Last Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin was overheard joking about the virility of Israeli leader Moshe Katsav, who has been accused of rape. In our blog, Richard Young wrote about this, and other high-profile gaffes, including Bush and Blair's excruciating Yo Blair! exchange at the G8 summit.
Richard writes, 'when the masks slip, we see some truly scary things underneath.' But here's the thing: the masks may not be slipping at all. The 'slip' may be deliberate. I don't mean that Tony Blair wanted to be shown hovering round the leader of the free world like an anxious waiter. This was surely a genuine mistake. But I'm not sure Reagan's 'off the cuff' remark was.
It was the height of the Cold War - August 1984 - and the US President was about to make his weekly radio address to the nation. During the sound check, so the story goes, Reagan joked, 'My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forver. We begin bombing in five minutes.' Alas, his gung-ho comments were broadcast round the world. Whoops.
I'm in the middle of researching a programme about the Cold War, and I've been told that the Reagan incident wasn't accidental at all. I don't know how true this is. But unlike the Yo Blair debacle, Reagan's 'gaffe' had the desired effect. It reduced the Soviet Politburo to a state of apoplexy. It cast Reagan as a bit of a cowboy, someone who might let his finger stray to the nuclear button if the Russians didn't behave. In fact, now know that Reagan was not some nuke-crazy nutter. He thought nuclear weapons were immoral, and came closer to any other US President to abolishing them entirely. He was conducting a campaign of disinformation.
So perhaps we need to give our politicians more credit on occasion. We feel so happy we've caught them out that we don't always stop to ask - have we? Because sometimes, just sometimes, we may hear what they want us to hear.
