the first inaugural of ronald reagan
was greeted in britain and europe
with perhaps not the same amount
of dismay, but there were quite
a lot of headlines saying,
"he is just an actor,"
which was completely not true
because he'd had eight years
as governor of california.
and what was worse, this
perception continued
throughout his entire years.
in europe, you could never get
a sensible set of opinion
to understand america is different
from our way of doing politics
and reagan, after all,
comes straight from the bone marrow
of american identity
and he was to be a great president.
nobody recognised that,
really, until today.
there is not a single street
in germany that says
reagan street or reagan plaza,
although he was the guy in ‘87
who said, "gorbachev,
tear down this wall".
but you have lots of kennedy
statues and so forth.
but i must say, to come back
to polly‘s characterisation,
i totally agree with the nature
of his speech.
but that in itself leads me
to a positive...