The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

George Bush has watched with concern the mounting fatigue and stress that show in the face of Mikhail Gorbachev, caught now in the riptide of Soviet unrest. It is midsummer in Washington, and the President is heavily engaged in trench warfare with Congress. But a part of his mind is on the extraordinary events in the Communist world and the possibility that before the year ends, he might be called upon to help bolster his weary Soviet counterpart. Strange bedfellows. Strange world these days.

"I don't want to miss any signals from the Soviet Union," Bush told TIME a few days ago, then added with unusual firmness, "I am not going to mishandle the Soviet account."

The Soviet account in this age is a contradiction of almost everything practiced by the eight Presidents who preceded Bush over the past 43 years. Ronald Reagan, with a certain grim humor, could tell how he had written notes to three Soviet leaders in a row; before the letters reached them, "they all died." Bush not only wants Gorbachev to stay healthy, he may literally have offered up an Episcopal prayer or two for his success. Further, Bush has put his note writing to Gorbachev on a routine basis instead of limiting it to moments of crisis. The letters contain subtle hints that he will stand up publicly for the Kremlin reformer.

Bush wants to have regular meetings with Gorbachev, as did Reagan, but scheduling that first one in this environment of high expectations is ticklish. Gorbachev and his Polish and Hungarian cohorts cannot yet be made members of the open-market club, though they have such yearnings. But Bush hopes that there may be some way to bring the Communists closer to provisional entry into the free-market system. Bush, like most modern Presidents, is captivated by confronting the problem and devising solutions. The hunch here is that in the next three or four months, Bush and Gorbachev will meet and move their separate worlds a bit closer.

There is some indication that Bush's visit to Eastern Europe last month helped resolve the deadlock over the Polish presidency; General Wojciech Jaruzelski agreed to run and narrowly won with the tolerance of Solidarity's Lech Walesa. The diplomatic and intelligence assessments of the President's personal diplomacy have generally been good, emphasizing that a network embracing Washington, Warsaw, Budapest and Moscow is a going concern.

Bush's relationship with the somber, shaded Jaruzelski is probably as open as that with reformer Walesa. "I told Jaruzelski that he seemed closer to Gorbachev than any of the other leaders," Bush related. "Jaruzelski smiled and said that was probably so. He told me that he had just talked to Gorbachev before our meeting. Jaruzelski now is more willing to speak out, has more confidence to accept different opinions."

With both Jaruzelski and Walesa, small remarks lodged in Bush's mind. "Walesa told me how he came home after work, and it was the one place where he could walk alone in his yard and be away from it all," recalled the President. "Jaruzelski talked about his daughter away at school and how he hoped she was not under pressure from her classmates for what he did. Those are the things we all are used to hearing and we all understand."