Looking For a Way Out

Jackson's coup creates an opening in Lebanon

The scene was historical theater at its best, complete with tears, smiles and the unlikeliest of costars. There, standing in the White House Rose Garden and surrounded by beaming relatives, was Navy Lieut. Robert Goodman, dramatically home after a month in a Syrian jail. There was the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Democratic presidential aspirant whose audacious diplomacy won Goodman his freedom. And there, in the middle, was Ronald Reagan, who a week earlier had declined to take Jackson's calls before the Baptist minister left for Damascus. But...