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: Bench Memos - National Review Online

A President's Relentless Optimism -- By: Interview

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Ronald Reagan is not just the stuff of right-wing confabs and campaigns. He was a key catalyst in the fall of the Soviet Union and its poisonous empire, an accomplishment that is widely celebrated and covered -- most recently, by Time magazine’s managing editor, Romesh Ratnesar, in his book <a href=" http://www.nationalreview.com/redirect/amazon.p?j=1416556907">Tear Down This Wall: A City, a President, and the Speech that Ended the Cold War</a>. Ratnesar recently discussed with NRO the book, President Reagan, and the war he helped win. KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: What was it that drew you to write about Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and this one speech in particular? ROMESH RATNESAR: I’ve long had an interest in the Cold War and the individuals and events that helped bring it to an end. I also wanted to write about a period I lived through and which shaped the world we live in today -- for people of my generation, the fall of the Berlin Wall was, next to September 11, the defining world-historical event of our lifetimes. Finally, I’ve long been interested in the uses and importance of presidential rhetoric. All of those things converged in this single moment -- President Reagan’s famous address at the Brandenburg Gate. LOPEZ: Your subtitle is “A City, a President, and the Speech that Ended the Cold War.” Why is it not an overstatement that this one speech was the turning point or catalyst for the end? RATNESAR: Reagan’s speech was delivered in the context of his evolving relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev -- which, as I argue in the book, ultimately defused the superpower rivalry that had dominated world politics for the previous half-century. What Reagan’s speech accomplished was to identify Berlin as the litmus test of Gorbachev’s intentions to seek a better relationship with the West. In Reagan’s view, arms-control agreements were a necessary but not sufficient condition for ending the Cold War; if the Soviets were truly serious about making peace, they would have to let the Berlin Wall come down. It took another two years, but in the end that’s what Gorbachev did. LOPEZ: Obviously, there was the Wall. Was it the pure imagery of Berlin that made the city so important? RATNESAR: After the end of World War II, Berlin became the central proving ground of the East-West conflict. It was the place where the contrasts between these two competing systems were most pronounced. In many ways, the Wall was a tremendous propaganda tool for the West -- it highlighted the oppression of Communism and the ways in which that system deprived those living under it of their most basic freedoms. It was also a symbol of the world’s division and enmity, which Reagan was determined to overcome. LOPEZ: How was the “tear down this wall” speech a window into Reagan’s mind? RATNESAR: Throughout his life, Reagan stressed that the world need not remain divided, that the human spirit was indomitable, and that change was possible. He was a relentless optimist, even in the darkest days of his presidency. To go to Berlin and stand in front of the Wall and call for it to be torn down -- at a time when the leader of East Germany was predicting it would stand for another 100 years -- revealed his fundamental belief that the world could change for the better. LOPEZ: Have we reached a point where it’s close to being a consensus that Ronald Reagan did something good when he implored “Mr. Gorbachev” to “tear down that wall”? RATNESAR: I think so. And the speech has transcended the moment in which it was delivered. It has entered American lore -- it’s one of the few presidential speeches of the last quarter-century that most Americans can instantly identify. I would argue that “tear down this wall” is the defining statement of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. LOPEZ: In 2010, is Reagan less hated on the left than he is loved on the right? RATNESAR: I’m not sure. I think that a lot of liberals do give him credit for helping to end the Cold War and for restoring American pride and optimism. I don’t think many liberals have changed their minds about his domestic policies. At the same time, though Reagan is revered by conservatives, I think that some have forgotten that he achieved what he did not through the use of force but through diplomacy, dialogue, and persuasion. LOPEZ: You write, too, that “Reagan’s gift was his ability to speak candidly about the realities of the age while still presenting an optimistic vision of the future. In his best speeches -- most famously at the Brandenburg Gate -- Reagan found a way both to defend American interests and make people believe in a more peaceful world.” In your professional career, does anyone else stand out with a similar gift? Do you see anyone on the horizon? RATNESAR: Reagan was an American original. No American politician before or since had spent so much time in the public eye before becoming president. He had literally given thousands of speeches before he even launched his political career in the mid-1960s. When you listen to a Reagan speech, you come away in awe of his ability to connect with audiences, his gift for sounding authoritative and familiar at the same time. I don’t see anyone out there who matches that. President Obama is certainly a gifted orator and terrific at delivering set-piece speeches, but he hasn’t developed Reagan’s voice. LOPEZ: There was a lot of pushback on that speech, before it was given. Is Reagan’s decision to deliver it in any way a refutation of the image people seem to have of Reagan as an aloof