he had felt that gorbachev in his meetings in geneva and then in reykjavik, which everybody reported at the time was not successful and it turned out to be pivotal, that there was an opportunity for a significant nuclear arms reduction with gorbachev, but his political standing at low was very low, the lowest of his presidency, and it started coming back. three months later was the berlin wall speech where people started recognizing, my god, the united states is back, and the president is going to be that forceful and that direct with the leader of the then soviet union. mr. gorbachev, tear down this wall. mr. gorbachev, open the gate. it didn't receive great coverage in america, but i think the american people understood that their forceful, direct president was about to have a major breakthrough. >> and it did have a tremendous impact certainly in the long run. in the immediate aftermath of it, what was the reaction in germany? and the united states? most of the reaction was that we were a little bit too belligerent, that we had maybe taken some steps to undermine gorbachev and his

i was in a fjord near reykjavik, island. >> what did you think of the pardon? >> it's a tough one. i don't think i would have done it but i didn't have the stereo scopic view of the harm to the country. this experience made me a real prosecutor. and i -- i've had prosecuteive instincts for a long time. maybe they weren't honed in 1974, but i don't think even then i would have done it. >> what did it this teach you about the wheels of our government? >> the wheels may grind slowly, but they grint pretty well. a lot of force in the law, and it made the president do a lot of things that he didn't want to do, and the whole procedure involved a lot of things a lot of people didn't want to have done. throw countries in the world i associate with the capacity for self examination. one is israel, one is the united kingdom, and the third and perhaps the greatest is the united states. >> did you stay in touch, besides the 1999 story, did you stay in touch with hillary rodham after? >> yeah, i've known her pretty continuously. there were whispered conversations about bill in 1974. they were n

ronald reagan walked away from reykjavik because of "star wars."st thing he did was take away missile defense from poland and from the czech republic. i was there in 2009 on the 20th anniversary of freedom for those two countries and the first question the president of poland asked of me that morning at breakfast was, why did your president take away our missile defense? that afternoon the ambassador to poland, asked me the very same question. you had this administration, the first thing they were doing was caving in to the russian government. they do not respect an america that caves in to them. they only respect strength. my father used to say it. peace through strength. megyn: you talk about your father saying that the communism was going to wind up on the ash heap of history. and that was as part of, one of his speech that is considered the original evil empire speech. it was given back in 1982, june 8th, 1982. here's a little bit of that. >> i have discussed on other occasions including my address on may 9th the elements of western policies to

reykjavik in clinton and bush, all of them. what do you think a second term for obama might mean in terms of many course corrections? >> well, let me note that nixon removed troops from china. he has deleted it off the books. be careful there. a lesson they're is that unaffiliated wise men are people who are leveled such. very careful predicting second terms because presidents can surprise you. i think that the, clearly this set of issues that obama 2.0 is going to face are the issues you have all been talking about. but theresa, asia, but let me offer a threat given that this is the panel focused on comparing the candid it's. i actually think they are more alike than they are different. they may not be in the same zip code on foreign policy, their lawyers in the same area code. many of the issues, the rhetoric has been different, the campaign criticizes the other guy and talks about your shortcomings, traditionally democrats republicans as reckless. republicans -- they accuse democrats of being reckless. i think that there wil

ceiling which ended as a butt of a -- as a bit of a train wreck, it hike the fiscal equivalent of the reykjavik summit of arms control which everyone knows ended in failure and gloom and turned out to be the key moment when people came back and said, no, we're going to have to see our way through this. so we may have to go a few rounds on this. i'll stop there. >> norm, isn't this just a modern version of the game of chicken, and the republicans are playing it better than the democrats? >> i will say i was appalled by what happened with the debt limit, and we've written about this. you don't play chicken with the full faith and credit of the united states. and, you know, it's true, the debt limit -- which is a stupid thing to do, first of all, we're one of only two countries that does it, you are ratifying previous debts, you're not actually extending it, but it's been a political football ever since we've done this. and if you look at all of the votes over the decades, it's almost funny when you watch the parties exchange their scripts with one another as the presidencies change and the level