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Those questions perplexed -- and at times even seemed to paralyze -- Bush for the first months of his presidency. One reason for his slow start was embedded in his political insecurity. Despite his protestations that he is a conservative, Bush is in fact a moderate Republican. Always has been, always will be. As such, he was not entirely trusted by the right wing of his own party. Never has been, never will be. When he first became President, he lived in mortal terror of Jesse Helms and his ilk, who seemed much more capable of making trouble in early 1989 than they do today.
There was an important difference between Bush and Reagan in this regard. No one had ever questioned Reagan's conservative credentials, so Reagan was all but invulnerable to the vigilantes of the hard right. Also, as a virtuoso political showman in his own right, Reagan appreciated the skill with which Gorbachev manipulated appearances, creating the impression of mastery and leadership even as he raised one white flag after another over the parapet of Soviet power.
Reagan was also immensely confident, both about himself and about the ultimate victory of capitalism over communism. Therefore he didn't mind letting Gorbachev take his bows on the world stage. Reagan had trouble comprehending, not to mention caring about, the difference between ballistic and cruise missiles, but he understood intuitively the significance of what Gorbachev was doing. Asked during a summit meeting with Gorbachev in Moscow in 1988 if he still regarded the Soviet Union as an "evil empire," Reagan replied, "No, I was talking about another time, another era." And, he might have added, another kind of Soviet leader.
At first, Bush was less sure than Reagan about how to deal with Gorbachev, in part because he was less sure about himself. He fretted not only about Helms & Co. but also about his standing with the broad center of American and international public opinion. He knew he had a problem with "the vision thing." Gorbachev's genius for making a public relations virtue out of political and economic necessity made Bush look bad by comparison. Bush's favorite word, prudence, often sounded like an alibi -- or a euphemism for timidity.
Only after months of prodding and nagging on both sides of the Atlantic did Bush and his closest aides realize that skepticism about Gorbachev's bona fides was not a real policy toward the Soviet Union. Even then, it took James Baker to shake the Administration to life. He is one of the best politicians ever to serve as Secretary of State. Critics say he is excessively concerned with how diplomacy is playing on the home front; he has been quick, for example, to justify the Administration's performance abroad by pointing to polls showing how popular the President is at home. But when tuned to what is happening inside the Soviet Union, Baker's famous antennas have served him, and Bush, well.