From "Honey, I Forgot to Duck"
Asked before he became the 40th President whether he had a strategy for dealing with the Soviet Union and communism, Ronald Reagan replied, "We win. They lose." Some thought him passive and disengaged in those days. But the man I discovered in five years of research was a gambler -- a bold, determined guy. He came to the White House with a few simple ideas about reducing taxes to lessen the size and role of government, confronting communism, and leading America back to the romantic remembrances of his boyhood. He imagined a future where any American could walk proudly and safely down the world's meanest streets. Ironically, his greatest personal test came on a Washington street some 70 days after his inauguration.-- Richard Reeves
Monday, March 30, 2:25 p.m.
On March 30, 1981, Ronald Reagan was leaving the Washington Hilton after addressing a conference of the AFL-CIO's Building Construction Trades Department. He left the hotel by a side entrance, waving to a small crowd. As he turned toward Michael Putzel, an Associated Press reporter who had called, "Mr. President," he heard a pop-pop-pop sound. "What the hell's that?" Reagan said to Jerry Parr, the Secret Service agent in charge of his guard unit. Parr was already moving, tackling the President, pushing him toward the ground as another agent, Ray Shaddick, forced both Reagan and Parr into the back of the President's limo, onto the floor.
"Take off," Parr yelled to the driver, Agent Drew Unrue.
Reagan was in great pain, the worst he had ever felt. "Jerry," he said, "get off. I think you've broken one of my ribs."
"Rawhide is returning," Parr shouted to Unrue. "Get the President to the White House."
The agent slid onto a jump seat. Reagan climbed up onto the backseat as Parr ran his hands along the President's side and back, feeling for blood or injury. The pain was paralyzing. Reagan sat stiffly. He coughed up bright red, frothy blood. After a pause he said, "I think I've cut my mouth."
"Go to GW!" Parr yelled now, meaning George Washington University Hospital. Sirens screamed around the limo. The police had already cleared the route to the White House along Connecticut Avenue to 17th Street, but at Pennsylvania Avenue, Unrue turned toward GW, about five blocks away.
David Prosperi, assistant to Press Secretary James Brady, ran back into the Hilton, looking for a phone. He called the deputy press secretary, Larry Speakes, gasping as he said, "Shots have been fired. Brady's down. I don't know about the President." Brady was on the ground in a pool of his own blood. A Secret Service agent and a Washington policeman had also been hit.
2:35 p.m.
As the limo reached GW, Reagan was in pain and had trouble breathing. But he was able to stand and tell Parr, "I'll walk in." He made it 40 feet until he was inside the emergency entrance. Then he sagged to the floor.
Parr and Shaddick carried the President to trauma bay #5A, where nurses and doctors cut off his clothes. Reagan's mouth and teeth were red from bubbling blood. "I can't breathe," he gasped. The doctors made a quick incision and inserted a tube into his throat. But with his systolic blood pressure reading down to 78, compared to his normal reading of 140, he passed out.
Doctors made three intravenous incisions to pump in new blood and liquids. The frothy blood meant lung damage, a collapsed left lung. Catheters were inserted in an effort to drain the blood in the lung. It came out dark, steadily pouring out as doctors tried to reinflate the lung.
"I don't hear anything," a nurse said, feeling for the President's pulse.
Oh, my God. We've lost him, Parr said silently. Lord, let him live.
The nurse, Kathy Paul, and a surgical resident, Wesley Price, noticed the small slit under Reagan's left armpit, a half-inch long. The President had been shot. Another nurse, Marisa Mize, held his hand. Reagan came out of it.
"Who's holding my hand?" he asked. "Does Nancy know about us?"
Michael Deaver, deputy chief of staff, called Jim Baker, the chief of staff, just as Speakes ran to Baker's office. Baker called several Cabinet members, telling them to come to the White House situation room. Staff members were already crowding into the small room.
