Killing Reagan (29 page)

The president is correct. Polls show Walter Mondale winning the debate in a landslide. Two mornings later, the
Wall Street Journal
will publish a story stating that 10 percent of all people over the age of seventy-five are senile. Reagan is seventy-three years old.

Even worse, years later medical studies will link invasive surgeries like the one Reagan endured after the assassination attempt to the eventual onset of memory loss.
5

“I didn't feel good about myself,” Reagan will confide in his diary during a weekend at Camp David to recover from the debate. “The press has been calling him the winner for two days now.”

But Ronald Reagan is not finished. He will have one last chance to convince Americans that he is still fit to be their leader.

That chance will come on October 21, in Kansas City.

 

25

M
UNICIPAL
A
UDITORIUM

K
ANSAS
C
ITY
, M
ISSOURI

O
CTOBER
21, 1984

7:00
P
.
M
.

The man who was nearly murdered three years ago is out for blood.

Ronald Reagan bounds onto the stage and takes his spot at the lectern, where he stands confident and poised. Despite it being evening, a time of day at which he often fades, the president looks crisp and attentive. As the contest gets under way, Walter Mondale stands on the opposite side of the stage, watching as Reagan fields a series of questions. The president does not like Mondale, thinking him a liar who has unfairly attacked his credibility. For Reagan, this second and last debate is personal. His answers now come easily. There is no sign of the stuttering or stammering from the first debate.

There is one question, however, that everyone in the audience knows is coming. Finally, after twenty minutes of debate, Henry Trewhitt of the
Baltimore Sun
gets to the heart of the matter: Is Ronald Reagan too old to be president?

Reagan stands ready to answer.

*   *   *

After the first debate, Nancy Reagan was livid—eager to apply blame on anyone but her Ronnie. “What have you done to my husband?” she screamed at Deputy Chief of Staff Michael Deaver. They were standing in the Presidential Suite at the Hyatt Regency in Louisville. “Whatever it was, don't do it again.”

The problem, Nancy quickly decided, is that the president is being bullied in the pre-debate prep sessions. His advisers, notably budget director David Stockman, often interrupt Reagan when he makes a mistake. It is well known in the White House that the troika of Ed Meese, James Baker, and Michael Deaver have a method of slowing down Oval Office meetings if the president does not understand a complex issue. Without insulting him, they diplomatically reframe the discussion until Reagan comprehends.

But there is no time for niceties while preparing for a presidential debate. Stockman is only doing his job, feeding the president facts so that he can easily rebut anything Walter Mondale might throw at him.

On October 17, during the initial debate prep for the final confrontation with Mondale, a newcomer observes the scene. From 2:06 to 4:36 in the afternoon, Reagan stands at a mock lectern in the Old Executive Office Building, fielding questions and arguing with Stockman, who stands at an opposite lectern playing the part of Walter Mondale. At one point, the normally polite Reagan barks “Shut up” at Stockman, filling the room with an embarrassing silence.

Tensions are high.

Clearly, something must change.

Afterward, Reagan returns to the White House, where he meets with the new observer. Roger Ailes is a stocky man with long sideburns. He is part of the so-called Tuesday Team, which has prepared the successful “Morning in America” commercials for Reagan. Ailes also worked for the Nixon administration and is known for his ability to stop chaos cold.

Michael Deaver makes the introduction. “Roger's here to help you with the debates.”

“What kind of help do I need?” Reagan responds. Though it is almost evening, Reagan shows no sign of fatigue, other than a slight hand and head tremor.

“You sort of wandered off the highway in the last debate. I'm gonna try and help you focus a little bit,” Ailes answers.

“That's a pretty good idea,” the president replies.

Roger Ailes agreed with Nancy Reagan that the president's debate problem had nothing to do with age or mental health. Instead, Reagan had been poorly prepared.

