Biden's condemnation of Putin will define his presidency — like 'Tear Down This Wall': Ronald Reagan's daughter

President Joe Biden's ad-libbed closing line of his speech in Warsaw last week condemning Vladimir Putin — "For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power" — has swiftly become a topic of intense debate in the media, with many sources pointing to White House sources trying to walk it back as evidence that it was an ill-considered line.

But on Monday, writing for The Daily Beast, Patti Davis — daughter of former President Ronald Reagan — argued that future historians and politicians will remember Biden's line quite differently. In fact, she argued, it will be remembered similarly to a phrase Reagan uttered in a June 1987 speech in Berlin that, for many, defined his entire presidency.

"On June 12, 1987, my father Ronald Reagan stood in front of the Brandenburg Gate and said his now-famous line: 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,'" wrote Davis. "His voice dripped with anger. He later told Lou Cannon that his anger was actually not at Gorbachev but at the East Berlin police who, he had found out, herded people away from the loudspeakers so they wouldn’t hear what the President of the United States had to say. Only the West Berliners, on the side where he was speaking, could hear."

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"Prior to that day, the speech my father gave bounced back and forth between Peter Robinson, who drafted it, my father, the State Department and the National Security Council. The 'tear down this wall' line kept getting cut; the reasons given were that it would be a direct challenge and would damage relations with the new Soviet leader," wrote Davis. "Following the speech, Henry Kissinger dismissed the idea of the wall coming down as fantasy. The State Department, while not walking back the line, put out relatively anodyne statements about working to unite East and West Germany, but pointedly did not mention the idea of tearing down the wall. Much of the media wrote off my father’s words as foolish idealism."

Just two years after that, though, the Berlin Wall came down. And Reagan's words were re-evaluated in that context. Biden's words could well look different from a future lens, too, she wrote.

"History is often defined by single moments in time – an action, a line spoken with the courage of conviction and an iron grip on the truth. We have all watched in horror as Vladimir Putin has committed war crimes, slaughtered civilians. Of course he shouldn’t remain in power. It’s up to Russia to make that happen, but the sentiment is an important one to give voice to," concluded Davis. "President Biden’s words will endure. The walk-back will fade."

You can read more here.