[Reagan] met Napoleon’s great criterion for success. He was lucky. Many American presidents had made ringing denunciations of the Berlin Wall, starting with John Kennedy.
But Reagan made his appeal to Mikhail Gorbachev, who was probably already half-convinced.
The Wall didn’t fall until Reagan had gone back to California but by then the Cold War had been wound up.
Reagan was wrong about a lot of things, and dishonest, too.