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- <text id=89TT3130>
- <title>
- Nov. 27, 1989: Grapevine
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- Nov. 27, 1989 Art And Money
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 30
- Grapevine
- </hdr><body>
- <p>By Michael Witte
- </p>
- <p> READING LIST. What book is scandal-scarred Washington Mayor
- Marion Barry reading as he tries to stare down recent
- allegations that he used crack? The Bible, Barry's press
- secretary initially replied when asked by TIME. Only the Bible?
- Well, said the Barry aide even more implausibly, in view of the
- mayor's managerial record, he is also reading In Pursuit of
- Excellence -- along with a bedside book that seems to make a lot
- more sense: The Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun.
- </p>
- <p> MR. PRESIDENT, IT'S THE PRESIDENT. George Bush devotes a
- surprising amount of time to the care and feeding of his many
- presidential predecessors. The thank you-note President has
- confided to relatives that Richard Nixon phones every few days
- to fill him in on his latest speech, article or trip. Though
- Jerry Ford checks in only about once a month, he invariably
- requests a favor to bolster his business career -- like use of
- Blair House or a ride on Air Force One. Far more circumspect,
- Jimmy Carter never calls at all. Instead, he occasionally mails
- Bush a detailed memo on some African conflict, which the
- impressed staff at the National Security Council uses to help
- shape policy. Ronald Reagan is characteristically passive. Bush
- telephones him often to fill him in. The Gipper is polite but
- completely uninterested.
- </p>
- <p> MAKE MINE MALTA. The mystery of who first scouted the
- location for Bush's mid-Med meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev has
- been solved. The President's brother William ("Bucky") Bush, a
- St. Louis banker, represented the U.S. in September at Malta's
- 25th independence celebration, and carried back a glowing report
- on this unlikely world crossroads.
- </p>
- <p> A LEERY LOOK AT LEAR. The furor over the recent Japanese
- buying spree of Columbia Pictures and Rockefeller Center appears
- to have kept LearJet in American hands. A Japanese automaker was
- putting the final touches on a friendly bid to acquire the
- Wichita-based aircraft manufacturer when it abruptly backed off
- for fear of adding to U.S. resentments. A cool reaction from the
- Japanese Trade Ministry may also have been a factor. With
- LearJet both on the auction block and currently competing for
- a lucrative U.S. Air Force contract, it is unclear whether
- Washington would allow such a Japanese flyer on the domestic
- aircraft industry, one of America's few remaining high-tech
- export success stories.
- </p>
- <p> THE CAPITAL'S ODD COUPLE. No one can accuse Senate Majority
- Leader George Mitchell of not finding something to like in the
- Bush Administration. In a new approach to bipartisanship, the
- divorced Mitchell is romantically entwined with Janet Mullins,
- the State Department's congressional liaison and the deputy
- national political director of the 1988 Bush campaign. This
- dating game has its complications, since protocol and common
- sense prevent Mullins from bringing Mitchell to White House
- functions without a separate invitation. "The Senator and his
- friend aren't in the same ideological camp," says a Democratic
- leadership aide. "But you've got a lot of mixed couples in
- Washington."
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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