First Lady Plays Part of Gorbachev : Reagan Well-Rehearsed for Major Role

With the summit officially starting in less than 48 hours, President Reagan made a rehearsal visit Sunday to the 18th-Century Swiss villa where he will meet with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Tuesday.

Top officials accompanied him and dutifully took their places in the meeting room along one side of the 16-foot conference table flown in from Washington.

Reagan settled into the armless cane chair that he will occupy for the historic confrontation. Nancy Reagan sat across from him, playing the part of Gorbachev. “Well,” the President quipped, “you’re prettier than I thought.”

If Reagan was in a relaxed mood Sunday, there has been nothing casual about the way he and his aides have prepared for what may be the most critical performance of his presidency. If attention to detail and earnest endeavor can do it, then never before in his political life has Reagan been so ready to face an opponent.

For the last three months, beginning during his August vacation at his California ranch in the Santa Ynez mountains, the President has been reading Russian history, screening video clips of Gorbachev and talking with Kremlin-watchers in preparation for the summit.

And that is only the crash course. In a sense, Reagan’s entire public career has been a prelude for his encounter with Gorbachev.

“This is every patriot’s fantasy--to confront your adversary in Olympian debate over issues about which you have fundamental differences,” said Kenneth Khachigian, a California lawyer and longtime Reagan adviser. “He clearly relishes the opportunity.”

Usually a relatively passive student who rarely asks questions, Reagan has reportedly been more engaged than usual when it comes to his Soviet studies. One official involved in the preparations said Reagan has taken extensive personal notes, something he almost never does, an apparent indication of his high interest.

Still, some of the seasoned Sovietologists who have been called to the White House to share their knowledge and experience with the President have remarked that Reagan, while attentive and affable, has not peppered them with requests for additional information and clarifications the way his predecessors did.

White House advisers say they have found that Reagan does best with a gentler approach, one with a minimum of direct give-and-take that would tend to put him on the spot. They favor a multi-media curriculum that depends heavily on videotapes of such things as “highlights” of Gorbachev’s public appearances, including the Soviet leader’s much-publicized visits to France and Britain.

For all the prepping, Reagan remains an unpredictable figure. In recent weeks, he has several times bobbled his position on his proposed “Star Wars” space-based missile defense system, mistakenly saying at one point that he would not deploy the controversial system until the Soviets agreed to disarm. “He doesn’t stay programmed,” said a White House official with a mixture of pride and alarm.

Officials also tried to arrange private screenings for Reagan of movies currently being shown in Soviet theaters. On that list was “Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears,” a tale of the pleasures and perils of life in the Soviet capital.

The White House is reluctant to confirm exactly which films Reagan has seen or the books he has read. “It tends to detract from what’s important,” a spokesman said. “It trivializes everything.”

But the details that have surfaced indicate an approach that can only be called total immersion.

‘Core Briefing Papers’

Reagan received the first of 25 “core briefing papers” last summer while he was still recuperating from cancer surgery. Each was crisply written, using no more than three to eight pages to outline such disparate subjects as the culture and ideology of the Soviet Union, the role of the Communist Party and Gorbachev’s economic goals.

Reagan was especially fascinated by anything having to do with the fragile condition of the Soviet economy, aides said. He is known to believe that the best hope for arms control lies in Gorbachev’s recognition that the Soviet economy cannot continue to stand the strain of an uncontrolled arms race.

Administration officials made the decision early on that they would not ply Reagan with the hard numbers of arms control. Mindful of the first 1984 campaign debate against Democratic candidate Walter F. Mondale, when Reagan, struggling to remember a sea of statistics, failed to articulate his overall themes, they concluded that he should concentrate on getting to know the Soviet leader.

Talks Arranged With Author

That meant fewer briefings on the details of policy and a broader look at the culture and ideology that shaped Gorbachev. Meetings were arranged with author Suzanne Massie, whose books provide a flesh-and-blood look at the Russian people, and Arkady N. Shevchenko, a high-level Soviet defector who made the best-seller list this year with his account of Moscow society and the inner workings of the Politburo.

Aides spent hours with Reagan going over the fine points of Gorbachev’s communicating style, his ideological posturing, his habit of interrupting, his overall aggressiveness. They told Reagan to expect an opening “ploy” from Gorbachev in which he would extensively outline the reasons why the Soviet Union is more peace-loving than the United States.

Reagan’s deeply held convictions, formed over the last half-century, give him “his own sense of history,” said an adviser, who acknowledged the possibility of a filibuster on both sides. “There’s a danger that there could be a lot of circling of each other.”

A top Administration official who briefed reporters at the White House last week said Reagan’s reading during the last months had enlightened him about some of the reasons for the distrust Soviets feel for the United States--and for his Administration in particular. Reagan recognizes they have “some understandable basis of fear of aggression from the outside,” this official said.

Reagan also realizes that his public statements during his long career have created a situation where the Soviets believe he finds it “personally unimaginable” to have reduced tensions between the superpowers, the official added.

Another official said Reagan has been deliberately restrained in all his public comments about the Soviets in the pre-summit period “so they don’t have an excuse to say his words are provocative.”

Show of Resolve Urged

But the President is being advised to “get his Irish up” if he is provoked by Gorbachev. White House planners feel a show of resolve by Reagan is important if he is to set the stage for meaningful progress. A 20-page memo from former President Richard M. Nixon, who negotiated the initial terms of detente in his 1972 meeting with Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev, conveyed the same message to Reagan: Be tough.

Unlike past Presidents, Reagan has not been captivated by any particular Sovietologist. There is no one in his Administration approaching the stature of Henry A. Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski when it comes to seeing the world through the superpower prism.

Instead, the day-to-day briefing of Reagan has been left largely to Foreign Service career professionals noted for their hard-nosed but ideologically neutral approach.

‘Sherpas’ Guided Reagan

The chief summit “sherpas,” as they are called after the Nepalese mountaineers who escort less hardy souls to the peaks of the Himalayas, are Jack F. Matlock Jr., 56, senior director of European and Soviet affairs for the National Security Council, and Rozanne Ridgway, 50, assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian affairs.

During the preliminary planning, some thought was given to staging a mock summit with Matlock playing Gorbachev. In the end, aides decided against it, not wanting to program Reagan to that extent. But the stocky, balding Matlock is still kidded about being a Gorbachev double, with only his North Carolina accent to give him away.

A pragmatist when it comes to U.S.-Soviet relations, Matlock is the author of a January, 1984, speech in which Reagan moderated his earlier remarks that included denunciation of the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.”

Official ‘A Real Pro’

Ridgway is the highest-ranking woman at the State Department and the first woman in memory to have a seat at a superpower summit. Described unanimously by her male colleagues as “a real pro,” Ridgway served as ambassador to East Germany and Finland before returning to Washington and her current high-pressure position.

Along with Matlock, the chain-smoking Ridgway will be at the negotiating table in Geneva to watch her prime student perform. She calls Reagan “our best asset . . . , the most effective proponent for a strong but reasonable America.”