anyway, I think it was a slip up, like when he said "gerald ford was a communist" instead of congressman, and in this case "stupid things" instead of "stuborn things" as john adams said.

Yep. I read his speechwriters wrote it as "stubborn things" but Reagan (probably in the initial stages of alzheimers) flubbed the line. What made it ironic was Reagan's infamous disregard for facts. One of my favorite Reagan stories was the speech he gave in 1983 to a roomful of Congressional Medal of Honor winners.

"A B-17 coming back across the channel from a raid over Europe, badly shot by anti-aircraft. . . The young ball-turret gunner was wounded, and they couldn't get him out
of the turrret there while flying.

"But over the channel, the plane began to lose altitude, and the commander had to order his men to bail out. And as the men started to leave the plane, the last one to leave -- the boy, understandably, knowing he was being left behind to go down with the plane, cried out in terror -- the last man to leave the plane saw the commander sit down on the floor. He took the boy's hand and said, 'Never mind, son. We'll ride it down together.' Congressional Medal of Honor, posthumously awarded."

That was Reagan, trying to pass off as factual a story about a fictional Congressional Medal of Honor winner to a roomful of real CMoH winners. According to subsequent media reports, some of them were not amused.

Reminds me of a joke. A doctor says to an old guy. "I've got very bad news. You've got cancer and you've got alzheimers.

"Well," says the old guy. "At least I don't have cancer."