TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/050691/0506103.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 9.7 KB | 201 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 25

Welcome the Unknown Soldier


A few thoughts from the conquering general before his escape
to some well-deserved peace and quiet with his family -- and
a new career

By NANCY GIBBS -- Reported by Cathy Booth/Miami, Sally B.
Donnelly/Los Angeles and Bruce van Voorst/Washington


    No one seems to know for sure whether General Norman
Schwarzkopf leans right or left, Republican or Democratic, so
forcefully does he assert that he's an independent. Few have the
least idea of what he thinks about monetary policy or school
choice or quotas or global warming. Chances are, he favors a
strong defense, though he has called war a "profane thing." What
is most interesting is not that no one knows, but that hardly
anyone cares.

    The virtue in Schwarzkopf's mystery is that the general
can be anything to anybody. Corporations look at him and see a
take-charge CEO; universities envision a powerhouse chancellor;
publishers perceive the author of a best-selling book. Above
all, much of the public is enraptured by a new leader whose very
appeal is that he has no platform, no party and no intention,
at least so far, of running for office. Such political virginity
lets people believe that Schwarzkopf, in his big, bold way,
could do the heavy work of democracy without being chewed into
small pieces by its machinery.

    When Schwarzkopf came home from the war zone last week, a
crowd gathered before dawn to foil his attempt to sneak quietly
back into the country at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. The
band played a victory march and the national anthem, and the
fans wearing STORMIN' NORMAN FOR PRESIDENT T shirts waved flags
and yellow balloons as sea gulls wheeled overhead. "I can't
describe to you the emotion that's in all our hearts," he said,
with his first words on American soil in 239 days. "It's a
great day to be a soldier. It's a great day to be an American."

    Then he disappeared -- though not completely. "After 39
years," he explained in an interview with TIME, "I owe the
family and myself a little time." There were steaks to eat
(thick and rare), ice cream to scarf down (Breyers mint
chocolate chip), family members and pets with whom to get
reacquainted (wife Brenda, son Christian, 13, daughters Jessica,
19, and Cynthia, 20, and a black Lab named Bear). He could catch
up with Jeopardy and Cheers. Come Sunday, he could go to a real
church and sit in a pew without sand in his boots. And while he
savored his privacy, Norman Schwarzkopf could lean back and let
the rest of America ponder his future.

    He says he plans to retire in August, an utterly
tantalizing prospect for pundits, pollsters, politicos, agents
and headhunters. "I'll try and write a book," he muses. "I don't
have the first line. Maybe, `I was born at a very early age .
. .' How's that?" He will play grand marshal at the Kentucky
Derby next month, and talks of becoming a first-class salmon
fisherman and improving his sporting-clays shooting.

    Meanwhile the offers ring in like a cash register. His
memoirs could fetch seven figures, his speeches $30,000 a pop.
He has been mentioned as an ideal football coach (the
Philadelphia Eagles) or university chancellor (Texas A&M) or
business leader (Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca is batting his
eyes). Van Poole, chief of the Republican Party in Schwarzkopf's
home state of Florida, is exercising monumental restraint. "I
thought I'd give him a couple of weeks," he says. The hope is
to persuade the general to run against popular Democratic
Senator Bob Graham. "I've not talked to Schwarzkopf directly,
but through a third party," says Poole. "He's not said no."
Others would let him skip the legislative spring training and
go straight to the majors. Former state G.O.P. chairman Henry
Sayler, a fellow West Pointer, launched a Draft General
Schwarzkopf 1992 Committee this month.

    All this may be wishful thinking, since Schwarzkopf
insists he is an independent with no political aspirations. "I
will admit that I have voted for people from both parties for
President," he says. But it is not easy fending off suitors
these days. "I do not envision myself as a political candidate.
I have said that at some point in the future, perhaps -- and
that's a very big perhaps -- I might be able to find a sense of
self-fulfillment serving my country in the political arena. But
that's not what I plan to do at the present time, nor do I seek
it, nor do I honestly deep down in my heart think it will ever
happen."

