I remember that day distinctly. I was in sixth grade. I remember coming home from school and my Grandmother telling me what had happened. The autumn before, Reagan had been something of a hero to the 6th grade version of me — largely because I couldn’t believe that an American President would allow a bunch of foreigners to hold American citizens hostage — and I spent the rest of that afternoon and evening sitting in front of the television watching what passed for wall-to-wall media coverage in the early 80’s.
The one thing I will never forget about that day is watching the CBS coverage (for some reason, my family apparently believed in Dan Rather at that point in time) and their repeated replaying of the shooting footage throughout the afternoon and evening. It was something we would see repeated five years later during the Challlenger disaster when the shot of the Space Shuttle exploding would be replayed day after day after day. I remember the announcement that James Brady had died, a fact which later proved to be untrue. I remember Alexander Haig delcaring that he was “in control” at the White House (at the time of the shooting Vice President Bush was in flight to Texas) —- an assertion which was absurdly blown out of proportion by the media. I remember wondering what would happen next, a reaction that resurfaced many times after that from Challenger to Tiananmen to the fall of the Berlin Wall to 9/11.
What we didn’t know at the time was how serious the situation was. Media reports the following day joked about Reagan asking the doctors if they were Republicans before he went into surgery. The truth was that there was a bullet dangerously close to his lung, and for a 70 year old man that was a big deal. But he made it through.
I also remember the images from several weeks later……..of Ron in a bathrobe with Nancy at his side waving to the cameras from a hospital window. For a time, the nation thought it would be going through an ordeal that had happened less than twenty years in the past. When it was over, the Reagan Presidency was, in some sense, transformed. Even with the recession that gripped the nation through 1981 and 1982, Ronald Reagan seemed invincible.
Of course, the other side of the coin told another story. March 30, 1981 was only the beginning. Less than 45 days after Reagan was shot, Pope John Paul II was shot in what now was clearly an effort by the USSR to kill a man they deemed to be a threat. And, less than five months after that, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was assassinated in what was arguably the opening shot in the War on Terror.
The world has changed in many ways since that cold day in March when John Hinckley fired his gun. The one thing we should be grateful for, I think, is that he didn’t succeed in his efforts, because the world would be far worse off if Ronald Reagan had died that day.
The Washington Post has its own coverage of today’s anniversary.
Linked with Don Surber and Outside The Beltway
