The Kennedy Half-Century (69 page)

Personally and politically, in the oddest kind of yin and yang, the Reagan White House and the Kennedy White House would complement each other. LBJ, Nixon, Ford, and Carter labored in JFK’s long shadow. Reagan enthusiastically sought to forge a legacy partnership, using selective policies and a warm bond with President Kennedy’s surviving family.

The release of the fifty-two remaining American hostages by Iran on inauguration day helped President Reagan get off to a hopeful start. In a final insult to the departing chief executive they had helped to destroy, the Iranians had made sure the hostages did not leave their control until a few minutes after Carter had left office. In a conciliatory gesture, Reagan asked Carter to greet the ex-hostages in Germany. A celebratory inaugural evening on January 20, 1981, featured Frank Sinatra, once one of JFK’s closest Hollywood pals, as chairman of the inaugural committee. The many other stars in attendance
or performing for the Reagans reminded some of Camelot—though not the seamier side that saw Sinatra facilitate the extramarital affair between Kennedy and Sam Giancana’s mistress, Judith Campbell.

Like Carter, Reagan chose JFK’s Resolute desk for the Oval Office. As the president settled in, observers noticed that similarities in style linked Kennedy and Reagan. Both had a wicked sense of humor and enjoyed joke telling, some of it off-color, using it to break the ice in groups large and small. By nature, both enjoyed the social side of the presidency, welcoming legislative leaders and Washington’s grandees to parties and after-hours drinks. The contrast with Jimmy Carter, who did not enjoy schmoozing and preferred quiet work and family time, was unambiguous. Reagan and Kennedy focused on the big picture, the top priorities, and left the details to staff. And both had a firm, realistic grasp of what they wanted to accomplish. Unlike JFK, though, Reagan had a faithful marriage to, and a full partner in, Nancy Davis Reagan, and he would soon need her strength in overcoming a personal and national nightmare with echoes of Dallas.

Ronald Reagan’s presidency nearly ended before it had really begun. On Monday, March 30, 1981, Reagan left the White House and arrived around 1:50 P.M. at the Washington Hilton hotel to address a large group of AFL-CIO representatives. An uneventful speech followed, and Reagan made his way out at 2:27 P.M. through a side passage. The presidential limousine was just ten yards from the door, and a small press contingent waited on the exit’s side to film Reagan and shout a few questions. Reagan turned toward them, smiled, and waved, but didn’t stop (fortunately, since that would have made him an easier target). In that instant, shots rang out from the press line. John Hinckley, Jr., had managed to insinuate himself in the knot of reporters and photographers, armed with a Röhm .22-caliber revolver loaded with “Devastator” exploding cartridges.
¹³
Uncannily, the gun had been purchased in a Dallas pawnshop, a mere mile from Dealey Plaza.
¹⁴
Hinckley managed to get off six shots in 1.7 seconds before being subdued by bystanders and Secret Service personnel. In addition to wounding a Secret Service agent, a D.C. policeman, and Reagan’s press secretary, James Brady, Hinckley shot the president by means of a bullet that ricocheted off the limousine and hit Reagan in his left underarm, as he was still in midwave while being pushed into the bulletproof car. This one-in-a-hundred shot was nearly enough to kill Reagan, as the bullet hit a rib, tore into a lung, and lodged a mere inch from his heart. Brady, shot through the head, was disabled for life. The agent and policeman, though seriously wounded, recovered.
¹⁵

Just as in Dallas, the assassination’s events occurred in the blink of an eye. Only those closest to Kennedy’s car immediately knew the awful truth on November 22, 1963, and on March 30, 1981, even Reagan and his Secret
Service agents in the limo did not at first realize that the president had been hit. While speeding back to the White House, Reagan started coughing up red blood, thought at first to have been a result of a rib broken in pushing him hard into the backseat. The right call—to go to George Washington University Hospital—was made by Jerry Parr, head of Reagan’s Secret Service detail, the man who had shoved the president into the limo just in time to avoid a possible shot to Reagan’s head. As in the case of JFK, the car reached the hospital in about five minutes.
¹⁶

