On Tearing Down Walls

On the 12th June 1987, U.S. President Ronald Reagan delivered what would become his most famous speech. Stood in front of the Brandenburg Gate in (what was then) West Berlin – and safely behind two panels of bulletproof glass shielding him from the East – he expressed his desire for greater openness with the Soviet Union. And then at the climax of the speech, he gestured towards the notorious barrier that had divided the city for over 25 years, and called upon his counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall”. It has become remembered as a pivotal moment in the Cold War and an unforgettable sound-bite of the 1980s, as instantly recognisable in any obligatory video-montage as Michael Jackson drinking Pepsi or Neil Armstrong planting the MTV logo on the moon.

It has also become a lesson about the importance of having a good speechwriter. The iconic phrase was almost cut. Reagan’s advisors were concerned that the speech was too inflammatory and risked embarrassing an already beleaguered Gorbachev, undoing months of delicate diplomacy. Officials in Berlin warned against the possibility of upsetting the delicate balance of glasnost and perestroika. It was a tense moment in East-West relationships, and the presidential visit had already flooded the streets with protesters and police.

But Reagan’s speechwriter, Peter Robinson, had spent time travelling West Berlin scouting potential locations for the speech, and taking in the mood of the people. He was convinced the call to tear down the hated wall would resonate with the audience; and Reagan, whose background in show-business undoubtedly gave him a good ear for a great one-liner, decided to take the risk. The speechwriter won over the special advisor, and history was made.

That at least is the official story, the one put together in biographies and ghostwritten memoirs. But it would be another two years before the Berlin Wall finally came down, and more recent historiography has questioned the actual impact of the speech. It was dismissed by the Soviet authorities as yet more jingoistic sabre-rattling, and as Reagan himself recalled – many of the East Berliners he had hoped to (indirectly) address on the other side of the Wall were physically prevented from attending. It has even been suggested the speech only attained international significance after the end of the Cold War as part of a deliberate reconstruction of events.

But in many ways this misses the point. And that is because the real audience for the speech was the American people. As Obama-speechwriter Ben Rhodes argues in his recent book, All We Say, a well-crafted political speech does more than just articulate a policy or stake a position. It can also help shape a national self-identity; in Reagan’s case, positioning the US as the guardians of liberty and democracy against the ‘evil empire’ of Soviet totalitarianism. It can provide a sense of purpose, and even cement political unity. But Rhodes concludes his book lamenting that such grand aspirations now seem to be a thing of the past.

Due to Donald Trump, the carefully prepared speech has now been replaced by something called the ‘weave’ – impromptu remarks, endlessly circling and rehashing the same tried and tested themes, already pre-packaged into bite-size chunks for social media. It is then perhaps no surprise our increasingly fractured political climate corresponds to an increasingly fractured form of political discourse. If only we could return to the classical tradition of great orators and statesmen.

It is interesting to reflect therefore how in ancient Athens, impromptu speaking was actually valued more highly than a carefully polished speech. It was assumed to be more sincere. The famous rhetorician Alcidamas went so far as to declare the best speeches are those ‘least like those that are written’. This however did not mean the great orators of the day had no need for a speechwriter, merely that a good one was one who could craft a speech that sounded like it was being delivered off-the-cuff. Their clients would then memorise the words and recite them as if speaking extemporaneously. But it takes a lot of hard work to look casual, and one common technique was to learn individual chunks or passages, and then put them back together on-the-fly – to ‘weave’ them, as we might now say. Ironically then, the fractured style of speaking associated with Trump may in fact be closer to the classical tradition we have apparently lost (note also the thumb-to-forefinger hand gestures as recommended by Cicero). It certainly requires just as much time and effort on the part of the speechwriter.

But has it ever really been any different? Look closely at the stories behind the great speeches of the past and they too begin to fracture. Peter Robinson may well have encouraged Reagan to include the memorable phrase, but Anthony Dolan was the chief speechwriter at the time, and he recalls Reagan actually coming up with it himself – and how this was the only reason why they were able to overcome opposition from the bureaucrats. It was certainly not the first time Reagan had publicly raised the idea. In a visit to West Berlin in 1982, he had provocatively asked the Soviets ‘why is there a wall there?’ And in an interview given to a German newspaper in 1986, he called on those responsible for the Wall ‘to dismantle it’. It was a tried and tested theme to which he liked to return, carefully packaged and polished up by a talented speechwriter.

So whose line is it anyway? It turns out the answer is just as blurry as the line between the carefully crafted speech and the extemporaneous weave. Because a speech, or the story behind it, is always an attempt to control the narrative. When Reagan demanded Gorbachev ‘tear down this wall’, he was attempting to control how the world saw the relationship between East and West. But by even delivering such a line, he was also attempting to shape his own political standing back home – positioning himself to the American people as a defender of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. When Peter Robinson recalls being inspired to write the line after attending a party in West Berlin, the iconic phrase becomes a reflection of the thoughts and feelings of those living in the shadow of the wall. And when Anthony Dolan shifts the inspiration back to Reagan himself, it becomes a statement of one man’s geopolitical vision. The fact that both speechwriters remember fighting the State Department to include the line provides a familiar narrative of bureaucratic intransigence. The more recent suggestion that the speech was only deemed important in hindsight tells yet another story in turn. Sometimes it takes just four little words to define an era. It is just a question of how.

The walls dividing us today tend to be digital. But they serve the same purpose. The Soviet Union wanted to prevent its citizens from escaping their socialist paradise; but the Berlin Wall was also a mechanism for preventing the influx of dangerous ideas flowing in the opposite direction. There were no conflicting interpretations of Reagan’s speech in the pages of Pravda, only the government approved message. Likewise, our current proliferation of online safety acts and digital IDs may be motivated by the desire to protect the vulnerable from exploitation and misinformation, but they also serve as a barrier between the public and what has been deemed unacceptable. Building a wall is always at some level an attempt to control a narrative. And so we push back and wait for the next politician to demand that we tear it all down. Only this time we have no idea who is writing the script on the teleprompter.

Like the magician Prospero in The Tempest, we can weave worlds and illusions with our words. A powerful speech can literally shape the course of history. This was well understood by Shakespeare, who at the end of the play – his last – has Prospero renounce his magic and appeal directly to the audience for mercy, asking them to ‘let your indulgence set me free’. This is Shakespeare speaking directly through the character, and asking his audience to tear down the (fourth) wall that has stood between them over the course of his life. Perhaps because he came to appreciate the real value of speech is that it connects us, even if we disagree on the narrative.