Eight years of this!

The death of Mikhail Gorbachev, former premier of the former Soviet Union that we were supposed to be so afraid of, brought to mind an interesting story from 1985, when he attended a summit meeting in Geneva with global leaders, including Ronald W. Reagan, a former movie actor who, through a series of unlikely events, had been catapulted to power as the president of the United States.

I mean, he wasn't even a good actor. But he was president, so off he went to Geneva, once he got clearance from his wife and their astrologer.

Now, Reagan was a big science-fiction fan, not hard to believe from a guy who made the crummy movies he did. 

And later on, it turned out that Reagan and Gorbachev excused themselves from the proceedings to talk a walk to a little cabin there on Lake Geneva. It was decades before anyone in this country or Russia found out the topic. Only their trusted personal interpreters went along with the two world leaders on their stroll, and they didn't blab at all.

But in 2009, former television presenter Charlie Rose interviewed Gorbachev and Reagan’s Secretary of State George Shultz, and during that show, Gorbachev told the world what was on Reagan's mind that day.

Reagan asked Gorbachev straight up if they could work together to save the world in case the world was invaded by aliens.

And we're not talking about some people from another country here. 

Gorbachev told Rose, "From the fireside house, President Reagan suddenly said to me, 'What would you do if the United States were suddenly attacked by someone from outer space? Would you help us?'

"I said, 'No doubt about it.'"

"He said, 'We too.'"

"So that's interesting," Gorbachev, still stunned 24 years later, said to much laughter.

It might seem impossible to imagine such thoughts darting through the mind of an American president. Remember, too, Reagan came up with the brilliant idea for the Star Wars Defense System, in which America would defend itself from attacks from other parts of the world with weaponized lasers and electromagnetic high-speed railguns firing projectiles at incoming missiles.

This technology did not exist at the time Reagan proposed it and it still does not. But instead of turning to defense experts for answers about defense issues, the amiable Reagan took advice from the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy, a group that counted science-fiction writers like Robert Heinlein and Jerry Pournelle among its members.

Reagan, who never really seemed sure about what he was doing, had been fooling around in 1984, rehearsing a radio address to the nation, when he said this into a live microphone:

 "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."

We were lucky in that Russia knew he was like some nutty uncle who was always pulling quarters out of your ear. No one took him seriously.