foreign policy issues. he was now crediting him with a breakthrough insight that changed the calculus of the cold war. >> i realized that what reagan had done without a grand master plan was to challenge what, at the time, was called the brezhnev doctrine, and that was "whenever we take over a country, it becomes a communist, it's ours." and all of a sudden, what reagan had done is to challenge that and to say, "no, you don't get to keep what you got. we're gonna challenge your possessions wherever they are." and i thought, "this is a really good idea. and i'm gonna give it a name." >> he invented the reagan doctrine, not reagan, and now everyone has got to have a doctrine. >> [ chuckles ] yeah. >> charles has made it mandatory to come up with a doctrine for every president. >> but even after reagan's 49-state landslide, krauthammer was still not sure what to make of reagan the man, who he met at the white house in 1986.