Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 14, 1994 TAG: 9411170051
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune
DATELINE: WARSAW, POLAND LENGTH: Medium
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's former National Security adviser, actually may get the chance.
Brzezinski's name is circulating as a possible consensus candidate in next autumn's presidential elections.
His main competitor would be President Lech Walesa, the one-time electrician who led the Solidarity union movement that toppled the communist regime in 1989, and Aleksander Kwasniewski, the 39-year-old leader of Poland's reformed communists.
The Solidarity movement has fragmented in the post-communist era, and Walesa's approval rating has settled in the low teens. A majority of Poles seem to regard their former hero as a bumbling buffoon and an embarrassment.
Kwasniewski's Social Democrats finished first in last year's parliamentary elections, but many Poles would be loath to elect a former communist as president despite Kwasniewski's claims that there would be no return to past ways.
``The only chance to defeat the former communists is to join forces and put up a mutual candidate. We have to look for such a person. In my opinion, Prof. Brzezinski could be the one,'' said Alexander Hall, a former Solidarity activist whose Conservative Party has been shopping Brzezinski's name around to other center-right parties.
The Polish-born Brzezinski's solid anti-communist credentials and his longtime advocacy of the reintegration of Eastern and Western Europe put him in good stead with the Solidarity camp as well as with Catholics and other Polish conservatives.
Reached in his office at Johns Hopkins University on Tuesday, Brzezinski was somewhat at a loss for words at first and then said, ``I don't think it's for real.''
Does he harbor any ambition to be president of Poland?
``Ha, ha, ha, sure,'' he said. ``President of Poland, president of the United States, pope. These are all wonderful Walter Mitty ideas.''
by CNB