“You're giving him too many facts, too much bullshit that he can't use, you're interrupting him,” Ailes tells Deaver. “Remember, he's a guy who's used to working with one director, who kind of lays out what the purpose of the thing is, and then he does it. Right now, you got five or six or eight guys interrupting him, all trying to prove they're smarter than he is.”

So it is that Reagan's debate preparation is altered. Now it is just Ailes and Reagan, one on one. The president endures long bouts of “pepper sessions,” in which he has to answer question after question without reaching for obscure facts or numbers. Instead, he simply speaks from the heart.

Now, with just four days left to the second debate, the strategy seems to be working. The president is upbeat and optimistic. He works hard, rarely seeming to tire.

“When guys brief people for debates,” Ailes will later remember, “they want them to memorize what they say 'cause they're the expert.… I shifted him back to staying in territory he knew and not trying to memorize a bunch of crap that nobody would remember.”

Ailes's strategy has revitalized Reagan. “I can sum up the day in one sentence,” he writes in his diary on Saturday, October 20, the night before facing Mondale. “I've been working my tail off to master the four minute closing statement I want to make in the debate tomorrow night.”

On the same evening, the president and Ailes have a last-minute discussion about the debate.

“What are you gonna say if they ask you if you're too old for this job?” Ailes asks Reagan. The two men are standing in a White House hallway, walking to the elevator that will take Reagan back up to the second-floor residence.

Michael Deaver, Nancy Reagan, and all of the president's advisers have forbidden any talk about the age issue. But Reagan and Ailes are sure the question will be asked tomorrow night.

Reagan stops in his tracks. He blinks and looks hard at Ailes. “I have some ideas,” the president begins.

Reagan tells Ailes what he intends to say. The words are rough and need a rhythm if they are to be effective, but Ailes likes the tone. Once upon a time, Ronald Reagan would have written the line for himself. Even now, he still makes elaborate changes in the margins of the scripts his speechwriters give him. But with his mind filled with debate minutiae, Ailes offers to write the entire response for Reagan.

“Whatever they bring up about age,” he tells the president, “you go to this answer. You have to hit it specifically. Deliver it the way Bob Hope would. Don't move on the laugh line. If you want to get a drink of water or something and just stare at him, fine. But here's the line.”

“I got it, coach,” Reagan responds after hearing Ailes's retort.

*   *   *

As the final debate edges closer to a conclusion, the inevitable age question finally arrives.

Ronald Reagan is ready.

“Mr. President,” the balding, bespectacled Henry Trewhitt says, “I want to raise an issue that I think has been lurking out there for two or three weeks and cast it specifically in national security terms. You already are the oldest president in history. And some of your staff say you were tired after your most recent encounter with Mr. Mondale.”

Reagan is smiling.

Trewhitt continues: “I recall that President Kennedy had to go for days on end with very little sleep during the Cuban missile crisis. Is there any doubt in your mind that you would be able to function in such circumstances?”

The president waits a beat, surveying the room. He appears to be fully in command of the situation.

“I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign,” Reagan says casually, allowing the moment to build, taking great care not to rush the punch line. “I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience.”

The crowd erupts in laughter. Even Walter Mondale is laughing. Reagan looks down modestly. He knows that even though there are still forty-five minutes in the debate, he has already won.

*   *   *

Two weeks later, on November 6, in a historic landslide, Ronald Reagan is reelected president of the United States.
1

The next morning, Reagan celebrates the best way he knows how: with a four-day vacation at the ranch, Nancy in tow.

 

26

W
ASHINGTON
, DC

C
HRISTMAS
D
AY
, 1986

6:00
A
.
M
.

The would-be assassin will soon be a free man.

But only for today.

