IT’S A MATTER OF PROTOCOL : When Foreign VIPs Come Calling, Just to Visit or to Do Business, There’s a County Office to Turn to

Is it OK to give a king a friendly slap on the back?

Sure, if he’s a king of rock ‘n’ roll, a king of swat or a king of the silver screen. But don’t try it on a genuine blueblood. Protocol dictates that you should never touch royalty unless one of them touches you first. And going on past record (several thousand years or so), the chances of a commoner getting a royal backslap are pretty remote.

Protocol is an internationally accepted code of civility which dictates how we deal with each other’s dignitaries--whether we touch them, how we address them, where we seat them at banquets, and what we chat about with them.

It was not so long ago that wars were being declared over mere slights and duels to the death were being fought over which ambassador sat where at court balls.

And today’s standards of international behavior are history’s legacy to us.

In some ways, not much has changed. An affront to a nation’s representative is still considered an affront to the nation itself, although seating someone behind a pillar is not exactly a declaration of war these days.

To avoid such diplomatic gaffes, specialists in the arcane details of protocol are de rigueur in the world’s capitals.

But because globe-trotting ministers of trade, members of Parliament, mayors and university chancellors conduct much of their official business outside diplomatic and political circles, states, cities, and even large corporations like AT&T; have established offices of protocol to ensure all the Ts are crossed when foreign VIPs come calling. The state of California has an office of protocol. So does the city of Los Angeles.

Even Orange County has one.

Now, just a minute. Bureaucracies of pomp and ceremony in laid-back Southern California? Didn’t we come out West to get away from this kind of starched ritualism?

According to Mary Bonino Jones, Orange County’s chief of protocol, how we choose to conduct ourselves privately is our own business. But when we are dealing with foreign dignitaries in an official capacity, we have no choice but to abide by the formalities agreed upon by the international community.

“In spite of how we feel, we still have an obligation as a government to adhere to the rules of protocol when relating to other governments and their representatives,” Jones insists. As the titular head of their nation, they are entitled to be received in an appropriate manner, like it or not.

And like it we do.

In spite of our weak protestations, America is a nation of unabashed royalphiles. Reportedly, more books on Britain’s royal family are sold in the United States than back home on their own turf. We can’t get enough gossip about Princess Di and Princess Stephanie of Monaco.

And the thought of actually meeting someone--anyone--with a title is enough to make us jelly-kneed.

Thomas Rusk, clinical professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego, calls the phenomenon “compare and despair.” As he sees it, economic status alone is no longer enough. We crave class, distinction. A title is one of the few things that can separate us from the simply rich guy who lives next door.

“There are hundreds if not thousands of years of tradition behind a title,” he explains. “Money can’t buy that and these people know it.”

If we can’t be royalty, then rubbing shoulders with them seems the next best thing.

Do you curtsy, bow, or shake hands? Do you talk or wait until you are spoken to? What about turning your back on them as you walk out of the room?

When royalty beckons, who ya gonna call? That’s right, the office of protocol.

Established in 1984 by the Board of Supervisors, the Orange County office of protocol has a sterling grip on the minutiae of when to address a duke as “your royal highness” and when to merely call him “your grace” (hint: a duke who is given the title is smaller potatoes than one, such as a member of the royal family, who is born to it.)

The office of protocol’s kid-glove treatment has been extended to the crown prince and princess of Luxembourg and to the king and queen of Sweden (who came to Orange County as private guests of Henry and Renee Segerstrom).

And in an unequaled public relations coup, the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, was in town on the day the world learned that he had been awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

Although the county provides the three-man protocol team with free office space in the Hall of Administration in Santa Ana and absorbs telephone charges, the office of protocol is funded through the efforts of its support arm, the Protocol Foundation.

Membership dues from about 350 private and corporate supporters provide the bulk of the annual operating budget (estimated at $104,500 for 1989-90). The balance is raised at the annual and very formal International Protocol Ball.

This year’s gala, being held tonight at Le Meridien Hotel in Newport Beach, is expected to raise about $40,000. Four hundred guests have paid $150 each to attend the ball and hobnob with 40 members of the consular corps. Those who paid $1,500 to sponsor an entire table will have the consul general of their choice as their guest of honor during dinner.

Diplomatic to the end, the ball’s organizers decline to divulge which consuls general are snapped up first, but rumor has it that those representing the Pacific Rim countries, Orange County’s major trading partners, are among those most sought.

When it comes to business networking, ballrooms are not off limits.

