TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/041392/0413102.000

Text File | 1992-10-19 | 6KB | 117 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 28

THE POLITICAL INTEREST

Two Visions, 21 Minutes Apart


By Michael Kramer


    When it came time to deny the obvious, the cool and
unflappable James Baker did so with a straight face and a
practiced hint of sadness. Like a compassionate schoolteacher
calmly instructing a roomful of dim students, the Secretary of
State repeatedly insisted that election-year politics had
nothing to do with last week's announcement of the
Administration's plan to assist the former Soviet Union. "We've
been working on it for months," Baker explained, adding that the
President wanted his proposals made public before Boris Yeltsin
faces a restless Congress of People's Deputies this week. That
much was true, but the rest was nonsense.

    In fact, Pat Buchanan's mindless "America first" crusade
had paralyzed Bush for months. Foreign policy, the President's
passion and claim to fame, was stowed throughout the early
primaries as Bush told Republican voters that his new first
priority was repairing the domestic economy. Aiding Russia and
the other republics became possible only when Buchanan's
challenge waned after Bush's victories in Michigan and Illinois
on March 17. But even then Bush was mute until Richard Nixon
chastised the President for a "pathetically inadequate"
nonresponse to Moscow's pleas for help. And even then nothing
happened until the White House realized that last Wednesday
morning Bill Clinton was about to unveil his scheme to assist
the faltering former communists.

    When Bush finally spoke, confusion reigned. "The stakes,"
the President soberly intoned, "are as high as any we have
faced this century." But there was no prime-time, Oval Office
address designed to rally a recession-weary nation to the cause
-- only a pressroom briefing at which the Administration's key
players couldn't say how much their proposal would cost. It was
not until eight hours later that Baker said the U.S.
contribution to a $24 billion multinational plan of loans,
grants and export credits would cost American taxpayers a
relatively small "$3-plus billion" in new funding.

    Bush did manage to beat Clinton to the punch on Wednesday
(by all of 21 minutes) but even that "victory" struck some of
the President's more astute aides as hollow. "Either we should
have beaten Clinton by at least one news cycle or we should
have waited a few days," says a Bush political adviser. "As it
was, all we did was pump up the opposition," par for the course
for a campaign organization that has yet to get its bearings.

    The Bush and Clinton plans are strikingly similar, and
both still see the planet as a dangerous place where the
occasional use of American force will likely be necessary for
decades to come. From there, their prescriptions for dealing
with the post-cold war world depart radically. Bush regularly
trumpets democracy's virtues, but his actions routinely serve
order and stability. Following the gulf war, the U.S. virtually
"owned" Kuwait, but Washington did little to ensure democracy's
ascendancy in the emirate. Yugoslavia is disintegrating, but
Bush has yet to recognize Slovenia and Croatia. The President
clung to Mikhail Gorbachev to the end, and viewed Yeltsin as the
problem rather than the solution even after Yeltsin won Russia's
first democratic election. Clinton's views are exactly opposite.
Democracy, he says, offers the best hope for stability, even if
moving toward representative government generates short-term
disorder.

    If one place best illuminates the differences in their
approaches it is China, a nation the President professes to
understand better than any of his advisers. To Clinton, Bush's
"coddling" of China's aging leaders after the Tiananmen Square
massacre is "unconscionable. There was a case for looking the
other way when we needed China as a counterweight to Moscow,"
says Clinton. "But there's no need to play the China card now
when our opponents have thrown in their hand, no need to ignore
China's spreading dangerous weapons technologies and its
trampling of human rights. I would deny most-favored-nation
status to China, impose trade sanctions and encourage the
younger generation's democratic aspirations. They'll triumph
someday, and we want to be seen as having been on their side
from the beginning. Bush is behind the curve because he
shortsightedly fears the turmoil of revolution."

    Clinton's muscularity has its limits. He speaks about
using military force to protect citizens from the repressive
acts of their rulers, but not in China, which is presumably too
powerful for such an intrusion into its internal affairs -- an
accommodation to reality that could cause other odious dictators
to acquire even more weaponry as a hedge against Clinton's
wrath.

    Beyond a "realistic" appreciation of U.S. might, Clinton's
preference for democracy and human rights has other holes. As
he panders for Jewish votes by siding with an Israel "abused"
by Washington, he has said nothing at all about Israel's
maltreatment of its Palestinian population.

    While Clinton's desire to spread Western ideals is less
than perfect, his rhetorical vision offers a stark contrast to
Bush's actions. At some point in every general election campaign
-- and no matter the state of the economy -- voters pause to
consider the candidates' foreign and defense policies. When they
do, they will have a clear choice -- assuming of course that
Clinton, as President, would actually inhale his vision.