Three Days in Moscow

by Bret Baier

  “He was the same man leaving the White House who walked in, other than a knowledge base that was enhanced,” Kuhn observed. “I mean, any president, any CEO, any professor or any lobbyist, or any professor-to-be, you want to get smarter every day. With all the information that you have in front of you on a daily basis as President, that knowledge base just grows immensely. But aside from that, he was the same man, personally, who walked in, who left eight years later. Not impacted, not affected by the power, the prestige of that office, because he was just very low key, very unassuming, very self-effacing, a unique man.”

  In his final weeks, Reagan had time to reflect back on his political life, and he realized that it had all started with FDR. That great man had been the inspiration of his youth, and he hoped that he in turn had given the young people of America even a fraction of the patriotic spirit that his predecessor had. He liked to recall the time he had seen Roosevelt during the 1936 presidential campaign, at a parade in Des Moines when Reagan was twenty-five. “What a wave of affection and pride swept through that crowd as he passed by in an open car . . . a familiar smile on his lips, jaunty and confident, drawing from us reservoirs of confidence and enthusiasm some of us had forgotten we had during those hard years. Maybe that was FDR’s greatest gift to us. He really did convince us that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself.” The image stayed with him. He always wanted to be the same kind of forceful, inspiring presence.

  For his farewell address, Reagan asked Peggy Noonan, who had left the White House after 1986, to return to help him shape the words and ideas that would express his time in the Oval Office. Through December 1988 and into January, she worked with him face-to-face. He wanted to tell two stories, one about a world remade, and the other about a hope—and a warning—for the future. On January 11, 1989, he made his last appearance before the American people, speaking from the Oval Office. He was comfortable at the desk, looking into the camera with that squint, a smile from his eyes, and reaching out through the lens to speak once again in that familiar voice, both resolved and tender.

  Of his achievement in brokering a new path of negotiation with the Soviet Union, he said:

  My view is that President Gorbachev is different from previous Soviet leaders. I think he knows some of the things wrong with his society and is trying to fix them. We wish him well. And we’ll continue to work to make sure that the Soviet Union that eventually emerges from this process is a less threatening one. What it all boils down to is this: I want the new closeness to continue. And it will, as long as we make it clear that we will continue to act in a certain way as long as they continue to act in a helpful manner. If and when they don’t, at first pull your punches. If they persist, pull the plug. It’s still trust but verify. It’s still play, but cut the cards. It’s still watch closely. And don’t be afraid to see what you see.

  His warning was different in character from the one Dwight Eisenhower had given twenty-eight years earlier. This was not the threat of bureaucracy or weapons buildup or a military-industrial complex but a threat in the heart of America that required a special vigilance:

  There is a great tradition of warnings in Presidential farewells, and I’ve got one that’s been on my mind for some time. But oddly enough it starts with one of the things I’m proudest of in the past 8 years: the resurgence of national pride that I called the new patriotism. This national feeling is good, but it won’t count for much, and it won’t last unless it’s grounded in thoughtfulness and knowledge. . . .

  All great change in America begins at the dinner table. So, tomorrow night in the kitchen I hope the talking begins. And children, if your parents haven’t been teaching you what it means to be an American, let ’em know and nail ’em on it. That would be a very American thing to do.

  And finally, a note of optimism, an ode to the glory of America. Reagan was never embarrassed to let his prose soar; it rarely felt corny coming from him.

  The past few days when I’ve been at that window upstairs, I’ve thought a bit of the “shining city upon a hill.” The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we’d call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free.

  I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it, and see it still.

  It’s notable that in his final words, Reagan elevated Gorbachev, the man who was now his friend, to a place of respect. He meant it when he wished him well, thinking of the journey they had made together and the road Gorbachev still had to travel. His tone was contemplative in his farewell. He would not have a direct role in the ending to the story, but he believed that history would judge the unique collaboration between two opposing nations kindly.

  At a good-bye party thrown by the staff in the East Room, Duberstein, as emcee, expressed the thoughts of many when he said, “Mr. President, you fundamentally ended the Cold War. . . . You started out trying to change America, and you wound up changing the world. Well done. Well done.”

  On his final morning, Reagan took the daily walk along the colonnade to the Oval Office and was surprised to find it had been cleared out, except for the desk and rug. Kuhn observed him: “For a moment alone, Reagan stood quietly and gazed around the room, fingers folded lightly in front of him, almost as if in prayer.” Then the spell was broken. Duberstein came in, along with Colin Powell. Powell was there to give Reagan his final national security briefing, the shortest and happiest one ever. “The world is quiet today, Mr. President.” Reagan thanked him and reached into his pocket, pulling out the nuclear code card. “Here, guys, I don’t need this anymore.”

  “No, Mr. President,” Powell said. “Put it back in your pocket. It will automatically be deactivated.”

