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The call of a trumpet. Many of Ronald Reagan's speeches sounded that way to me. During his long political career he used simple, direct, forceful language to make his points, developing his own unique sound. So when I joined his speechwriting staff in 1983 -- at age 26, its youngest member -- my goal was to help Reagan go on sounding like Reagan. One big challenge was the speech at the Berlin Wall, which Reagan would visit during a 1987 trip to Berlin to help commemorate the city's 750th anniversary. I was told only that he would speak at the wall, that he'd likely draw a crowd of about 10,000, and that, given the setting, he probably ought to talk about foreign policy.One day in late April 1987, I met the ranking American diplomat in Berlin, hoping to get some material. The diplomat knew what Reagan shouldn't say. Since West Berliners were intellectually and politically sophisticated, he would have to watch himself. So no chest-thumping. No Soviet bashing. And no inflammatory statements about the wall. People who lived here, the diplomat said, had long ago become used to the structure that encircled them.
After meeting the diplomat, I flew over Berlin in a U.S. Army helicopter. From the sky, the wall seemed less to cut Berlin in two than to separate two modes of existence. On one side I saw movement, color, crowded sidewalks. On the other, buildings were pockmarked from shelling during the war; pedestrians were poorly dressed. The East Berlin side was lined with guard posts, dog runs, rows of barbed wire.
That night, I went to a dinner party hosted by Dieter and Ingeborg Elz, native Germans who had retired to West Berlin after Dieter completed his career at the World Bank. We had friends in common, and they were hosting this party to help give me a feel for their city. They had invited Berliners of many walks of life -- businessmen, academics, homemakers. We talked about the weather, about German wine. And then I related what the diplomat had told me. "Is it true?" I asked. "Have you gotten used to the wall?"
The Elzes and their guests glanced at one another uneasily. My heart sank. Had I come across as brash, tactless? Finally one man raised an arm and pointed. "My sister lives 20 miles in that direction," he explained. "I haven't seen her in more than two decades. Do you think I can get used to that?" Another man spoke up. Each morning on his way to work, he said, he walked past a guard tower. Each morning, the same soldier gazed down at him through binoculars. "That soldier and I speak the same language," he said. "We share the same history. But one of us is a zookeeper and the other is an animal, and I'm never certain which one is which."
Our hostess now broke in. "If this man Gorbachev is serious with his talk of glasnost and perestroika," she said angrily, pounding her fist, "he can prove it. He can get rid of this wall."
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