NEWS
September 18, 1989 | DOYLE McMANUS, Times Staff Writer
When Secretary of State James A. Baker III visited Congress last week to lobby for the Bush Administration's policy toward Nicaragua, some of the toughest questions came not from liberal Democrats but from conservative Republicans. What happens, they wanted to know, if Nicaragua's leftist Sandinistas win next year's presidential election fair and square? "If it's a fair election, I guess we'd have to deal with them," Baker replied, according to several people who were present.
NEWS
March 28, 1989 | DAVID LAUTER, Times Staff Writer
Administration officials publicly rebuked C. Boyden Gray Monday after the White House lawyer openly questioned the Contra-aid deal between President Bush and congressional leaders. The incident has emerged as a rare--and embarrassing--display of internal tension within a Bush White House staff faulted by some critics as inexperienced but which had won high marks for teamwork. "This was not Boyden's finest hour," said one senior White House aide. "Hopefully, we're back on the right track."
NEWS
March 25, 1989 | DAVID LAUTER, Times Staff Writer
Proclaiming a new era of bipartisan foreign relations, the Bush Administration and Democratic congressional leaders Friday announced a new policy for promoting democracy in Nicaragua. Under the new policy, Secretary of State James A. Baker III told reporters, leaders of the Democratic majority in Congress agreed to provide the Administration with "flexibility" in choosing how to prod Nicaragua toward democracy.
NEWS
March 25, 1989 | DOYLE McMANUS, Times Staff Writer
Friday's bipartisan agreement on U.S. policy toward Nicaragua marks President Bush's first clear break with the foreign policy legacy of President Ronald Reagan, who made military aid to the Nicaraguan rebels his most fervent cause. For eight years, Reagan campaigned for the Contras, calling them "freedom fighters" battling a communist regime whose expansion threatened Mexico and even southern Texas. It was an issue, he said, of "right versus wrong." Now, that polarizing rhetoric is gone.
NEWS
January 17, 1989 | DOYLE McMANUS, Times Staff Writer
James A. Baker III won't take over as secretary of state until next week but the style of his new regime at the State Department is already becoming apparent. He has spent far more time on Capitol Hill than on Embassy Row, and almost as much time at the side of President-elect Bush as inside the State Department. For the moment, at least, grand questions of foreign policy are taking a back seat to immediate problems of politics and personnel. "Policy?
NEWS
January 17, 1989 | DOYLE McMANUS, Times Staff Writer
A blue-ribbon panel including two former Republican Cabinet members is urging President-elect Bush to abandon the goal of overthrowing Nicaragua's leftist regime and negotiate a U.S.-Nicaraguan security agreement instead. The Inter-American Dialogue, in a report scheduled for release today, declares that continued U.S. hostility toward the Sandinista regime "would condemn Central America to many more years of confrontation, destruction and despair."