A Gentle Battle of Images

Ronald Reagan was born to campaign: he loves it and does it well. Last week, in the twilight of his presidency, he was back to his specialty, this time amid the onion domes of Moscow. Strolling around Red Square, talking to priests, writers, students and refuseniks, toasting his hosts at gala dinners, the President was unmistakably campaigning -- primarily on behalf of American- style human rights but also, and somewhat confusingly, on behalf of his opposite number and sometime adversary, the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.

Mikhail Gorbachev has never had to run for office, at least not in the conventional sense. But he too is a natural campaigner, as anyone who saw him pick up a child in Red Square and tell him to "shake hands with Grandfather Reagan" would testify. He was running a kind of countercampaign, seeking to present himself as a radical reformer who is revitalizing the Soviet Union and toning down conflict between the superpowers -- but also as a confident leader who would not get pushed around by any Reagan sermonizing.

For both, it was a complex task. Reagan had to praise Gorbachev's drive for glasnost and perestroika while still making clear that it does not yet go nearly far enough, and he had to criticize the Soviet human-rights performance sharply without attacking Gorbachev personally. Gorbachev had to alternate between chumminess with Reagan and resentment of his unabashed preachiness.

Not surprisingly, each stumbled at times: Reagan by pulling his punches at the end and weakly blaming Soviet human-rights violations on "bureaucracy" rather than the Communist system or (heaven forbid!) his host; Gorbachev by taking now and then an almost contemptuous attitude toward Reagan. But like the seasoned troupers they are, they generally brought off their assignments with a surefooted panache.

Given their goals, it was not surprising that their fourth summit revolved around the ceremonial events rather than the one-on-one Reagan-Gorbachev meetings. With the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty ratified, the potential Strategic Arms Reduction Talks treaty bogged down and the Soviets pulling out of Afghanistan, there was not much top-level business to transact -- or at least not much that could get transacted given the constraints. Aides dutifully produced seven agreements, a procedure that has become de rigueur for summits lest they be popularly judged failures. But the agreements mostly concerned such minor matters as nuclear-testing procedures, fishing rights and exchanges of students. In effect, though certainly not in title, this was the Photo Opportunity Summit.

In the battle of images, Reagan several times appeared tired and disengaged, to the point that Gorbachev felt obliged to come to his rescue and cut off reporters' questions before one of their private sessions. Gorbachev is a generation younger, and looked it; he appeared constantly animated, bursting with ideas and emotions.