Last Act

by Craig Shirley

  For months, Hooley had had a suitcase packed and waiting by the door for the phone call, so he would be ready to head out to Andrews Air Force Base and go west to perform one more task for his beloved old boss. Still, no one could accurately forecast how long Reagan would live. “It could be weeks, it could be months,” said one individual with knowledge but unidentified to the Associated Press.8 That same day, however, the wire service had already moved several stories on Reagan’s sudden decline but again without attribution and few details.

  Also on June 5, President George W. Bush—“43”—was in Europe and while there met with the ailing Pope John Paul II, who gave Bush an earful about the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which the Vatican had opposed. Thousands were protesting Bush as he moved around the continent. “There is a lot of hatred of Bush in France, real hatred,” said an aide to French president Jacques Chirac.9 Protesters burned American flags and carried Palestinian flags and signs denouncing Bush as a terrorist. Simultaneously, anti-Bush protests were underway in Lafayette Park, just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House.

  The mood of the American people was guarded and somewhat demoralized. The terrible events of September 11, 2001, still hung over the country as the War on Terror continued unabated. Some felt that Bush had made a mistake in praising Islam too effusively and too often, as it muddled the picture as to who the enemy was.

  On the other hand, the French had routinely denounced American presidents with the only exception being JFK and that was in part because his wife Jackie was of French descent and she spoke the language fluently. Dwight Eisenhower got rough treatment from the French even though he’d led the D-day invasion that liberated their country from the Nazis and the Nazi accomplices in the Pétain Vichy government exactly sixty years earlier. While a former president lay dying and the current president was in Europe, the news of the world continued.

  In secret at a hotel in New Jersey, Department of Justice officials gathered together the families of the victims of September 11, 2001, and played the recordings of the phone calls made from the planes to loved ones.10 This was the first time they’d been played for the survivors. More than a hundred attended the sad and horrible reliving and retelling of the new day of infamy.

  O. J. Simpson sat down for an interview with the Associated Press and told the wire reporter he was no longer in the hunt for the real killers because of the pressures of being a single parent.11

  The lineup of the Washington insider Sunday shows was announced, and the usual suspects of insiders were expected to talk about the usual insider stuff, including fireworks at the CIA. The shows were routinely ignored by Middle America and Reagan had never paid them much mind, only mentioning them in passing in his diary, which spanned eight years in the White House.

  The Peoria Journal Star was reporting that Governor Rod Blagojevich wanted to close the Pontiac prison because the inmate population had diminished.12

  In Washington, Vice President Richard Cheney was being questioned by investigators looking into the illegal leak of the name of a CIA operative to columnist Bob Novak. The investigation was centering on Karl Rove, Bush’s political aide and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby of Cheney’s staff.

  Later, Cheney flew to Chicago for a fund-raising event for Jack Ryan,13 a handsome and successful banker who’d once been married to actress Jeri Ryan. They divorced in 1999. His Democratic opponent took the high road publicly saying the divorce was private and the records were private. Behind the scenes, however, his supporters were agitating hard for release of the records. Finally, in a bizarre decision worthy of the long history of corrupt judges in Chicago, it was ruled that the private agreement was somehow in the public interest, and the private agreement by two private individuals was unsealed and splayed all over the media.

  In their divorce, Jeri Ryan had charged that her husband wanted to have sex with her in odd, public places but one was hard pressed to understand how this helped the electoral process or their young son. Ryan, trailing badly in the polls and humiliated, withdrew from the race, clearing the way for the election of his opponent, Barack Hussein Obama. Meanwhile, Obama’s academic and medical records remained sealed and unquestioned by the ruling elites. Bush was facing a tough reelection, but the good news was the economy had added nearly 250,000 jobs in the month of May alone.14 Appearing at a recent book symposium, Al Gore’s former campaign manager, Donna Brazile, trashed Reagan harshly, saying he had initiated “the politics of telling poor people they are worthless.”15

