Killing Reagan (12 page)

The third name on Nixon's list is Ronald Reagan. He is extremely popular among Republicans, and, despite conservative philosophies that are far to the right of Nixon's, Reagan has few enemies in Washington and should have little problem getting confirmed.

Reagan has campaigned for Nixon during three elections. He has called to offer condolences at a time of hardship. Reagan and Nixon have exchanged correspondence for more than a decade. They should be friends.

But because of envy on Nixon's part, they are not.

Nixon's nomination for the vice presidency is an old friend: Congressman Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. of Grand Rapids, Michigan, the minority leader in the House.

Ronald Reagan will not be coming to Washington anytime soon.

*   *   *

All through the 1973 Christmas season, and into 1974, Richard Nixon battles to stay in office. As prosecutors circle ever closer, he denies them access to tape-recorded discussions he had about the Watergate situation. The prosecutors are forced to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court, which rules unanimously on July 24, 1974, that Nixon must turn over the recordings of sixty-four conversations related to Watergate that occurred in the Oval Office.
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It is a crushing defeat for the president, made all the worse three days later, when the House Judiciary Committee files three articles of impeachment against him. There is a chance that Richard Nixon will be not only forced out of office but also sent to prison.

Every night throughout the crisis, comedian Johnny Carson performs a six-minute monologue of topical one-liners on
The Tonight Show
. Carson is “the most powerful single performer in television,” one critic says of the late-night talk show host, and it is true, as many in the media take their cues from him.

Carson and other entertainers batter Richard Nixon, causing more and more Americans to believe that their president is indeed a crook. Cries for Richard Nixon to resign are relentless, and so is Johnny Carson: “Tonight's monologue is dedicated to Richard Nixon. I've got a monologue that just won't quit.”

*   *   *

Richard Nixon is not a quitter. But by August 7, 1974, it is clear that he has no other choice. He calls Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to explain his decision. The two men, who bonded over ending the Vietnam War, meet in the Lincoln Sitting Room, Nixon's favorite room in the White House. Richard Nixon's mental health has become an issue as the Watergate crisis has dragged on for more than two years. He has hinted at suicide. He drinks too much and often takes sleeping pills to allow himself at least a few hours of peace. But the pills don't always work: Nixon has begun wandering the White House hallways late at night, engaging in loud verbal debates with the paintings of former presidents that hang on the walls.
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But on this evening, Nixon is not in an argumentative mood. Instead, he is defeated and drunk. Kissinger enters the White House to find Nixon slumped in his favorite leather chair. The room is nearly dark. Even though Nixon is still technically the president, his powers are deeply diminished. The military Joint Chiefs of Staff no longer recognize his authority and actually refuse to take orders from him. Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger has even gone to the extreme of planning for the army's Eighty-Second Airborne Division to remove Nixon from office forcibly, if it should become necessary.

Suddenly, Nixon begins to cry. “Pray with me,” he says to Kissinger, pushing back his ottoman and sinking to his knees on the light gray carpet.

Kissinger is startled and initially confused. He is Jewish and does not share Nixon's Quaker faith. But above all, Henry Kissinger is an accommodating man and soon joins Nixon on the floor.

Nixon continues to cry as he prays, then falls forward and presses his face into the carpet. “What have I done?” he laments, pounding the floor with his fists. “What has happened?”

*   *   *

Thirty-six hours later, Nixon signs his letter of resignation with a flourish. There is no precedent for his act. Per the Presidential Succession Act of 1792, Nixon addresses the letter to Henry Kissinger, his secretary of state and most trusted adviser.
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Now there is nothing to do but leave the White House. Nixon stops first to say good-bye to his household staff in the West Hall. The cooks and maids form a single line, and Nixon stops to shake each hand. Then it is on to the East Room, where a large crowd of family and supporters waits to hear him deliver one last speech. The U.S. Marine Band plays the theme song from
Oklahoma!
as Nixon enters and steps to the podium, followed by “Hail to the Chief.” Nixon's wife, Pat, stands to his left as he pulls out a pair of black-framed glasses and steps to the three microphones. His daughters, Julie and Tricia, also stand on the podium, next to their husbands. The women have all been crying. Nixon speaks for twenty minutes, fighting back tears at times, and concludes his remarks by reminding his audience, “Always give your best, never get discouraged, never be petty; always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”

George H. W. Bush, head of the Republican National Committee, stands in the audience, marveling at Nixon's words. Later he will write in his journal, “The speech was vintage Nixon—a kick or two at the press—enormous strains. One couldn't help but look at the family and the whole thing and think of his accomplishments and then think of the shame and wonder [what] kind of man is this really. No morality—kicking his friends in those tapes—all of them. Gratuitous abuse.”

Across the country, Ronald Reagan watches Nixon's resignation unfold on television. All three major networks are carrying the proceedings live. “It is a tragedy for America that we have come to this, but it does mean that the agony of many months has come to an end,” Reagan says in a statement to the press.

As Nixon leaves the White House and steps into the Marine Corps helicopter that will fly him away from the presidency forever,
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Ronald Reagan is left to wonder if Gerald Ford will ask him to be the new vice president of the United States. Reagan tells reporters he would consider such a request “a call to duty.”

But that call never comes.

 

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D
ALLAS
, T
EXAS

A
UGUST
9, 1974

5:00
P
.
M
.

As Richard Nixon flies into self-imposed exile, his plane passes just a few hundred miles north of this sprawling Texas city. Below, in a furnished rental apartment, John Hinckley Jr. lies around, strumming his guitar. The spartan room is tidy, for Hinckley is a fanatic about cleanliness and personal hygiene, often washing his face with such vigor that his father fears “he'd take the skin off.”