executive? RATNESAR: Reagan didn’t have a great deal of interest in the programmatic details of policy -- he wasn’t a wonk. But he cared a lot about his speeches. He worked hard on them and rewrote many of his most important speeches extensively. He believed that giving speeches was one of the president’s most important duties. LOPEZ: What surprised you most during the course of researching and writing your book? RATNESAR: I was surprised at how little news the speech made at the time. The three networks led with reports from Berlin on the nightly news broadcasts, but the speech wasn’t on the front page of either the Washington Post or the New York Times. Even some of Reagan’s advisers thought “tear down this wall” was a throwaway line. Frank Carlucci, Reagan’s national-security adviser, told me that he remembers thinking, “It’s a great line, but it will never happen.” LOPEZ: You refer to “an element of prophecy” in Reagan’s Cold War boldness. What accounted for it? What compelled him to be so bold? RATNESAR: Again, I think Reagan was a fundamentally optimistic leader who believed to his core that totalitarianism was doomed and that the human yearning for freedom would prevail. He worked to make that happen by supporting democrats and dissidents throughout Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and by speaking out openly about the oppression suffered by those living behind the Iron Curtain. LOPEZ: What, in your estimation, was Ronald Reagan’s most important Cold War relationship? RATNESAR: I think that his relationship with Gorbachev was indisputably the most important relationship Reagan forged as president, possibly the most important forged by any American president in the last 50 years. LOPEZ: What did you learn about John Paul II over the course of writing this book? RATNESAR: I don’t think I realized how much both John Paul and Reagan were transformed by surviving assassination attempts. In the case of both men, I think those near-death experiences fueled their sense that they had God-given missions to fulfill as leaders -- namely the liberation of those living under Communism in Eastern and Central Europe. LOPEZ: And what did you learn about Margaret Thatcher? RATNESAR: She was Reagan’s closest friend among other world leaders. She, of course, nudged Reagan to “do business” with Gorbachev. At the same time, she was more skeptical than Reagan about the possibilities for transformative change -- she didn’t seem to have any expectations that the Berlin Wall would fall as quickly as it did. LOPEZ: And Mikhail Gorbachev? RATNESAR: Gorbachev had two key insights: first, that the socialist system was doomed so long as the arms race continued; and second, that in order to become a constructive member of the international community, the USSR needed to allow the countries in its orbit to go their own ways. That’s why he refused to intervene militarily as Communist power crumbled in country after country in 1989. That was his greatest contribution as a leader. LOPEZ: What did you most enjoy about writing Tear Down This Wall? RATNESAR: I loved reporting it, talking to former members of the Reagan White House about their experiences, and bringing to life these two great leaders, Reagan and Gorbachev, and the partnership they built together. I also enjoyed telling the stories of the other characters in the book: Peter Robinson, the young speechwriter who was assigned to write the Brandenburg Gate address; and Gerd Poppe, a dissident in the former East Germany who, like so many others in that country, discovered after the fall of the Wall that his own friends and neighbors had been informing on him. LOPEZ: What was most challenging about writing Tear Down This Wall? RATNESAR: I think the fact that a lot of the documents from that period are still classified -- it made it more challenging to try to nail down the exact sequence of events and sort out exactly who did what, when. LOPEZ: You note that in his Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama “wrote that he felt far more affinity for Reagan’s approach to foreign policy than did most liberals.” Has that held up in the first year and change of his presidency? RATNESAR: Well, yes and no. I don’t think Obama has been as forward-leaning as he could and should be with his rhetoric. He hasn’t done enough to speak out on behalf of human rights and democracy around the world, as Reagan did. He’s clearly not comfortable with the kind of uncompromising rhetoric that characterized Reagan’s first few years in office. It’s hard to say what Reagan would have done about a problem like Afghanistan -- Reagan was never cavalier about sending American troops into harm’s way, but he would have been determined to defeat the Taliban. In at least one area, Obama has championed one of Reagan’s most cherished goals -- the abolition of nuclear weapons. How much success he will have in that endeavor remains to be seen. LOPEZ: Do you think we’ll be hearing more Reagan citing from other Democrats, like we’ve heard from Obama, in years to come? RATNESAR: I think so. I think Reagan will continue to loom large over American politics for years to come, and I think many liberals will continue to compare today’s crop of conservative leaders unfavorably with Reagan. LOPEZ: What is your next big project? RATNESAR: I’m still chewing on some ideas, but it will most likely be focused on the period closer to the beginning of the Cold War than the end. LOPEZ: We hear a whole lot about the end of “big journalism.” How is Time doing? RATNESAR: Time is doing just fine -- we’re not your grandparents’ magazine anymore. -- Kathryn Lopez is editor-at-large of National Review Online. <hr width=100% size=2>

Full post as published by Bench Memos - National Review Online on March 07, 2010 (boomark / email).