I CLOSE-UP
at
Makes
Shoshana
Run?
JAMES BESSER AND GARY ROSENBLATT
PHOTOGRAPHS BY CRAIG TERKOWITZ
he scene was the Waldorf
Astoria hotel in New York
last November. Shoshana
Cardin was about to con-
front George Bush as part of what she calls
"the most important responsibility of my life."
Two months earlier the president had gone
on national television and attacked the thou-
sands of Jewish lobbyists who had come to
Washington to fight for $10 billion in loan
guarantees for Israel. Mr. Bush's remarks
were the culmination of a bitter dispute be-
tween his administration and the American
Jewish community, which was still reeling
from the blunt attack that had unleashed
anti-Semitic sentiment across the country.
Now, as chair of the Conference of Presi-
dents of Major American Jewish Organiza-
tions, Mrs. Cardin had requested and been
granted a 15-minute private interview with
the president prior to a larger meeting with
her fellow Jewish leaders.
As she walked into his suite, alone, she
faced the president, flanked by his national
security advisor, his chief of staff, a top State
Department official and his chief of public li-
aison.
Mrs. Cardin was aware of her self-imposed
responsibility, but she says she was not in-
timidated.
"As soon as I got in the room, and when I
started, I was not nervous," she said in a re-
cent interview. "It was not Shoshana Cardin
dealing with the president at that point, it
was the American Jewish community."
What transpired at that, and the subse-
quent larger meeting, says much about Mrs.
Cardin's self-confidence, her sense of histo-
ry and her vision of leadership.
Facing Mr. Bush, she told him that his
attack on the Jewish groups promoting the
FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 1992
for organized
American
Jewry,
Shoshana
Cardin
has confronted
George Bush,
Yitzhak Shamir
and Mikhail
.
James Besser is Washington correspondent and Gary
Rosenblatt is executive editor of The Detroit Jewish News.
24
As spokesman
Gorbachev.
Now she wants
another term.
c7;