The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

They looked up one day last week in the White House and discovered they were in another political campaign, this one a global face-off with the Soviet Union's Mikhail Gorbachev as the other candidate.

"It's like '84," said a presidential aide. "We've got oversight groups meeting to plan our approach to the summit. Policy papers are being prepared for the President. The speechwriters are gearing up. Our advancemen have been to Geneva a couple of times already. The media have a powerful desire to see a contest and are pounding the drums."

Little did Ronald Reagan know on that teary night last November when, with old friends, he toasted "the last campaign" that the big one still lay ahead. That is so because the Soviet Union in its clumsy but inexorable way found that it was living in the "global village." That is Marshall McLuhan's term for a world so saturated with media that any significant act by anyone, anywhere, good or bad, is seen, reported and gossiped about. The Soviets stumbled from behind the Iron Curtain to face the cameras when they were clobbered on the world's tubes after bombing Afghan villages, blasting the Korean airliner, murdering Major Nicholson in Germany and committing a few dozen other uncivilized acts. Not only have the Soviets stolen (naturally) pages from American campaign manuals, they have even produced their version of John Kennedy--Gorbachev, who displays a good-looking, clothes-conscious wife and plenty of middle-age "vigah."

When he got back from a recent campaign stop at North Carolina State University where he fielded questions from the students, Reagan plopped down with his staff. "Well," he said, "that ought to prepare me for those young fellows that are coming from the Soviet Union." In Geneva a few days ago, Soviet advancemen were pressing their U.S. counterparts to show them where the American press center was going to be. Then they asked if the center would be open to Soviet journalists. Getting no immediate answer they asked again, and again. The Swiss, pressured by the Soviets, asked the same question of the U.S. team. Then the Soviets requested a phone line and a typewriter in the American press center, wherever it might be. Pravda, TASS, Izvestiya and the other Soviet outlets undoubtedly would fill and color their summit coverage with the overheard irreverences of American correspondents chortling over Reagan's malapropisms, Nancy's dresses and Secretary of State George Shultz's tennis. That's the lingo of freedom that Soviet eavesdroppers love to distort. The U.S. team, wise in the ways of media, suggested the Soviets give them similar privileges. The issue is on hold while the Soviets go back to the manual.

Another story that made its way to the White House is that the dour Georgi Arbatov, the Soviets' top U.S. expert, was playing Reagan in the Kremlin's dry runs for the Geneva confrontation. The thought is so singular that it provoked laughs in the back corridors of the White House. One wag suggested that if that went well, Arbatov could move on to Hollywood and Bedtime for Bonzo.

Within a few days the entire White House will, one way or another, be geared into this summit preparation. Countless people from ten agencies will be pressed into service. It could be true that the Soviets have had a few good moments lately in their pre-summit politicking, but the Americans, who invented the game, are working and waiting. Gorbachev had best be careful or he may peak too soon.

"Damn," said Ronald Reagan a few days ago, after reading TIME's description of the well-tailored suit Gorbachev wore in his interview with the magazine. "I've been wearing a pinstripe suit like that for five years, and they didn't notice." He's taking that suit to Geneva.