November 18, 2024

— President Reagan

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"No doubt about it."

If you were here seven or eight months ago, you might remember me talking about just how bad 1983 and 1984 were.

Oh sure, we got some fantastic music that we're still playing all these years later, and some classic movies that people still watch and rave about.

Plus, in researching this I found a book arguing that 90 days in 1984 that included everything from Michael Jordan signing with the Chicago Bulls to the U.S. Olympics in Los Angeles to a bunch of court cases that leveled the playing field in various ways were the most important three months in sports in the last 50 years.

Still, everything that happened then in our lives -- Michael Jackson's Thriller and the Karate Kid and all that, plus whatever great things happened in our lives -- came against the backdrop of a looming potential nuclear war.

Am I remembering this right?

I was in my early teens yet and I seem to recall this undercurrent that, yes: you might be going to the prom and rooting for your team and studying hard and growing up -- but also that the entire world and everyone you love could be destroyed with about 15 minutes warning if the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. just finally decided to go at it.

Heck, as I wrote here in September, we just passed the 41st anniversary of the date on which a Russian lieutenant colonel in charge of missile defense for the Soviet Union basically saved the world by not responding as he was trained to, when all of his computers lit up showing (incorrectly) that the U.S. had launched an intercontinental ballistic missile attack on Russia.

"I had a funny feeling in my gut," he later said. "I didn't want to make a mistake. I made a decision [not to respond], and that was it."

Anyway, it was against this background that 41 years ago tomorrow, November 19, 1985, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev met for the first time, holding a two-day summit in Geneva.

They discussed the arms race and international diplomatic relations. The meetings ran long, which was a good sign.

Fun story: A senior U.S. aide tried to interfere and wrap things when one 30-minute session stretched past 60 minutes, only to get a strong rebuke from a higher-ranking aide. Can you imagine?

Anyway, there weren't any big agreements at the Geneva summit. But, Reagan and Gorbachev set the stage for five other summits: Reykjavík in 1986, Washington, D.C. in 1987, Moscow in 1988, and then again that year in New York City, with then-President-elect George H.W. Bush attending as well.

Probably just as important, they seemed to build rapport on a personal level.

And there's a fantastic little vignette that came from this, and that Gorbachev didn't share until many years later -- after he was nearly broke, literally doing a Pizza Hut commerical in Russia to raise funds, and also giving interviews and going on talk shows.

At one point, Gorbachev explained, they took a private walk, accompanied only by their interpreters. And, Reagan the former actor asked a question that I think only a world leader who had spent a lot of time in movies might have thought to ask.

Here's how Gorbachev described it:

Fortunately, we weren't attacked by anyone from outer space; fortunately as well, the Cold War ended a few years later.

And while we certainly have tensions with Russia right now ("tensions," that's a nice word), we've managed to have at least a few decades of relative peace and cooperation.

I think the relationship between Reagan and Gorbachev played a part in setting that up. Of course, so did goading the Soviets into a decades-long arms race that their economy simply couldn't support, but we'll focus on the relationship part for today.

I've probably quoted Gorbachev more often than Reagan in the five years I've been writing these newsletters, so let's give Reagan the quote of the day:

Words worth remembering in our current era, too.

Did you see ...

• President Joe Biden's administration has allowed Ukraine to use U.S.-made weapons to strike deep into Russia, in a significant reversal of Washington's policy in the Ukraine-Russia conflict. The move comes two months before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20 and follows months of pleas by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to allow Ukraine's military to use U.S. weapons to hit Russian military targets far from its border. (Reuters)
• Trump transition news: You probably already know about the issues facing Trump's nominees for attorney general and secretary of defense over various allegations (that they deny), so I'll just add links. More likely to be missed: The Trump transition team is reportedly compiling a list of U.S. military officers involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan and exploring whether they could be court-martialed. (Washington Post, NBC News, NBC News x2)
• No Sex, No Dating, No Babies, No Marriage: How the 4B Movement Could Change America: The gender divide has sundered Korean society — and now it’s coming for the U.S. (Politico)
• Who's funding new home purchases? Mom and Dad. (Axios)
• Attorneys for X Corp., the firm established by Elon Musk to take over Twitter, filed a notice of appearance in the bankruptcy case of Alex Jones and his Infowars platform. The new owners of satirical news site The Onion had been declared the successful bidders for Jones’ controversial platform, alongside families of the Sandy Hook massacre victims. But the Texas bankruptcy judge overhearing the case voiced concerns called for a new hearing to discuss those potential issues. (AOL)
• The so-called Queen of Polling, J. Ann Selzer, whose final survey for The Des Moines Register failed to accurately capture former President Donald Trump’s strong support in the 2024 election, resulting in a 16-point miss, says she's retiring from the business. She says she made her decision before the polling error, which had given Democrats hope before the election but turned out to be way off. (CNN)
• A growing number of people are having their eye color permanently changed through cosmetic surgery. Many doctors say the surgery hasn’t been proven safe and warn it could cause lasting damage. "People said I was crazy," says a Russian emigree ophthalmologist who was the first doctor in the U.S. to offer keratopigmentation for nonmedical reasons, and who is on track to do 400 surgeries this year at $12,000 each. "But in Russia, they say if you’re not brave, you don’t drink Champagne." (WSJ)