REAGAN ACTED LIKE HE WAS MENTALLY UNBALANCED
For a radio broadcast, Reagan quipped during a sound check :"My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes." This was picked up by the press all over the world, and Reagan was characterized as an irresponsible old man" by newspapers in Europe. At home, the controversy refused to go away. Commentators raised doubts about Reagan's fitness for the job. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Michael Deaver's admission that Reagan often napped during cabinet meetings didn't help. John Oakes, a former New York Times senior editor, asked what kind of confidence the American people could have during a crisis in a man of such "shallow, rash, and superficial judgment?" He and others cited Reagan's confusion over fundamental policy issues, including contradictory statements about tax policy, and found him unqualified for the job. Former MIT president Jerome Wiesner, who served as science advisor to both Kennedy and Johnson, described Reagan's "gallows humor" as a "verbal Rorschach test" and questioned his competence to continue with his finger on the nuclear button. Some people even raised the question of the president's mental acuity. Reporters were particularly troubled by a recent photo opportunity at his ranch at which Reagan was asked a basic question about arms control. Los Angeles Times reporter Robert Scheer described the scene : "No answer came, and for an embarrassing few moments, the President of the United States seemed lost, gesturing but not speaking. Then his wife, Nancy, at his side, apparently saved him with an answer, uttered while barely moving her lips. 'Doing everything we can,' she said. Reagan repeated, 'We're doing everything we can.' "
Those around Reagan ran interference and protected him as best they could. George Shulz nurtured the side of Reagan that preferred negotiations over belligerency. Backed by Nancy Reagan and Michael Deaver, Shulz battled against the administration zealots. Reagan gave Shulz the green light to improve relations with the Soviets. In mid-1982, the United States and the Soviets began negotiating a new treaty to dramatically reduce strategic forces : the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START. But Reagan continued the Committee on the President Danger's campaign of bemoaning American weakness. "You often hear," he stated in late 1982, "that the United States and the Soviet Union are in an arms race. The truth is that while the Soviet Union has raced, we have not . . . Today, in virtually every measure of military power the Soviet Union enjoys a decided advantage." Despite the scare talk, the United States still maintained a small advantage. In 1985, the U.S. arsenal contained 11,188 strategic warheads to the Soviets' 9,907. In total warheads ----strategic, intermediate-range, and tactical ---the United States led 20,924 to 19,774. And global arsenals continued to grow, peaking in 1986 at more than 70,000 nuclear weapons with a total destructive capability equivalent to that of approximately 1.5 million Hiroshima bombs.
Arms control gained renewed urgency when scientists calculated that even a small nuclear exchange would release enough smoke, dust, and ash into the atmosphere to block the sunlight, plunging the earth into a prolonged period of cooling that would kill off much of its plant life. Some predicted dire consequences, even the end of life on the planet, caused by the "nuclear winter" that would result from a nuclear war----even a "small" one.
Tensions between the world's two superpowers were running precariously high when an extraordinary development in the Soviet Union changed the course of history. In March 1985, Konstantin Chernenko became the third Soviet leader to die in office in two and a half years. His successor, fifty-four-year-old Mikhail Gorbachev, brought new energy and vision to the job. As a young man, he had witnessed the horrors of war. Later, as a Communist Party official, he had traveled widely in the West. As premier, he intended to realize his dream of revitalizing Soviet socialist democracy and improving the lives of the Soviet people. Like Krushchev and othe r reformers before him, he knew that that could not be accomplished as long as military expenditures continued virtually unchecked.
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