The Secrets of Reagan's Success

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As it happened--as Hollywood would have seen fit to script it--the only people aside from Reagan who really believed in Star Wars were the military leadership of the Soviet Union. The Zap! Pow! Bam! comic-book defense strategy reinforced Moscow's growing despair about the future and hastened the end of the cold war. And that, finally, is what has proved most galling to the Gipper's ideological opponents: his glossy Hollywood optimism proved more supple than the professional pessimism of the intellectual left. Ultimately, Reagan's sloppy and often insensitive domestic governance will have little impact on his place in history. His willingness to break the law and defy Congress by funding the contras in Nicaragua and surreptitiously attempting to trade arms for hostages with Iran--these will be footnotes as well. Reagan will mostly be remembered for his unyielding opposition to the Soviet Union, for his willingness to call a regime that murdered at least 40 million of its citizens "evil."

In fact, I didn't understand how truly monumental, and morally important, Reagan's anticommunist vision was until I visited the Soviet Union in 1987. My first night there, I was escorted to the Bolshoi Ballet by two minders from the U.S.-Canada Institute. The Russians were thrilled that I had figured out the Cyrillic alphabet and was able to read the program. The young woman on my left rewarded me with a smile--a rare public act in that terrifying regime--and a whispered encouragement: reform was coming. Glasnost and perestroika, she assured me, were real. The minder on my left, a chunky young man, then nudged me with his elbow. "Ronald Reagan. Evil empire," he whispered with dramatic intensity, and shot a glance down to his lap where he had hidden two enthusiastic thumbs up. "Yes!"