On this 20th anniversary of the day Ronald Reagan dared Mikhail Gorbachev to “Tear Down this Wall” while standing at the Brandenburg Gate, one needs only to read a few headlines from the week that followed to capture the angst of some in the Cold War press.

Much of that angst was directed at Reagan, who by June 12, 1987, had been written off as a cold warrior.

“A Potemkin President: Reagan is losing the air of authority,” declared one column in The New York Times, before the writer went on to announce that the presidency was “ceasing to function” and predict, “19 months of a surreal Presidency to go. If it lasts.” Perhaps one could call it a generation gap.

Reagan and his peers were the “Greatest Generation,” one that confronted the enemy directly and won, one that rebuilt the world after winning a world war. Many emerged with an enduring optimism.

By contrast, some in the Cold War press reported the world through gloom-and-doom eyeshades. Mutually assured destruction was a constant threat. The best that could be hoped for was containment of the wrong powers that be rather than freedom for Europe.

“Keep Germany Divided: The Dirty Little Secret Is That It Means a Europe at Peace” headlined an opinion piece in The Washington Post two days after one of Reagan’s finest moments.

“It’s just that, considered as a unified nation, in a world parched for peace, the Germans are not quite ready for self-government,” is how the Post writer ended his piece. Ronald Reagan didn’t see it that way.

Six years before challenging Gorbachev to tear down the wall, Reagan revealed his strategy in a significant way. His first gesture was proposing to lift the grain embargo in a letter to Leonid Brezhnev.

While some may have seen this as caving to the Communists, Reagan was appealing to his roots: the common man. He met the immediate need of the masses.

So when the Great Communicator challenged Gorbachev to get rid of the Berlin Wall, only a few in the press saw the significance. Others painted a worst-case scenario, focusing on what they perceived as Reagan’s legacy rather than on his appeal for freedom. Continued...