What Dog Days? : Conventional Wisdom Says Everything Shuts Down in August--Everything, That Is, Except History

August is, of course, the month for vacations. Like millions of others, Mikhail S. Gorbachev and George Bush agreed about that--and got caught napping.

“What is it about August?” Bush asked plaintively this week after his Maine holiday was interrupted by Moscow machinations that briefly ousted the Soviet leader.

Bush’s question reflected the widely shared and deeply ingrained notion that nothing should interrupt the traditions of August--placid days by the sea, languid weeks in the mountains, herd-instinct convergences on amusement parks.

Bush himself has spent part of August in Maine every year of his life, except in 1944, when he was a World War II Navy combat pilot in the Pacific.

So maybe the President was feeling jinxed this week. Last year, his August break was interrupted by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. Then, Bush refused to give up his vacation plans and was roundly criticized for clinging to Kennebunkport instead of rushing to the Washington cockpit.

Apparently mindful of last year’s sniping, Bush told reporters: “I thought this vacation was going to be all rest and no work, and now it’s going to be changed somewhat.”

Bush promised to at least look busier, even though he returned to Maine after spending part of Tuesday at the White House.

“I’m going to spend a little more time--maybe quite a bit more time--in various formal ways that you will see unveiled in staying on top of this situation,” he said.

Still, it’s a good question. What is it about the dog days of summer that tempts rolls of the political dice?

“August is the Saturday night of the year,” jokes author and historian Priscilla McMillan of Harvard University’s Russian Research Center. “Hitler always moved when he thought people were asleep. Saturday night was his favorite time to invade countries.”

In fact, says McMillan, some Kremlin watchers were tipped off to the incompetence of this week’s coup leaders by their sense of timing.

Sure, they picked the right month with Gorbachev conveniently out of town. But the conspirators bumbled when they acted on a Monday instead of a weekend, when the rest of their opposition was likely to be less alert, McMillan notes.

Whatever the reasons, the supposedly sleepy month of August has had an impressive share of political cataclysms in this century:

* World War I began on Aug. 1, 1914, with Germany’s declaration of war on Russia.

* The German-Soviet nonaggression pact that paved the way for the invasion of Poland and World War II was signed on Aug. 23, 1939.

* In August, 1945, atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Japan. World War II ended shortly afterward.

* On Aug. 15, 1947, India and Pakistan were granted freedom from the British Empire, sparking bloody clashes between Muslims and Hindus in the chaos that followed.

* The Berlin Wall began to go up on Aug. 31, 1961.

* The Tonkin Gulf Resolution that gave President Lyndon Johnson broad powers to wage the Vietnam War was approved by Congress on Aug. 7, 1964.

* The Watts riots in Los Angeles began on Aug. 15, 1965.

* In August, 1966, the Chinese Cultural Revolution was proclaimed.

* The Soviet Union clamped down on budding democracy in Czechoslovakia with an invasion on Aug. 22, 1968.

* The continuing troubles in Northern Ireland began on Aug. 25, 1971, the same day President Richard M. Nixon imposed a wage-price freeze to stabilize the U.S. economy.

* Nixon resigned on Aug. 9, 1974, forced out by the Watergate scandal.

* After a dramatic strike, the Polish government recognized the Solidarity union on Aug. 30, 1980, a seminal event in the dissolution of communism.

* On Aug. 22, 1983, Philippine opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino was assassinated. His killing ultimately sparked the revolution that toppled President Ferdinand E. Marcos.

McMillan and other historians agree that August has an impressive record for major events. But they also say that the upheavals of August are probably only coincidences.

“If you took any month of the year, you’d find all sorts of things going on,” says Robert Dallek, a UCLA history professor and author of “Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908-1960.”

But knowing a coincidence when he sees one, Dallek also notes: “Lyndon Johnson was born on Aug. 27, 1908.”