  The National Spelling Bee was taking place in Washington with David Tidmarsh, an eighth grader from South Bend, Indiana, correctly spelling autochthonous. It meant “indigenous.” For his fine efforts, winning out of nine million competitors, David won seventeen thousand dollars in prize money and other awards.16

  South Bend was the home of Notre Dame and the setting for the movie Knute Rockne, All American, in which a young actor portrayed star Fighting Irish fullback George Gipp. On his deathbed, he asked his coach, Rockne, “Sometime, when the team is up against it . . . the breaks are beating the boys . . . tell them to go out there with all they got . . . win just one for the Gipper.”17

  Now Reagan, at the last, was “up against it.”

  In the last three weeks and in the last stages of his own battle with Alzheimer’s, Reagan’s eyes had been closed. During ten years, the once inquisitive mind had been slowly shutting down one system after another, as the terrible disease did with all its victims. First, short-term memory; second, long-term memory; then, voluntary motor functions; and finally, as the brain dwindles, goes with it the involuntary heart and lungs and other organ functions.

  The disease peeled away the essence of the person as one peels an onion. Layer by layer. Patti Davis, Reagan’s pretty if also controversial daughter said it was like “plateauing.”18 Later, Higdon received yet another call from Nancy. “The doctors are here, and I think you need to get everything ready.”19

  Reagan, for his whole life, had been proud to share the “humble roots”20 of every other American and yet Reagan was also proud that he was singularly unique. As Leader of the Free World, Reagan was the irrepressible American Exceptionalist. He’d once been an inimitable and successful man and president and world trailblazer who, at the end, would die, just like every other man since the time of Adam.

  No one, not even occupants of the Oval Office, escaped death.

  Reagan had bounded out of the White House and Washington in January 1989 on a wave of good will, the affection of many of his countrymen, and an astonishing record of accomplishment. The country he’d inherited eight years earlier was broken and demoralized. The best days seemed in the past. A country that under Franklin Roosevelt had defeated the evil of Berlin and Tokyo—which in turn under Harry Truman rebuilt a war-torn European continent, created the United Nations, and asked nothing from those countries except some land on which to bury her dead—was a thing of the past.

  A nation that became second to none in war and peace, hurled rockets into the depths of the solar system, clothed and fed the poor of the world, provided superb free education to all children, denied opportunity to none, had the strength to admit wrongness and the integrity to throw crooked politicians out of office, had been brought low by unpopular foreign adventures, internal discord, centralized corruption, ill-mannered progressivism, the soullessness and depravity of the Flower Children and anti-war movements, and the radical chic of the 1960s. The traditions of reliance on faith and family had been pulled down, but ironically, as one political philosophy argued for more concentrations of power in the nation’s capital, it simply led to more dismay and skepticism about Washington, especially with leaders who were “lost in power,” as Bill Buckley said.

  In 1980, America was losing a Cold War, the American economy was in tatters, and
the American spirit was all but snuffed out. Cynicism was the celebrated disposition and Jacobinism their warming fire.

  Eight years later, that country was winning the Cold War, while a humiliated and discredited Moscow was on its knees, suing for peace. Reagan believed that America operated on a higher moral plane than any other country in history, and he approached the presidency in that fashion. Like all Americans, he rejected monarchy, he rejected empire, he rejected High Toryism and neo-conservatism, and he approached the job with reverence and humility and a fundamental belief in the individual. He knew that if the American defense was to be raised, he first had to raise the American economy, and to do that he had to raise America’s morale and spirituality. In his overlooked 1980 election eve address, he spoke of his goal to “revitalize the values of family, work, and neighborhood.”21

  The crippling double-digit inflation and interest rates that had decimated the economy and Americans’ savings in the 1970s had been eradicated. When he left office, inflation was almost nonexistent and interest rates were at a supportable level. Gasoline was less than a dollar a gallon. Unemployment in January 1989 was 5.4 percent,22 which some economists said was impossible. The debt was falling rapidly. The vitality of the economy had been restored, but only after Reagan had restored the citizenry’s belief in itself.

