Agreed. It was always aspirational - no disagreement there. But people visiting the US from abroad in the 1980s and 1990s would never have thought to themselves: "They might detain me for something that I wrote that disparages Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, or Bill Clinton, so I better hide that." You can add Ford and Carter to that list as well. Hell, even George W. Bush wouldn't have done that.
That just wasn't a concern.