Clinton, Nixon Join on Yeltsin Wavelength : Presidency: The baby boomer and the ex-President he once opposed find common ground on the question of aid to Russia.

WASHINGTON —  Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon, after a long telephone conversation last week and a private White House meeting Monday night, have put aside their gaping generational and ideological gulfs and found common ground on the question of aid to Russia.

Former President Nixon, seeking the mantle of America’s elder statesman, believes that the United States must lead in the salvation of Russian democracy to prevent the re-emergence of threatening Slavic nationalism.

Clinton, the baby boomer who seeks to “reinvent” America, realizes that if Moscow’s tenuous experiment in democracy and free markets fails, he’ll never get a chance to test his expensive social theories at home because they depend on relative peace abroad.

Despite their divergent motives, the 80-year-old ex-President and the 46-year-old incumbent agree that supporting teetering Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin is the most urgent item on the U.S. foreign policy agenda.

The two met Monday night for more than an hour in the private quarters of the White House to discuss their common concerns about Russia’s plight and their unique experiences at the pinnacle of American politics.

The meeting served to further Nixon’s long rehabilitation after the disgrace of his Administration’s Watergate scandal and his resignation in 1974. It gave Clinton needed heft in foreign affairs.

Although Nixon entered and left quietly by a back entrance, the White House made no secret of the visit. The meeting and a 40-minute Clinton-Nixon phone conversation last week were announced at White House briefings.

“There he was, back on the front page, making policy,” said Nixon biographer Stephen Ambrose. “God, what a comeback. Who’d have believed it possible?”

Clinton said Tuesday morning that he and Nixon had had a “great” meeting but declined to divulge what the former President’s advice had been. A Nixon spokeswoman likewise offered no details.

“We were pretty much on the same wavelength, and we have been pretty much on the same wavelength on this issue for more than a year now,” Clinton told reporters at the start of a meeting with French President Francois Mitterrand.

“He gave me a lot of very good ideas,” Clinton said.

This from a man who participated in protests against Nixon’s Vietnam War policy and who cut his teeth in national politics working for George S. McGovern’s ill-fated attempt to stop Nixon’s landslide reelection in 1972.

This from the young law school graduate who turned down a dream job on the House Judiciary Committee drawing up a bill of impeachment against Nixon only because he was so impatient to return to Arkansas to begin his own political career.

A top Clinton aide said Tuesday that Clinton has begun an intensive course in Russian history, politics and economics in preparation for his first summit meeting with Yeltsin in Vancouver April 3 and 4. Nixon is but one of a number of tutors who will be assisting the President, he said.

The senior aide said that the meeting with Nixon was an important signal that Clinton intends to pursue a nonpartisan foreign policy and will seek aid and advice from all parts of the ideological spectrum.

What particularly drew Clinton to Nixon was the former President’s insistence that Russia’s fate is inextricably tied to America’s.

Nixon warned in a newspaper article last week that if Russia were to revert to its reactionary militaristic past, the United States would have to reverse the rapid decline in defense spending. The rearmament of the Pentagon would eat up all the money that Clinton hopes to spend rebuilding the United States, and then some, Nixon warned.

Nixon recently returned from a two-week trip to Russia that included a long meeting with Yeltsin. Clinton sought Nixon’s insights into Yeltsin’s character and his political dilemma as he faces down a restive Parliament. Clinton also asked Nixon what the West could provide in money and technical assistance to prop up Yeltsin and promote economic reform.

Clinton’s invitation to Nixon follows a recent tradition of Presidents consulting with him before embarking on summit trips. Ronald Reagan and George Bush both sought his advice.

“It has become de rigueur in the U.S.-Russian relationship to clear it with Dick first,” said Ambrose, director of the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans.

“Clinton is interested in Nixon’s reaction to Yeltsin, and I’m sure Dick gave it to him,” the historian added. “It could have been done quietly, like Bush and Reagan did. But Clinton sees advantages in having Mr. Cold Warrior on his side.”

Clinton and Nixon on Tuesday night attended Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 90th birthday celebration at a Washington hotel. The onetime South Carolina segregationist and States Rights Party candidate for President has served in the Senate since 1954.