The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

If communism as we have known and hated it is out of the way, perhaps George Bush can now talk unabashedly to Soviet officials about such good old- fashioned values as God, truth and the sanctity of human life. Evangelist Billy Graham, who talked to Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev shortly before the botched coup, returned from the Soviet Union and passed the word to his friend Bush that both men had told him of the need for "some philosophy, some religion, an inner strength" for their society.

How dramatic a change that is in the nature of Big Power relationships is now up for discussion by the President and his men. On the waters of Kennebunkport, Bush and his National Security Adviser, Brent Scowcroft, ponder "the new rationality," where facts will not be obliterated by rigid ideology. White House planners are anticipating a reemergence of Christianity in Russia, bringing with it a moral framework that has long been absent from Soviet political life.

For much of this century, U.S. Presidents have found that dealing with the "unnatural" concepts of communism was often more difficult than confronting Soviet military power, which was measurable and matchable. Harry Truman, like most American pols, believed he could touch the soul of any man he sat down with after a couple of toddies. He came back from the Potsdam Conference in 1945 enamored of the new friend he called "Old Joe" Stalin. Then the cold war started, and Truman got a clear view of the dark heart of a fanatic communist.

After the Bay of Pigs, and with tension rising in Berlin, John Kennedy went to Vienna believing that he could find some agreement with Nikita Khrushchev on how to reduce the threat of nuclear war. Instead he drew blank stares and threats. Throughout that grim summer Kennedy would talk to friends about Khrushchev's seeming indifference to the specter of millions of people dying in a nuclear exchange. "I'd never encountered anybody like that before," Kennedy mused.

Lyndon Johnson, the master persuader, thought he could work a little magic with Alexei Kosygin at the Glassboro summit in 1967 and slow arms sales to the troubled Middle East. Kosygin joined heartily in swapping stories about going hungry and chopping wood as boys. But the cold curtain came down when they got around to discussing a deal to ease tension. L.B.J. emerged from that meeting, his long face sagging, and told his National Security Adviser, Walt Rostow, "I've used everything I know, but I think I've failed."

Richard Nixon probably understood the nature of communism best, perhaps because of his conspiratorial bent and his take-no-prisoners approach to U.S. politics. Ronald Reagan was the most candid when he branded the system "the evil empire."

White House Soviet experts say the "amorality of communism" continued to bedevil Presidents up until Gorbachev took power. The first hint of change came when British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984 signaled to Reagan that Gorbachev seemed realistic and trustworthy. If whatever Soviet entity survives this upheaval embraces the human values of democracy, it will, in the view of former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, "make it easier emotionally and conceptually for us, but it won't be any easier in terms of the number of problems." That's gain enough.