Reagan deliberately confronted criminal regimes with what they fear most: the publicly spoken truth about their moral weakness.
Ronald Reagan would embarrass himself and the country by asking Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall which was going to be there for decades. So the National Security Council (NSC) staff and State Department had argued for many weeks to get Reagans now famous line removed from his June 12 1987 Berlin speech.
With a fervor and relentlessness I hadnt seen over the prior seven years even during disputes about the ash-heap of history or evil empire they kept up the pressure until the morning Reagan spoke the line. Is that what I think it is? I asked White House communications director Tom Griscom about a cable NSC Adviser Frank Carlucci had been nudging at us across the table during a White House senior staff meeting at the Cipriani Hotel in Venice. (Reagan had been attending a G-8 summit there and would shortly fly to the German capital.) With a shake of his head and a smile Mr. Griscom confirmed the last-minute plea from State to drop the key sentence.
In the Reagan Library archives similar documents chronicling the oppositions intensity surface from time to time. I was gratified though not surprised to hear a few years back about one NSC staffers memo to Deputy National Security Adviser Colin Powell complaining that on multiple occasions perhaps as many as five or six I had declined as head of speechwritingthe writer talked about a heated argument between usto remove the offending sentence.
And not only me. Shortly after the speech draft began making its review through the bureaucracy the speechwriters as Reagan true-believers had deployed to do the interpersonal glad-handing that sometimes eases objections to speech passages. The Berlin event for us was the quintessential chancein front of Communisms most evocative monumentto enunciate the anti-Soviet counterstrategy that Reagan had been putting in place since his first weeks in office.
Well before a draft was circulated I called the writer who had the assignment Peter Robinson and told him I was going to an Oval Office meeting.
Shortly before we walked to the West Wing Peter told me what he wanted in the draft: Tear down the wall. I pushed back in my chair from my desk and let loose fantastic wonderful great perfect and other inadequate exclamations. The Oval Office meeting agenda went quickly with little chance to pop the question. But the discussion ceased for a moment toward the end and I crowded in: Mr. President its still very early but we were just wondering if you had any thoughts at all yet on the Berlin speech?
Pausing for only a moment Reagan slipped into his imitation of impressionist Rich Little doing his imitation of Ronald Reaganhe made the well-known nod of the head said the equally familiar well and then added in his soft but resonant intonation while lifting his hand and letting it fall: Tear down the wall.
I had refused to talk to Peter until I was back in my office such was my excitement. Slamming the door I shouted: Can you believe it? He said just what you were thinking. He said it himself.
So it was the presidents line now. And that made it easier though not dispositively so for the speechwriting department to fight off objections. But this is where the Berlin address was about more than the killer sentence.
As commentators have noticed much of the rest of the speech is also memorable with enduring ideas and stately cadences. Mr. Robinson a Dartmouth and Oxford graduate had been mentored in his career by such writer-luminaries as Dartmouth Prof. Jeffrey Hart and William F. Buckley Jr. This pedigree helped him understand how Reagans own conservatism while less formally instructed was powerfully ideational. Closer historical scrutiny of Reagans writings before the presidency as well as the extent of his involvement in his presidential speeches has revealed that he was more than merely a Great Communicator but also a man of ideas a cerebral president.
And part of Reagans caring about larger ideas had to do with the nature of his foreign policy and the often overlooked rubrics he adopted. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has suggested that the Reagan years show that containment worked. In fact Reagan explicitly and repeatedly rejected containment as too accommodationist saying containment is not enough.
As part of this strategy Reagan established offensive-minded victory-conscious rubrics like forward strategy for freedom not just world peace but world freedom and expanding the frontiers of freedom.
Part of this was Reagans attempt to codify while in office a Cold War narrative developed by the anti-communist conservative movement that formed him over three decades even as he helped form it. That narrative saw liberal notions about how to handle communist regimes as provoking aggression or causing catastrophe: Franklin Roosevelts Stalin diplomacy Harry Trumans Marshall mission to China John Kennedys offer of a status quo to Khrushchev in Vienna Jimmy Carters statement that we have an inordinate fear of communism.
Reagan had the carefully arrived at view that criminal regimes were different that their whole way of looking at the world was inverted that they saw acts of conciliation as weakness and that rather than making nice in return they felt an inner compulsion to exploit this perceived weakness by engaging in more acts of aggression. All this confirmed the criminal minds abiding conviction in its own omniscience and sovereignty and its right to rule and victimize others.
Accordingly Reagan spoke formally and repeatedly of deploying against criminal regimes the one weapon they fear more than military or economic sanction: the publicly-spoken truth about their moral absurdity their ontological weakness. This was the sort of moral confrontation as countless dissidents and resisters have noted that makes these regimes conciliatory precisely because it heartens those whom they fear mosttheir own oppressed people. Reagans understanding that rhetorical confrontation causes geopolitical conciliation led in no small part to the walls collapse 20 years ago today.
The current administration most recently with overtures to Irans rulers and the Burmese generals has consistently demonstrated that all its impulses are the opposite of Reagans. Critics who are worried about the costs of economic policies adopted in the last 10 months might consider as well the impact of the administrations systematic accommodation of criminal regimes and the failure to understand what good vs. evil rhetoric can do.
Mr. Dolan was chief speechwriter at the Reagan White House for eight years and served in the George W. Bush administration as special adviser in the offices of the secretary of State and the secretary of Defense.