Nancy Reagan, who had been having lunch at the White House, was at the hospital less than ten minutes later. The President opened his eyes and saw her. "Honey," he said, "I forgot to duck." It was what heavyweight boxing champ Jack Dempsey said after he lost the championship to Gene Tunney, when Reagan was a teenager back in Illinois.
Meanwhile, press assistant Lyn Nofziger arrived at the hospital with Jim Baker, counselor Ed Meese, and Speakes. The three had left just as Secretary of State Al Haig arrived at the situation room and took the big chair at the end of the conference table. Nofziger asked a few questions at the hospital, then called Ed Rollins, an assistant back at the White House, saying, "The guy's in really bad shape. They don't know if he's gonna make it or not."
Larry Speakes was taking notes: "Doctors believe bleeding to death. Think we're going to lose him. Rapid loss of blood pressure."
"Has the Vice President been called?" Haig asked in the situation room. George H. W. Bush was aboard Air Force Two, flying from the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport to Austin for a speech. Yes, Bush had been called, by his press secretary, Pete Teeley. Haig was patched through to the plane.
"This is Secretary Haig, Mr. Vice President ..." He could not really hear Bush on the scrambled ground-to-air call, finally shouting, "George! This is Al Haig," telling him he should return to Washington.
"We're All Republicans Today"
At 3:10 p.m., the White House press office released a short statement saying that contrary to earlier reports, the President had been shot but was in stable condition. Haig ordered the State Department to prepare a cable for United States ambassadors around the world: "Flash. Please deliver following message. The government in Washington continues to carry out its obligations to its people and its allies."A Secret Service man then called Treasury Secretary Donald Regan out of the room. Regan came back to say that the gunman was a 25-year-old white man from Colorado named John W. Hinckley, Jr. He had a Texas Tech student identification card in his wallet. "This is apt to be a loner," he added.
3:24 p.m.
At GW, someone was asking the President for permission to operate, to stop the internal bleeding, to find the bullet. There was no exit wound.
Reagan was wheeled into the OR at 3:24 p.m. Senior surgeon Benjamin Aaron, GW's chief of thoracic surgery, widened the incision under the President's armpit, then inserted another catheter. The bullet, a hollow .22 caliber slug meant to explode in the body, was flattened like a dime, apparently because it had ricocheted off the bulletproof Presidential limo before hitting one of Reagan's ribs and being redirected. It was an inch behind the heart. Aaron drew it out. The chest cavity was filled with blood. Reagan had lost almost half the blood in his body, four or five pints. He was dying, kept alive by transfusions of blood and other fluids. Aaron decided on immediate surgery. Reagan opened his eyes as the surgeons made ready and said, "I hope you're a Republican."
Joseph Giordano, chief of GW's trauma unit, was not. He said, "Mr. President, we're all Republicans today."
At the White House, more people crowded into the situation room. There, the Secretary of State had taken charge. The highest officials in the land were getting their information just as ordinary Americans were, by watching TV. They were arguing in polite but tense terms about what should happen before the Vice President returned to Washington. Haig and Caspar Weinberger, Secretary of Defense, were in quiet confrontation over the ready status of U.S. military forces around the world, when David Gergen, communications director, interrupted, "Al, a quick question. We need some sense, better sense of where the President is. Is he under sedation now?"
"He's not on the operating table," Haig replied.
"He is on the operating table!" Gergen said.
"So the ..." Haig began, "the helm is right here. And that means right in this chair for now, constitutionally, until the Vice President gets here."
This was not correct. The Presidential Succession Act of 1947 established the chain of command as first the Vice President, then the Speaker of the House and the president pro tem of the Senate -- all elected officials -- followed by members of the Cabinet in the order their departments had been established, beginning with State. Military command authority, however, went from the President, to the Vice President, then to the Secretary of Defense.
