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ON THE SCENE

GoIT HU Mi:

HAVEN, MASSACHUSETTSHE LONG political odyssey ofBill Clinton seemed to pass amilestone of sorts, as he vaca-

The press corps that follows him

There was something unmistakablycomforting about seeing the Presidentacting like a normal person on vaca-tion. It's hard to tell if it was more ofa relief to see him being left alone orto have him leave the rest of us alone.His most quotable comment of theweek was "Whoa, Mama," shouted athis golf ball from a tee at the FarmNeck Country Club. Shades of GeorgeBush? Not really, not when the mostconspicuous member of the foursome,besides Mr. Clinton himself, was Ver-non Jordan, late of the Urban Leagueand, despite his standing as a big-timeWashington lawyer, a shield againstany charge that the populist Presidenthad gone high-hat on his holiday.

The choice of Martha's Vineyard,late as it was, seems in retrospect tohave been inspired. It may be the oneplace in America Mr. Clinton could gowitbout any dan ger of run nin g intoanti-tax protestors, anti-abortion pro-testors, or anti-gay protestors. TheVineyard is a redoubt of Sixties liber-alism; even the island's one radio sta-tion plays mostly the music of thatera. The waitresspardon me, wait-personwho attended the Presidentand his party at the fabled Black DogTavern said she had marched onWashington but had never before meta President. She was thril led. So wasnearly everybody else, to judge by themyriad of welcome signs posted allover the place. The only message thathad even a faintly discouraging wordwas nailed to a tree along one of theisland's byways. "Bill," it said, "weknow you're trying."

Even the place where Mr. Clintonstayed seemed perfect, the private es-tate of Robert McNamara. Thus theonetime Vietnam War resister man-aged to associate himself with theman who ran the war, without break-ing poiiticai ranks. McNamara of

course is a Democrat. Nearly everyonehere seems to be. The curator at theCounty Historical Museum says shewas pressed into service as the Repub-lican registrar of voters because "thelast Republican on the island whocould write died last year." That maybe an exaggeration, but not by much.This is, after all, the vacation home ofsuch luminaries as Carly Simon,James Taylor, William Styron, JulesFeiffer, Art Buchwald, Katharine Gra-ham, Sheldon Hackney, JacquelineKennedy Onassis, and Spike Lee. Notmany Dittoheads in that group. Suchpeople may not be easily impressed,but one senses that they would all begiddy if Mr. Clinton chose to make thisthe site of his summer White House.

They certainly gave the Presidentthe full treatment. Mrs. Graham hadhim over twice, and Mrs. Onassis tookhim out for a luncheon cruise on a 70-foot yacht owned by her beau, MauriceTempelsman, the diamond dealer. Af-terward, she entertained him at herhouse. For Mr. CHnton, who dates hispresidential ambitions from the dayhe met JFK in the Rose Garden dur-ing a Boys Nation photo-op, hobnob-bing with his widow must have beengratifying indeed. Alas, the camera-shy Mrs. Onassis did not oblige withthe kinds of consecrating poses withthe President that the White Housewould no doubt have loved. She sentbrother-in-law Ted and boyfriendMaurice out to greet the Clintons onthe pier. "Welcome to Massachusetts,"said Ted heartily. T. R. Reid of theWashington Post once described a tu-mescent Ted as having had "an epicu-rean summer." From tbe look of himhere, he's had another one.

The summer regulars here, Vine-yarders as they call them selves, do notmerely regard this picturesque islandas a nice place to visit. They share analmost cultish devotion to it as a sortof Nirvana. The Vineyard Gazette, thelocal paper owned by the eminentJames Reston and his family, wentinto rhapsodies tbe day Mr. Clintonarrived. In a welcoming editorial, thepaper said, "This place in the sea be-yond the land offers a special qualityof life, a certain quiet and peace . . .Ten days of vacation at the SummerWhite House is not much time. Butthe Vineyard holds out unimagined re-wards for those who pause longenough to experience the beauty ofthis fragile land." Whew. The paper

