The Challenge to 'Tear Down This Wall'

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"General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Ronald Reagan
June 12, 1987

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Presidents are remembered for saying many things.

In what tend to be their more honorable moments, presidents are remembered for statements they make in speeches.

In what tend to be their less honorable moments, presidents are remembered for things they say in more private and confidential settings or in off–the–cuff remarks they apparently think no one else can hear and often regret.

Perhaps it was that way with Ronald Reagan's remark about the "evil empire." Well, it may have been the kind of thing Reagan said only to confidantes and advisers at first, but by the time he was president, I think he believed the Soviet Union was an evil empire.

And he wasn't bashful about saying so.

Whatever else Reagan accomplished in his life, one must remember that his early training involved acting on the stage. The nature of acting is persuasion.

He often told a story about his early days as a sportscaster on radio. In those days, radio stations received the play–by–play of sports contests on the wire, and the station's own on–air talent would read it.

On one occasion, the wire machine stopped working in the middle of a baseball game, and Reagan had to ad lib. He came up with numerous creative ways for the batter to keep fouling off pitches until the machine was repaired and began providing the play–by–play again — at which point Reagan discovered that the batter had popped out on the first pitch.

His listeners would read no riveting accounts of the batter's dramatic duel with the pitcher in the next day's papers. No doubt many were disappointed.

When he was running for president, Reagan came across as being devoutly anti–Soviet Union. I must admit, though, that I often wondered just how much of that was for show and how much of it was genuine.

Some of it may well have been an act, but I was inclined at the time to believe most of it was genuine. While I seldom agreed with Reagan, I felt compelled to conclude that his rhetoric was more extreme than most mainstream establishment Republicans of the day embraced — at least, with any enthusiasm.

And Reagan's public speeches early in his presidency clearly indicated that the Reagan of the campaign trail was the same one who occupied the White House.

However, a lot changed while he was president. The Soviet Union's leadership was far more hard line when Reagan became president than it was at the end of his presidency, and, on this day 25 years ago, Reagan stood in front of the infamous Berlin Wall and called upon Mihail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union's moderate leader, to "tear down this wall."

Considering that is precisely what happened shortly after Reagan left office, his words on that occasion seem positively prophetic — even though it was his successor, George H.W. Bush, who presided over its collapse.

His most devout admirers will tell you that it happened because of Reagan's policies. Perhaps it did. Or perhaps it would have happened anyhow. Reagan himself said communism would collapse under its own weight. It was just a matter of time.

It's fair to wonder, as Peter Robinson does in the Wall Street Journal, if "mere talk," as he called Reagan's speech, "made any difference."

Robinson, a former Reagan speech writer, concluded that the speech was a catalyst that changed the world. Well, perhaps it influenced the communist world, the world that existed behind Winston Churchill's famed iron curtain.

As far as I could tell at the time, the free world was unaffected. The free world paid attention to what was happening, but daily life went on.

Still, when the wall came down, I must admit that I wondered if there had been more to the speech than met the eye — or ear.

The call to "tear down this wall" had powerful emotional imagery behind it, imagery that was even more powerful when it actually came to pass.

Some people say it was Ronald Reagan's finest hour. Personally, I felt his finest hour was when he comforted a grieving nation following the Challenger disaster. At the time, I guess I dismissed the Berlin Wall speech as grandstanding.

But I'll grant you that Reagan's speech 25 years ago today was probably his presidency's most memorable moment.

If that was grandstanding, it was grandstanding with endurance.

A Dramatic Day

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Until recently, if anyone thought of Oct. 15, 1969, it probably was in connection with the World Series, which was known at the time — and is still remembered today — as the triumph of the Miracle Mets, the Amazin' New York Mets, over the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles.

October 15 wasn't the day that the Mets wrapped up their improbable championship — that happened the next day — but it may have been the day when the Mets' triumph became all but official.

