As President Reagan gets ready for this weekend's meeting with Soviet leader Gorbachev, commentator Cal Thomas thinks that House Democrats are depriving the President of the most important thing he could take to Iceland—a clear control over US foreign policy.
House majority leader Jim Wright isn't even Speaker of the House yet, and already he is acting as if he were President. Wright has offered President Reagan a deal. He says he and House Democrats will delay a showdown with the White House over arms control until next year if the President will agree to terms for future consideration of constraints on strategic weapons and other House arms control strategies. These would include abiding by weapons limits in the unratified SALT II Treaty, which the Soviets have repeatedly violated. This type of behavior on the eve of a meeting in Iceland between the President and Mikhail Gorbachev would be unseemly enough for any member of Congress. But for major Democratic leader it is unconscionable. Why should Gorbachev feel any need to negotiate with the President if House Democrats led by Jim Wright are doing his job for him? Gorbachev, of course, is under no such pressure since members of the Politburo in one-party Russia compete only for the privilege of being the loudest ratifier of Gorbachev policies. Wright, who was a co-signer of a 1984 "Dear Commandant" letter to Nicaragua's Marxist dictator Daniel Ortega, in which, among other things, he deplored his own country's policies against the Central American nation, apparently believes that cutting a deal with the Soviets in which we all will live in a safer world is like a mating game. One must make the right moves before the other party shows any interest. The Soviets are pressing ahead on all fronts, offensive and defensive weapons and laser technology, even while they denounce the United States for conducting research on its own strategic defense initiative. Will they be impressed by the good will Congressman Wright thinks he is displaying by trying to tie the President's hands before Iceland? Hardly. Gorbachev will try to tie the President's feet as well. The history of this country before the Vietnam War was that the President of the United States set American foreign policy. The Congress advised and debated, but in the end it was the President who prevailed if differences arose. Now it is the Congress that is making foreign policy: on South Africa, on Central America, and, on the most dangerous level of all, with our chief adversary, the Soviet Union. There is no room for mistakes in dealing with the Soviets, but Jim Wright and the House Democrats are making them. Gorbachev will arrive in Reykjavik well rested, knowing that much of his work will have already been done for him by Jim Wright. No wonder he's bringing his wife. There will be plenty of spare time for socializing.
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