> Shane is right about Deng.
Okay, Deng I grant.
> Another is Eisenhower.
Eisenhower? We're talking about people who were alive in my time! Besides...
> Without him, no NATO, no EU.
Hm? No NATO, no EU if Adlai Stevenson had been elected?
> The thing about Gorbachev is that he came at the end of line of reform
> leaders that the central committee was throwing up.
Wha??! Which ones??!
> It's very easy to believe that if it wasn't him, it would have been
> the next or the next, and that the committee had primed themselves to
> follow him before he led.
I've never heard this theory before!
> he was washed away in history's flood.
Well yeah, a flood he started, and that washed away the Soviet world.
I think we have a disagreement about how Communism collapsed.
SA