Two miles away, in the Capitol, there were just two Senators on the floor of the Senate, Republican Majority Leader Howard Baker of Tennessee and Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, a Democrat. Baker received word of the shooting and announced it, saying that the President was apparently in good shape. Moynihan rose to say, "I was glad to hear how well the President is recovering, but there's something larger at stake. I do not know that in our time we have seen so great a display. It makes us proud of our President."
Reagan, though, was still on the operating table, fighting for his life.
6:20 p.m.
The surgery was now finished. Still under anesthesia and on a respirator, the President remained under close observation. Ten minutes later, Air Force Two landed at Andrews Air Force Base and taxied into a hangar. Bush was driven home. Then he came back out into another car and headed for the White House. "The more normal things are, the better," he said.
The President began to regain consciousness at 7:30 p.m. A half-hour later, he was given morphine for chest pain. At one point he asked whether the shooter had been caught: "Why did he do it? What's his beef?"
As he began to talk, the first official medical briefing was being held at GW. After meeting with Lyn Nofziger, Dr. Dennis O'Leary, the dean of clinical affairs, said with authority, "The President was alert and awake, with stable vital signs. He was at no time in serious danger."
Other physicians felt that the performance was more politics than medicine. Reagan was being pumped with painkilling drugs that were also scrambling his brain. In addition to morphine, codeine, Demerol and Valium, the anesthesia, Pentothal, would be metabolized over a week or so.
The Vice President came into the press briefing room at 8:20 p.m. to say, "I can reassure this nation that the government is functioning fully." When he left, Speakes and Gergen took questions. One reporter asked, "What precautions are being taken that Haig is not going to try a coup d'état?"
Meanwhile, Reagan was writing notes on pink paper with a felt-tipped pen. One read, "All in all, I'd rather be in Philadelphia" -- an old line from comedian W. C. Fields when he was asked what he wanted on his gravestone.
Soon after midnight, Dr. O'Leary had another statement: "The President is obviously able to function. He can probably put in a full-time day today as long as he gets a nap this afternoon."
The President was awake and in pain most of the night. At 2:15 a.m., after being given more morphine, he was taken off the respirator, but was still unable to speak because of the endotracheal tube in his throat. Then, when Reagan heard a technician say, "This is it," he became agitated.
He scrawled, "What does he mean?"
A nurse said it meant they were ready to remove the tube. That was at 2:50 a.m.
One of the next notes from Reagan said, "Where am I?"
"Mightier Than the Bullet"
Tuesday, March 31The wounded President had been in the hospital for less than 36 hours when The Washington Post hit the streets just before midnight on March 31. The lead headline of the paper, dated April 1, read, "Reagan, in Good Spirits, Making a Fast Recovery." The Washington Star was more explicit: "Reagan Works from Hospital: Sees visitors, signs bill on dairy prices, 'business as usual,' White House insists." That was how the story was told across the country. An overnight national Washington Post/ABC News poll indicated that the President's approval rating had jumped from 62% to 73%.
Baker, Meese and Deaver had brought the 18-page White House news summary, put together each weekday by the press secretary's office, to the recovery room for what was announced as a regular 7 a.m. planning meeting -- except that it was being held in the intensive care unit. The windows were covered so that no one, gawker or assassin, could peer in.
Reagan had dozed on and off through the dark morning hours of Tuesday, March 31. Oxygen tubes were clipped into his nose. By 6:45 he had been propped up in bed and could brush his teeth. Deaver began the meeting by telling the President not to worry, that the White House was still functioning like a well-oiled machine. Reagan's response was breathless and garbled, but it was a good line: "What makes you think I'd be happy to hear that?"
The event of the day was the President's signing of a piece of legislation, S. 509, canceling some price supports for dairy farmers. He received morphine just before that, and his signature was so shaky that reporters questioned whether it was a forgery. But one newspaper, The Los Angeles Herald Examiner, ran the signature across a full page, with the headline "President Reagan's Pen Is Mightier Than the Bullet."
