Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked (40 page)

Two decades later, Max Kampelman, a major figure in the Democratic Party, would recall his time as U.S. nuclear arms negotiator. Here he recounts what happened when the administration
asked him to return for the arms negotiations in Geneva to try and persuade House Democrats to vote for the MX:

I was not and never have been a lobbyist, but I agreed to return to Washington. I wanted my first meeting to be with the Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill, who, I was informed, was the leader of the opposition to the appropriation. . . .

At the end of the day, I met alone with the president and told him that O’Neill said we were about 30 votes short. I told the president of my conversation with the speaker and shared with him my sense that O’Neill was quietly helping us, suggesting to his fellow Democrats that he would not be unhappy if they voted against his amendment.

Without a moment’s hesitation, the president telephoned O’Neill, and I had the privilege of hearing one side of this conversation between two tough Irishmen, cussing each other out, but obviously friendly and respectful.

I recall that the president’s first words went something like this: “Max tells me that you may really be a patriot. It’s about time!” Suffice it to say that soon after I returned to Geneva I learned that the House had authorized the MX missiles.

An event that undoubtedly affected the outcome was the shooting of an American army major outside an East German military installation. The two sides could come to no agreement about the details: whether or not the major had entered an actual
“restricted area,” or if Major Arthur Nicholson, stationed at Potsdam, was fired upon by a Soviet sentry. But there was no question that a U.S. officer’s death under such circumstances rekindled Cold War anger at the very moment President Reagan was seeking approval
for a weapon he intended to use as a negotiating wedge with the Soviets.

Major Nicholson was killed on Sunday, March 24.
The House voted to authorize money for 21 additional MX missiles by the narrow vote of 219 to 213 on Tuesday the twenty-sixth, and voted again to appropriate that money by a vote of 217 to 210 on Thursday the twenty-eighth. In his diary entry, Reagan confirmed the Speaker’s commitment as Kampelman described it. But he added,
“But right down to the wire he twisted arms, threatened punishment of the 61 Dems. who went with us—in short he was playing pure partisan politics all the way.”

He was, I contend, missing the nuances of Tip O’Neill’s inside game. Knowing the Speaker—and observing this one from up close—I could see he was doing pretty much what he’d promised the president he would do. I’d watched Tip O’Neill fight hard on those issues he cared deeply about—Social Security, programs for the sick and poor, opposition to Reagan’s Central American policy, to name important ones. I saw none of that passion when it came to the MX issue. I could tell, though, how taken he was with the administration lobbying effort.
“In thirty-two years,” he told the press, “I haven’t seen such an all-out effort. I have to admire it.” Bringing in Max Kampelman—who was, after all, a respected Democrat—to push for the MX, said Tip, may have been the key.
“If the president will fight as hard for the START [Strategic Arms Reduction Talks] as he has for the MX, it will do the nation good.”

In early April, Speaker O’Neill was set to lead a thirteen-member bipartisan congressional delegation to Moscow. Republican leader Bob Michel would join him. Before departing, they visited the president at the White House.
“Just wanted a last min. briefing & our
blessing,” Reagan jotted in his diary. “Gave them both.” But, along with his blessing, he also gave O’Neill a letter to hand personally to Soviet general secretary Gorbachev. He asked also that Tip convey with it a simple message. He wanted him to assure the new man at the top in the Kremlin on two accounts: one, the degree to which Americans
were
united; two, the sincerity of
Ronald Reagan
in his desire for meaningful negotiations. As O’Neill biographer John Aloysius Farrell wrote, the Speaker made for
“a particularly credible messenger,” given the frequency with which he’d shown himself at odds over Reagan’s policies and his criticism of his past opposition to nuclear arms treaties.

When O’Neill was asked what he intended to tell Mikhail Gorbachev, if the Soviet leader inquired about President Reagan, he answered without even an instant’s hesitation.
“I’m going to tell him that he got fifty-nine percent of the vote and he whaled my party!”

