The Summit Spectator /Sherping
Brooks, David
Sherping by David Brooks T his is the year Bill Clinton discovers the joys of global summitry. He attended a NATO summit in January, he's got a European summit in June, and there's still talk of a...
...Another reason the president will come to love summits is that for all their drama they always have a happy ending...
...The arrangement has the outstanding merit of reminding everyone that Francois Mitterrand is really quite short by world-leader standards...
...Sherpas are difficult to engage in conversation, mostly because of their tendency to steer conversations back to such arcane matters as the need for an efficient payments-clearing system...
...Reporters, dismissive 24 hours before, wait long into the night until the final communiqué is issued...
...Summits are played out in four movements: In the first, pre-summit phase, there are stories in the press on the tremendous obstacles blocking an agreement between world leaders and on the awful ramifications if no agreement is reached...
...When they and their buddies get together, they probably make wry little comments about the Italian payments-clearing system...
...The language is based on English, but is without any idiomatic expressions or colorful words that cannot be translated easily into any other language...
...One of the most interesting things about them is their hobbies...
...Felipe Gonzalez, the sherpa who amazingly has become the Spanish head of state, cultivates bonsais, which suggests fastidiousness and contemplation...
...The Swiss diplomat Edouard Brunner paints lead toy soldiers, a hobby that is endearing, yet with an aroma of Bismarckian realpolitik...
...The third news cycle, during which actual meetings take place, is dominated by skeptical reporters explaining to their audiences that these summits are merely empty gabfests...
...In fact, if it weren't for Mitterrand's fear of being the puniest, Italy wouldn't even be allowed to be a member of the G-7...
...The fourth and climactic movement comes late on the final night, with the announcement of the triumphant breakthrough...
...Sherpas are a strange breed, and are in their element during global summits...
...Chief among these, perhaps, is the chance to dress up in a blue suit and red tie and stand in a row with other world leaders so that hundreds of photographers can snap the identical picture...
...The second movement begins with the summit's opening social event and consists of minute analysis of the moods and positions of the various participants...
...The substance of the actual agreement will remain fuzzy, because the leaders have not in fact reached an agreement: they have merely found words to put into the final communiqué that no nation can object to: "G-7 Leaders decide to 'Go for Growth,'" or "Industrialized Nations Vow to Cooperate...
...The message of these photo lineups, which are the pictorial highlight of every summit, is that an awesome array of power has been assembled in one place, as if Ruth, Mantle, Mays, and Aaron had been captured dining together...
...The Germans among them talk at great length about the virtues of the German payments-clearing system, and then they hug each other and cry...
...The only real requirement for a summit is that it succeed...
...Worse, they are clearly in the habit of being in the company of people who know what a payments-clearing system is...
...He attended a NATO summit in January, he's got a European summit in June, and there's still talk of a job summit in between...
...Sherpas choose their hobbies with care, in part as a talking point in case any journalists should ever want to do anewspaper profile, in part because they think an impressive hobby adds to their mystique...
...Less pretentious sherpas have simply stuck with their student-day anti-weenie hobbies: John Major's private secretary, Alex Allen, is known for his passion for the Grateful Dead...
...One might have thought that for a peace summit on Yugoslavia to have been hugely successful, it would have had to contribute peace in Yugoslavia...
...The act of pretending to be engaged in a serious discussion with world leaders is "to sherp...
...One of the oddities of this language is that it contains no words for bird or plant life but twenty-six expressions for the phrase "reinventing government...
...the Spanish payments-clearing system sends them into gales of laughter...
...0 106 The American Spectator February 1994...
...The sherpas speak a dialect called Business Class English, the lingua franca of the global establishment...
...After one European summit to end the war in former Yugoslavia, British Prime Minister John Major declared that the meeting had been "hugely successful...
...door...
...There are massive press conferences with smiling politicians and then the mandarins come down for off-the-record briefings...
...The real question, then, is not how Bill Clinton could have been prevailed upon to travel to Europe last month during the worst presidential scandal in twenty years, but how anybody ever managed to drag him away...
...Whereas the usual wrangling of domestic politics will become demeaning—and the unusual demands of scandal become downright tawdry—summitry offers numerous and lasting joys...
...Each nation gives its own insider briefing at which it explains how it "won" the summit...
...These moods are deduced from the brief glimpses reporters get of the leaders as they dash from limo to palace David Brooks is deputy editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe...
...T he wonkish staff members who make all this sleight-of-hand possible are known as sherpas...
Vol. 27 • February 1994 • No. 2
