High-Wire Act

By Hugh Sidey

When General Wojciech Jaruzelski had spoken and returned to his seat beside George Bush in the Polish Parliament, Bush reached over and patted the Communist boss's forearm. A little later, clustered with some newly chartered Polish Little Leaguers, he scooped up the grinning kids and pulled them close for the ritual team picture.

Next day, standing below the soaring Workers Monument in Gdansk, the President wrapped his arm around Solidarity leader Lech Walesa and held the portly electrician next to him. At the Westerplatte Memorial, which marks the site of the first gunfire of World War II, Bush, draped in a large American flag by an exuberant Pole, reached into the crowd, picked up a small boy and hugged him as if he were one of his own eleven grandchildren.

In rainy Budapest, beneath the huge statue of Lajos Kossuth, Hungary's greatest figure of independence, the President bounded down from the stage after brief remarks, stripped off his borrowed raincoat and wrapped it around a soaked, startled and utterly smitten old woman, who had to fend off other onlookers grabbing for her new prize.

On his way to speak at the Karl Marx University of Economic Sciences, Bush invited a couple of students into the presidential limousine; one of them sported a power yellow tie, reflecting Alan Greenspan more than Karl Marx. At the end of a run with dozens of youthful joggers, Bush jovially autographed a dirty sneaker that a child had thrust into his hand.

He was Uncle George on a historic dash through Eastern Europe, trying to reach out and touch everyone, striving to bring down to personal terms his doctrine of homegrown political and economic freedoms and what they could mean for the burdened people of the Soviet bloc. He was consumed with the idea that the economic summit, held in Paris during the weekend, ought to give much of its attention to the stirrings in the long-troubled nations of the old empire.

What propelled Bush was his belief that history is calling him and the leaders of Poland and Hungary to forge some kind of new partnership quickly. | But as he listened to the confessionals of Communists declaring their system a failure and searching for a peaceful way out, he realized that he had to move gingerly.

Before he left home, Bush wrote Mikhail Gorbachev that his trip was not designed to stir up trouble in the Soviets' backyard. "Winners, losers -- that's not what this is about," he insisted on Air Force One, as he sped toward Warsaw.

The delicate challenge was to encourage the faltering nations to embrace democratic reforms and move toward a free-market economy mostly on their own, without provoking another era of repression from nervous party bosses. Bush offered only $115 million to Poland, a pittance when measured against Poland's $39 billion international debt, and $25 million to Hungary. But part of the President's traveling plan was not to overpromise and energize the dissidents, who might then make more demands.

Some untutored White House aide had predicted a roaring reception in Poland, much like the one John Kennedy evoked in Berlin in 1963. A little Kennedy-like rhetoric was even inserted into Bush's Gdansk speech ("To those who think that freedom can be forever denied, I say let them look at Poland"). That totally missed the meaning of these dramatic days. Gorbachev is more of an ally than a threat. On this trip there was no adversary for Bush to shake his fist at while summoning hoarse defiance in the streets. The subdued, weary Poles seemed to understand Pogo's famous observation, "We have met the enemy and he is us." They were curious about Bush but worried about the new world he talked of. Capitalism is only dimly perceived by most people in Eastern Europe.

In a moment of cold candor, John Sununu, White House chief of staff, put it accurately, though he later apologized for his "unfortunate" analogy. Asked about the modest $115 million package for Poland, he replied, "In a sense we could actually do too much. You can't create the problem of a young person in the candy store, where there is so much there that they don't know which direction to take and don't have the self-discipline to take the right steps."

While Bush made eloquent pleas in his formal addresses about "the power and potential of this moment," perhaps his most telling diplomacy was conducted around the dining tables of Warsaw, Gdansk and Budapest. At U.S. Ambassador John Davis' residence in Warsaw, Communist leaders sat down with the Solidarity reformers who just last month startled the world by winning all but , one of the contested seats in the Polish Parliament. The lunch took on a life of its own.

When the idea of mixing the political enemies was first proposed, Jaruzelski turned down the invitation, then changed his mind, the first hint of Bush's healing touch. "I have lived perhaps 50 or 80 meters away from here for 16 years, and it is the first time that I have come to this residence," he said. If he was startled, the Solidarity members who had been imprisoned by the Communists were even more amazed as they pulled up chairs at the same round tables with their former jailers. "Rather strange," said Janusz Onyszkiewicz, a spokesman for Solidarity, "if you take into account that a year ago I was in prison." His wife Joanna, also a Solidarity partisan, admitted to her table partner that it was "uncomfortable sitting with people you have been fighting for years."

Yet Bush pulled it off. In the unseasonal heat, he ordered coats removed. He jumped from person to person with his outstretched hand. A thaw of sorts set in. Though Bush had ruled out toasts, he changed his mind and ruled them in again. He, Jaruzelski and Bronislaw Geremek, opposition leader in the Parliament, rose one by one in feeling tribute to the moment. It was at this lunch that Barbara Bush claims to have discovered a jocular streak in General Jaruzelski, known to most of the world as an unsmiling dictator lurking behind dark glasses. "Very amusing," insisted Barbara. "When George said, 'Take off your coats,' ((Jaruzelski)) said, 'I have to sneak in and take off my suspenders too.' So then when he had to get up to make his speech, he said, 'Well, I'd better be careful. I've got to remember I don't have my suspenders on.' "

In Gdansk the next day, Bush was at the luncheon table again, this one in the 100-year-old home of Solidarity leader Lech Walesa. Women from the neighborhood had prepared an avalanche of Polish dishes, ranging from smoked eel to schnitzel. Bush looked at the groaning board and commented, "My mother taught me to eat what's before you. In this house I would weigh 300 lbs." Framed pictures of Christ were in almost every room; crucifixes hung over most of the doors. By Polish standards the house was a mansion; Walesa noted that his work with Solidarity had some benefits.

Bush chatted with kids and patted dogs, but there was some serious talk when he and Walesa strolled alone. Walesa had said he was not ready to run for President of Poland, but Bush reportedly reminded him that if successful ; reform was to occur, somebody should be ready to lead. Walesa poured out his hopes for luring $10 billion in investments to Poland, a vague scheme of venture capital that caught the fancy of the former Texas oil entrepreneur.

Wherever Bush went, he heard quiet endorsement for his restrained attitude toward the Soviet Union. "Gorbachev makes it possible for us to move ahead," confided one of the Communists to Bush. "We appreciate your keeping a good relationship with him." It seemed, as Bush hurried along his route, that his hosts gained nerve and expressed not only their conviction that Communism was a botch but also their uncertainty about how to untangle their political and economic messes. "We are where you were in 1776," Hungary's party president, Rezso Nyers, told Bush. "We need a currency that is convertible. The question is, Can we get it fast enough to keep things moving? We know that reform means instability in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Poland and Hungary. At the same time, we know we need foreign capital. Most basic is, How do we reform the thinking of our people who for the past 40 years have not been told how the world works?"

Before he left Hungary, Bush had a special demonstration of the new wave. When he arrived to deliver his formal address at Karl Marx University, it was difficult to find any sign of Marx. The lone statue at the far end of the huge hall was blocked from sight by the press stand. "Your people and your leaders -- government and opposition alike -- are not afraid to break with the past, to act in the spirit of truth," Bush told the students. "And what better example of this could there be than one simple fact: Karl Marx University has dropped Das Kapital from its required reading list." All over the hall George Bush, a proud product of U.S capitalism, saw the young Hungarians break into wide smiles and nod in agreement.