Most of all, it was a competition in truth-telling (or falsifying), a Cold War duel in credibility occurring amid a mounting pileup of classified information, exposes, and oxymoronic jargon that would eventually donate euphemistic doublespeak terms like dual hegemony, limited nuclear war, and the slogan win the peace to the American language.
There were lots of credibility problems during the Cold War.
Everyone was very credible during the Cold War.