Just Like Old Times
By Hugh Sidey
The Presidency
The Secret Service will drive Andrei Gromyko through the gates of the White House to make sure he arrives safe and sound for his meeting with Ronald Reagan. Both the President's military aide and the chief of protocol will be out under the West Wing Portico to add dignity when Old Grom, as he is semiaffectionately called by some diplomats, sets his feet on White House ground again after a six-year absence.
He will be steered through the Roosevelt Room, where he will pass a portrait of F.D.R., the first President he called on. Gromyko could find his way in the dark, since he has logged dozens of visits to the Oval Office. When he sits down in front of the fireplace, in one of the Martha Washington chairs, to the President's left, Gromyko will find he is quite an attraction. At least six of the President's top men will be clustered around to weigh every word and interpret every gesture for some glint of the future relations between the superpowers.
After two hours or so of talk, the 75-year-old visitor will be escorted through the Rose Garden to the Family Dining Room. There will be some chilled Stolichnaya vodka from Mother Russia to wash down Chesapeake blue crabs out of Chef Henry Haller's imaginative kitchen. Old Grom can demolish succulent rolled veal, served on Lyndon Johnson's china and set off with a California wine. Finally, Gromyko will be escorted to the diplomatic doorway in the back of the White House for his exit, far from probing cameras and obstreperous reporters. It is a vantage point with a magnificent panorama of the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial. On a clear autumn day the air seems to rustle with the presidential whispers that have changed history.
That is the way we deal these days with an eminence from the "evil empire."
Gromyko is the first top Soviet official Reagan has been able to get his hands on when he needed to. Old Grom cannot help mustering an inward smile about the royal treatment that follows a period of international sulking.
Reagan will not confront Gromyko. The President is tough in policy, in speeches, on paper. Eyeball to eyeball he softens, not hardens. He listens, smiles, talks softly, encouragingly. What will Gromyko hear? How will he size up the leader of the free world? We still wonder whether Nikita Khrushchev's assessment of John Kennedy launched the Cuban missile crisis and whether Leonid Brezhnev's contempt for Jimmy Carter encouraged the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
For his part, Reagan is utterly baffled why the Soviets keep saying they fear him and America, because neither has ever had any ambitions for empire or world revolution. Can he get a clue from Old Grom? Probably not. Gromyko is in his own way just as skillful an actor as Reagan. Gromyko has in the past reminisced about his warm times in the White House with Franklin Roosevelt and Cordell Hull. But just a few months ago he conducted a cold and programmed shouting match with Secretary of State George Shultz in Madrid over the Korean airline incident.
Last week former Secretary of State Dean Rusk recalled how he watched Gromyko's face and body language as John Kennedy warned him about putting missiles into Cuba. Gromyko never gave himself away. He denied the missiles were on the island. "We knew the missiles were there," said Rusk. "The President had a desk full of photos. I'm sure Gromyko knew. He was doing what Moscow told him to do." Rusk took him to dinner that fateful October night, and Old Grom's mask remained impenetrable through vodka, wine and cognac.
Still, says Rusk, we need more "pointless talk" at the highest levels of diplomacy. Out of such seemingly aimless moments come feelings that at first are formless but can change the world some day just as surely as the strongest armies. Something could start this week. Stranger things have happened at lunch in the White House.