Thanksgiving in The Desert

By Hugh Sidey

Have 747, will travel . . . and travel . . . and travel.

George Bush -- after nearly 17,000 miles, six countries, a sweeping accord to reduce conventional arms in Europe, a 34-nation peace charter, a dozen speeches, untold private diplomatic understandings, a quart or two of ceremonial champagne, at least 25 clean shirts, eye contact with nearly a million people and G.I. turkey in the Saudi desert (twice) -- came home to roost (certainly not rest) for the weekend. He sent his laundry out, had Air Force One fueled again (53,611 gal.) and got ready to head for Mexico this week.

When he gets back from that jaunt, he plans to hang out at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for only four days, then to roar south to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Venezuela and Uruguay. In January it must be Moscow, if Bush's pal Mikhail Gorbachev is still in charge, followed by stops in Turkey and Greece. By the end of February, Air Force One is expected to be riding the billowy cumulus above Australia, headed for South Korea and Japan, leading to the dark suspicion that Bush may be trying to emulate Lyndon B. Magellan (a tag pasted on L.B.J. when he flew to Australia in 1967 and just kept going in the same direction until he was back where he started).

The global President, the diplomatic road warrior (a rattled rocket here, a helping hand there), Bush has raised presidential motion beyond art to religion. He has always been nervous sitting still. He is at his absolute best in some wind-scoured distant city like Prague, raincoat crunched around him, hair blowing, lifting the hopes of more than 100,000 Czechs -- or in Paris, glad-handing his way through mirrored halls while the First Lady is off in the Grand Palais viewing one of Picasso's works, cocking her head this way and that, deciding "it had about 18 different ideas."

Almost everything Bush did on last week's eight-day junket was good and even necessary, urgent business he had pushed back during the U.S. budget struggle and the election. In Wenceslas Square, Bush's evocative words raised a great roar: "There are no leaves on the trees, and yet it is Prague spring. There are no flowers in bloom, and yet it is Prague spring." In the huge crowd, vendors sold copies of the U.S. Constitution for 8 Czech crowns (30 cents) each.

Bush spent hours in Paris patiently listening as the reborn international consortium, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, debated the structure and methods for preserving peace in the years beyond the cold war. When he talked, Bush emphasized the threat of war in the Persian Gulf, a dose of reality for a city of countless dreams, many of them shattered.

Before he left Paris to spend Thanksgiving with the troops in the gulf, the President vainly pleaded with Gorbachev to support publicly a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the U.S. to use force to drive Iraq from Kuwait if the economic sanctions fail. But the Soviet President, while supporting Bush in principle in private, wanted to be sure the Arab nations were on board. "Everybody takes comfort from everybody else," explained a White House aide. Bush laid on an extra stop in Geneva at the end of his trip to talk to Syria's President Hafez Assad, in part to try to ease Gorbachev's doubts.

Bush and his fellow travelers may be defining the way the world will be run in these next decades: frequent gatherings of heads of state; a plethora of councils and conferences linked in the off-hours by phone, fax and video; an army of bureaucrats below constantly moving around the network with plans and ideas. But a number of people wonder if the leaders are traveling a bit too much for their own good. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's tenuous hold on her job may have finally loosened while she was in Paris. Gorbachev's junketing, while helping him become the toast of the world, has not halted the erosion of his position at home. Old hands at this game, like former Secretary of State Dean Rusk, have warned the new crowd not to take over too many duties of the diplomatic corps, lest heads of state be confronted with the impossible task of responding to every nation that has a complaint.

"The President needs to be home now," argued one of Bush's longtime advisers last week. "Sure, see the troops on Thanksgiving. But the policy in the gulf is going to be determined right here in the next three or four weeks. If he doesn't do it, others will."

Chimed in another friend, "Bush's got this jet-propulsion problem. He's always moving, and everything becomes a tactical decision, not a strategic decision. He is like Patton on the battlefield, not Eisenhower at headquarters."

While Bush was overseas, a handful of new polls were published showing increasing doubts in the U.S. about gulf policy and Bush's leadership. Members of Congress and other self-acclaimed authorities on war and foreign policy tuned up once the President's plane crossed the continental shelf. Forty-five House Democrats filed a court suit challenging Bush's authority to wage war against Iraq without congressional approval. The Washington Post sought out the opinions of eight presidential scholars, and all but one were worried about Bush's softening hold on the American mind; their dour musings were syndicated across the country. This week the Senate's Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees start hearings on gulf policy, the kind of forum that will be tilted toward doubters.

Bush and his White House handlers were hoping that last week's excursion carried its own antidote to pessimism. There were 350 journalists accompanying the President, and most of them seemed to approve of his performance. The network anchors rushed for their desert tunics and created as much stir among the troops as the President himself. At the end of the Thanksgiving stage show, elaborate broadcasting facilities in the middle of the desolate sand beamed back live reports from the media superstars.

Bush walked among the G.I.s more as a comrade-in-arms than as a Commander in Chief, never short of a quip: "If push comes to shove, we're going to get Roseanne Barr to go to Iraq and sing the national anthem," he joked to troops. "Baghdad Betty, take that." He signed T shirts and caps, and posed for snapshots. He had turkey ("pretty good") with the Army and Marines on land and attended Thanksgiving services aboard the Navy's U.S.S. Nassau, a helicopter-landing ship. Bush was plainly heartened by the enthusiasm of the troops. As he journeyed on, Bush began to speak of the looming specter of nuclear weapons in Iraq's arsenal. "Every day that passes brings Saddam one step closer to realizing his goal of a nuclear weapons arsenal," Bush declared at one stop. "And that's another reason, frankly, why more and more our mission is marked by a real sense of urgency." The gung-ho military let loose with a visceral cheer.

Bush came within 70 miles of the Kuwaiti border, his chopper escorted by menacing gunships, their sides punctured with the ugly snouts of .50-cal. machine guns. Fighter planes ranged high overhead. "Security good?" somebody asked Desert Shield commander General Norman Schwarzkopf. "It had better be, or I'm in trouble," he replied. Bush wore one of those camouflaged barracks hats that have become the symbol of the waiting game in the desert. The President also had a gas mask handy; he had been shown how to use it aboard Air Force One.

Bush left horseshoe-pitching gear with the land forces, suggesting they practice up, then come by the White House when the crisis is over to challenge him and one of his sons. When the President asked about their needs, they most often requested flyswatters, beer and the date when they would be going home. Bush had no estimate for the last. Was the duty as boring as reported, one young officer was asked by a journalist following the President. The soldier looked incredulous, then answered, "We're standing here watching the President eat. That's how boring it is."

Four other political luminaries were at Bush's side during his Thanksgiving pilgrimage. The President had shrewdly asked the top congressional leaders -- Senators George Mitchell and Robert Dole and Speaker Thomas Foley and House minority leader Robert Michel -- to come take turkey in the desert, an offer that could not be refused. They looked like hired extras swept unexpectedly into the Bush spectacle.

Headed for Cairo and a little hands-on steadying of Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, Bush marveled at the harsh landscape with its glaring horizons and fine, shifting sand, and at how unquenchable the good spirits of the U.S. men and women there remained. Yet the President seemed somewhat subdued by his desert foray. That might be an unexpected dividend of his journey. Though he did little to dispel the home-front doubts about the possibility of war, he drew the alliance of other nations closer to him, showed his own determination and intensity in the course, and seemed to sense the immense difficulties of waging and sustaining war so far away.

With reporting by Michael Duffy with Bush