Ben Domenech’s The Transom today:
Ronald Reagan’s speech at the Brandenburg Gate had its twenty-five years anniversary yesterday. http://vlt.tc/bjp There are many points in history where the executive chooses to be bold where the balance of collective Washington wisdom bends always toward restraint, and as is typically the case in such moments, Reagan’s own aides disagreed with the president and the words the speech contained. The internal documents from the Reagan administration illustrate that Peter Rodman and his policy allies at the State Department fought intensely [sic] behind the scenes against the language Reagan used and the message he sent. http://vlt.tc/bjh They pronounced the speech “mediocre” and “a missed opportunity” at the time. This provides a helpful warning against trusting your advisors’ admonitions too much – the best presidential moments often come when such caution is thrown to the winds.
As you might expect, this can prove quite frustrating for the advisors themselves. As Henry Kissinger wrote: “The choice of speechwriters always determined the tone and not infrequently the substance of a Presidential speech. The common conception is that speechwriters are passive instruments who docilely craft into elegant prose the policy thought of their principals. On the contrary, the vast majority of them are frustrated principals themselves who seek to use their privileged position to put over their own ideas.” But this is true of many in politics, not just the speechwriters – it is arguably even true of Kissinger himself! And so the president made his decision. http://vlt.tc/bjn “The boys at State are going to kill me for this,” the president told Kenneth Duberstein, his deputy chief of staff, in the limousine on the way to the wall, “but it’s the right thing to do.” It’s in these moments, when history hinges on the right message delivered rightly and the hopes of an entire people hang on what comes next, that leaders have the rare opportunity to matter. Some balk at this challenge. Reagan didn’t, and in doing so, achieved as much as any speech can: he redefined the possible in the eyes of the world.
In this case, the sentiment of the Berliners themselves won out, translated by Peter Robinson, no frustrated principal he. http://vlt.tc/bjm (Peter shared an anecdote recently about being introduced to Sen. Scott Brown by George Schultz: http://vlt.tc/bjo Sec. Shultz: “Scott, meet Peter Robinson. Peter wrote Ronald Reagan’s ‘tear down this wall’ speech. He’s been coasting ever since.” Sen. Brown: “That’s okay. Havlicek stole the ball.”) Defining moments are often unexpected, and in them, the great ones change the world. Let us be grateful for all those who denied the conventional naysaying, and recognized, as Czeslaw Milosz wrote, that this was a moment where hope and history rhyme.
