I don't know. I think the laugh may be on all of us as well as on those who think a Frost quotation was the appropriate response to the Berlin Wall.
Read that passage again. Doesn't it sound like a parody of what the elite would have said about Reagan's 'tear down this wall?'--a missed opportunity to quote Edna Millay? Don't you suspect Morris was pulling all of our legs, over and over in his biography?
Yep. In too many places in the book I'd have to stop and ask WTF did he mean by that? Then read on with two trains of thought: either pro or con --most times it turns out as pro-Reagan.
Once you get used to this fictional "Forest Gump"-style narrative, Morris seems more favorable to RR than I expected.