Had they gone back to the White House, Reagan probably would have died. Walking into the hospital, the president nearly collapsed from internal bleeding and was rushed to treatment for critically low blood pressure. Once stabilized, the surgery began to remove the bullet—which was not then known to be a Devastator and could have exploded during the operation. Before the surgery, a distraught Nancy Reagan had arrived. Mrs. Reagan’s recollections of her trip to GW Hospital included a flashback to Dallas: “As my mind raced, I flashed to scenes of Parkland Memorial Hospital in Texas, and the day President Kennedy was shot. I had been driving down San Vicente Boulevard in Los Angeles when a bulletin came over the car radio. Now, more than seventeen years later, I prayed that history would not be repeated, that Washington would not become another Dallas. That my husband would live.” She could have added, “That I would not become the next Jackie Kennedy.” Mrs. Reagan never spoke about the assassination attempt with Mrs. Kennedy, who did not call or write Mrs. Reagan during the period of the president’s shooting and recovery. Possibly it was too painful a memory for Mrs. Kennedy to invoke.
¹⁷

Upon seeing his wife in the hospital, Reagan quipped in his usual self-deprecating way, “Honey, I forgot to duck.” Shortly before being anesthetized, Reagan looked up at his doctors and said, “Please tell me you’re Republicans!” The head surgeon replied, “Mr. President, today we are all Republicans.”
¹⁸
Given Reagan’s age and the seriousness of the wounds, it was touch-and-go for a while, with a difficult recovery behind the scenes. The president was unable to return to the White House for thirteen days, and once there, was still mending for weeks more.
¹⁹
The nation was not told at the time how badly off Reagan had been, and he put on the actor’s face whenever out in public. Although he was back making speeches by the end of April, Reagan was on a reduced schedule of activity for months, and some felt his full vigor did not return until the autumn.

Meanwhile, the nation was in shock. At first, the public was told that Reagan was unharmed. Shortly thereafter came the dreadful truth, and real fear that Reagan would die from a gunshot wound. The confusion and contradictory announcements—including a widely broadcast claim that Jim Brady had
died—led many to suspect that we were purposely not being given all the facts. In yet another echo of 1963, Vice President Bush was in Texas, and some speculated that he was being rushed back to Washington to take control. Bush’s absence from D.C. led to the famous not-quite-right declaration by Secretary of State Alexander Haig that he, Haig, was next in line and “in control” at the White House.
²⁰

Reagan’s midday assassination attempt generated immediate comparisons to JFK’s murder in Dallas. Regardless of partisan affiliation, Americans were in total disbelief that this could have happened again.
²¹
Just as with Kennedy, many wondered about the motive of the assassin. Like all presidents, Reagan had many domestic and international opponents who may have nursed grievances about the 1980 election results. International intrigue was never far from our minds in the era of superpower confrontation. Could foreign agents be involved? The Cold War was still icy and Reagan had been fiercely anti-Soviet and anti-Cuban. And then there was Iran, whose hatred of the Great Satan was undiminished by the transfer of power from Carter to Reagan.

But it quickly became apparent that there were no complicated plots, second shooters, or grassy knolls attached to this sordid event. John Hinckley was more akin to Garfield’s loony killer Charles Guiteau than to Lincoln’s cause-motivated John Wilkes Booth. Mentally ill, Hinckley had stalked both Carter and Reagan in an attempt to impress the actress Jodie Foster, his imagined girlfriend. That Hollywood’s president would be felled by an assassin trying to win over a Tinseltown star was among the more bizarre aspects of the case. Foster had played an underage prostitute in the 1976 movie
Taxi Driver
, and the film had become a Hinckley obsession. The attempted assassination of a senator running for president was part of the plot, and in Hinckley’s warped mind, a similar effort in real life against a sitting president would make him a national figure worthy of Foster’s affections.

