One Way or Another, Life Goes on for Ex-Presidents : Retirement: From herding pigs to brokering peace deals, most former chief executives manage to keep busy.

Presidents are not cast entirely adrift on the ice floes of private life. Bill Clinton will have some Secret Service protection. The government will provide him with a limited budget for an office and a staff, in addition to his regular pension. President Bush received, in fiscal 1999, about $400,000 from the government to run his office, according to Bush’s chief of staff, Mike Dannenhauer.

A number of ex-presidents have chosen to write their memoirs, putter around their libraries and then slowly fade away.

Harry Truman lived for two decades as an ordinary citizen in Independence, Mo., working on his memoirs, living frugally, occasionally popping up with an ornery comment. One day, riding down a country road, he stopped and helped an elderly lady herd some wandering hogs back toward their pen. Truman later explained that he’d been a farmer longer than he’d been a president. He liked to lead tours of his library, uttering a favorite joke: “My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse, or a politician. And, to tell the truth, there’s hardly any difference.”

Dwight Eisenhower, among the world’s most powerful men even before he was president, did not easily make the transition to private life. He and his wife, Mamie, retired in 1961 to Gettysburg, Pa., but he grew quiet, distant, enervated.

The night Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson returned to Texas, they took a walk around their ranch and came upon a pile of their luggage in the carport. No one would be carrying it for them.

“The coach has turned back into a pumpkin. And the mice have all run away,” Mrs. Johnson said with a laugh. LBJ was depressed for months and wouldn’t speak of his time in the White House. He let his hair grow long, over his collar. He started smoking again, despite warnings that it might kill him. He was not wanted at the next Democratic convention. In four years, almost to the day, he made the full transition from world leader to political nonperson to dead man.

Gerald Ford played golf.

George Bush let everyone know, when he left the presidency, that he planned to get heavily into the granddad business. He did, and occasionally jumped out of a plane. Now he’s reemerged as the sire of a look-alike version of himself who may well reach the White House. Unique among ex-presidents, he hasn’t written a memoir.

Which brings up Richard Nixon, champion of the reputation-burnishers. For 19 years he cranked out one book after another, about himself, about Watergate, about foreign affairs. His rehabilitation was never complete; Watergate remained firmly rooted in the first line of his obituary.

Ronald Reagan lives, but the Gipper is gone.

Finally there’s Jimmy Carter, who’s had the most active ex-presidency in recent times, traveling the globe to monitor elections and broker peace deals. Carter spent a few years after his 1980 defeat thinking he might someday be elected again; when that faded, he reinvented himself as a freelancer.