TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/081489/08148900.040

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 4KB | 65 lines

NATION, Page 20

The Presidency

The Courage of Restraint

By Hugh Sidey


    He cut short a cross-country speaking tour in Chicago, grunting
to his staff, "I just know it is the right thing to do," and
hurried home to Washington to confront his first hostage crisis as
President. He jumped off his helicopter Marine One onto the South
Lawn of the White House. Walking in the fetid summer air toward the
Oval Office, he kicked an acorn lying on the drive, a small sign
of George Bush's frustration at finding himself caught in the
terrorist web that humiliated his predecessors. That was about his
only display of raw anger.

    He was facing the classic problem of men at the top: whether
to heed the heart or the head. So far, he has taken the cerebral
approach. That has pleased many leaders, who have praised the
President for "the courage of restraint." But at home Bush heard
Pennsylvania's Republican Senator Arlen Specter call the U.S.
response "pitiful."

    Our measure of a leader's courage, which in the end can raise
a President to greatness or terminate his political life, is far
more complicated than it used to be. "Most of the Presidents we
eulogize are those who acted dramatically in crisis," said Roger
Porter last week. Porter is a Harvard scholar on the presidency,
on loan as the President's economic-and-domestic-policy adviser,
thus being granted a rare chance to witness the chemistry of
leadership. "We have tended to equate success and action. We
sometimes confuse action with accomplishment. A President is
instantly under enormous pressure to `do something.' It is vitally
important for him to have his emotions under control."

    Bush's approach is certainly not rooted in scholarship but in
a remarkable range of close-in experience with dozens of terrorist
acts over the past two decades. Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater,
between lengthy jousting with the alerted journalists, recalled
being with Vice President Bush in Paris in 1985, when the TWA
Flight 847 hostages were being driven from Lebanon to Syria to be
released. "Now, Marlin," said Bush in a cool and level voice, "tell
me once again why I should appear on Face the Nation just at this
moment. And remember, if that caravan turns and goes back to
Beirut, your career is finished." Bush was restrained and cautious
on TV. The vehicles, after a heart-stopping pause, came through.

    The President deliberately held his crisis meetings in the
Cabinet Room, not the Situation Room, known for its combat
decisions. "Remember, Jim Baker and Admiral Crowe and I have sat
through a lot of these situations in the past years," Bush told the
others around the table. He kept to his schedule, including an
outdoor barbecue for members of Congress and their spouses. He best
defined his approach when the congressional leaders flanked him one
evening. "We are not going to heighten anticipation about what the
United States response may be," he said. "Rather, we want to take
a prudent approach."

    Whether deliberate or not, Bush seems to have developed a new
pattern of reaction for these events. His calls to a dozen heads
of state and his orders to ambassadors and military commanders set
in motion literally hundreds of probes and pressures to pinch off
the terrorist acts, perhaps the most comprehensive network ever
stitched together so quickly and so quietly. That is much harder
work than going to war, and the returns are not yet in. The use of
force may still be the only effective answer. Bush's exercise of
power is another experiment in the new world that he inherited and
that continues to evolve before our eyes.