• • •

“We have a mutual friend,” the new Soviet leader, networking from the start, said as he greeted his guest that April day in Moscow. He was referring to Archer Daniels Midland’s Dwayne Andreas. It had been Andreas who’d passed word to O’Neill four years earlier how impressed the Soviet leaders had been by Reagan’s decisive handling of the air traffic controllers’ strike. Though at first, drumming his fingers and checking his watch before his visitors entered the room, Gorbachev seemed intent on a brisk meeting, he quickly turned into a man with questions and plenty of time on hand to get them answered. Bob Michel, the top Republican on the trip, saw that Gorbachev had his notes marked in different colors for the main points he intended to make. In the end, his session with the O’Neill delegation lasted nearly four hours.

Because O’Neill was carrying a letter from the president, a Republican, he was quick to clarify his role in the American political system.
“I’m part of the opposition,” he explained.
“We’re trying to understand what the position of the opposition is,” Gorbachev shot back, intrigued, “as well as the position of those in power.”
“There’s a big difference,” Tip replied. “On some questions, we don’t agree on
everything
.”

Later, Tip recounted his Kremlin experience this way:

I remember when I went in first to meet with him, face-to-face, just the two of us, he spoke to me in English. He said, “You are the leader of the opposition.” He said, “I do not know what the opposition means, Democrat, Republican, you all oppose Communism.”

I said, “Mr. Gorbachev, let me say this to you: At home, on the domestic front, we have issues and we have opposition philosophically, oftentimes on foreign affairs. But when the President of the United States goes to Geneva with you, he is representing our country, and we talk as one. So yes, you may say you do not know what the opposition is because both Democrats and Republicans are opposed to communism. But we stand together in support of the President of the United States, not only Tip O’Neill, but the party that I stand for, and the party that I represent, and the Congress of the United States.”

After the encounter, he’d been impressed if not completely overwhelmed. What he found familiar was that Gorbachev reminded him of a
“New York lawyer.” He was, Tip said, “a
master of words and a master in the art of politics and diplomacy.” Also, he
“had a flair
about him. He had charisma about him. He had a Western style.”

The letter O’Neill brought with him confirmed Ronald Reagan’s desire—relayed originally by George Bush when attending the Chernenko funeral—to meet with the new Soviet leader. Tip praised Gorbachev’s positive reaction.
“I think it augurs well for world peace when the two dominant nations of the world can get at the table and sit down. . . . If they only keep talking that’s the most important thing.” He had no worries, he added, about the possibility of Gorbachev outmatching Reagan. “. . .
The president will be able to handle himself,” he told the press. “Don’t you worry about the president.”

It was hard to be impressed by what I saw of the Soviet Union’s economic development,” Tip later noted.
“I’ll never forget the ride into Moscow from the airport: the countryside seemed unbelievably dismal. We stayed in a government-owned hotel where the beds were so small that I had to put two of them together—and it still wasn’t big enough. Inside the Kremlin walls, however, the buildings were fantastic. And although the Russians are officially atheists, I’ve never seen so many carefully preserved paintings of the saints.

And when he and others in the delegation met afterward with President Reagan to report on their trip, Tip had a striking revelation to share that had come of the conversation with the new Soviet leader. The single thing that seemed most to bother Mikhail Gorbachev had been the American president’s characterization of the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.”

• • •

The plan was for Reagan and Gorbachev to hold their first summit in Geneva, site of the ongoing nuclear arms talks. Trying to ensure that the president arrived in Switzerland with a politically united Congress behind him, Tip O’Neill called for a cease-fire in the two parties’ current disputes over government spending. Above all, this meant the question of appropriations for national defense. A short-term agreement between the Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill would permit Reagan to enter talks free of simmering partisan debate back home.
“We need to clear the decks for the President in Geneva,” the Speaker said on the eve of the leaders’ meeting.

When President Reagan meets with Mr. Gorbachev next week he deserves the support of all Americans regardless of party or philosophy. In Geneva, there will be only one American spokesman. There will be only one American having both the authority and the mandate to build a secure peace. That man is the president of the United States.

