“After a lackluster European trip, Ronald Reagan turns his attention this week to arms control and deficit battling to revive his presidency,” began a June 14 Chicago Tribune news story.
Echoing Walter Mondale, the reporter cited Reagan’s age as a hint before suggesting that the president was in “political recuperation.”
Others among the American press missed what happened at the Brandenburg Gate concentrating instead on what they thought went wrong.
The day-after story in The Washington Post described the atmosphere surrounding what was perhaps Reagan’s greatest speech this way: “Even though Americans predominated in the front rows of the audience, many of Reagan’s most provocative lines received only scattered applause.”
And: “But the crowd, estimated by officials at 20,000, was about half the number that had been anticipated.”
Even in TIME magazine’s June 22 story, “Back to the wall; Reagan rallies with a strong speech,” the president was portrayed as coming in second: “For all his eloquence, the aging President was repeatedly upstaged by the youthful and suavely dynamic image of the man who was not there: Mikhail Gorbachev.”
And if that wasn’t enough, a U.S. News & World Report writer piled on: “The overall impression was of a lame-duck President who knows all too well that his dream of carving out a shining place in history is eroding into bittersweet memories.”
So while the press eyed presidential legacies, Reagan stuck to his lasting vision of freedom for the common man. And in the end, it was that vision that helped bring down a wall, freed a nation, and brought a legacy of freedom across Europe.
|