Amiable--and Formidable

Something over 15 million Americans watched NBC’s Tom Brokaw joust with Soviet General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev on television Monday night. What they saw, perhaps for the first time, was the real Gorbachev--animated, loquacious, charming, very sure of himself and hard as nails.

Half leading, half led by a master politician with a message clearly in mind, Brokaw made two major contributions. He offered a look at what negotiating with Gorbachev is like--at the hurdles of culture, history and ideology that must be cleared just to arrive at some common view of problems that divide the United States and the Soviet Union. He also showed that it can be done.

Viewers also heard a preview of the ground that Gorbachev wants to cover at next week’s summit meeting with President Reagan in Washington--much of it old hat, but still intriguing because it was coming from the top.

Gorbachev wants to move closer to an agreement to destroy half the intercontinental nuclearmissiles in both countries, leaving each with something over 6,000 of the most dangerous weapons on Earth. He wants to extend the 1972 anti-ballistic-missile treaty that limits testing and deploying defense systems, letting research on “Star Wars,” and the defenses that he says the Soviets are designing, proceed as best they can on those terms. He will talk about Afghanistan, ground forces in Europe, Nicaragua, Cuba and other potential flashpoints and, if necessary, human rights--on his terms.

For the most part, Americans have seen Gorbachev in ceremonial settings--smiling, shaking hands, sometimes pensive. “Let me teach you a little lesson,” Gorbachev said at one point during the show, lapsing into a Soviet mindset as old as V. I. Lenin--one that says that the Soviets alone perceive truth and that others are still groping. Amiable and formidable, a most satisfactory introduction to a summit meeting in which so much depends on the two leaders making certain that the answers match the questions.