That day, sleeping on and off, Reagan wrote more notes -- "Will I be able to ride my horses again? Will I be able to cut brush?" He also saw his wife and children, who had flown in from California and from Omaha, Nebraska. At midday, White House physician Daniel Ruge told him that Jim Brady, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy and Washington police officer Thomas Delahanty had been shot, and that Brady had severe brain damage.
"Oh damn, oh damn," Reagan said, his eyes filling with tears. "We must pray. That means four bullets hit. Good Lord."
At nine o'clock Tuesday night, Reagan was moved to a suite on the third floor of the hospital. He was in pain and still needed oxygen to breathe.
The Wednesday morning papers -- and the White House summary -- carried the news that gunman John Hinckley was an obviously disturbed young man who'd arrived in Washington on March 29 by bus. He had a ticket to New Haven, Connecticut, because he wanted to see Jodie Foster, a movie star who was a student at Yale. On Monday he saw Reagan's schedule in The Washington Star, including the speech at the Hilton. At 12:45, he wrote an unmailed letter to Foster, saying he intended to kill the President to prove his love for her: "I would abandon the idea if only I could win your heart."
Amazing Recovery
By Wednesday, April 1, the Vice President was calling the President's recovery "amazing." That word dominated headlines around the country. At the hospital, Dr. O'Leary declared that Reagan was certainly never in danger of dying. The White House began issuing three daily "Notice to the Press" accounts of what the President ate, beginning with a Wednesday breakfast of "fresh orange juice, honeydew melon, two soft-boiled eggs, whole wheat toast and decaffeinated coffee" -- and said he walked 50 yards down a hall with his wife.When he was helped back into bed, Nancy Reagan and her stepdaughter, Maureen, daughter of the President and his first wife, Jane Wyman, sat quietly in the next room, hearing the thumping noise made by a nurse who was pounding the President's chest to bring up phlegm. Then they talked, softly, and held hands, ending years of suspicion and estrangement.
"He's so sick, oh, he may die," the daughter told a friend.
By late the next day, Thursday, April 2, the President was running a fever of almost 103. His white blood count was up; the color had drained from his face. He was spitting up blood. GW doctors put him back on antibiotics, and a chest x-ray showed cloudy areas along the bullet's track through his lung. "We've been living in a dream world," said Dr. Aaron, who told the Reagans that he was considering removing the damaged lobe of the lung.
The fever was still at 102 on Friday morning, but dropped at midday. White House photographer Michael Evans was called in to take the first post-operation pictures. One was released to the press that night. It showed the President in a bathrobe, a little bent over, smiling and holding hands with Nancy. By then his temperature was climbing again to 101.
It was a busy medical day, with new x-rays and a flexible fiber bronchoscopy snake inserted through Reagan's throat to clear the left lung of blood particles. Dr. Aaron was saying the President would probably be discharged early the next week, but other physicians were more worried, believing Reagan had developed pneumonia. He slept through most of Saturday and Sunday, treated intravenously with stronger antibiotics.
The world was also busier that weekend. Soviet troops and tanks, along with units from other Warsaw Pact countries, were on the borders of Poland -- two Red Army divisions stationed inside the country. They were involved in "maneuvers" and "war games" that had already lasted three weeks. The Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, flew to Prague on Sunday to make an unusual appearance at a Czechoslovak Communist Party Congress.
Warnings of the "gravest consequences for East-West relations" were issued from the White House, along with statements that the President was conferring with aides as the crisis deepened. American television networks carried live coverage of speeches by Lech Walesa, the Solidarity leader, and a new Polish premier. During one speech, an intern checking Reagan's room noticed that the President was sitting up, watching cartoons on TV.
On Monday, a week after the shooting, Reagan's fever was just below 100. X-rays showed his left lung starting to clear up. He was in good spirits, feeling well enough for a meeting with Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill. Arriving at midday, O'Neill was shocked. He saw a sick old man in terrible pain. Reagan was feverish, obviously medicated. Doped up, O'Neill thought. He suddenly realized the President had been near death. They shook hands and O'Neill gave Reagan a book of Irish jokes. Then he left.
