Bush Democrats

National Review, July 8, 1991 by William McGurn

IN A CITY where those who are in the know outnumber those who aren't, George Bush's nomination of former Democratic National Committee Chairman Robert S. Strauss as his new envoy to Moscow came as a genuine surprise. Although the public line is that Strauss was pursued for more than a month, in fact the question was first popped to him less than a week before he accepted. It has left Republicans and Democrats alike bewildered. "The only explanation is that Clark Clifford has his legal troubles and Armand Hammer is dead," says one Administration wag.

If Strauss has ever expressed a strong opinion on Gorbachev or the USSR, it has somehow eluded Nexis. Strauss himself admitted to the New York Times that "if they want a Soviet expert, they made a mistake in picking me." But it was no mistake. Bush clearly did not want a Soviet expert, having passed over a number of eminently qualified Foreign Service officers whose names had been submitted to him for consideration.

What Bush wanted instead was a high-profile member of the Washington Establishment. A senior partner in the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, the ambassador-designate has a reputation for the big deal; at Thanksgiving dinner last year, for example, he picked up an easy $8-million commission for putting together a takeover by Matsushita Electrical Industrial Co. of MCA-the latter of which had Mr. Strauss on its board of directors. Perhaps more important, as part of the Texas mafia Strauss has known both Bush and Secretary of State James Baker a long time: Baker ran Gerald Ford's unsuccessful campaign in 1976 while Strauss was running the Democratic Party. Strauss came up against Baker again in 1980 when Baker was running Bush's campaign and Strauss Jimmy Carter's.

"This is a major appointment or the President would not have picked someone so prominent and so plugged into the Washington power structure," says Helmut Sonnenfeldt, a member of the National Security Council under Nixon, and now with the Brookings Institution. "I suppose it is a signal to Gorbachev that Bush is interested in internal developments in the Soviet Union and wants to have someone there who might influence events in as broad-gauged a fashion as possible."

The unanswered question is how Bush wants to influence events. It's true that Strauss will make it easier to get whatever the President wants through a Democratic-controlled Congress. The irony here is that the Democrats in Congress have been tougher than the Administration vis-a-vis Moscow. A bill put forth by some of the most leftward members of the House-David Bonior (D., Mich.), Ron Dellums (D., Calif.), Barney Frank (D., Mass.), et al.-calls for U.S. recognition of the Baltics and support for the Republics over the central government. The Democratic leadership could have easily picked up on this, but Majority Leader Richard Gephardt (D., Mo.) muffed his chance with an op-ed piece in the Washington Post calling for a big aid package.

Despite conservative fears, however, Bush gives little indication that he plans on any massive aid to Gorbachev. Yes, there has been movement on Most Favored Nation status (which, after all, only reduces tariffs: it does not grant subsidies), and, yes, we did give them some agricultural credits, not to mention the go-ahead for Gorbachev to rattle the tin cup at the Group of Seven meeting in London this July. But despite the op-ed hysteria there is no sign that any 100-billion aid-for-democracy grand bargain is in the works.

That leaves the Soviets themselves as the other end of the Strauss puzzle. Certainly having an ambassador who has the President's ear is an important asset; indeed, it is the whole justification for political appointees. But conservatives within the Administration argue that at a time when the Soviet Union is going through unprecedented historical changes, it might have been better to go with a career diplomat-like the departing ambassador, Jack Matlock-with an understanding of the Russian language and history. James Billington, a Russian scholar who is now the Librarian of Congress, has talked about the hundreds of new publications (many church-related) popping up all over the Soviet Union, each crammed with fascinating insights into what's going on across the USSR. Whatever assets Strauss brings to the job, going outside the accepted sources to this kind of information is not one of them. Last week's vote in which Boris Yeltsin became the first popularly elected official in Soviet history should remind our establishment man of the dangers of clinging too closely to the establishment. Strauss must be the ambassador to the Soviet Union, not the ambassador to Mikhail Gorbachev.

In short, though the surprise of his appointment has worn off, the mystery of what it means remains. We will probably know soon enough. If Strauss's first moves are toward Yeltsin and leaders of other Republics, America would be sending the signal that we aren't as interested in Gorbachev's own political survival as in his reforms. And Strauss's reputation and experience as a shrewd businessman (Archer-Daniels-Midland, of which he is a director, does a lot of business with the Soviets) means that his assessment of the investment climate there would be taken seriously in the business community.