Reagan deliberately confronted criminal regimes with what they fear most: the publicly spoken truth about their moral weakness.
Ronald Reagan would embarrass himself and the country by asking Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall which was going to be there for decades. So the National Security Council (NSC) staff and State Department had argued for many weeks to get Reagans now famous line removed from his June 12 1987 Berlin speech.
With a fervor and relentlessness I hadnt seen over the prior seven years even during disputes about the ash-heap of history or evil empire they kept up the pressure until the morning Reagan spoke the line. Is that what I think it is? I asked White House communications director Tom Griscom about a cable NSC Adviser Frank Carlucci had been nudging at us across the table during a White House senior staff meeting at the Cipriani Hotel in Venice. (Reagan had been attending a G-8 summit there and would shortly fly to the German capital.) With a shake of his head and a smile Mr. Griscom confirmed the last-minute plea from State to drop the key sentence.
In the Reagan Library archives similar documents chronicling the oppositions intensity surface from time to time. I was gratified though not surprised to hear a few years back about one NSC staffers memo to Deputy National Security Adviser Colin Powell complaining that on multiple occasions perhaps as many as five or six I had declined as head of speechwritingthe writer talked about a heated argument between usto remove the offending sentence.
And not only me. Shortly after the speech draft began making its review through the bureaucracy the speechwriters as Reagan true-believers had deployed to do the interpersonal glad-handing that sometimes eases objections to speech passages. The Berlin event for us was the quintessential chancein front of Communisms most evocative monumentto enunciate the anti-Soviet counterstrategy that Reagan had been putting in place since his first weeks in office.
Well before a draft was circulated I called the writer who had the assignment Peter Robinson and told him I was going to an Oval Office meeting.
Shortly before we walked to the West Wing Peter told me what he wanted in the draft: Tear down the wall. I pushed back in my chair from my desk and let loose fantastic wonderful great perfect and other inadequate exclamations. The Oval Office meeting agenda went quickly with little chance to pop the question. But the discussion ceased for a moment toward the end and I crowded in: Mr. President its still very early but we were just wondering if you had any thoughts at all yet on the Berlin speech?
Pausing for only a moment Reagan slipped into his imitation of impressionist Rich Little doing his imitation of Ronald Reaganhe made the well-known nod of the head said the equally familiar well and then added in his soft but resonant intonation while lifting his hand and letting it fall: Tear down the wall.
I had refused to talk to Peter until I was back in my office such was my excitement. Slamming the door I shouted: Can you believe it? He said just what you were thinking. He said it himself.
So it was the presidents line now. And that made it easier though not dispositively so for the speechwriting department to fight off objections. But this is where the Berlin address was about more than the killer sentence.
As commentators have noticed much of the rest of the speech is also memorable with enduring ideas and stately cadences. Mr. Robinson a Dartmouth and Oxford graduate had been mentored in his career by such writer-luminaries as Dartmouth Prof. Jeffrey Hart and William F. Buckley Jr. This pedigree helped him understand how Reagans own conservatism while less formally instructed was powerfully ideational. Closer historical scrutiny of Reagans writings before the presidency as well as the extent of his involvement in his presidential speeches has revealed that he was more than merely a Great Communicator but also a man of ideas a cerebral president.
And part of Reagans caring about larger ideas had to do with the nature of his foreign policy and the often overlooked rubrics he adopted. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has suggested that the Reagan years show that containment worked. In fact Reagan explicitly and repeatedly rejected containment as too accommodationist saying containment is not enough.
As part of this strategy Reagan established offensive-minded victory-conscious rubrics like forward strategy for freedom not just world peace but world freedom and expanding the frontiers of freedom.
Part of this was Reagans attempt to codify while in office a Cold War narrative developed by the anti-communist conservative movement that formed him over three decades even as he helped form it. That narrative saw liberal notions about how to handle communist regimes as provoking aggression or causing catastrophe: Franklin Roosevelts Stalin diplomacy Harry Trumans Marshall mission to China John Kennedys offer of a status quo to Khrushchev in Vienna Jimmy Carters statement that we have an inordinate fear of communism.
Reagan had the carefully arrived at view that criminal regimes were different that their whole way of looking at the world was inverted that they saw acts of conciliation as weakness and that rather than making nice in return they felt an inner compulsion to exploit this perceived weakness by engaging in more acts of aggression. All this confirmed the criminal minds abiding conviction in its own omniscience and sovereignty and its right to rule and victimize others.
Accordingly Reagan spoke formally and repeatedly of deploying against criminal regimes the one weapon they fear more than military or economic sanction: the publicly-spoken truth about their moral absurdity their ontological weakness. This was the sort of moral confrontation as countless dissidents and resisters have noted that makes these regimes conciliatory precisely because it heartens those whom they fear mosttheir own oppressed people. Reagans understanding that rhetorical confrontation causes geopolitical conciliation led in no small part to the walls collapse 20 years ago today.
The current administration most recently with overtures to Irans rulers and the Burmese generals has consistently demonstrated that all its impulses are the opposite of Reagans. Critics who are worried about the costs of economic policies adopted in the last 10 months might consider as well the impact of the administrations systematic accommodation of criminal regimes and the failure to understand what good vs. evil rhetoric can do.
Mr. Dolan was chief speechwriter at the Reagan White House for eight years and served in the George W. Bush administration as special adviser in the offices of the secretary of State and the secretary of Defense.