    The general is battling powerful forces here, for he has
been cast as a savior by a public that longs for shiny heroes.
"It's sort of overwhelming," he says, blinking in the limelight.
"I didn't have a sense of how completely spontaneous it would
be." His incandescent televised briefing after the liberation
of Kuwait sent a powerful message: here at last was a leader
who was blunt, not glib; passionate, not packaged, with the
carriage of a man of courage and principle. Even then, it was
hard to imagine that he would willingly trade the high
challenges of the Saudi desert for the sandbox that is American
politics.

    The battlefield has always been a fruitful scouting ground
for kingmakers. George Washington was eager to retire after his
years as a soldier, but there were some who urged him to become a
military despot, if not an absolute monarch. Andrew Jackson, the
hero of New Orleans, rode into the White House with two bullets
in his body and a white scar across his face. When South
Carolina tried to annul new federal tariffs, Jackson sent
soldiers to Charleston harbor and muttered about marching south
with 50,000 men. William Henry Harrison was the hero of
Tippecanoe; Ulysses Grant served under Zachary Taylor in the
Mexican War, before going on to glory at Vicksburg and
Appomattox; and Rough Rider Teddy Roosevelt, mustache bristling,
charged up San Juan Hill and into American mythology. In
Eisenhower, one of the century's greatest generals, America
found one of its better Presidents.

    Clean wars produce clean heroes; Vietnam's graduates into
office have tended to be former prisoners of war instead of
generals. The gulf war is the first in a generation to produce
a bumper crop of political recruits, with Schwarzkopf looming
largest of all. "He represents a revival of the golden days of
America and all that Americans are looking for," says Dom
Bonafede, assistant professor of government at American
University. "He's not your typical media figure with his hair
coiffed and with spin doctors and media consultants swirling
around him." Says Sherry Jeffe, a senior associate at the Center
for Politics and Policy at the Claremont Graduate School: "He
embodies what Americans dream our country can be and what it
should be."

    Though its feelings are understandable, there is something
scary about a country that aches for heroes and leaders in this
way. America came through a frightening war with a great
victory and owes its soldiers a natural debt of gratitude. Like
Eisenhower and other soldiers before him, Schwarzkopf was the
right man in the right place at the right time, commanding
loyalty from his troops, respect from his peers and deference
even from his superiors in Washington. As if that were not
enough, some people now want him to dispel, almost
single-handedly, the cynicism that hangs over government at
every level.

    "He's commanding, quotable, and has a great personality,"
says Ken Khachigian, a former Reagan speechwriter and now a
political consultant. "He's got all the makings of a natural
candidate." It is easier to be commanding, however, when there
are disciplined troops to command -- hardly a description of
Congress or the federal bureaucracy. It was good sport to cut
reporters off at the knees and to swat their questions into the
big black box of national security. But the campaign press corps
has some artillery of its own and takes delight in bringing out
the dark side of a candidate. Schwarzkopf's explosive temper
would make him vulnerable. "Long before he becomes President,
the halo will be stripped away," says Amitai Etzioni, professor
of government at George Washington University. "In the end, we
can't stomach a real hero. We're happy to have heroes for a
week, but we have to tear them down."

    In the shadow of 1992, it is not really Norman Schwarzkopf
who deserves the close scrutiny of voters, but the process that
seeks to loft him into the political firmament and could just as
easily bring him crashing down. "Somebody said the other day I'd
make a lousy politician because I say what I think," Schwarzkopf
says. "That's a sad commentary, when we say that the
representatives of the American people can't say what they
believe." In fact, it is the very absence of known beliefs that
makes Schwarzkopf unassailable as a candidate. "The tremendous
mythology surrounding him makes him even more attractive in a
society that is unwilling to make sacrifices and hard choices,"
argues UCLA lecturer Hyman Frankel. Once the myth is punctured
by real information, what, if anything, would be left? Boldness
and candor, to be sure, but these qualities can be lethal for a
politician.

    The general is not naive about his opportunities or the
obstacles that await him if he rides into the political
battlefield. "There's a great expression I've always believed,"
Schwarzkopf observes. " `The higher the monkey gets up the
flagpole, the more opportunity he has to show his ass.' Or I
should say his rear end." Perhaps even a public desperate for
a plainspoken hero will give him some time off to collect his
thoughts.