We Americans know the awesome stakes of this summit. We also know the difficulties. The United States and the Soviet Union have major disagreements. Some of our differences may simply be insurmountable, regardless of the wisdom and good will that is shown next week. But we also believe there are encouraging signs that progress can be made in Geneva. The greatest challenge, and the highest priority in Geneva, must be to reduce the risk of nuclear war.

O’Neill was guarding his party as well as his country. He was giving Reagan no opportunity to blame the Democrats if the summit went badly. He wanted all the authority—and, with it, all the
responsibility—in Reagan’s hands alone.
“I don’t want to send the president to meet Mr. Gorbachev in a position where he doesn’t dare pick up the check.”

Reagan, for his part, clearly hoped to forge an ongoing personal connection with the new Soviet leader. To this end, he even made a special point of scoping out ahead of time the room where he’d meet with him,
“where I hope to get Gorbachev aside for a one on one.” The president would later write that he’d headed off to Geneva convinced that the new leader of the Soviet Union
wanted
a deal for the very basic reason that he
needed
one.
“He had to know we could outspend the Soviets on weapons as long as we wanted to.” Not all that long ago, Gorbachev had been complaining openly—more like a small businessman than a world leader—to Tip and his delegation about the
“gold rubles” he was spending that year to keep his arms negotiators in place at the Geneva bargaining table. If he had to worry about the per diem costs of his diplomats, how could he match Reagan’s challenge on futuristic missile defense?

Once they’d opened their discussions, the two men’s real differences, especially over Reagan’s proposed missile shield system, soon came to the fore. The American president argued that “Star Wars” was intended to serve defensively only; the Soviet leader saw it differently. In his mind, it would allow the United States to deliver not just a first strike but one made with impunity. This is despite Reagan’s offer to share the technology with the Soviets once it had been developed.
“It’s not convincing,” Gorbachev challenged him. “It opens up an arms race in space.”

Yet progress was being made, and much of it was personal. Here’s Reagan’s account.
“That evening it was our turn to host dinner and I saw, as I had the night before when the Soviets had entertained us, that Gorbachev could be warm and outgoing in a social setting even though several hours earlier we’d had sharp differences
of opinion; maybe there was a little of Tip O’Neill in him. He could tell jokes about himself and even about his country, and I grew to like him more.”

The Geneva summit, at its close, was pronounced a success, yielding as it did agreements for similar future meetings in both Washington and Moscow, as well as a pledge to cut the two countries’ nuclear weapons stockpiles in half.

To trumpet the president’s success and bring home to the American public this historic first thawing of the Cold War, the White House decided, once again, to go for its own version of street theater. The scenario called for the president to arrive back from Geneva onto the very steps of the Capitol—there to report, with full silver-screen drama, to a joint session of Congress.

But that wasn’t all.
“In an unusual procedure,” the Speaker announced on the morning of the Reagan return, “I have been asked by the White House to go with Bob Dole to greet the president of the United States and to fly by helicopter back here with him. And Mrs. O’Neill has been asked to be seated with Mrs. Reagan, which is an unusual circumstance.

“I expect a full report, a true report of what happened. It will not be partisan whatsoever. I am more than delighted that there will be continued talks with Gorbachev coming here next year and our president going over there the year after. As long as we are sitting at the table, although we might not always get along, there is the possibility that something can be agreed upon.”

That night, introduced by the Speaker, President Reagan expressed his gratitude.
“You can’t imagine how much it means in dealing with the Soviets to have the Congress, the allies and the American people firmly behind you.” After five hours of one-on-one meetings with Gorbachev, he obviously was feeling positive, saluting his Soviet counterpart for, among other attributes, being
a
“good listener.” As for more substantial aspects of the exchange now placed on the table, Reagan cited a proposed 50 percent cut in nuclear arms and a plan to eliminate
all
intermediate-range missiles in Europe. “The summit itself was a good start,” he concluded, “and now our byword must be: steady as we go.”

Both as theatrics and as politics, the president’s appearance counted as a hit.
“I haven’t gotten such a reception since I was shot,” he wrote.
“The gallerys were full & members wouldn’t stop clapping & cheering.”