43 Years Ago, I was Blocks Away When Reagan was Shot by John Hinckley
Does vitriolic rhetoric lead to violence?
At 23 years old, I attended a conference at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) in Washington, D.C. The meeting was on Monday, March 30, 1981, in a building north of Dupont Circle.
At lunch on the first day, the group learned President Reagan was speaking at the Washington Hilton. Since we had time for lunch, the group decided to walk to the hotel to catch a glimpse of “The Gipper.”
Within minutes of stepping onto the sidewalk, four large black sedans whizzed past at high speed. I don’t remember if they had sirens, but I do remember they were sedans, as I’m not even sure SUVs existed yet. We wondered what in the heck that was, but we kept walking. There was a police presence within two blocks of the hotel, and we couldn’t get close.
Unlike yesterday afternoon, when three friends texted me to turn on the TV, alerting me to the attempted assassination of former President Trump, there was little information in 1981 even blocks away on the ground. We couldn’t get close enough to the hotel to speak to anyone, so we turned around and went for lunch. Curious, I found a pay phone and called my Mom collect.
She had the television on, already knew what had happened, and was glad to hear from me. Of course, Mom had no way of knowing I was anywhere near the shooting (and had we left earlier, we might have been on the scene), so maybe she did have a Mother’s intuition.
I was in D.C. all week, having added vacation days to tour a city I’d already visited twice in my young life, in 1966 and 1975. I stood in the crowd outside George Washington University Hospital, watching people throw jelly beans (Reagan’s favorite candy) at First Lady Nancy Reagan as she entered the hospital.
I went to Congress and was on an elevator with Senator Ted Kennedy, which struck me as odd considering the deaths of Kennedy’s brothers. I was not on the Senators-only elevator; Senator Kennedy was on a regular elevator. Security seemed in Congress so lax that I could be so close to the brother of the two assassinated men. (On my last visit to Congress about seven or eight years ago, I was there as a reporter, interviewing the Architect of the Capitol for a magazine story on Constantino Brumidi, who painted the painting in the Rotunda. Even though I was on official business, the security was exponentially stricter.)
I had vivid memories of the JFK assassination. And when RFK was killed in 1968, I was ten years old and mindful of his death. RFK had spent much time in Indiana, including a visit on April 4th when he calmed an Indianapolis crowd hearing of Martin Luther King’s assassination.
(RFK also stopped on a motorcade north of Indianapolis to shake hands with students from Duck-Creek-Boone Elementary School that spring, including a 10-year-old Randy Abbott, who remembers it well.)
Forty-three years ago, there was far less vitriol, even against Reagan, who was considered extremely conservative by the left. My politics were still evolving. My family had been cloth-coat Republicans, but both my father and I voted for a third-party candidate and right-leaning John Anderson in the 1980 election, also feeling that Reagan was too conservative. I had voted gladly for Gerald Ford during my first election in 1976, and I would vote for George H.W. Bush in 1988.
The crowds at George Washington Hospital were not political; there was much concern about Reagan’s health, and no one blamed the other party. Reagan had been shot by a young man who somehow felt his deed showed fealty to film star Jodie Foster.
Today, how the former President’s terrible event will be viewed remains to be seen, but if the recent past is prologue, I suspect there will be much finger-pointing that rhetoric from the left caused this event.
I also suspect Christian nationals will believe that God turned Trump’s head in time to avoid a headshot. The former President tweeted this morning, “It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.”
It feels disingenuous to me to put God’s theoretical intent about Donald Trump above Lincoln, the Kennedys, Steve Scalise, or any other person affected by political violence to a God with a scorecard. I remember hearing a rabbi pray one year before the Indianapolis 500. After asking for the safety of the drivers, the rabbi said, “And God be with the Pacers in the playoffs and provide them victory over the Knicks.”
I’m certain God is not a Pacers fan or follows the NBA. I am glad that the former President was not injured more severely. But those who claim to be especially blessed by God beg the question: why them and why not others? Ask the parent of a six-year-old who dies after three years of leukemia treatment how blessed they feel.
I do not wish the former President or any other politician of any stripe physical harm. Those courageous enough to serve the public deserve the protection we can provide.
I hope we all share a softening of our rhetoric and consideration of the words we put into the world. With the Republican convention beginning tomorrow, the Grand Old Party has the opportunity to model this behavior. Last night, we saw a thoughtful and concerned President Biden address the nation with compassionate words for “Donald” on television.
While we cannot control a madman with a gun, we can control what words we put into the world and how we make our views known. John Dickerson, whose mother, Nancy Dickerson, covered aspects of the JFK assassination, called for grace and restraint from all Americans on CBS this morning.
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The New York Times posted this op-ed by Patti Davis today on the shooting of her father, President Ronald Reagan, in 1981 and the impact on her family and our country.