Kennedy: Ich bin ein Berliner! Reagan: Tear down this wall! The two most iconic speeches delivered by American presidents abroad both took place in Berlin. I read each of them dozens of times. I’d listen to recordings of them in my apartment late at night. I wanted, more than anything else, to help put Barack Obama in that continuum, to write words that someone like me might someday read. And to the campaign staff, this was precisely the objective—to put Obama visually in that continuum.
