I was furious. “Mr. Yeltsin,” I said, this time in English, “General Scowcroft is a busy man. If you don’t want to keep your appointment, let me know and I’ll cancel it and you can go back to your hotel.”
He muttered to himself for a few moments, then huffed and said sharply, “Where is he?” I took him by the arm and almost dragged him up to Brent’s office.
Brent, knowing none of this, greeted him warmly. Yeltsin sat down and launched into a soliloquy on his plans for Russia. Brent, who always worked too hard for his own good, fell asleep. Yeltsin didn’t notice, completely absorbed in his own presentation. About thirty minutes into the meeting, the President flung open the door. Yeltsin smiled broadly, jumped up, and embraced the startled leader of the free world in a bear hug. Then he continued his monologue. After about thirty minutes more he was done. The President left, and I escorted a self-satisfied Yeltsin out to his car.
My first impressions of the man were obviously not very good. But less than a year later Yeltsin stood bravely atop a tank on a Moscow street and faced down the army and the security services of the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin would become the historic if somewhat flawed figure who brought down the Soviet Union and launched democracy in Russia. I was very glad that we had arranged that early meeting—bizarre as it was—with the President of the United States.
As expected, January 1991 brought the outbreak of war with Saddam Hussein. This event dominated the news and the attention of the President and Brent. But I was consumed with simultaneous crises in the Baltic states. Suddenly faced with the prospect of Baltic independence, Gorbachev belatedly tried to crack down. Thirteen people were killed and more than a hundred were wounded when Soviet-backed Lithuanian security forces fired on and drove tanks over protesters in Vilnius, the capital city. Violence in the Baltics continued to escalate. “We condemn these acts,” President Bush told the press, saying that the events “could not help but affect our relationship” with Moscow. In spite of all the upheaval, however, the Soviet Union did not launch a full-scale military invasion of Lithuania and Latvia. I can’t be sure, but I have always thought that the President’s clarity helped to remind Moscow of the costs of doing so. After the events that January, it was increasingly clear that the Baltic states would become independent and that Gorbachev’s days were numbered.
Fortunately, our pressure on Moscow did not disrupt the Gulf War coalition, which, led by American military power, successfully expelled Saddam Hussein’s forces from Kuwait. But the war left the Iraqi dictator in power, able to threaten his neighbors and oppress his people. That would be a problem for another day.
With the war concluded, I decided that I had discharged my duties and could return home. The President sent me a lovely letter recounting the role that I had played. “While the fate of the Soviet Union is still not decided,” he wrote, “you have set us on a course to realize the historic dream of a Europe whole, free and at peace.” I was sad to leave but felt a tremendous sense of completion and accomplishment.
The day before my departure, First Lady Barbara Bush invited me to join her for tea in the residence. “You are such a good friend of the Bushes,” she said. “This won’t be the last that we see of you.”
chapter thirty-eight
I returned to Stanford tired but content. The university was again generous, telling me that I would not be required to teach until the fall quarter. That allowed me time to design my next research project—the one that I would use to make my case for promotion to full professor during the next academic year.
I didn’t miss Washington or the work in the White House. Even when the coup against Gorbachev took place in August 1991, leading to the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union in December, I didn’t regret my decision to leave. Throughout the spring and summer I worked again for ABC News as an expert analyst but largely kept my distance from the policy world.
One of my surprises upon returning to Palo Alto was just how much my father had established a new life and reputation of his own. Daddy had always been a magnet for people, and he’d become a powerful one in Palo Alto. Not only was he active with Stanford’s Public Service Center and the Department of Athletics, transforming what was once just a study hall for freshman football players into an academic resource and tutoring center for all Stanford athletes, but he had also become a well-regarded figure in East Palo Alto.
Not long after I returned home, one of Daddy’s new friends—Charlie Mae Knight, the superintendent of the Ravenswood schools in East Palo Alto—asked if I would deliver the districtwide commencement address. Ravenswood is an elementary and middle school district with no high school. Yet as I was sitting on the stage, it occurred to me that with extended families having come from all over the Bay Area and beyond to attend the ceremonies, the commencement exercises felt more like a high school graduation.
“This is an awfully elaborate commencement for eighth graders,” I said to Charlie.
“Well,” she said, “that’s because seventy percent of these kids will never finish high school. This is their last commencement.”
I was stunned, and realized that I knew very little of the poverty and lack of opportunity just a few blocks from my house.
That evening, I asked my father to tell me about the challenges for the school district, feeling a little embarrassed that I’d lived in the area for ten years and knew nothing, while my father, who’d moved to Palo Alto only recently, was actively trying to help. He told me about some of his efforts, including refurbishing an athletic field for the district. Daddy also told me about what Charlie Mae wanted to do. Ravenswood had had eleven superintendents in ten years and the odds were long, but he was impressed with her toughness and commitment. He was going to be a partner to her and mobilize resources from Stanford to help. “Stanford has been running its own programs and its own agenda in East Palo Alto,” he said. “It’s about time that someone ask the people there what they need.”
My father was just doing what he’d done all of his life: following in his father’s footsteps of educational evangelism. I resolved right then to get involved too, and asked Charlie Mae to lunch a few days later. She talked about the need for extended-day learning activities, saying that children had nothing wholesome to do after school. Most extracurricular activities such as music and art had been cut because of budgetary pressures. Charlie and I agreed that I’d pull together some people who might be interested in helping, and after some discussions a group of community leaders from Palo Alto planned to launch the Center for a New Generation (CNG).
We had no idea how hard it would be. There was a political power structure in East Palo Alto that was suspicious of outsiders and determined to keep control. It didn’t help that I was from Stanford, which, as my father had noted, had a well-deserved reputation for giving the help they decided the community needed without asking the community what it wanted. There were also a number of nonprofits in East Palo Alto run by residents of the city that were little more than jobs programs for the staffs of the organizations. Money had flowed to these programs from corporations and foundations with little demand for accountability. In this way, Palo Alto had eased its conscience, but it was hard to argue that kids were being helped by what my dad called “guilt money.” Some of the directors of these programs, who were often powerful people in the city, saw the CNG as a threat to their funding sources.
To break through, we had to work very hard. We held community meetings, and also scheduled numerous meetings with the Board of Education. We brought the chair of the school board into the effort, which helped immensely. And we addressed the city council. I finally lost my cool when one of the members asked what was in it for me. I shot back, “Nothing. But there is something in it for your kids. Why are you so hard to help?”