'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'

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"I came here to tell you the truth — the good, the bad and the ugly."

Lt. Col. Oliver North
July 7, 1987

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A good word to describe Oliver North when he began his Iran–Contra testimony a quarter of a century ago would be defiant.

He seemed to enter the hearing room with a chip on his shoulder, and he was all too eager to defend the secret policy he had been carrying out.

Many Americans probably heard his name for the first time when Ronald Reagan dismissed him following the revelation of that policy in November 1986.

After that, as I recall, he mostly slipped from the public's thoughts until his former secretary, Fawn Hall, testified about how she had helped shred documents for her boss and smuggled others from the office.

Then people began clamoring for North to testify — as if most had just heard his name for the first time. And, I guess, there were those who had. I suppose there were some people — very sheltered people — who had no idea who Oliver North was before this day in 1987.

In fact, I know there were. I was one of them. Well, not entirely. I mean, I had heard the name in connection with reports about his involvement in the scandal and his intention to testify. Otherwise, I didn't know much about him.

But after this day 25 years ago, his name was a household word.

In 1987, I was working nights on the Arkansas Gazette's sports desk so I watched North's testimony every day — until about the middle of the afternoon on days when I had to go to work, all day on days when I didn't.

(On those days when I worked, I would often set my VCR to record in my absence. Then, when I returned home after midnight, I would stay up and watch the rest of his testimony from that day.)

Rudy Abramson of the Los Angeles Times wrote that North was "the most eagerly awaited witness since Watergate's John W. Dean III" 14 years earlier.

There is truth in that, but it wasn't quite the same.

When Dean testified in the summer of 1973, I remember hearing his testimony on radios and TV sets wherever I went. My parents watched Dean's testimony on the family TV set, and they had the car radio set to the testimony so it was possible for me to go from the house to the car and never miss a thing.

Then, almost anywhere I might go — the grocery store, the barber shop, whatever it might be — I could see/hear the testimony on small portable TVs or on radios.

(My family lived in the country, a few miles outside the city limits. I remember one day when my father needed to get something from a hardware store in town, and I went along with him. I could hear the testimony on the TV as we left the house, then Dad switched on the radio when we got in the car and we listened to it all the way into town. Then, we may have missed a minute or two of testimony when we walked from the parking lot into the hardware store, but when we did, we found that the proprietor was watching the telecast on his portable TV.

(As long as we were in town, Dad wanted to run a few errands at nearby stores so we walked from the hardware store to the other businesses. All along the way, I could hear the testimony — on radios in cars and stores, on portable TVs. Hardly missed a beat.)

Before his testimony, Dean's was not a familiar face to most Americans. But even though I was much younger at the time of Watergate, I knew more about Dean when he started his testimony than I knew about North.

Looking at it from another angle, both of those key witnesses — North and Dean — received generally high points for credibility from congressional investigators and viewers.

Dean challenged Richard Nixon's version of events, and Nixon's own tapes demonstrated how reliable Dean's memory and word were. Ultimately, Nixon resigned.

North, on the other hand, did not implicate Reagan in any wrongdoing. He did not challenge Reagan's decision to dismiss him when the plot came to light; if Reagan was involved more directly, North did not accuse him.

It seemed to me at the time that a lot of people hoped he would — or, at least, that he would get caught in a contradiction that would give ammunition to the administration's critics.

Kind of like the people who go to car races hoping to see a pileup.

The revelation of the Iran–Contra scandal in November 1986 marked the end of a really astonishing spike in presidential popularity. For nearly two years, Reagan had enjoyed the approval of more than half of survey respondents — often far more than half.

His approval dropped below 50% when Iran–Contra was made public, though, and it only rose above 51% once in the next 19 months — when Hall testified.

Reagan didn't resign. No evidence was ever uncovered that he authorized diversion of arms profits to the Contras, and Reagan remained president through the conclusion of his second term in 1989.

Gallup has been measuring presidential job approval since the dawn of Franklin Roosevelt's second term in 1937, and, of the presidents who have been re–elected in the last 75 years, only Dwight Eisenhower and Bill Clinton enjoyed comparable periods of popularity.

A year before North's testimony, in July 1986, Reagan's job approval stood at 63%, according to Gallup. His popularity dipped below 50% when the scandal became public knowledge, and, by the time North began giving his testimony 25 years ago today, Reagan was clinging to a 49–43 plurality in the Gallup poll.

But Reagan bounced back. By the end of 1988, he was back at 63% approval.

In the years ahead, in fact, the implementation of the arms–for–hostages plan seemed to get a certain amount of vindication.

The now 68–year–old North ran for the U.S. Senate from Virginia nearly 20 years ago and narrowly lost to Lyndon Johnson's son–in–law. He has written several books and is a popular commentator for Fox News.

Enforcement of the Boland Amendment, which had been passed in the early 1980s, seemed to restrict future U.S. aid to the Contras. Congress later repealed the Boland Amendment, however, and funding for the Contras resumed.

My Goddaughter's Birthday

This is a special day.

Today is my goddaughter Nikki's 25th birthday.

I never had a sister, but I know from my experiences with my mother and my grandmothers that ladies don't like to disclose their ages — so I figure this is probably the last time Nikki will let me get away with that.

But I want to mention it for two reasons really — a person's 25th birthday is an important milestone, one that I want to be sure to observe, and knowing how old she is kind of puts things in perspective.

The year before Nikki was born, her father moved back to the St. Louis area where he had lived as a child. For a long time, he lived in Arkansas, where I grew up and lived until about a year after Nikki was born.

Nikki's father and I were close friends in high school and remained close afterward. We're still close.

And I remember being asked to be Nikki's godfather. I just don't remember when (except in a general sort of way) or how.