  The Bushes and Quayles arrived at the White House for the obligatory coffee, though Nancy could not remember drinking any. The mood, remembered Barbara, was relaxed—“a friendly takeover”—quite different from 1981, when the tension with the Carters had overwhelmed all attempts at polite conversation. Much had been made of the distant relationship between Nancy and Barbara; the Bushes had seldom been invited to the Reagans’ private quarters at the White House, and when Nancy gave Barbara a tour during the transition, she was seeing much of it for the first time. The warmth that had grown between Reagan and Bush in their eight years together didn’t necessarily trickle down to the first and second ladies. One theory held that Nancy had never forgiven the Bushes for running against her husband in 1980. Although Bush wrote in his diary, “Nancy does not like Barbara,” Nancy left Barbara a gift, a beautiful orchid, in her bedroom. A more likely explanation for the sense of distance was that they were different people, in style and sometimes in substance. Indeed, Bush was about to show just how different he was from his California predecessor. Savvy and experienced, a former congressman, ambassador, CIA director, and vice president, he had his own ideas about the future. He and Reagan had forged a close bond over eight years, but now the torch had passed to him and it was on his shoulders to determine his own, and in some sense Reagan’s, legacy.

  It was cloudy and mild on Inauguration Day. In the car on the way to the Capitol, Reagan cheerily noted the overcast skies. “When I became Governor of California,” he told Bush, “just as I placed my hand on the Bible, the sun came through and warmed it.” As Bush wrote in his diary, “And sure enough, while we were on the platform, the sun started through.” Of course, memories about weather are notoriously shady. There wer
e neither cloudy nor sunny skies at Reagan’s gubernatorial inauguration, which happened at night. And the same story is often told of his first inauguration as president. No matter; Bush enjoyed the image of heavenly cooperation.

  Barbara held two Bibles—the one George Washington had used for his swearing in and one given to Bush by the congressional prayer group. It was opened to the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven . . . Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.”

  After working with Reagan on his farewell, Noonan was asked to help Bush with his inaugural address. “I thought this must be the most special place in history, forty feet down from the retiring president and twenty feet from the incoming president,’’ she told Maureen Dowd of the New York Times. “And here I am, sitting on this couch between this president and that one.”

  In many respects that speech would mark the end of an era. Bush’s director of communications, David Demarest, was determined to restore some invisibility to the job, which was the way he thought it should be. He also kept a careful eye on the prose. High-minded oratory was a better fit for Reagan than it was for Bush. It felt authentic because it was, Reagan crafting many of the sentiments himself. He loved to write a poignant phrase, tell a human story. His speeches were full of the resonance of his voice. But what suited Reagan wasn’t right for Bush.

  Noonan had helped pen Bush’s convention acceptance speech the previous August, introducing lines that would both elevate and haunt Bush—calling on America to be “a kinder, gentler nation” and beckoning Americans to create “a thousand points of light” of service. They were lofty sentiments for a prosaic man like Bush.

  In general, his speeches as president would be less soaring and more down-to-earth, a style he favored and that was right for him. “I don’t like a lot of flowery prose,” he told Demarest. “I’m not Ronald Reagan. I’m not an orator; don’t try to make me into one.”

  After the ceremony, the Bushes walked the Reagans to Marine One, where they would begin their journey home. “It was sad telling them good-bye,” Barbara wrote, “although he should have felt great, leaving with a very high approval rating and the affection of the nation.” Fitzwater recalled that standing on the steps watching the helicopter lift off, he, James Baker, and President Bush all cried. Baker and Fitzwater would be staying on—Baker as secretary of state—and though they were excited about what they were beginning, the full force of what they had lived—with that man—fell over them, and they couldn’t stop the tears.

  In the helicopter heading for Andrews Air Force Base, where the Reagans would board Air Force One (no longer designated as such because Reagan wasn’t president) to fly home to California, the pilot performed a ceremonial loop around Washington. Looking down at the White House, Reagan tapped Nancy on the knee. “Look, dear,” he said. “There’s our little bungalow.” And the tears started flowing again. But they looked forward to the descent into normalcy away from that “public housing” in Washington, setting up their regular home, learning where the light switches were—ordinary things.

  When Bush entered the Oval Office for the first time as president, he found a note from Reagan in the drawer of his desk. At the top was a cartoon image by Sandra Boynton showing an elephant lying curled up on the ground with a flock of turkeys standing on top of him, pecking away. The inscription read, “Don’t let the turkeys get you down.” Below, Reagan had written:

  Dear George.

  You’ll have moments when you want to use this particular stationary [sic]. Well go to it.

  George I treasure the memorys [sic] we share with you all the best. You’ll be in my prayers. God bless you & Barbara. I’ll miss our Thursday lunches.

  Ron

  Fitzwater, who was in the Oval Office when Bush read the note, said Bush was touched. “What a sweet man,” he said fondly.

