354 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
were few and far between. George Bush, now the Republican Party
candidate in the presidential campaign, asked to see Shevardnadze.
(The Democratic Party candidate Michael Dukakis inexplicably made
no such request.) The advice that Bush gave was for Soviet leaders to
transact as much business as they could before the end of the year.
Arms agreements ought to be completed with all speed. Although he
expected to win the election, Bush pointed out that he would begin
with a lower standing with the American Congress than Reagan.
When Shultz heard about this, he thought it a ‘dumb’ way to talk to
Shevardnadze and revealed a poverty of expectation.^10 A visionary
presidency was coming to an end. The White House was about to yield
occupancy to a man with doubts where once there had been a leader
of clarity and hope.
Shultz worked to guarantee at least a smooth finale to Reagan’s
time in the White House. Tensions with the Kremlin were to be mini-
mized. CIA Deputy Director Robert Gates annoyed Shultz, not for the
first time, with a speech he made on 14 October 1988. Addressing the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, he spoke of his
uncertainty about Gorbachëv’s capacity to carry out a basic economic
reform and added that his hold on power could soon become precar-
ious.^11 Shultz felt it necessary to announce that there was no change of
direction in the White House. He had not finished with Gates. Three
days later he tore into him in person, accusing him yet again of trying
to make policy when his real job was to collect and process infor-
mation. It was not the intelligence agency’s proper function to take
part in public politics. Gates had omitted to seek clearance for the
speech, and Shultz took him to task him for contending that
Gorbachëv had only three supporters in the Politburo. He reminded
Gates about how late the CIA had been in coming to recognize that
Gorbachëv was different from previous Soviet leaders. As if unsure
that his message had not hit home, he concluded: ‘So you have as you
know for a long time a very dissatisfied client.’^12
Gorbachëv hoped to make it impossible for the next American
President, whether it was Bush or Dukakis, to change the current line
of foreign policy. On 31 October he held a planning session about his
upcoming visit to New York, where he was scheduled to address the
United Nations General Assembly. He wanted his speech to be a sort
of ‘anti-Fulton’.^13 Whereas Churchill in at Fulton, Missouri in 1946 had
described an Iron Curtain as dividing the two halves of Europe, Gor-
bachëv intended to proclaim the need to remake the continent without