The Prudence Thing: George Bush's Class Act

No one is under oath when writing their memoirs, but this joint account by former President George Bush and his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, has better credentials than most. They not only had privileged access to official documentation, as well as their own sources, but also were generously helped by former staffers like Richard Haass, Condoleezza Rice, and Philip Zelikow. Furthermore, the two authors separate their observations, which take the form of individual comments on a central narrative. This structure gives the work a freshness that makes it readable as well as authoritative. In short, it is a good buy, both for scholars and the general public.

That said, the book contains few surprises. The three years it covers, from January 1989 to December 1991, were among the most momentous of the century, including as they did the liberation of Eastern Europe, the Tiananmen Square massacre, the unification of Germany, the Gulf War, and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. They have already been microscopically examined by scholars, journalists, and memoir writers. But the view from the Oval Office is unique, even if the events are already familiar. In particular, the book tells us nothing that we did not know about President Bush himself. Both in background and personality, he was well fitted for the task of navigating the rapids through which the United States and the world passed during those three stupendous years. He was a thorough professional, having spent the best part of two decades in high office in Washington. He knew how government worked and how the world worked. As vice president he had come to know most of the world's leaders -- usually at the funerals of their predecessors -- and was on friendly terms with many of them. Unlike some of his own predecessors, he was not dependent on policy experts he did not trust or cronies trusted by nobody else. As a man born to the senatorial (if not the presidential) purple, he accepted power easily and carried it graciously. He assembled a team as professional as himself, among whom Brent Scowcroft was preeminent.

A GENIUS FOR FRIENDSHIP

Scowcroft had also been a Washington insider for 20 years and understood both the importance and the limitations of his role. Hard-working, strong-minded, yet self-effacing, he knew that his task was not to make policy ...a la Kissinger (whose offers of help he politely rejected), but to create harmony among the able people who constituted the presidential team and present the president with practicable choices of action. His relationship with the president was like that between a general and his chief of staff. Like all such successful relationships, it deepened into close friendship.

Indeed, friendship was the clue to Bush's success, and he had a genius for it. It went far deeper than the backslapping camaraderie with which some Americans try to establish relationships with foreigners, which is usually deeply resented. Clearly, Bush not only liked but understood people, including those of different cultures. That made them tend to like him. He was, admittedly, lucky in the leaders with whom he had to deal. German Chancellor Helmut Kohl shared Bush's informal tastes and anyhow knew the importance of keeping the United States on his side during the delicate process of German reunification. Margaret Thatcher never concealed her suspicion of Bush's tendency, as she saw it, "to go wobbly," but her determination to preserve the "special relationship" between Britain and the United States kept her in line. Francois Mitterrand was another matter altogether: Had Bush not charmed the French president during an informal weekend in Kennebunkport, the persistent efforts of the Quai d'Orsay to rock the boat might have caused a great deal more trouble.

But most important of all was the friendship with Mikhail Gorbachev. It was not just that Bush, like Thatcher, found it easy to do business with him. From the very beginning, he admits, "I liked him." Under other circumstances, Bush would no doubt have kept these feelings under close control, but in solving the problems that lay before them, a relationship of close confidence could do nothing but good. Scowcroft was professionally more cautious. It took him some time, as it took many other Americans, to realize that Gorbachev was "for real." He feared that Gorbachev was launching a dangerously successful charm offensive to disarm the West, and warned Bush accordingly. As the year wore on, however, it became clear that Gorbachev's concessions over arms control and Eastern Europe were not only sincerely meant but bitterly opposed within his own entourage. The support of Gorbachev against his internal enemies became a firm plank of Western policy.

Nonetheless, even Bush was determined that Gorbachev should not be allowed to shape the future unilaterally with his dramatic concessions. Bush was initially criticized for his apparent lack of ideas, and he disarmingly confessed that he was not good at "the vision thing." During the first six months of his presidency, however, he badgered his staff to produce ideas that would enable him to preserve the initiative. But by the summer of 1989, events in Europe were moving so fast that "the vision thing" became largely irrelevant. All the United States could do, in Bush's words, was encourage, guide, and manage change. This required seat-of-the-pants planning, not a Wilsonian vision of a new world order.

SWALLOWING TOADS