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More recently, Vance privately displayed some uncustomary anger in the neutron bomb flap. He "went through five roofs," reports an aide, when other advisers pressured Carter to counter a partly inaccurate New York Times report that the President had decided against production of the weapon by immediately announcing that he had resolved only to postpone production. Vance argued for a week's delay in which to brief affected NATO allies. He was given only a few days, but it was time enough to get out advance word and limit the diplomatic damage.
The steadying Vance hand has probably been at its best in the Administration's policy on the Middle East—certainly the most intractable situation the U.S. is trying to influence. There, Vance's personal characteristics neatly fit the nation's role. Subdued, relatively inconspicuous, evenhanded, persistent, Vance symbolizes the U.S. as the patient mediator working to get the contending principals together. The issue has taken more of Vance's time than any other; he has visited the Middle East five times since taking office. Vance's gentle probing of the contending parties' feelings apparently helped inspire Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's "sacred mission" to Jerusalem. And although Israeli Premier Menachem Begin once lashed out publicly at Vance for saying that Sinai settlements "should not exist," the self-assured Vance, certain that he was right and was stating official U.S. policy, took no personal offense.
It is the widespread perception of Vance as a gray and bland figure that most worries his colleagues and, increasingly, Vance himself. Although he is effective in head-to-head private negotiations, he is a plodding public speaker and a poor salesman for policies that sorely need selling. Since the President too lacks a flair for inspirational rhetoric or the graceful articulation of American foreign policy concepts, the Administration has not been projecting a coherent foreign policy to the world—or to Americans, either.
"He's very suspicious of conceptualizing as a device," says one of Vance's State Department colleagues, in reference to a general complaint that Vance has no grand design for a future world order. "He thinks it tends to distort reality." Explains another associate: "He is so controlled, he is right out of a Louis Auchincloss novel. I keep wondering where he goes to do his primal scream."
Vance's natural caution has undoubtedly contributed to his durability. Unlike a number of recent Secretaries of State, he has never published a single book and has rarely written articles on foreign affairs, outside of official speeches and reports. And although he was the top deputy to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and strongly endorsed President Johnson's escalation of the U.S. troop commitment to Viet Nam, he has received remarkably little personal criticism for that role.