Hinckley is nineteen years old now, living in Dallas near his elder sister, Diane, while on summer break from college. He works in a local pizza joint called Gordo's, where he sweeps floor and clears tables. Hinckley is already gaining the sixty pounds he will soon add to his five-foot-ten-inch build. His Paul McCartney–type haircut frames his face, bangs sweeping low across the tops of his eyebrows. When he smiles, Hinckley's dull blue eyes come alive. Yet Hinckley rarely smiles; nor does he have any inclination to shed some of his expanding girth. He has little interest in physical fitness or presidential politics—or in anything, for that matter. While his elder brother, Scott, is being groomed to run their father's oil company, and his sister is newly married and settling down, John has retreated into a world all his own. He speaks with a flat affect, and his gaze often lacks expression. His only solace comes through music.

The truth is John Hinckley is at a loss to explain what is happening in his brain. He has some form of schizophrenia, a mental disorder that causes the mind to distort reality. A combination of inherited traits and environmental factors has altered his genetic makeup, beginning with subtle changes in his teenage years. If left untreated, his condition can tailspin into delusions and violent behavior that will become dangerous to him and those around him.

His parents are currently building a new home in Evergreen, Colorado, a small mountain town populated largely by wealthy conservatives. They moved there from Dallas just a year ago, as John was beginning his freshman year at Texas Tech University. Having no friends in Evergreen, John Hinckley prefers to spend the summer in scorching-hot Dallas before heading back to school in the fall.

But Hinckley has no friends in Dallas, either. This is nothing new. Once, his high school classmates called him “as nice a guy as you'd ever want to meet.” He was popular and well liked, a member of the Spanish Club, Rodeo Club, and an association known as Students in Government. But halfway through high school, he abruptly stopped playing sports or taking part in school functions. His mother, Jo Ann, was heartbroken by the sudden change—and confused as to why it happened.

John Hinckley is no longer one to experience happiness. It has been a long time since he has known that emotion. But here in his room, at least he is content. He listens to the Beatles and plays guitar, day after day after day. Today is a Friday. The president of the United States has just quit. The world is in shock. Outside, the sun is shining on yet another baking-hot Texas summer afternoon. But John Hinckley does not notice. Within these walls, each day is just like any other. Friday might as well be Monday. It does not matter.

Hinckley's parents think themselves lucky that their son does not drink, take drugs, or engage in sexual promiscuity. They are deeply religious evangelical Christians, and to know that their son is not violating biblical principles gives them some peace. So they leave him alone.

One day they will look back and realize that their son's withdrawal from society was not normal.

By then, it will be too late.

 

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O
LD
S
HADOW
C
ABINET
R
OOM

H
OUSE
OF
C
OMMONS

L
ONDON
, E
NGLAND

A
PRIL
9, 1975

N
OON

Ronald Reagan sits on a small cloth-upholstered sofa, his left knee just inches away from touching that of a woman sitting in an adjacent chair. Reagan is now a former governor, having left his office in Sacramento three months ago. The still-handsome sixty-four-year-old senses an immediate chemistry between himself and the forty-nine-year-old Margaret Thatcher, Great Britain's new House of Commons opposition leader.

Thatcher is a homely woman, but Reagan considers her “warm, feminine, gracious, and intelligent”—so much so that he will take the unprecedented step of gushing about the British leader to Nancy Reagan when this meeting ends in two hours. For Margaret Thatcher, the feeling is mutual. “When we met in person I was immediately won over by his charm, sense of humor, and directness,” Thatcher will later recall.

Thatcher wears her graying hair swept up in a high wave. Her dress features wide lapels and a zipper down the front, a style not often seen in the staid world of British politics. She is a complex woman, fond of working through the night and unwinding with a glass of whisky. She owns an American-made Ruger handgun for protection, and there is a growing legend that she helped invent soft-serve ice cream back in the days when she was a chemist instead of a member of Parliament.

Thatcher is a new breed of politician, eager to break her nation out of the cradle-to-grave welfare philosophy that has thwarted the British economy since the end of World War II. Though she is dedicated to politics, ideology means more to Thatcher than appearance. In time, she will learn to balance the two, burnishing her image by switching to power suits and a simple strand of pearls. Her favorite color is turquoise, but she often prefers the more powerful appearance of black, white, gray, and navy. She will soon begin dying her hair reddish blond, and, at the suggestion of legendary actor Laurence Olivier, she will hire a voice coach from London's Royal National Theatre to bring her speaking voice down an octave.

In time, Thatcher will earn the nickname Iron Lady, for her habit of imposing her will on Parliament and her staunch opposition to the Soviet Union and socialism.

But all this is yet to come. For now, Margaret Thatcher is more focused on talking policy with the man she has just met but who is obviously her political “soul mate,” to use Reagan's words.

Thatcher presents her guest with a pair of cuff links. Reagan opens the small box and tries them on as a photographer snaps the moment for posterity. He wears a dark suit, polka-dot tie, and white shirt. The former governor's successful economic policies have led to an invitation to speak with British businessmen about ways to reduce the size of government and grow the economy. This sort of political proselytizing has become Reagan's primary occupation since moving from the governor's mansion in Sacramento back down to Los Angeles. He will make almost two hundred thousand dollars this year traveling the world giving speeches.
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In addition, two ghostwriters help him prepare his weekly syndicated newspaper column, which goes out to 226 papers in the United States. And he personally writes the Saturday afternoon radio broadcast he delivers to 286 conservative stations nationwide.