re: Everyone here has lived through those times.
The current wisdom on Reagan and the Cold War today is that the Soviet Union spontaneously folded up for no particular reason, and that the dim and dozing Reagan just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Gorbachev walked off with a Nobel Prize for that one. To the best of my knowledge, Reagan wasn't even nominated.
That particular rewrite is already done. The beauty of a good historical rewrite is that many people, even those who supposedly lived through it, remember only the official version.