Ronald Reagan Remembered: Courage in Pursuit of Freedom

One hundred years after his birth, 30 years after his inauguration as president and only seven years after his passing, it's already widely acknowledged by both Democrats and Republicans that Ronald Reagan was a great man and a great president. His role in ending the Cold War, with America victorious and the forces of Marxism-Leninism, as he so eloquently put it, "on the ash heap of history," has been assured. You could almost say we are all Reaganites now.

But it seems many just didn't understand Reagan's vision at the time. Not just his communist adversaries. Not just his political opponents here at home. Even those in his own party and on his own staff sometimes failed to see the strength of the man's commitment to freedom -- or his courage in seeking it.

The words that we now think of as Reagan's most powerful utterance as president were almost never spoken. On June 12, 1987, he traveled to what was then West Berlin to make unmistakably clear his commitment to increasing freedom in Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe. As the draft of his prepared remarks was circulated through the many byzantine layers of bureaucracy that come with the modern presidency, one little phrase kept getting edited out.

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It finally got to the point where Reagan had to have a confrontation with his own deputy chief of staff. Only after pulling rank on his own staff this way did Reagan finally address the crowd of 20,000 gathered at the Brandenburg Gate and issue his famous declaration, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

Two years later, Germans in the East and West did exactly that, presaging German unification and the fall of the Soviet Union.

A piece of the Berlin Wall is preserved today at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, to remind us of the power one man's words and vision can have on the rest of the world.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is the minority leader in the Senate.

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