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Chapter 23 Mission Most Important Sunday, 30 January 1983 On the flight to Andrews, GB was up but edgy, a reflection of the tremendous worldwide attention being given this trip. At last night’s Alfalfa Dinner, for example, Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Georgia) gravely told him it was the most important vice presidential trip in a decade. The Washington Post editorialized today: “This is a remarkable day in the Reagan Administration’s foreign policy. Two senior officials, Vice President George Bush and Secretary of State George Shultz, are flying to opposite points on the globe. [Shultz is going to China to try to patch up relations there.] . . . The Vice President seems to us just the right man—positive, experienced, political—to satisfy the allies’ real craving for a strong and sensible American lead.” There was also a good piece in the New York Times. Aboard AF were Rick Burt of State and thirty-five-year-old Cdr. Dennis Blair, the European specialist on the National Security Council staff. Heavily laden with fuel, SAM  lifted off at : a.m. on our tenth foreign trip in only nineteen months. We crossed the icy wastes of Canada and a cloudy Atlantic, headed for Germany. Toward  p.m. local time, we landed at the airport serving Cologne and Bonn. Amb. Arthur Burns, white-haired and pipe-puffing, came aboard with the German chief of protocol, a gentleman with the theatrical name of Count von Finckenstein.Then we descended toTV lights and a welcoming party led by FM Hans-Dieter Genscher. He heads the minority Free Democratic Party, whose defection from a coalition with Helmut Schmidt’s socialists to join the CDUCSU conservatives led to Helmut Kohl’s installation as chancellor last October. Monday, 31 January 1983 At :, Jennifer, Dennis Blair, State Department interpreter Harry Obst, and I walked to the modernistic chancellery building just across Adenaueral- mission most important 267 lee from our hotel. Harry said that [former chancellor] Konrad Adenauer chose Bonn as the capital of West Germany [in ] because it was a short distance from his home in Cologne—exactly like another father of his country who had a plantation on the Potomac. We stood on the edge of a red carpet facing a blue-uniformed honor guard. Chancellor Kohl came out of the building and took a salute saying, “Guten Morgen, Soldaten!,” to which they replied in loud chorus, “Guten Morgen, Herr Bundeskanzler!” A few minutes later, GB’s motorcade entered the courtyard and stopped before the TV cameras. Kohl and FM Genscher sprang forward to greet him. “These guys are fighting for their political lives,” the DCM [deputy chief of mission] at the US embassy said out of the corner of his mouth. “Every thirty seconds they get on TV with the vice president of the United States is worth another , votes to them.” GB introduced the members of his official party to Kohl, a strapping man who is slightly taller than Bush. Mrs. Bush followed with Frau Hannelore Kohl, an attractive and vivacious woman whose broad jaw and red hair recall Margaret Heckler. The Chancellor and VP took their places on the reviewing platform as the band rendered stirring versions of both anthems. Then the two leaders went inside the chancellery for talks. Jennifer and I followed to have some strong coffee and take a look at the place. We were both amused at the official portrait of Chancellor Willy Brandt (–), a warm-colored abstract with no facial features. We later got a car that took us into the neighboring community of Bad Godesburg, dominated by a medieval castle on a hill. At its foot is La Redoute , a pretty Italianate house of the eighteenth century where Mozart once performed. The West German government uses it for official entertaining, such as this afternoon’s luncheon for VP Bush. In his toast, Chancellor Kohl spoke of the warmth that exists between Germany and America and of what West Germans owe to American generosity after the war. It was a campaign speech, of course, in which the Chancellor also called for both “defense and détente” and a US-Soviet summit. When AF took off for Berlin, it carried a distinguished passenger list headed by Chancellor and Mrs. Kohl. Those who wish to take that as a sign that Kohl is our boy may do so, and they won’t be wrong. But RR gave thenChancellor Schmidt a lift to Berlin in Air Force...

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