How would you analyze President Reagan's Brandenburg Gate address?

Reagan's famous speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate
and the Berlin Wall in 1987 has been often quoted and the clip replayed over and over as
a pivotal point in the Cold War, where the leader of the "free world", Reagan, issued a
direct challenge to his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev to "Tear down this
wall".

But the speech itself is not that significant in my
opinion.  It is, like most political speeches, largely symbolic.  And while standing in
front of the Berlin Wall in solidarity with NATO ally West Germany, as John F. Kennedy
had once done, makes for great political theater, it is still
theater.

In the end, the Wall was torn down by the Germans
themselves, and only after a popular revolution in their own country.  It wasn't because
Reagan asked them to (and it happened two years later).  Reagan is often, in my opinion,
given too much credit for "winning the Cold War", but I do love that speech, and from a
political standpoint, it was very effective.