What the People Said
SCHORR, DANIEL
Washington Notebook BY DANIEL SCHORR What the People Said President George Bush may not be a great communicator, but he is an impulsive, perhaps even compulsive communicator. "Well,...
...But it has begun happening allof asudden, atapace and in an emotional manner that makes it scary to those in the West who have been making all those liberation speeches for 40 years...
...It appears that the dim outlines of a Gorbachev Doctrine are emerging...
...We were promptly arrested, our film was confiscated, and after three hours were released...
...In some places one could see families and friends waving to each other in tears while witnessing their sudden separation—forever, they thought...
...Now one hears the West nervously clearing its throat as East Germans are urged to stay in their country...
...They seemed to be demonstrating, among other things, against the politics of polarization...
...In Communist Europe it is the most sacred day in the calendar—the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution...
...If abortion and race begin to fade as dominating issues in American politics, then November 7 may be remembered as the day America showed signs of coming together—even as the Communist region of Europe showed signs of falling apart...
...National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft prays for "orderly change" and fears "chaos or an explosion" that might "give the occasion for a crackdown...
...In fact, the realization began to sink in that East Germany's decision to solve its problem of people fleeing by sealing itself off, rather than by blockading West Berlin, as long feared, was a relief to the Kennedy Administration...
...It has promised free elections and opened the Berlin Wall—something that this reporter, who watched its erection in 1961, did not expect to happen in his lifetime...
...It was only two days later, on August 15, that I saw slabs of concrete being unloaded and reported on CBS, in a tone of incredulity, "It looks as though they are going to build a WALL—a permanent wall...
...A million émigrés will not all stay in West Germany...
...Although Bush may have softened his rhetoric on abortion, he has not softened his actions...
...In 1987, only 1 per cent of 1,900 women questioned by the Alan Guttmacher Institute gave rape or incest as a reason for their abortions...
...When we talk about rape or incest, how many abortions are we talking about...
...At his news conference, he made three points: that, given the grave problems facing America, abortion is not a very important matter to him...
...The clichés of Western ideology have always held that the attractions of democracy and the seductions of capitalism would inevitably bring about the decline of the East...
...There has always been much talk of bringing Europe together...
...November 7,1989 may be better remembered, though, for two other manifestations of the popular will...
...But some seemed to be voting not so much one way or another on abortion as against turning it into a litmus test political issue...
...East Germany has reshuffled its Politburo and government, bringing forward its thin ranks of reformers...
...It quickly became clear that the Western Allies would not intervene to knock down the barrier, as they had the right to do under Four Power arrangements...
...The conventional wisdom is that last July's Supreme Court decision broadening the power of the states to restrict abortion galvanized the "pro-choice" forces and caught "prolife" candidates with their polls down...
...The voters also appeared to be calling for a cease-fire in the political war over abortion...
...These newcomers represent an economic problem, as resentments rise and are exploited by extremists—as has already begun to happen in West Germany...
...It was Western policy to favor German reunification—as long as that was an impossible dream...
...Well, good morning, and I'mback again," he said as he opened a news conference on November 7. The occasion was a contrived one—the first anniversary of his election (actually a day off...
...President Bush emphasizes his desire for "the evolution of peaceful change...
...when I was awakened in my room in the Kempinski Hotel by Hans-Jürgen Neumann, CBS' West Berlin cameraman, who said I had to come down to the Brandenburg Gate to see the amazing thing happening there...
...A quick tour showed the same thing happening at Potsdamer Platz and other crossing points...
...This may sound ironic to those who remember how, long before Bush campaigned with antiabortion support, it was the pro-life forces who practically invented single-issue politics...
...At the Brandenburg Gate checkpoint the scene was indeed amazing...
...But they had no way of knowing what the situation would be when they agreed to such a meeting last July, or even when the meeting was finally announced on October 31...
...It was 2:30 a.m...
...On the West Berlin side, starting on the fateful Sunday morning, people gathered to protest and jeer at the East Germans erecting the barrier...
...During the 1970s, before Congress imposed restrictions, Medicaid paid for 300,000 abortions a year—only 10,000 of them involving rape, incest or danger to the woman's life...
...In addition, he has vetoed the District of Columbia appropriation that would have allowed the use of locally raised funds for abortions, and a foreign-aid bill containing a minor grant for family planning in China where, the President said, abortionis compulsory...