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also carr ied a let ter to the First Fam-ily's cat. It was sent on behalf of catsabandoned here by vacationers. "AsFirst Cat," the letter said, "could youhelp us, the lost, the abandoned andthe hu ngry?" No minority, i t seems, isbeyond the compassion of the goodpeople here.After a week on the island, theWhite House organized a bash for thepress at the sumptuous home of Inte-r ior Department aide Susie Trees. Themedia throng, its numbers swelled bynumerous spouses and children, atebarbecue, drank, and danced on anoceanfront bluff with a stunning viewof the sunset . The President patientlyand good-humoredly made the rounds.This week, he admitted, had been thefirst time in years he had been able to

sleep eight hours straight. It was alsothe first time in four years he hadtaken more than a few days off. "Wetook some time back in 1988, but aftertha t we ju st nev er did," he said, shak -ing his head. He seemed almost mysti-fied that he could have waited so long.He seemed aware too that this res-pite had been a tonic not just for hishealth, but for his image as well. "Iwas overexposed," he said. "Some-times less is more." He didn't say if hewould come back. But on this night,with James Taylor's brother Living-ston singing Sixties folk tunes, andone of the contributors who financedthe party telling him the rich reallyare eager to pay more taxes, it washard to imagine Mr. Clinton could finda more congenial place. D

To Russia w ith LoveM A R K C U N N I N G H A M

PSKOV, RUSSIAC HRIS CHIAIA, a 25-year-oldregular guy from the idyllicsuburb of Darien, Connecticut,is in charge of about $2 million worthof medicines and medical supplies inthe heart of a country which is notori-ously descending into chaos. It 's notunusual, in the world of internationalaid, for young men to be out on thesharp end of things; the unu sual thingis that Chris is quite on top of thejobthough it undoubtedly helps thatour hosts have their act very much to-gether. These facts are not a coinci-dence, but rather a consequence of theway AmeriCares, the chari ty that employs Chris, does business.

AmeriCares put together tbis hu-manitarian aid shipment as i t haswell over a hundred others, worthmore than $100 million, to the formerSoviet Union. In the decade since itwas founded, in 1982, it has se nt ship-ments worth some $600 million world-wide. I went along as a member of thedelegation that rode behind (and ontop of) the cargo as we flew fromWindsor Locks, Connecticut, to Van-couver, British Columbia, to St. Pe-tersburg. When we landed, the rest ofthe group went off to tour hospitalsAmeriCares has aided in that ci ty;Chris stayed to oversee the unloadingMr. Cunningham is NR's articles editor.

and follow the bulk of the aid 170miles southwest to Pskov, a small in-dustrial city near the Estonian borderand the center of the Pskov Oblast(administrative region). I volunteeredto go along and see the dirty end of theprocess.Our hosts are the Public HealthCommittee of tbe Pskov Oblast. Pskov,a Russia hand once explained to me, isto Russia as Peoria is to America. Therest of the oblast is quite ruralMelanie Barocas, a photographer whojoined us later, compared it to ruralArkansas ( though the buildings aremuch more substantial, since the cli-

mate is quite rough). The authoand the people alike are trying to with the difficulties bred by sevyears' misrule, the alien challengfreedom (a chance for the younganother task for the old), and thstability, sometimes verging on chy, caused by the lack of a fulltablished successor regime.These are mat ters Russians handle themselves; Americans only provide advice (sometimes and some stopgap help. The PHealth Committee's biggest problethat supplies cannot be obtainedcally: in the division of labor wthe old Soviet Bloc, pharmaceuproduction was the job of satellittions; medicines from aspirin to anotics, not to mention surgical suppare now available only on the bmarket and priced out of reach. Pthe city has had some help fromcentral Russian govemment and sister cities like Roanoke, Virgthe 600,000 people in Pskov Ohave had nothing.

It is an awkward fact that muchto the collapsing East has been wor stolen. The billions with whichWest Germans bribed Mikhail bachev to free their countrymen dpeared, and the same still hapwith mucb government-to-governcash aid. Relief shipments are tled away by a gauntlet of corrupbeyond the omnipresent and rut"mafias," even public employees were honest under the old regimeresorting to theft and extortiotheir salaries vanish in hyperinfla

AmeriCares prides itself on masure the product gets to the peoplmeant for. Elisabeth Whitaker, AmCares' project director for the foSoviet Union and Eastern Europdaughter of diplomats, has built awork of reliable contacts througthe region and regularly scouts person. The Russian FederatCommittee for Humanitarian pointed her to Pskov as a region ning help; informal contacts confithat the Pskov authorit ies are cerely trying to discharge theirsponsibilities. She has arrangedSergei Albert, the deputy directothe St. Petersburg branch of the Inational Foundation for the Surand Development of Humanity, tocompany us as translator , guide,fixer. Chris, a veteran of a dozenvious airlifts, is painfully aware o

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