When the Russians started building the Berlin Wall JFK took a trip to Germany and called himself a jelly donut (Berliner) and promised the German people all sorts of things. The media loved the speech and JFK went home. LBJ ignored the Wall. Nixon ignored the Wall and Carter ignored the Wall. Reagan went to Germany and did what he did best. He made Americans feel good and he spit in the eye of the failing Russian government. We may not remember JFK's speech even though the media loved it but we remember Reagan's line even though the media tried to ignore it. It was a brilliant move that is unlikely to ever be duplicated.
It was a photo op by an actor. Get over it. The wall and the Soviet sphere collapsed of its own dead weight.
Kennedy did not call himself a "jelly donut". The fact that the same word for a resident of Berlin is used for a pastry doesn't mean he was inviting the Germans to "eat me".
What if the wall had been in Frankfurt or Hamburg? What if he made a similar speech in Sardinia? Or Denmark?
And no one saw the dead weight of the soviet sphere until it collapsed. Atleast among the mainstream.
And the mainstream is saying that those who are seeing the dead weight among us are nutjobs. Go figure.
And I might have added, the wall came down during the (first) Bush administration. The catalyst had more to do with actions by Hungary and Czechoslovakia than with Reagan. Good on Reagan for encouraging it, but that was more than two years earlier.
So where are the dead weight walls about to come down now? As long as it's not the wall between the Carolinas. We need that one. Have ya seen those people??
(Hjmick's not in this thread is he?)