"Tear Down This Wall" (page 3 of 3)

"The Right Thing to Do"

A few days before the President was to leave for Europe, Tom Griscom got a call from the chief of staff, Howard Baker, asking Griscom to step into his office. "It was Baker and the Secretary of State -- just the two of them," recalls Griscom. Secretary of State George Shultz objected to the speech. "He said, 'I think that line about tearing down the wall is going to be an affront to Mr. Gorbachev.' I said, 'Mr. Secretary, the President has commented on this line. He's comfortable with it.' "

When the traveling party reached Italy, Shultz objected again, to deputy chief of staff Ken Duberstein. So on June 5, Duberstein briefed Reagan on the objections and asked him to reread the speech's central passage. He did. Duberstein told Reagan that he thought the line about tearing down the wall sounded good. "Then," says Duberstein, "he got that wonderful, knowing smile on his face and said, 'Let's leave it in.' "

When Reagan arrived in Berlin, State and the NSC submitted still another draft. Yet the President was determined to deliver the controversial line. "The boys at State are going to kill me," he told Duberstein, smiling, "but it's the right thing to do."

So at the end of this long, messy process -- what? The President stood before the Berlin Wall on June 12, 1987, the Brandenburg Gate behind him, the crowd hanging on his every word. Then came the line: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." There it was. No euphemisms. No wishful thinking. The truth. Reagan sounding like Reagan.

And that's my point. Though I flailed around a bit as I composed the speech, I knew I simply had to write something with the same trumpetlike sound Reagan himself always made. We speechwriters weren't attempting to fabricate an image. We were attempting to meet the standard Reagan himself had long ago established.

After the President delivered the speech, people felt he'd been correct to do so. As Tom Griscom recalls, "The Secretary of State found me after the speech and said, 'You were right.' "

From Reader's Digest - February 2004

 

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