Actually, O'Connor was really Barry Goldwater's mistake, wasn't she? And also Kenneth Starr. Reagan just did as he was told.
As for Barry G. and Kenneth Starr -- I'm sitting here chuckling that these two men show up as "the men around the President." True or not, TMATPs always get blamed -- Colonel House, Harry Hopkins, Sherman Adams, Walter Jenkins, Karl Rove nowadays. But, sigh, the Gipper himself had his finger on the trigger.
Boy, I would like to meet the person who told Reagan to drop a bomb on Colonel Kadafi : )