The chest x-rays looked a little better on Tuesday, April 7. On Wednesday, Reagan was exhausted, but worked for more than an hour, writing a little piece about his America. One of the memos that got through to him, delivered by Deaver, said that the White House had promised a July 4th message from the President for Parade magazine. Deaver thought the President might want to do it himself and that it might cheer him. He was right.
In strong handwriting, Reagan wrote of the boyish thrill of blowing tin cans 30 feet into the air with firecrackers. Then: "Enough of nostalgia. Somewhere in our growing up we began to be aware of the birthday of our nation. I believed then and even more so today, the greatest nation on earth. That day [is] more than just the birthday of a nation. It commemorates the only true philosophical revolution in all history. Oh, there have been revolutions before and since. But [they have] exchanged one set of rulers for another. Ours changed the very concept of government. In this land it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights, that government is only a convenience. Happy 4th of July." God and country -- and Reagan!
Back in the Saddle
Eight Days LaterBy April 9 the President's fever was gone. In his 11 days in the hospital, he had lost a dozen pounds or so. Despite spokesmen saying he was "wolfing down" food, even Nancy was having trouble getting him to eat. Mrs. Reagan had friends from California transport soups -- split pea, turkey and hamburger soups, his favorites. That didn't work either. Reagan wanted to go home to the White House, and departure was set for Saturday, April 11.
Steven Weisman of The New York Times wrote the pool report for distribution to other reporters that morning: "The President, before leaving the hospital entrance, received warm applause from about 40 or 50 people inside. Reagan emerged with Nancy clutching his right arm and daughter Patti holding his left. He seemed pale and a little stiff but he was grinning broadly. Asked how he was feeling he said, 'Great ... great.' "
There was more cheering after the President arrived at the White House. He was wearing a red sweater, and a grin too. Upstairs, he collapsed into a chair, and that night in his diary he wrote: "Whatever happens now I owe my life to God and will try to serve him in every way I can."
On April 28, the President made his first public appearance since the shooting, a 9 p.m. speech to a joint session of Congress, on live television. "The place went nuts," said one commentator. Representatives and Senators stood and applauded, then cheered and whistled for three long minutes.
"Thanks to some very fine people, my health is much improved," Reagan said. "I'd like to be able to say that with regard to the health of the economy."
Then he got to specifics: "The House will choose between two different versions to deal with the economy. One is the measure offered by the House Budget Committee. The other is a bipartisan measure introduced by Congressman Phil Gramm of Texas and Del Latta of Ohio." The Administration, he said, would embrace Gramm-Latta.
"The answer to a government that's too big is to stop feeding its growth," he went on. "Government spending has been growing faster than the economy. The massive national debt we accumulated is the result of the government's high-spending diet. Well, it's time to change the diet."
Interrupted frequently by more cheering and applause, toward the end he said, "The poet Carl Sandburg wrote, 'The republic is a dream. Nothing happens unless first a dream.' That's what makes us, as Americans, different. We've always reached for a new spirit and aimed at a higher goal."
Back at the White House, the President said that he was amazed when he saw 40 or so Democrats standing and applauding. "Boy, that took guts," he said. He joked, "That reception was almost worth getting shot."
The Democratic Majority Leader of the House, Jim Wright of Texas, wrote in his diary that night: "We've just been outflanked and outgunned. The aura of heroism which has attended him since his wounding, deserved in large part by his demeanor under the duress of his physical ordeal, assured a tumultuous welcome. It was a deceptive, extremely partisan and probably very effective presentation."
Speaker Tip O'Neill said, "The President has become a hero. We can't argue with a man as popular as he is. I've been in politics a long time. I know when to fight and when not to fight."