Peter Robinson (speechwriter)

Peter Robinson
Robinson in 2019
Speechwriter for the White House
In office 1983–1988
President	Ronald Reagan
Chief Speechwriter for the Vice President
In office 1982–1983
President	Ronald Reagan
Personal details
Born	Peter Mark Robinson (1957-04-18) April 18, 1957 (age 66) Vestal, New York, U.S.
Education	Dartmouth College (BA) Christ Church, Oxford (BA) Stanford University (MBA)
Known for	Berlin Wall Speech

Peter Mark Robinson (born April 18, 1957

Robinson is the host of Uncommon Knowledge, a political podcast at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. The show has featured guests like Thomas Sowell, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Henry Kissinger, and it delves into topics such as public policy, history, geopolitics, and economics.

Speechwriter

After Oxford, Robinson applied for a position at the

On arrival in the city before writing the speech, Robinson was warned by US diplomats to avoid Cold War rhetoric and that Berliners had adjusted to the presence of the Berlin Wall. However, after consultation with local Berliners, he found them deeply wounded and concerned about the wall; in many instances it had separated families and represented an intrusion of a police state into daily life. Returning to Washington D.C., Robinson's phrase became controversial with the State Department and other staff members, including Chief of Staff Howard Baker and National Security Advisor Colin Powell. Repeated attempts were made to remove it from the speech, but Reagan overruled them, wishing to communicate not only with West Berliners but with East Germans on the other side of the wall. Reagan went so far as to say "yes, this wall will fall", and that "As long as this gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind."

External videos
Booknotes interview with Robinson on Snapshots from Hell, December 18, 1994, C-SPAN

Robinson wrote more than 300 speeches during his White House tenure. After serving for six years, Robinson attended business school at Stanford University where he earned a Master of Business Administration in 1990. The journal he kept of his two-year experience there was the basis for his book Snapshots from Hell: The Making of an MBA, published in 1994, which details the considerable difficulty he encountered during the first year of business school due to his lack of a "quantitative background".

Research fellow

External videos
Presentation by Robinson on It's My Party, September 14, 2000, C-SPAN
Presentation by Robinson on How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life, August 6, 2003, C-SPAN

In the early 1990s, Robinson joined the

He served on the Board of Trustees of Dartmouth College from 2005 to 2013.^[3]

Personal life and writings

Robinson lives in northern California with his wife, Edita, and their five children. Edita's parents left Cuba in 1959 and she was born about 18 months later.^[4]

In 2003, he published his third book, How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life. He has stated that it is "nothing less than a love story – an account of the profound respect and affection that one young man came to feel for the President who changed his life forever." The book received a favorable review from Margaret Thatcher, and she remarked that it features a "wealth of insights".^[5]

References