This traditionalism hobbled Democrats and Republicans alike. During those years I recall attending at least three press breakfasts held at the Arms Control Association at which Paul Warnke and Spurgeon Keeney—two prominent arms-control advocates and former officials in the Carter administration—among others, brutally criticized Reagan's then-latest disarmament proposal on the grounds that it was obviously designed to be rejected by the Soviets. A few days later, Gorbachev would accept it. These press conferences marked, to many, the bankruptcy of conventional arms-control theory.