Hinckley was eventually found not guilty by reason of insanity—a highly controversial decision—and he has mainly remained in mental institutions for most of the last thirty years.
²²
When Hinckley appeared in court about a month after the shootings, he was forced to wear a bulletproof vest, and spectators underwent a triple security check, two metal detectors, and a frisking. Authorities were clear on their motive: to prevent “another Jack Ruby” from killing the accused.
²³
Hinckley was not the only one to receive extra protection. Almost immediately after the attempted assassination, temporary Secret Service protection was extended once more to Senator Ted Kennedy.
²⁴
There were no specific threats, but the Capitol Hill police and Secret Service anticipated the possibility of a deranged copycat being “inspired” to take action.

Not unexpectedly, the Secret Service insisted that its procedures had not been at fault on March 30. The Service’s spokesman, Jack Warner, noted that
the agents “were competing with a bullet” and “the fact that we live in a democracy has to be taken into account.” A few days after Reagan was shot, Warner told a reporter, “We do not at this time anticipate any changes in procedure.”
²⁵
Reagan’s close friend and White House counselor Edwin Meese (later U.S. attorney general) noted he had known the president for many years and he would not lower his public profile on account of his nearfatal experience. Neither Warner nor Meese properly calculated the determination of Nancy Reagan, who, according to former White House aide Mike Deaver, gathered key staffers and Secret Service officials together and demanded improvements in presidential security.
^26
af

Whether that discussion happened or not, the Secret Service eventually accepted that changes were in order, just as they had done after Dallas. The failure to have an agent check press credentials and watch spectators at the Washington Hilton rope line, or to have the president’s exit more carefully shielded, was nearly fatal. In a July 1981 report on the assassination attempt, the Treasury Department, which supervises the Secret Service, admitted that the Warren Commission’s recommendations for improving the Service were never fully implemented. Greater protection would require “significantly increased manpower and financial resources” as well.
²⁷
At the Washington Hilton—known to this day inside the Secret Service as “the Hinckley Hilton”—the president is now driven into a special interior entrance before disembarking. In fact, whenever possible, especially at unsecured sites, presidents since Reagan avoid walking in full view of unscreened people; most present-day presidential arrivals and departures are “covered” and unseen, with presidents shielded from unanticipated attacks.

As with Lee Harvey Oswald, the FBI had not connected the dots—and quickly the Secret Service tried to shift blame to the Bureau. Hinckley had been arrested in October 1980 at the Nashville airport by alert screeners for the illegal possession of firearms, specifically three revolvers, a box of .22-caliber ammunition, and a pair of handcuffs in his luggage. A judge fined Hinckley $62.50 and let him go on his way. Even though President Carter was in town for a campaign stop, the FBI never questioned Hinckley closely or reported the incident to the Secret Service. Sometimes, a coincidence is more than a happenstance, and that was the case with Hinckley and Carter together in Nashville.
²⁸

Mrs. Reagan was so distraught over nearly losing her husband that she consulted an astrologer, Joan Quigley, about the president’s schedule; events would be postponed or canceled to accommodate the astrologer’s advice.
Quigley’s assistance was not known until 1988, when embittered ex-Reagan chief of staff Don Regan, who had been fired by the Reagans, released a book.
²⁹
But as questionable a “science” as astrology is, few Americans faulted the traumatized First Lady when her habit became public. Understandably, Mrs. Reagan did not think she could fully trust the Secret Service alone to keep her husband safe.

The Secret Service’s resistance to change and defensive justification of its “procedures” in the face of obvious evidence that they did not work is typical of bureaucracies everywhere. It is true, as President Kennedy once said, “If anyone wants to do it [kill me], no amount of protection is enough. All a man needs is a willingness to trade his life for mine.”
³⁰
But as the country learned in both 1963 and 1981, the Secret Service is obligated to work ever harder to make its most valuable protected official as safe as humanly possible. Every security slipup is potentially fatal. Presidents know this, and while they do not usually express concern for their safety publicly, they are aware of the dangers. It is the First Family that suffers the most, though. Both Mrs. Reagan and son Ron Jr. separately urged President Reagan not to seek a second term, fearing further attempts on his life.
³¹