  BUSH TOOK OFFICE IN the company of old faces and new. His foreign policy team was especially strong: James Baker as secretary of state, Brent Scowcroft as national security advisor, and Robert Gates, who would become director of the CIA within a year, as deputy national security advisor. Congressman Dick Cheney stepped down as House minority whip to become secretary of defense after the Senate rejected Bush’s first nominee, John Tower, for personal issues and potential conflicts of interest. General Colin Powell stayed on with a new title, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

  For chief of staff Bush picked John Sununu, a former governor of New Hampshire, a no-nonsense, strong-willed tough guy who was a good balance to Bush’s dispassionate nature. Marlin Fitzwater remained on as press secretary.

  Those who worked for Bush during his time in Washington, both as vice president and as president, were always struck by his graciousness and innate kindness. One poignant example, related by Gates, involved Scowcroft, whose wife was quite ill:

  Brent was so tired . . . he would complete a fifteen-, sixteen-hour day at the White House and then go home and care for his wife. As Brent’s wife became sicker during the administration, sometimes the president and I would conspire against Brent and I would find a way during the day to let the president know that Jackie was in the hospital again and so the president would call Brent, maybe at 4:30 or 5:00 in the afternoon, and tell him that he was going over to the residence, that he was done for the day. Then Brent would go to the hospital and I would call the president, and the president would come back to the office and we’d do a couple more hours work.

  It was a remarkably kind subterfuge, the type of thing the Bushes were well known for.

  “He won’t let you be anything but a friend,” Powell said of Bush, adding that Barbara was the same way. He remembered meeting her for the first time during Reagan’s administration when he sat beside her at an official luncheon. “How do you do, Mrs. Bush? I’m very pleased to be with you,” he said. She answered, “Call me Barbara.” Powell told her he couldn’t do that. “You’re the vice president’s wife, ma’am. I can’t call you Barbara.” When she insisted, he said, “My mother would kill me.” She responded, “If you don’t call me Barbara, I’ll kill you.” And so they became Barbara and Colin, at least in private. It seems like a small thing, but that is the way strong relationships and loyalty are built. Bush, too, chafed at the reverential honorifics and was known to pick up the phone and tell an alarmed aide, “This is George.” (Later, when his son became president, he’d begin calls, “It’s Forty-one.”)

  The style points could be deceptive. From the outset, Bush demonstrated that he was his own man, a tough customer, especially with the Soviet Union. Observers were puzzled at his seeming antagonism to continuing a dialogue with Gorbachev in the early months of his administration. Bush was suspicious of Gorbachev and privately thought Reagan had been seduced by the man. Some advisors were whispering in his ear that perestroika was a ruse. Vice President Dan Quayle warned that Gorbachev was nothing more than a “Stalinist in Gucci shoes.”

  As Bush wrote to his friend Aga Khan shortly after taking office, “I’ll be darned if Mr. Gorbachev should dominate world public opinion forever. His system has failed and it’s democracy that’s on the march.” That might have been an opinion shared by many, even Reagan himself with his frequent reminder “Trust but verify.”

  But Bush’s reluctance to make a move didn’t play well in public, where it seemed as if he were treading water while Gorbachev boldly publicized one initiative after another. The Bush team thought Gorbachev was showboating in May, when he announced that the Soviet Union would stop supplying arms to Nicaragua. Rather than praising Gorbachev, the administration let it be known that it doubted his sincerity and suspected that his deeds would not match his words. On the defensive in front of the press, Fitzwater made what he called “the worst mistake of my career,” accusing Gorbachev of acting like a “drugstore cowboy,” not making meaningful proposals. He knew as soon as he spoke that he’d stepped in it. Back in his office, the consequences of his brash words began to sink
in as he listened to the press outside calling “Bring out the drugstore cowboy!” He trudged to the Oval Office to meet his fate, and although Bush let the matter drop, the press did not. Fitzwater’s name-calling only underscored the administration’s inability to present a strong message to the world.

  On May 21, 1989, a New York Times editorial entitled “Take Me to Your Leader,” opened, “Imagine that an alien spaceship approached Earth and sent the message: ‘Take me to your leader.’ Who would that be? Without doubt, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev.” The editorial added, “It’s not likely that most earthlings would instantly think of George Bush.”

  To be sure, Reagan’s relationship with Gorbachev had not been without conflict or controversy. But Bush’s recalcitrant attitude, which was echoed by his administration, was incomprehensible. Gorbachev thought the Bush foreign policy team was still immersed in the old Cold War attitudes and couldn’t break through them to anticipate, much less orchestrate, a new world. Scowcroft would later admit that this had been somewhat true for him. “The Cold War so profoundly affected all of us,” he said. “It infused every part of our lives. It was a pattern of thinking. It was the world that we knew.” Bush was also determined to be cautious. He wasn’t about to simply rubber-stamp his predecessor’s initiatives.

  Yet it was obvious that across Eastern Europe the Iron Curtain was dissolving, with Communist regimes in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania on the brink of failure.