In the Eye of the Storm

By Jacob V. Lamar Jr

He had just presided over one of the more acrimonious Senate hearings in recent memory, but as he leaned back in a cushioned rocking chair, sipping a cup of coffee in his modestly decorated office, Richard Lugar seemed unperturbed, even placid. The Indiana Republican's composure belied the fact that he was caught smack between two formidable forces: the growing clamor in Congress for punitive sanctions against South Africa and the Administration's continued resistance to such measures. As both a loyal Reaganaut and an independent-minded chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Lugar found himself in the unenviable position of trying to construct a compromise. Yet he was able to say, in his quiet and ingenuous way, "I don't see my own role as pressured."

Lugar's limited plan for sanctions reflects his cool-headed pragmatism: he calls for rescinding the landing rights of South African Airways, closing visa offices in U.S. consulates throughout South Africa, and freezing bank assets of South Africans who have begun to transfer their savings to the U.S. in anticipation of a flight from a civil war in their country. The Senator theorizes that through such measures the U.S. could say to the troubled nation's white elite, "You're going to have to deal with your own problems in South Africa and get some talks started there."

If anyone has a chance of laying out a sound middle path for U.S. policy, it is Lugar. Late last week, Delaware Democrat Joseph Biden, one of the Senate's most vehement supporters of tough sanctions, said, "I will truly listen to whatever Dick Lugar has to say on South Africa, and I think there's a reasonable prospect he will propose something with real teeth in it."

There is an almost eerie tranquillity about the Indiana Senator. Though he wears a politician's fixed smile, he does not indulge in the posturing and showmanship that are a committee chairman's institutional prerogative. Presiding at last week's stormy hearing, he sat primly with his hands folded and his jacket on, oblivious to the heat generated by both television lights and the querulous exchanges between wrought-up Senators and bristling Administration spokesmen. Precise and undramatic, Lugar, 54, comes across more like a fusty academic than a hands-on vote getter. He is regarded as thoughtful -- as opposed to purely brainy -- by friend and foe alike, a quality that stands out among legislators given to impulse. Always dressed in shades of dark gray and blue ("Once I owned a green suit," he says, as if surprised by the recollection), he seems somehow smaller than his 5 ft. 10 in., 160 lbs. Yet his intellectual weight is felt on both sides of the aisle.

The bipartisan respect that Lugar commands is testimony to his adept stewardship of the Foreign Relations Committee. In less than two years as chairman, the Rhodes scholar and former mayor of Indianapolis has taken firm charge of a committee that in recent years has been rendered virtually impotent by dissension. By working to put together strong majorities on foreign-policy issues, he has brought greater clout to the panel than it has enjoyed in a decade. "He's a good chairman," says the committee's ranking Democrat, Rhode Island's Claiborne Pell. "He's fair and patient and would prefer a consensus to winning a point by a vote." Lugar has also earned high praise for helping position the Administration behind Corazon Aquino during the last days of Ferdinand Marcos' rule in the Philippines.

As Lugar began work on the plan he will present to the Senate committee this week, he was considering adding sanctions on new investments by U.S. companies in South Africa and a ban on imports from South Africa's state-owned steel and coal industries. If he seems calm about the policy storm looming, it may be because he is confident that his plan will receive serious attention. Says Lugar in a deceptively mild tone: "I'm not the kind of person who is easily rebuffed."

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett and Michael Duffy/Washington