One Washington expert, who monitors security issues with an intimate insider's eye, told me he regarded NMD as now certain to be deployed if Bush wins. He will surround himself, of course, with advisers. General Colin Powell is regarded as the prime candidate for secretary of state, and might even be announced as such before November 7, to reel in those voters who look at Governor Bush and see only a dim-witted Reagan without the excuse of being an actor, or the defence of having a simple vision he will cling to. Reagan did have the big idea that he needed to beat the Soviets, a task in which he succeeded. Because of that governing notion, the times accommodated, and even profited from, a leader otherwise unqualified for world leadership, whose purpose everyone could easily figure out.
Modern times are different.
Foreign policy is the task of building alliances, largely by personal persuasion. A president can't subcontract the task of choosing between advisers whose opinions, however clever, conflict. He has to decide himself, about matters of great complexity. Nor can he cajole allies or persuade Congress except by his own negotiating talents. The hands-off president is not, these days, an option.