Her mother, Tammy, has told me many times that, when she and Randy discussed who should be their daughter's godfather, my name was the only one they considered.

I may have won that election by a landslide, but I was nevertheless humbled by the honor.

A quarter of a century later, I am still humbled by it.

And I suppose the natural inclination would be to assume that the date that I was asked to be her godfather would be one of those dates that lives forever in my memory. But I couldn't tell you what the date was — or even how they asked me, whether it was by letter or by phone.

Perhaps they asked me in person. I made an annual pilgrimage to St. Louis to see the Cardinals play the Dodgers in those days. It may have been on such a visit that they asked me. I really don't remember.

I just remember that it wasn't long after Nikki was born — sometime in the summer of 1987, I guess, maybe later.

I also remember joking with Tammy that I wanted a bumper sticker that said "Ask me about my goddaughter!"

(Actually, I think I was serious about that. Just never found one. Seems to me that you could only find "Baby on board" products in stores at that time.)

And now, she's all grown up with a young son of her own.

I keep up with her life these days via her Facebook status updates. And her mother frequently posts on Facebook about the grandson Nikki gave her.

So I have a pretty good idea of what is happening in their lives.

I never married, never had any children of my own, but I am very proud of Nikki — as proud as I would be, I suppose, if she were my own daughter.

Unfortunately, I only saw Nikki a couple of times when she was still a toddler. I wish I had been around for more of her childhood, but we lived in different states. Even so, she made me proud from a distance, and she makes me proud today.

And so, on this, her special day, I just want to say a few things to her.

Nikki, I love you very much. Each day, you redeem my own existence in ways I never would have imagined. May your life be filled with the same pleasure, wisdom and sense of purpose you have given mine.

Your love for your son reminds me so much of my own mother's love, there are times when I feel that some of her blood must flow through your veins. But maybe that is simply being a mother. Maybe it comes with the territory.

I know that can't explain it entirely, though. Not all mothers are as loving and nurturing as my mother was — and as you clearly are.

You must have inherited that from your own mother. You could not have inherited it from mine.

But that doesn't change how proud I am of who you are.

That will never change.

I hope you have a wonderful birthday and a long and happy life.

And I promise never again to tell anyone how old you are!

The Challenge to 'Tear Down This Wall'

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"General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Ronald Reagan
June 12, 1987

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Presidents are remembered for saying many things.

In what tend to be their more honorable moments, presidents are remembered for statements they make in speeches.

In what tend to be their less honorable moments, presidents are remembered for things they say in more private and confidential settings or in off–the–cuff remarks they apparently think no one else can hear and often regret.

Perhaps it was that way with Ronald Reagan's remark about the "evil empire." Well, it may have been the kind of thing Reagan said only to confidantes and advisers at first, but by the time he was president, I think he believed the Soviet Union was an evil empire.

And he wasn't bashful about saying so.

Whatever else Reagan accomplished in his life, one must remember that his early training involved acting on the stage. The nature of acting is persuasion.

He often told a story about his early days as a sportscaster on radio. In those days, radio stations received the play–by–play of sports contests on the wire, and the station's own on–air talent would read it.

On one occasion, the wire machine stopped working in the middle of a baseball game, and Reagan had to ad lib. He came up with numerous creative ways for the batter to keep fouling off pitches until the machine was repaired and began providing the play–by–play again — at which point Reagan discovered that the batter had popped out on the first pitch.

His listeners would read no riveting accounts of the batter's dramatic duel with the pitcher in the next day's papers. No doubt many were disappointed.

When he was running for president, Reagan came across as being devoutly anti–Soviet Union. I must admit, though, that I often wondered just how much of that was for show and how much of it was genuine.

Some of it may well have been an act, but I was inclined at the time to believe most of it was genuine. While I seldom agreed with Reagan, I felt compelled to conclude that his rhetoric was more extreme than most mainstream establishment Republicans of the day embraced — at least, with any enthusiasm.

And Reagan's public speeches early in his presidency clearly indicated that the Reagan of the campaign trail was the same one who occupied the White House.

However, a lot changed while he was president. The Soviet Union's leadership was far more hard line when Reagan became president than it was at the end of his presidency, and, on this day 25 years ago, Reagan stood in front of the infamous Berlin Wall and called upon Mihail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union's moderate leader, to "tear down this wall."

Considering that is precisely what happened shortly after Reagan left office, his words on that occasion seem positively prophetic — even though it was his successor, George H.W. Bush, who presided over its collapse.

His most devout admirers will tell you that it happened because of Reagan's policies. Perhaps it did. Or perhaps it would have happened anyhow. Reagan himself said communism would collapse under its own weight. It was just a matter of time.

It's fair to wonder, as Peter Robinson does in the Wall Street Journal, if "mere talk," as he called Reagan's speech, "made any difference."

Robinson, a former Reagan speech writer, concluded that the speech was a catalyst that changed the world. Well, perhaps it influenced the communist world, the world that existed behind Winston Churchill's famed iron curtain.

As far as I could tell at the time, the free world was unaffected. The free world paid attention to what was happening, but daily life went on.

Still, when the wall came down, I must admit that I wondered if there had been more to the speech than met the eye — or ear.

The call to "tear down this wall" had powerful emotional imagery behind it, imagery that was even more powerful when it actually came to pass.

Some people say it was Ronald Reagan's finest hour. Personally, I felt his finest hour was when he comforted a grieving nation following the Challenger disaster. At the time, I guess I dismissed the Berlin Wall speech as grandstanding.

But I'll grant you that Reagan's speech 25 years ago today was probably his presidency's most memorable moment.

If that was grandstanding, it was grandstanding with endurance.