  Polls across the board showed broad approval for Reagan and not just from his base, but historic highs from young voters and from African Americans. Americans finally thought their country was on the right track. He’d left his party with a coherent governing philosophy, his country freer, and the world safer. The U.S. economy, between 1975 and 2000, expanded 128 percent,23 most of it coming in the Reagan years and in the Reagan-inspired years when the Republicans wrested control of Congress in 1994, led by a young Reaganite, Newt Gingrich.

  John O’Sullivan, editor of the National Review, said that the “fact of America” would survive, but Ronald Reagan had restored the “idea of America.”24 Reagan himself stuck his chest out a bit and said toward the end of his presidency, “The way I see it, there were two great triumphs, two things that I’m proudest of. One is the economic recovery, in which the people of America created—and filled—19 million new jobs. The other is the recovery of our morale. America is respected again in the world and looked to for leadership.”25 For romantic Americans their shining country was shining again. For Reagan, he left office more popular than when he was sworn in—unlike Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, and Truman. Only Ike could make the same claim.

  It hadn’t been easy. There had been political brawls and prowling bears and terrorist plots and scandals and exploding shuttles and cancers and shuttered factories and assassination attempts and more. And yet Reagan confronted even more difficult problems than many of his predecessors. Even the Washington Post said on the last day of his presidency,

  Ronald Reagan has absolutely confounded prediction . . . Today, at the age of 77, he relinquishes the office so many people thought he never could get, being, it was said eight years ago, too old, too ideological, too conservative, too poorly informed, too politically marginal—in short, too out of it. But there he is, going out in a rare end-of-the-term surge of good feeling, his critics—on key issues, we are emphatically among them—still at a loss as to how to assess and finally even understand this man.26

  His critics at the Post were forced to concede that Reagan’s presidency had been “consequential.”27 The country was united and had become part of that “community of shared values”28 of which he’d spoken at the Republican National Convention in Detroit in 1980, when he accepted the party’s nomination, after trying and failing to gain it twice before. As Robert Higdon recalled, “Things were good in the world, and it was time to go away.”29 But he wasn’t going quietly.

  In late 1988, he’d given a series of speeches drafted by favored wordsmith Clark Judge, taking on the “Iron Triangle” of the media, K Street, and Capitol Hill.30 His days were filled with meetings, appointments, letters, and receptions. And endless resolutions sent to him by Congress, declaring February 1989 as “America Loves Its Kids Month”31 and “Fire Safety at Home Day”32 and “National Burn Awareness Week.”33 He exchanged pleasant letters with Barry Goldwater, who after eight years opened one letter by saying, “Dear Mr. President: It’s still hard for me to call you that.”34 Reagan replied and said, “As you can imagine, I’m looking at January 20 with mixed emotions. There is, of course, anticipation about getting back to California and the ranch, but then some regret because of things we didn’t get done here.”35

  Nearing the end of his presidency, he delivered remarks in New York honoring Jack Kemp. “And come January, when I saddle up and ride into the sunset it will be with the knowledge that we’ve done great things. We kept faith with a promise as old as this land we love and as big as the sky. A brilliant vision of America as a shining city on a hill . . . America’s greatest chapter is still to be written, for the best is yet to come.”36

  Tucked in his presidential papers was the farewell address of George Washington, which Reagan wanted to study in anticipation of the day he would deliver his own farewell remarks to the American people. They also left with sixteen scrapbooks of their eight years of leading history.37

  Ironically, some conservatives were dismissive of Reagan and his eight years as president. Paul Weyrich, a leading New Right operative, called the Reagan Revolution “an illusion.” But speaking for other conservatives, Mitch Daniels, a veteran of the Reagan White House, said he and others on the Right were “morose” about the Gipper leaving Washington.38 They were also dubious that the scion of New England Mayflower society, George H. W. Bush, would run with the conservative baton Reagan had handed off to him.

