It doesn't seem possible that it was 45 years ago today, that a nut named John Hinckley, Jr., attempted - and nearly succeeded - the assassination of President Ronald Reagan. But 45 years today it has been. There are people alive today who have built well-established careers in politics and journalism who were not alive today when this earth-shaking event took place, and that seems even more impossible.
But it's true.
This is a day that will inevitably bring some "where were you when" reminiscences. I remember very clearly where I was. I was standing behind the Sporting Goods counter at the Woolco Department store in Cedar Falls, Iowa. I was 19. My boss, the Sporting Goods Manager, had gone off for a late lunch. We had spent a slow Monday morning stocking shelves and then smoking and joking behind the counter until he went off to the store's Red Grille to eat. It was only a few moments later he came running back: "The president's been shot!"
Customers and employees alike crowded into the store's Electronics department to watch on one 27" tube television that was hooked to an antenna on the roof of the store; we all stood, entranced, watching as things developed, none of us knowing whether the president was alive or dead, or what would happen next.
It was one of those moments where the world held its breath.
Richard Allen was Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs when the horrible event happened. He later described where he was and what he was doing when that fateful moment came:
We were in the Roosevelt Room, meeting about the next steps in the regulatory relief effort. We literally walked out of the Roosevelt Room and a lady comes out of the press office, screaming to the deputy press secretary, Larry Speakes: “Larry, Larry, the President has been shot at and Jim Brady has been shot!” It was pandemonium there, but it was controlled pandemonium. There were some reports later. They said we knew the President had been shot, it was serious and this and that. Not true. I was there.
[Dick] Darman picked up the phone immediately and asked for “Signal,” which is the White House military switchboard. “What’s going on?” About that time Jim Baker arrived. Baker grabbed the phone from him, and said, “I don’t understand this. If he’s fine, if he’s okay, why are they going to GW [George Washington University] Hospital? I don’t understand this.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw [David] Gergen running across. He had Meese in tow and then [Michael] Deaver came running in. They threw the phone down, ran, jumped in the car—they’d brought the car around front—and took off for GW.
That's what would happen, of course. That was a moment when Washington suddenly kicked into overdrive, a moment when a seemingly routine day for the president turned into something else entirely, a day when the administration which was less than a year into the first term reoiled in shock, and a day when everyone else stopped in their tracks.
Here is, for my money, the difference between 45 years ago and today. Mr. Allen also described the reaction by the Democratic House Speaker, Tip O'Neill:
So Tip came down, he did go in, and it was rather poignant. I stayed in the room. Mrs. Reagan, I think she slipped out. I don’t think she was in there. But Tip got down on his knees next to the bed and said a prayer for the President and he held his hand and kissed him and they said a prayer together. One about, what is it? Walking by still waters, the psalm-The 23rd psalm. The Speaker stayed there quite a while. They never talked too much. I just heard him say the prayer, then I heard him say, God bless you, Mr. President, we’re all praying for you. The Speaker was crying. The President still, I think, was a little, he was obviously sedated, but I think he knew it was the Speaker because he said, I appreciate you coming down, Tip. He held his hand, sat there by the bed and held his hand for a long...
Can you imagine that today? If a bullet struck President Trump, fates forfend, would Hakeem Jeffries say a prayer at the president's bedside? Or would he lead a parade of leftist whack-jobs dancing in the streets?
I think we all know the answer to that.
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President Reagan was, perhaps, the most transformative president of the 20th century. But there's a key difference between 1981 and today. Things then, as Speaker O'Neill so eloquently demonstrated, were still more civil. When an event like this occurred, the Democrat Speaker put aside political difference in a show of non-partisan human concern, not to mention shock and horror that such a thing could happen in the United States. That's as it should be. The other difference is that John Hinckley, Jr. was apparently not motivated by politics so much as by a twisted obsession with the actress, Jodie Foster.
But the two assassination attempts on then-candidate Donald Trump? Those were, or would have been blatant political assassinations - as was the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The differences between now and then are so stark, so shocking, that it beggars description - and yet examine it and describe it we must.
45 years ago today, the world very nearly changed. In the summer of 2024, with the attack on then-candidate Trump, it did.
So, where were you 45 years ago today?