Ironically, the very people who arrange galas for the international A-crowd work out of a cramped, windowless office filled with dowdy furniture and secondhand equipment.

Jones gingerly admits that her team is working under “some rather constraining conditions.” The annual budget barely covers three salaries, office supplies and printing costs. The staff members go next door to the county information office when they need to make photocopies, they rely on volunteers to pad out the manpower and, as Manager of Protocol Services Pat Ware put it, “We shop around for the best deals on office supplies. It’s always a bit of a scramble.”

Royalty, heads of state and grandees make up the smallest percentage of official visitors who come to town for the Tour d’ Orange, she explains. The VIP roster runs more to trade attaches, ministers of finance and government specialists in technology, science, business and education who come, as Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder puts it, to learn about the business of doing business with Orange County.

“The thrust of the protocol office was never intended to be social,” says Wieder, who pushed for the creation of the office while board chairman.

“If we had called it the International Economic Board, perhaps people would understand its function better. Orange County has a larger percentage of employers that do business overseas than any other place in the United States. Believe me, these visiting dignitaries are no longer coming to see Mickey Mouse,” she added.

Wieder is referring to the days when Disneyland held a virtual monopoly on the county’s protocol.

Until 1984, the Magic Kingdom’s well-oiled, well-financed international relations department had been rolling out the red carpet on our behalf for prime ministers, presidents and royalty, including Japan’s Emperor Hirohito, for nearly 30 years.

Those were also the days when Orange County’s international profile could have been summed up in six words: “Orange County? What’s that? Oh, Disneyland.”

Part of the office of protocol’s mandate is to do something about that image.

The county’s booming international economy has already made some headway in pulling us out of global obscurity. But the decentralized nature of the county makes it hard for foreigners to understand exactly what kind of economic and political entity that they are dealing with.

“Orange County has 2.25 million people and 29 cities, but we don’t have a ‘key city’ where an office of protocol is traditionally located,” Jones explains.

“Every township in the world has a mayor and visitors are familiar with the cultural significance of the mayor’s position. But a Board of Supervisors is hard to explain. It’s an interesting challenge to impress our visitors with the importance of the board.”

Jones could certainly teach us all a thing or two about the fine art of diplomatic small-speak, which she mastered during her 15 years in international relations as manager of community affairs at--where else?--Disneyland. Supervisor Wieder called her “a natural for the position.”

Ask her outright if we are a county of cultural hicks and she replies: “The community is certainly becoming more and more knowledgeable about other cultures.”

The office of protocol is also the official county liaison with the region’s consular corps. Until the office was opened, the 70-odd consulates based in Los Angeles and the 15 based in San Francisco viewed Orange County as an extension of Los Angeles at best. At worst, the county--and its economy--were ignored completely.

“You just don’t get the whole picture without an office of protocol to assist you,” says John Kelso, Australia’s consul-general.

Through its Business Relations Council, the office of protocol holds economic briefings for the consulates on what Orange County has to offer. The council also coordinates seminars and networking for local companies who either conduct international business or who are interested in doing so.

“We are here as a resource for the business community,” Ware says. “Understanding that in many countries it is important to follow a certain etiquette before getting down to the hard nails of business can make or break a company’s entree into a foreign market. We have that kind of information here--cultural profiles from all over the world--at their disposal.”

That information could be as simple as knowing that when the French say something is impossible, it is not necessarily a statement of fact but merely a colorful way of punctuating negotiations. Or knowing that in Asia, where the exchange of gifts formalizes a business relationship, the color of the gift wrap is as crucial as the gift itself. While red means good luck in Japan, in Korea it symbolizes death.

“Even the man in the street benefits,” Wieder says. “He understands that there is a trickle-down effect as the county’s economy is affected.” More important, perhaps, is knowing that the office of protocol is supported privately rather than by his tax dollars.

In fact, not one cent of the budget is earmarked for entertaining visiting dignitaries. Instead, the office relies on its network of companies and private individuals to host the visitors.

Gayle Anderson, a realtor who doubles as president of the Protocol Foundation, has hosted dozens of guests from around the world at her 1 1/2-acre home in Orange Park Acres, including a group of Indonesian members of Parliament and one of the Queen’s Guards, who stayed for two weeks.

“We also had a professor of political science from Stuttgart University stay with us on his way to lecture at Harvard,” she says. “He had never been on a horse in his life, and we just happen to own seven horses.”

Suddenly, the bespectacled academic was having the time of his life impersonating an Orange County cowboy. “By bringing these people into your home, you break all the formality,” she says.

And that, after all, is what we do best in Orange County.