Biden-Reagan comparisons are ‘preposterous’

The ‘preposterous’ comparison between Biden and Reagan
Among the most shameless displays of water-carrying for Joe Biden since his Saturday regime-change gaffe is the suggestion, floated by some apparently without embarrassment, that the president’s Warsaw address resembles a speech made by one of his predecessors in Berlin in 1987.

According to Sunday’s Politico Playbook AM, “some foreign policy experts are already comparing [Biden’s speech] to Ronald Reagan’s famous ‘Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall’ address.” On Twitter, Bill Kristol liked Biden’s call for regime change to Reagan’s memorable line, arguing that both were considered “gaffes” by the…

The ‘preposterous’ comparison between Biden and Reagan

Among the most shameless displays of water-carrying for Joe Biden since his Saturday regime-change gaffe is the suggestion, floated by some apparently without embarrassment, that the president’s Warsaw address resembles a speech made by one of his predecessors in Berlin in 1987.

According to Sunday’s Politico Playbook AM, “some foreign policy experts are already comparing [Biden’s speech] to Ronald Reagan’s famous ‘Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall’ address.” On Twitter, Bill Kristol liked Biden’s call for regime change to Reagan’s memorable line, arguing that both were considered “gaffes” by the foreign policy establishment. Joe Scarborough posted a photo of Monday’s Wall Street Journal front page, where a headline read “Biden’s remark on Putin stirs anxiety among Western allies”, and said “Substitute ‘Reagan’ with ‘Biden’ and you could be looking at a 1985 headline.” In the Washington Post, Max Boot also drew the parallel between Biden’s unscripted line and words of Reagan’s that were seen as provocative at the time.

When I read that line from Politico to him over the telephone yesterday, Peter Robinson let out an amused chuckle. I had called Robinson, Hoover Institution fellow and host of the indispensable interview series Uncommon Knowledge, because, as a young White House speechwriter, he was the man who came up with Reagan’s immortal line. I was intrigued what the man responsible for one of the most memorable lines ever uttered by a US president made of Biden’s rather less successful intervention.

“We pretend, you and I, for a moment or two, that this is a serious matter,” says Robinson of the Biden-Reagan comparisons. “I’ll do my best.”

So, to take the pundits’ comparison in good faith for a moment, how does “This man cannot remain in power” compare to “Tear down this wall”?

“I have an immediate response and a more measured response. And the immediate response and the conclusion of my more measured response are the same: it’s preposterous,” says Robinson.

The one grain of truth to the comparison is, according to Robinson, the fact that “foreign policy experts… tried to remove ‘tear down this wall’ from President Reagan’s speech. The State Department and the National Security Council were convinced that it was a policy error.”

But the comparison, Robinson says, “breaks down very quickly.” Unlike Biden’s gaffe, Reagan’s “tear down this wall” line was planned, scripted, considered. “That’s the line I want to say to them. That wall has to come down,” Robinson remembers Reagan telling him at Camp David. According to Robinson’s records, officials tried to remove the line in seven subsequent drafts. And yet Reagan insisted it was in the final version. “It certainly was not a gaffe. The president himself had considered matters.” (I recommend this fuller run-down of the story behind Reagan’s speech.)

Unlike Biden’s Warsaw speech, which was walked back by the White House immediately afterwards, the opposition to Reagan’s speech mostly came beforehand. When it was delivered, it won over some of those who had been hesitant, like secretary of state George Shultz. “The moment he said it, it had a sense of rightness or fittingness that everyone in the administration seems to have recognized. That doesn’t seem to be at all the case with Biden… He’s following an emotional logic rather than the text or the logic of agreed upon policy statements.

“So I start off thinking [the comparison] is preposterous and I work my way through all that and I can say yes, it is preposterous… The notion that Biden has achieved his Reagan moment strikes me as more hopeful than persuasive.”

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Reagan was at the end, Biden is at the beginning

Robinson may find the Reagan comparisons absurd, but he is sympathetic to Biden and his team. Reagan’s speech, he points out, came after three and a half decades of the Cold War, and the administration could build on the policy and statements of previous presidents. “The lines had been drawn,” he says, “Reagan came along and added new energies, but he was adding new energies to a policy that Harry Truman adopted.”

Biden is in Truman’s shoes, not Reagan’s. “Biden is at the beginning of whatever we end up calling this conflict,” says Robinson. “What Putin is attempting to do, the rise of China, all of this is all still very new to us, which, you know, is why I have to say I feel a certain sympathy for Joe Biden.”

But while the uncertainty and freshness of the geopolitical moment should be the cause of some sympathy for the president, it also makes his freewheeling gaffes all the more alarming — and unacceptable.

Trump’s hole-in-one

What use is sinking a hole in one unless you can brag about it afterwards? Any golfers reading this who have managed the feat will surely admit that (whether or not they bought everyone a drink, as custom dictates), they made sure the clubhouse knew about their accomplishment.

You will not be surprised to learn that Donald Trump is no different. Confirmation of the former president’s sporting achievement landed in reporters’ inboxes in press release form on Monday evening. “Many people are asking, so I’ll give it to you now, it is 100% true,” Trump said of the shot. “I hit a 5-iron, which sailed magnificently into a rather strong wind, with approximately 5 feet of cut, whereupon it bounced twice and then went clank, into the hole,” he explained.