Briefing note: US Deputy Secretary Of State meeting with Andrei Gromyko (1985)
The whole tone of it was corny, even for the standards of the time. But there is a subtext in it worth commenting on. Once you agree to engage on the level of a &quot;serious&quot; discussion in an existential power struggle with committed ideologues, like Reagan and the soviets, you&#x27;ve given key ground.<p>Even (especially?) communists will tell you the soviet ideology wasn&#x27;t communism. The soviet state was totalitarian, which is essentially defined by the object against which it constantly militates, which is truth in all and any form. The total war on any truth that could allow for an island of private individual identity in opposition to the movement is the sufficient and necessary condition for the totalitarian urge (Arendt, etc.). What made Reagan the oddly ideal person to respond to that movement was it was his cowboy-actor personal boundaries that were anathema to the uncertainty on which the soviet mentality depended and cultivated in people. It was a unique situation.<p>Obama had a similar &quot;openness,&quot; I think, which was not what most people think at all, but rather complete confidence in the boundary between himself and others that enabled him to seem open to any and all circumstances. Reality is nobody ever gets close enough to see the heat and steel behind it. 
Comparably, Bill Clinton even had more sharp edges than Obama.<p>Maybe the 80&#x27;s were just this corny, but the briefing note has some tells of very polished people code switching to what they understood only from the outside as Reagan&#x27;s aw-shucks earnestness.