  But that was all behind him now. He told audiences that when he got back to the ranch, his plan was to “lean back, kick up my feet, and take a long nap. Now, come to think of it, things won’t be all that different after all.”39

  Most everybody liked Jim Hooley. Hooley had the manly Irishness that Reagan was fond of, but the low-key efficiency that Mrs. Reagan appreciated. He was never in the newspapers, never caught off base, but enjoyed a good laugh, friends, a good cigar, and a glass of whiskey as much as the next guy. Hooley had been married once briefly—it didn’t take—and had devoted much of himself to Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

  As an advance man, he’d often been in charge of Reagan’s movements from the 1980 campaign through much of the presidency and now, Reagan’s last journey. Hooley’s horoscope on June 4, 2004, had advised, “do not take shortcuts with your work,” while also hinting about a “sting of unpleasantness.”40 He was known for his thoroughness with his work but this week it would be accompanied by the sting of an unpleasantness of managing much of the service for a man whom he not only deeply admired, but even loved.

  Hooley’s status was somewhat remarkable as he’d been at the center for a long time and yet had few knife scars to show for it. Even James “Jim” Baker and Ed Meese had scars from their years of service in Washington to Reagan. There wasn’t an administration going back to Washington’s time—some involving duels, foreign intrigue, and prison for more than a few—in which people did not emerge bloodied and battered and worse for wear. The fog of alcohol was often a miasma for the high and mighty of Washington politics as was the comfort of a stranger in a strange bed.

  Hooley looked like a cop straight out of Central Casting and in fact had once been a Capitol Hill police officer. He’d also—not surprisingly—once been a bartender at the Black Rooster until he finally graduated from American University in Washington. “I was basically screwing around.”41

  Like Reagan, Hooley had also once been a Democrat, volunteering for Hubert Humphrey’s 1972 presidential quest. But by 1976, he was performing small tasks for the Reagan campaign. When he’d go home to upstate New York, ne
ar the Hudson Valley, his family and parents would rib him good. “So you’re going to work for this 69-year-old ex-actor because you think he’s going to be president? That’s what we put you through college for?”42

  In 1978, his often but not always reliable friend Rick Ahearn called and told Hooley to come down to Alabama and help him get Guy Hunt, an Amway salesman, elected governor. Ahearn said Hunt was a great guy and easy to work with, both of which Hooley found out were not true when he dropped everything and went to Alabama—and discovered Ahearn had skipped the state, leaving Hooley there for “almost nine months in the middle of 16 dry counties.”43 It was enough to drive any man to drink.

  But Hunt was a Reagan supporter and Lyn Nofziger, longtime Reagan political consigliere, asked Hooley to stay in Alabama because they would need Hunt’s help in 1980 in a state where Ambassador George Bush and former Texas governor John Connally were attempting to make inroads. Hooley reluctantly stayed and in so doing had made large deposits to the Reagan Favor Bank from which to draw, especially since he handled a major Reagan event in the state, filling the Birmingham Coliseum on a Friday night, which, by the way, seated seventy-five thousand people. Hooley hired every Kelly Girl in the state and then had them phone every Boy Scout troop, every Girl Scout troop, every American Legion post, every Masonic Hall, every Grange Hall, every country club, offering them “free tickets” to go see Ronald Reagan.44

  The Reagan people were impressed, and the next day Dave Fischer, a Reagan staffer, invited Hooley to Reagan’s suite for coffee and a photo with the governor. When Reagan chatted Hooley up and gave him a knowing wink, the young man was hooked and on board for good for the Gipper.45

  Later, Charlie Black, Reagan’s political director, rescued Hooley from Alabama and brought him aboard the national campaign. He was the first advance man on the payroll of the 1980 campaign, and by Labor Day he was handling the advance for many of the Gipper’s big events, including the official kickoff of the fall campaign at Liberty State Park in New Jersey, with the Statue of Liberty in the background and hundreds of Slavic Americans in the foreground. The event was executed flawlessly, the “visuals” were terrific, and it all came down as a big feather in Hooley’s cap. And the band of Hooley and Ahearn was back together.