Washington — The Kremlin has noticed that someone not named Al Gore may become the next American president. The evidence of this daring new thinking lies in Moscow's recent dispatch of the Russian ambassador here to check out the campaign operation and geopolitics of George W. Bush.
Ambassador Yuri Ushakov did not get to see the Texas governor and GOP front-runner in person. But he did get a horizon's tour from Condoleezza Rice, Bush's top foreign policy campaign aide (and a Russia specialist). Rice had no problem in their Sept. 7 conversation identifying the points of emphasis a new Bush White House would bring.
Other countries have been working on establishing lines into the Bush operation for months, just as in Moscow foreign diplomats spend inordinate amounts of time and energy scouting the likely victors and vanquished in next year's presidential election there.
The appeal of the unknown -- and the fear of the known, as incarnated in Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton -- dominates this phase of presidential politics in both countries. Bush and Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov have risen to the top in early polling largely because of who they are not. They and their rivals now begin the process of spelling out for their electorates and for the world who they are.
The types of scrutiny foreign governments focus on front-runners range from discreet to covert. But scrutiny becomes an often invisible factor in policy-making as well. This is the case now between the United States and Russia.
The Clinton administration's stout defense of the Yeltsin government against charges of corruption has been based in part on a high-level U.S. consensus that cannot publicly be aired: The top political alternatives to Yeltsin are at least as corrupt -- and perhaps more so -- than are the Russian president, his family and his closest associates.
This is said particularly of Luzhkov, who has been linked in U.S. intelligence reports to elements of the Russian mafia. At least one of Luzhkov's associates was refused a U.S. visa last year because of his mob ties, a diplomatic source tells me.
The unpalatable specter of Luzkhov becoming president has spurred a U.S. search for a credible alternative candidate to support. But the mayor and his allies are favored at the moment to come to power next year, and Washington feels compelled to remain silent about a driving force in its policy of unstinting support for Yeltsin and his allies.
The fear of Luzhkov has become Catch-22 in Russian politics. When private polls last spring showed then Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin beating Luzhkov in a two-man race, Clinton and aides fell over themselves in boosting the nondescript Stepashin as a statesman. But such attention seemed to help convince Stepashin that he should not endanger a promising political career by antagonizing the powerful Luzhkov in open battle.
That timidity led Yeltsin to fire Stepashin and install Vladimir Putin, a former career KGB agent and more recently presidential logistical aide, as the new prime minister and as Yeltsin's proclaimed favored successor next year.
The choice of Putin -- the third consecutive prime minister Yeltsin has chosen with an espionage background -- shows the Russian president's intense need to stay close to those who hold the files with potentially damaging information on him and who can dig up more dirt on his adversaries.
Until separate investigations of corruption in New York, Switzerland and Moscow came together in media reports in recent days to put a glaring spotlight entirely on Yeltsin, there seemed to be a delicate balance of terror among Moscow's competing political circles that kept the subject of corruption under wraps.
All of the major candidates were believed to be holding compromising material on each other. As Yeltsin made clear in an extraordinary telephone call to Clinton on Wednesday -- placed essentially so the Russian president could assure the American president that "I am not a crook" -- the Kremlin believes its opponents have fired a political nuclear weapon at Yeltsin, who is determined to fight back.
Scorched earth lies ahead in a Russian presidential campaign that now looks as if it will be dominated by a mayor Washington believes to be corrupt (Luzhkov), a spy it does not know (Putin), an ex-spymaster it does not like (Yevgeny Primakov), an embittered Communist apparatchik it cannot trust (Gennady Zuganov), and a rabid nationalist it abhors (Vladimir Zhironovsky).
That's an outlook that would make any American president nostalgic for a corrupt but friendly drunk as a partner.
-- Jim Hoagland is a columnist for Washington Post Writers Group.
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