The Damascus Primary

By Jay Branegan

President Clinton's trip last week to India and Pakistan felt more like a political campaign swing than a statesman's visit. There were policy speeches and "issues events" on health and the environment. There were photo ops and town-hall meetings. Sometimes all that seemed to be missing was candidate rallies and attack ads.

Make no mistake--his tour of the subcontinent and the meeting planned for Sunday in Geneva with Syrian President Hafez Assad were all part of Bill Clinton's last campaign. Call it a quest for a legacy (a term Clinton has banished from the White House lexicon) or, as he might prefer, a simple attempt to do the most he can in the 10 months he has left in office. Either way, Clinton is waging a peace campaign, trying to use his skills as mediator and empathizer to end some of the world's most stubborn conflicts. In addition to those he confronted during this trip, there's the tattered Northern Ireland power-sharing agreement to repair and ethnic hatred in Kosovo to soothe. So much to do...

The goal of his talk with Assad was to move along Syria's stalled peace talks with Israel. Syria wants to begin talking about where the new border should be, but Israel first wants security guarantees and normalized relations. The problem on the Asian subcontinent, which Clinton had been aching to tackle for years, is twofold: the need for Indians and Pakistanis to back away from a war that could quickly go nuclear, and to end the cold war-era estrangement between India and the U.S. A senior American official claims to have heard "the sound of ice melting" in Indo-American relations, but neither the Indians nor Pakistani coup leader General Pervez Musharraf, who got a stern Clinton lecture on democracy during their brief meeting in Islamabad, took any steps to reduce tension.

Staff and the press knew they were in for an unusual trip when, right after takeoff, the Secret Service handed out strict written warnings to be especially careful because Americans in the region had been the targets of terrorists in the past. Sure enough, an early side trip to a Bangladeshi village by helicopter over dense jungle--scheduled to spotlight microcredit loans--was abruptly scrubbed because of threats from terrorist groups linked to Osama bin Laden. The next day brought news reports of a horrific massacre of 35 Sikhs in the troubled Indian province of Kashmir, the key source of trouble with Pakistan. Security would interrupt the script again at week's end, when the President slipped deftly into an unmarked plane for his trip from India to Islamabad while the designated Air Force One plane pulled in without him.

Throughout, Clinton remained unrattled, hitting his stride quickly with a speech to the Indian Parliament, where he turned on the famous Clintonian empathy (statesman's edition) and displayed his politically perfect pitch, showing respect for India's prickly assertiveness on the nuclear question. "Only India can determine its own interests," he said to thunderous applause. The Indians, both legislators and press, were dazzled. ("A masterly display of diplomatic oratory that floored his select audience," said the Hindustan Times in a typical comment.) The Americans, in turn, were startled when the lawmakers, an anti-American bunch by reputation, all but trampled one another afterward in the scramble to shake his hand.

That set Clinton off on an arc of good pictures and vibes, with visits to the Taj Mahal; to a village where dancing women showered him with flower petals; to a nature preserve, where the First Tourist saw two Bengal tigers; and, finally, after days of security-minded abstention, to his first plunge into a subcontinental rope line.

It's not unusual for a visiting President to see a country's best side. But in India the contrast with the worst is starker than most. Roads normally choked with the cacophony of Third World traffic--battered cars and trucks, camel-and horse-drawn carts, wandering cows, beggars, bicycles, rickshas and pedestrians--became for Clinton's motorcade clear thoroughfares for miles on end, with spectators held back by fences built especially for his visit.

Although Clinton often mentioned that India has many of the world's poor, he rarely saw them. So sanitized was the President's view that many Indians wondered whether he was too optimistic in his assessment of India's potential for progress and, by extension, for the prospect of improved Indo-U.S. relations. But Clinton has always been an optimist. What better trait for someone who wants to be a peacemaker?