“Ronald Reagan resisted - he said on the one hand that Nelson Mandela should be released, but he depended upon a white supremacist government to reform itself from within.”
That is exactly what happened.
“I think Nelson Mandela challenged that.”
This last part makes no sense.
Anyhow, I vaguely remember someone named Mary Matalin, but ...
Mary Matalin is married to James Carville. They are both politically the opposite from each other, as she is conservative and he is liberal. We used to refer to him during the Clinton years as the Serpent head