Escorted by the Secret Service, John Hinckley will spend the holiday at his parents' new home in Northern Virginia. Doctors here at St. Elizabeth's Hospital feel that Hinckley is making significant progress in dealing with his mental illness. They also believe that a day with his family will further the healing process. Jack and Jo Ann Hinckley have thrown themselves into their son's recovery, selling their Colorado home in order to move east. Each Tuesday afternoon, they attend therapy sessions with their son and a hospital psychiatrist. The Hinckleys are inspired by the advances John seems to be making. It appears that John Hinckley is “finding his voice,” as his father describes it, even getting elected ward president by his fellow patients.

The Hinckleys and the hospital staff, however, are unaware that their son still secretly conceals pictures of Jodie Foster in his room, which is forbidden. Even more disturbing is that John Hinckley is cultivating friendships through the mail with murderers. He has secretly become pen pals with convicted serial killer Ted Bundy, now awaiting electrocution in Florida for murdering two Florida State University sorority sisters and a twelve-year-old girl.

Hinckley is also corresponding with Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, imprisoned in California for attempting to assassinate Gerald Ford in 1975. Unbeknownst to his doctors or his parents, Hinckley asked Fromme to send him the address for the notorious murderer Charles Manson.
1

*   *   *

Shortly after daybreak, John Hinckley is walked down from his fourth-floor hospital ward by an attendant. He then passes through the locked front doors of St. Elizabeth's and is rendered to his parents. Two Secret Service agents are in charge of supervising the visit.

But it is not his parents with whom Hinckley is eager to spend time. No, it is his girlfriend, forty-year-old Washington socialite Leslie deVeau. Today will be the first time they have the chance to be alone since they met four years ago.

Like John Hinckley, Leslie is a cold-blooded criminal. She was sentenced to St. Elizabeth's after murdering her ten-year-old daughter, Erin, in 1982. In an unconscionable act, deVeau placed a shotgun against the sleeping child's back and pulled the trigger. She then turned the gun on herself, but it misfired. Instead of killing her, the blast tore off deVeau's left arm. Like Hinckley, she was declared not guilty by reason of insanity and placed in the mental hospital.

At a hospital Halloween party in 1982, Hinckley sidled up to the petite brunette and began flirting. “I'd ask you to dance if I danced,” he said. The two spent the rest of the party in deep conversation, sharing their life stories. Leslie deVeau, who comes from an old Washington, DC, family, did most of the talking. In vivid detail, she told Hinckley about how she'd murdered her daughter. When it came time for Hinckley to talk about his crime, he showed no remorse. Instead, he led deVeau to a hospital bulletin board where a newspaper clipping about his evil deed was posted.

“He was still operating under the delusion it made sense what he did,” deVeau would later remember. “That he was supposed to do this to prove his love for Jodie Foster.”

Although deVeau knew that Hinckley was still infatuated with the actress, her unlikely relationship with him blossomed. “I was lost until I met Leslie,” Hinckley will later write. “Leslie made me want to live again, and she is the sunshine of my life.”

Hinckley and deVeau resided on the same floor, but contact between them was restricted. Still, they found ways around the rules in order to communicate. They ate in the cafeteria at different times, but each furtively taped love letters underneath the dining table for the other to find. On the occasions that they actually saw each other in person, they used sign language to message “I love you.”

In time, deVeau was granted the special privilege of being let outside to wander the hospital grounds. Hinckley, who had no such privilege, would shout to her from a window, and she'd answer back. In this way they conversed, not at all concerned that the whole hospital could hear them.

A year before, in mid-1985, deVeau was granted an even greater privilege: doctors decided she should be released from St. Elizabeth's and be treated on an outpatient basis. Thus, she no longer sees John Hinckley on a daily basis but returns to the hospital to visit him on weekends, where they can talk face-to-face. They sit across from each other at a glass table on visiting day, holding hands and kissing, ignoring the other patients and their guests all around them. During these visits, deVeau confides that she is still haunted by the night that she shotgunned her daughter to death.

In turn, Hinckley confessed that despite his outward bravado and trademark smirk, he had nightmares about the day he shot Reagan. He went on to tell Leslie that he sometimes dreamed that he was in a wheelchair, like James Brady.