The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

Mikhail Gorbachev sat on Nancy Reagan's right. On her left was Richard Perle, former Pentagon hard-liner and Soviet nemesis. The President was flanked by Raisa Gorbachev and Jeane Kirkpatrick. And the State Dining Room was filled with the unlikeliest 125 people one could imagine supping together: Henry Kissinger and Meadowlark Lemon, great Globetrotters both; Claudette Colbert and Moscow's supreme propagandist, Alexander Yakovlev; Ted Graber, Nancy's interior designer, and Georgi Arbatov, the Kremlin's noted American expert; Joe DiMaggio and Pearl Bailey; David Rockefeller, Mary Lou Retton and Saul Bellow.

The centuries whispered to them. "I knew this was a special moment," Mrs. Reagan thought as she entered the State Dining Room with her husband and the Gorbachevs. "The people there were happy, uplifted," she later recalled. The dinner was the affirmation of the day's achievement and the gracious application of wine and warmth to see if the journey of peace could be pushed on down the road a bit.

History has traveled the alimentary canal forever. George Washington worried in his very first days as President in 1789 about how to hold official dinners, so important a part of stewardship did he consider the evening ritual. Power was dispensed in the evening at the table, reasoned John Adams, just as it was during the day.

"I've never seen a dinner take off like this one," marveled Graber. "I was stunned by how much that evening moved me," said former Democratic Party Chairman Robert Strauss, who sat across from Nancy and Gorbachev. "I've only felt it once before, at the dinner for Sadat and Begin."

Did the sense of destiny and the Strolling Strings soften the crusts of Gorbachev and his crew of Soviets who mingled below the portrait of Abraham Lincoln? At the end, when Pianist Van Cliburn played Moscow Nights, Strauss thought he saw a bit of mist in the eyes of the Gorbachevs as they sang along. It was surely the most startling music in the East Room since Harry Truman played The Black Hawk Waltz.

The new Librarian of Congress, James Billington, a historian of Russian culture who speaks the language, probed for a glimpse of the underlying vision that Gorbachev might hold. How would the Soviet government, he asked, officially commemorate the millennium of Christianity in Russia next year? Gorbachev deftly avoided the question by indicating that his nation's ecclesiastical authorities were making the preparations. How "Russian" was the man? wondered Billington; then he queried him about Soviet writers. Gorbachev's reading was current, and included the so-called village writers, who have deplored the loss of rural values in Russia.

Congressman Dick Cheney asked what Gorbachev wanted his country to be in 20 years. He hoped, Gorbachev replied, to see a society more dynamic, more open and more democratic. Billington made a mental note that the translation was more appealing than the original Russian.

There was virtually no talk of children, homes or hobbies. The Soviet leader was at work. In his forceful way, Gorbachev left little doubt that he cast ^ himself as a man of destiny, that his reforms would make or break the Soviet nation. Looking straight at Cheney, he said, "This is the only opportunity we will have."

Gorbachev told Perle he had seen a new film, from Britain's Granada television and shown last week on PBS, that dramatized the Reykjavik summit. "The fellow who played you lost a lot of weight," laughed Gorbachev to the pleasantly padded Perle, who relished the notoriety.

Former CIA Director Richard Helms, barred from associating with powerful Communists for his entire career, gripped the Gorbachev hand and said, "I never expected to meet a General Secretary of the Communist Party." Gorbachev broke into a grin, and for that second, perhaps, was as amazed as Helms.

Reagan introduced Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb and visionary of Star Wars, to Gorbachev, whose response was so minimal that Reagan thought he had not heard the name. "This is the famous Dr. Teller," said the President. "There are many Dr. Tellers," replied Gorbachev coolly, seemingly haunted by his dissident H-bomb scientist Andrei Sakharov.

Billy Graham decided that Gorbachev had an "evangelical quality," but without God. And during the mellow Cliburn sing-along at evening's end, George Will leaned over to Admiral William Crowe, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and whispered, "That song just cost you 200 ships."

Maybe. But nothing on that evening was certain except the world was changing and that small assembly of Soviets and Americans was witness to a rare act within the larger drama. As he went out into the night, Helms cast a glance at Lincoln with his chin in his hand. "I wonder what old Abe would think," Helms mused. Then he added his own yearning. "Maybe this time we can make it work."