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Mikhail Gorbachev, RIP
The first time I met Mikhail Gorbachev he ignored me for a couple of minutes, devoting himself instead to my wife.
This was in the early two thousands. Communism had collapsed so completely that even the last leader of the Soviet Union had become a capitalist, visiting the United States on a paid speaking tour. My wife and I met him backstage before one of these events. Chatting with Edita, Gorbachev asked where she was from, how she liked California, and if she had ever visited Russia. As they spoke, I realized he was good. Really good. He had the touch. Unlike Brezhnev, Andropov, Kosygin, and the other aging tyrants he had succeeded, Gorbachev proved human, even, heaven help me–he had lead a country officially pledged to the destruction of our own country, after all–likeable. He may have risen to power in a Communist system, but he’d have done just fine in a democracy, too. When at last Gorbachev turned from my wife to me, his translator explained that I had composed President Reagan’s Berlin Wall address. Gorbachev smiled. “Ah,” he said, “dramaturg!”
