Remembering Ronald Reagan

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of Reagan's speech at the Brandenberg Gate, in which he famously urged Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall." Two years later, the Germans themselves tore it down. While Reagan had his flaws and made his share of mistakes, the Brandenberg speech deserves to go down in history as one of the high points in American presidential rhetoric.

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Also, Reagan's presidential diary is now available on bookshelves. I saw the book's editor, historian Douglas Brinkley, interviewed on C-SPAN recently. Some of the passages he read out loud might surprise people today. Among other things, Reagan reacted to the murder of more than 200 Marines in Beirut not with a reckless desire to send more ground forces in; instead, he saw it as a sobering reminder that the Middle East was a dangerous morass to be avoided. He also viewed the death of any innocent civilian caused by American bombs as a failure, not as an acceptable loss. Many so-called conservatives today would likely take exception with those two points--and perhaps in the fullness of time they will be proven right--but it's refreshing to remember that at least one Republican president in the not-so-distant past viewed military intervention as an option of last resort, and took great pains to avoid entangling the U.S. in the Middle East.