Tear Down This Wall: "A Mediocre Speech and a Missed Opportunity"
Peter Robinson ·
June 12, 2012 at 6:49am
In delivering his Berlin Wall address, President Reagan overruled the objections of the National Security Council and the State Department. Here, a couple of documents from the Reagan library. One, an NSC memorandum to Colin Powell, then Deputy National Security Advisor, calls the address "a mediocre speech and a missed opportunity." The other shows the NSC edits. Note what the NSC deleted.
What Ronald Reagan was up against.
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Jan '11
Re: Tear Down This Wall: "A Mediocre Speech and a Missed Opportunity"
That's gotta feel good.
Jul '10
Re: Tear Down This Wall: "A Mediocre Speech and a Missed Opportunity"
A "mediocre speech" that sent shock waves the world over.
Don't forget Powell voted for Obama.
Jun '10
Re: Tear Down This Wall: "A Mediocre Speech and a Missed Opportunity"
I do have to say that I appreciate the suggestion made in the NSC edit, i.e. "Even in the Communist world, the economic and moral bankruptcy of centralized state control is beginning to be understood."
Jun '10
Re: Tear Down This Wall: "A Mediocre Speech and a Missed Opportunity"
It happens to every writer:
Re: Tear Down This Wall: "A Mediocre Speech and a Missed Opportunity"
Mel Foil, you are a genius!
Dec '10
Re: Tear Down This Wall: "A Mediocre Speech and a Missed Opportunity"
It's amazing how stupid that smart people are.
Even more amazing how sure and insistent they are.
Dec '10
Re: Tear Down This Wall: "A Mediocre Speech and a Missed Opportunity"
Agreed. That's an instant winner!
Sep '10
Re: Tear Down This Wall: "A Mediocre Speech and a Missed Opportunity"
AmishDude: It's amazing how stupid that smart people are.
Even more amazing how sure and insistent they are. · 26 minutes ago
Not as smart as they thought they were.
Mr Robinson, you are a prince among men. Thanks for sharing the details.
Mar '11
Re: Tear Down This Wall: "A Mediocre Speech and a Missed Opportunity"
--Historical nonentity, passing notes to Thomas Paine.
Dec '11
Re: Tear Down This Wall: "A Mediocre Speech and a Missed Opportunity"
I could not agree more, Jimmy Carter: Don't forget Powell voted for Obama.
However, do not approve of a previous assistant to the President 'spilling the beans' in so public a manner.
Jun '12
Re: Tear Down This Wall: "A Mediocre Speech and a Missed Opportunity"
AmishDude: It's amazing how stupid that smart people are.
Even more amazing how sure and insistent they are. · 4 hours ago
There is a line from the greatest TV show ever, I speak of course of Babylon 5.
Bad Guy #1
"They Can't Be That Stupid, Can They?"
Bad Guy #2
"Always Bet On Stupidity."
I have found this quote to be extremely useful, in my wanderings down the service road of life.
Aug '10
Re: Tear Down This Wall: "A Mediocre Speech and a Missed Opportunity"
Valin
... the greatest TV show ever, I speak of course of Babylon 5.
Concur
Mar '11
Re: Tear Down This Wall: "A Mediocre Speech and a Missed Opportunity"
Thank you for sharing. Fascinating!
Aug '10
Re: Tear Down This Wall: "A Mediocre Speech and a Missed Opportunity"
Peter, thanks for sharing this. It is further evidence that the wisdom of committees is often very flawed.
May '10
Re: Tear Down This Wall: "A Mediocre Speech and a Missed Opportunity"
Peggy Noonan's highlight as a speech writer was the Challenger disaster. That speech, because of the quick turnaround, wasn't as vetted by staff as usual. The one staffer that saw it wanted to change the line from "High Flight" from "...touch the face of God" to "reach out and touch someone." From poetry to an AT&T ad!
Re: Tear Down This Wall: "A Mediocre Speech and a Missed Opportunity"
I think Peter would tell you that this kind of thing is not the exception, it's the rule. Too often, alas, presidents go with these kind of recommendations. It was Reagan's gift to rhetoric that he did not.
I've always believed that is in part what helped Ted Sorensen. He had had a relationship with Kennedy for a long time before JFK became president, and he had sufficient clout that he could ignore these kind of change requests from very senior people.
Aug '11
Re: Tear Down This Wall: "A Mediocre Speech and a Missed Opportunity"
Thanks for sharing Peter! I heard you mention once or twice before that some high-level people didn't want the "tear down this wall" included.
Funny enough, that line was one of the few things I knew about Ronald Reagan. Or rather, it was one of the few things I knew about Reagan that was true.
Sep '10
Re: Tear Down This Wall: "A Mediocre Speech and a Missed Opportunity"
The hilarious irony is that the recommendations would truly have made for a missed opportunity. It is the character of bureaucrats that they never want to disturb the status quo; and the character of Ronald Reagan was very different.
Thanks for writing that, Peter, and showing us what Rob Long would call "the notes".
May '10
Re: Tear Down This Wall: "A Mediocre Speech and a Missed Opportunity"
Dogsbody nails one irony. The other irony is that what was mediocre was not the speech....but the critics.
God bless Peter and God bless Ronaldus Magnus for that speech and its results. (And pity the others with the poor sense to criticize such eloquence in such a permanent form that their foolishness is a matter of historical record.)
Dec '10
Re: Tear Down This Wall: "A Mediocre Speech and a Missed Opportunity"
Is it too broad a brush to take this kind of small-mindedness to paint all the State Department, the bureaucracy that surrounds the DoD, and intelligence agencies as elitists that do MUCH more harm than good? I would assume so, but there are so many of these stories I can't help but wonder.