If realized, however, such a Baker-Gorbachev plan would amount to a shortsighted publicity stunt for the Administration -- one with potentially dangerous long-term consequences for America's vital interests in its own hemisphere.
"Jim Baker and Lee Hamilton are very capable men, but I can't believe they have a secret plan that nobody else has thought of for how to extricate ourselves, " says Max Boot, senior fellow at Council on Foreign Relations.
"I'm not so much disappointed because I am on a four-year plan, " said Swain, who on Thursday won the 3m synchro title with Nicholas Robinson-Baker for the second year running.