On that day, the teams met in the fourth game of the World Series. The Mets held a two games to one advantage. After dropping the opener on Oct. 11, the Mets got a narrow win in Game 2 and a 5–0 victory in Game 3 and entered Game 4 with the chance to build a 3–1 lead, which has been virtually insurmountable in the annals of World Series competition.

Oct. 15, 1969, was a controversial day. For one thing, it was Moratorium Day, a global demonstration against American involvement in Vietnam. The mayor of New York (where Game 4 was to be played) ordered flags flown at half–staff in honor of all who had died in Vietnam, but the commissioner of baseball, in an apparent effort to keep the Series out of the political debate, said the American flag would be flown at full staff during the game.

That wasn't all, though. A photograph of Mets pitcher Tom Seaver, who lost the opener to Baltimore, was used in antiwar literature that was circulated outside New York's Shea Stadium that day — even though Seaver insisted the photograph had been used without his permission.

Seaver was slated to pitch on October 15 as well. He shut Baltimore out through eight innings, then yielded a run in the ninth and the game went to a 10th inning, when the Mets scored the winning run. They clinched the championship with a 5–3 victory the next day.

For the most part, public attention was devoted to Moratorium Day and the fourth game of the World Series on Oct. 15, 1969. I know of nothing that President Richard Nixon said about the World Series, but he did say that, while activities like Moratorium Day were expected from antiwar activists, "under no circumstances will I be affected whatever by it."

Nixon's actions in Vietnam were, indeed, apparently unaffected by the massive protests, but, within the last week, we have heard, through England's Telegraph, of actions that Nixon apparently took to prevent a nuclear war on that day.

The Telegraph reports that a Chinese historian claims that, on Oct. 15, 1969, the Soviets were about to launch a nuclear strike against China but were dissuaded by Nixon's assurance that, if they did, the United States was prepared to attack more than 100 Russian cities, thereby starting World War III.

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If that is true — and I have no reason to think it is not — it may lend some credence to a scene from Oliver Stone's 1990s biopic "Nixon," in which Nixon, Henry Kissinger and other Nixon advisers discussed foreign policy over dinner on the presidential yacht.

In the movie, Nixon talked about playing Russia and China against each other and using "triangular diplomacy" to get better diplomatic deals from each. Introducing the nuclear option may have been a high–stakes way to nudge each into doing as he wanted.

Nixon played hardball, as his handling of the Watergate scandal clearly demonstrated. In spite of extremely vocal opposition in this country to American involvement in Vietnam, Nixon followed his own course, initiating a policy that was, if anything, even bloodier than the approach that had been taken by the much–reviled Johnson administration, and he always claimed that, if he had not resigned the presidency, the Americans never would have been driven from Saigon less than a year after he relinquished power.

But perhaps there was more to it than that.

I was never an admirer of Nixon, but one thing was clear to me when he was alive and has become even more so in the years since his death. Things were never simply one way with Nixon. He was calculating, yes. He was manipulative. He was paranoid and secretive, and writer Richard Reeves may well have been correct when he observed that Nixon "assumed the worst in people, and he brought out the worst in them."

Nixon's personality may have been predisposed to wreck his presidency, but there were also aspects of his character that seemed to make him more empathetic than normally would be expected from someone who has often been described as a narcissist.

Perhaps Nixon was offended by the Soviet Union's belligerence, its reckless approach to the use of nuclear power only seven years after the Cuban missile crisis.

Even a narcissist may have a sense of what he/she believes to be correct — if only because it violates the narcissist's view of his/her role in events.

As a young man, Nixon was quite a poker player. During his time in the Navy in World War II, Nixon won enough money playing poker to finance his successful 1946 campaign for a House seat. Perhaps he felt that the Russians were forcing him to reveal his hand so he upped the ante.

The real truth may never be known.

But it is a fact that neither the Soviets nor the Chinese — nor, as a result, the Americans — used nuclear weapons on Moratorium Day 1969.

The only bombshells that week came in the world of baseball.