...We interviewed people who were gathering in dismay and disbelief to watch themselves being sealed in...
...Now the trouble came not from the West, but from the buffer...
...then they inserted posts and proceeded to string barbed wire between them...
...And, in East Germany, where the Berlin Wall has breathtakingly parted, the regime was on the run before the wrath of the people— those of the people, that is, who were not themselves on the run...
...Today Western leaders must be wryly remembering an ancient Chinese curse, "May all your wishes come true...
...Under lurid floodlights, workers guarded by East German troops used jackhammers to pound holes into the ground...
...It is traditionally a day of pomp, mighty military display and well-organized "spontaneous" demonstrations by the narod (the people...
...But this November 7 found many of the narod counterdemonstrating in Red Square, with one banner calling 1917 "atragedy...
...and that he deplores the injection of single-issue politics into American campaigns...
...And there is some indication that Western leaders, having no interest in destabilization in Europe, are willing to go along with this premise...
...That means "no" to German reunification...
...Now, though, the superpower leaders had more to talk about than they had bargained for—what both could do to avert an upheaval in the part of Europe that Stalin annexed and subjugated in the mistaken belief that this buffer against the West would strengthen the security of Mother Russia...
...Replacing the Brezhnev Doctrine, which called for defending Communist rule by force in every country where it existed, the new doctrine is that these countries can have any kind of political system they want—as long as they remain within the defensive perimeter of the Warsaw Pact...
...But it was not supposed to happen so fast and so furiously...
...On November 7 Americans demonstrated, too—at the polls...
...Grumpily, I called room service for coffee—and was told there was no room service because the overnight shift, East Berlin commuters, had not shown up...
...Under European Community rules, even before integration in 1992, they can travel to 11 other member countries, seek jobs and housing and, if necessary, apply for welfare...
...The election of the country's first black governor in Virginia, and black mayors in New York, New Haven and Seattle, even if by margins narrow enough to reflect some ambivalence, still suggested that many voters are starting to turn away from cynical manipulation of racial antipathies...
...August 13, 1961 remains as vivid in my mind as yesterday (maybe more so, given my age...
...Other rallies in Georgia, Armenia and the Baltic States were disrupted or canceled...
...Nevertheless, the deliberations of the superpowers seemed less relevant to the turmoil in Eastern Europe than the December 8-9 summit of the European Community in Strasbourg, France...
...Indeed, one wondered then why busy leaders, whose in-boxes are crammed with domestic problems, would plunge their staffs into logistical nightmares to get together for two days on ships without any clear agenda...
...that there is plenty of room for difference on the subject in the Republican Party...
...In its most immediate terms, East Germany is a European problem...
...Ex-President Gerald R. Ford reminded us, in the pages of the New York Times, that this is what he said, or meant to say, in rejecting Soviet domination of EasternEurope during his 1976 debate with Jimmy Carter...
...Perhaps, after the lessons of the recent election are absorbed, the President will become less rigid in his actions, as some Republicans in Congress are urging...
...In great spirits and in confident command of himself, the President exuded his exhilaration with his job...
...At seven that Sunday morning I took the elevated train to East Berlin with an American cameraman (West Berliners were no longer admitted...
...He has vetoed Medicaid funding for abortion in the case of rape or incest (on the rather specious ground that it might be abused by those falsely claiming to have suffered such assaults...
...It is noteworthy that President Bush (and this may have been one reason for scheduling a news conference on election morning) muted his own once clarion support of the antiabortion forces, whom he had addressed on his first working day in office with a call for a constitutional ban...
...Perhaps, precisely, because summits are more fun than dealing with intractable problems at home, and because they provide quick fixes in imageenhancement...
...Gorbachevs Doctrine At this writing—ah, magazine lead time...
...President Bush and Mikhail S. Gorbachev would not have wanted for something to talk about at their floating Club Med "presummit" at the beginning of December...
...Last year, with danger to the life of the mother the sole permitted reason, Medicaid-financed abortions totaled 84...
...So, the issue of rape and incest abortions is largely symbolic, but, as with the flag, a symbol can loom very large when a President feels it necessary to validate his ideology and his personal strength...
...In succeeding hours, and days, we saw scenes of increasing desperation— a car crashing through the barbed wire, an East German policeman vaulting over the barrier, people jumping out of windows into safety nets on Bernauerstrasse, where buildings formed the border...
Vol. 72 • November 1989 • No. 17
