Last Act

by Craig Shirley

  “Congratulations on a great job for the Republican Party. I couldn’t be happier with the results of the election. And please don’t count me out! I’ll be putting in my licks for Republicans as long as I’m able. Sincerely, Ronald Reagan.”84

  Even during the week in which the media was often harsh about the deceased former president, some wondered if the media was being too gentle with him or at least his legacy. One more clear-eyed writer for the Washington Post, media critic Howard Kurtz, reminded all of how Reagan was “widely portrayed as uninformed and uninterested in details . . . he was often described as lazy, ’just an actor,’ a man who’d rather be clearing brush at his California ranch and loved a good midday nap.” Kurtz’s point was that Reagan was much more than the man often misreported on.

  Incredibly, in 1988, a book was published titled On Bended Knee by Mark Hertsgaard, an ultra-leftist writer for The Nation, which pummeled the media for supposedly going easy on Reagan during his presidency.85 This, too, came back up. Liberal historian Robert Dallek complained that the coverage of Reagan since his death amounted to a “hagiography.”86

  As if to refute Hertsgaard and Dallek—and consistent with the real story of the Reagan in death narrative—many articles recounted the “schisms” created in the country by the Reagan years and “nearly 16 years after he left office, some major interest groups . . . remain bitter about his legacy.”87 Even Bitburg cemetery, from nineteen years earlier, was dragged back up again. Some African American leaders, including Julian Bond, were harsh in their criticisms of Reagan, and the controversy over the launch of the 1980 campaign was also rehashed.

  The main problem was their facts were wrong. Reagan’s 1980 campaign did not begin at the Neshoba County Fair (where Jimmy Carter and Mike Dukakis made appearances) but instead at Liberty State Park in New Jersey. Of course they failed to mention Reagan’s high approval numbers among African Americans as he was leaving the office. What they and seemingly most commenters did not fail to mention was Iran-Contra, a matter that was reexamined and re-debated even though Lawrence Walsh’s own report, while extraordinarily tough, said there was “no credible evidence” that Reagan knew of the illegal and clandestine operation.88 “The Reagan years were marred by scandals . . .” stated one over-the-top Washington Post story.89

  On the other hand, there were a number of stories running in which every Republican quoted claimed to have always loved Ronald Reagan and claimed to have always supported him. Republican apparatchiks, who in the 1960s and 1970s thought Reagan was a certified yahoo, the George Wallace of the Republican Party, and who couldn’t give him the time of day, were now pronouncing their lifetime devotion to him.

  Between the extremes, future historians knew they would have their work cut out for them trying to find the real story about Ronald Reagan. And as economist Robert Samuelson pointed out, nearly none of the obituaries so far had even mentioned what many regarded as Reagan’s greatest achievement—the eradication of the inflation of the 1970s that had been eating away at income, savings, investment, and equity—America’s future.90

  A recent Pew Research poll showed that a healthy percentage of Republicans did not trust the “mainstream media.”91

  Defying history and gerontology, Roger Clemens, age forty-one, won his first nine outings for the Houston Astros. Some called his efforts superhuman and a first-year election to Cooperstown was assured.

  Sparked by the Reagan funeral, some politicians were stepping forward to claim that stem cell research was the solution to Alzheimer’s, even as research doctors said that the chances were small the treatment could make any difference with the dreaded disease.

  At 2:00 a.m. Friday, Park police officials, noting the length of the line, began telling new arrivals not to waste their time because the Rotunda would be closed in several hours for Reagan’s trip to the National Cathedral.

  Nothing doing said the late-arriving citizens. People were still coming from hundreds and even thousands of miles away, and though warned they had no chance to get into the Capitol, they insisted on waiting in line, which the Park police reluctantly allowed them to do.

  Maggie Hall of rural Virginia was adamant and was a voice that spoke for many. “Even if I couldn’t get in, I had to wait. I couldn’t give up. [Reagan] was an optimist. So I was an optimist.”92

  CHAPTER 8

  DO WE NOT HEAR THE CHIMES AT MIDDAY?

  “Ronald Reagan does not enter history tentatively; he does so with certainty and panache.”

  The world had mourned the death of Ronald Reagan for six days. By Friday, the public outpouring of emotion was so impressive that one observer, Dave Keene, quipped that the other former presidents should simply “mail it in”1 when they died, because their state funerals would never come close to rivaling the Gipper’s. Keene was a “lifer” when it came to conservatism, though he’d had his ups and downs with the Reagans over the years, supporting Nixon over Reagan in 1968, supporting Reagan over Ford in 1976, and supporting Bush over Reagan in 1980.

  However, as the head of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference during the 1980s, Keene had made sure that the Gipper came each year, often fighting with truculent aides in the Reagan White House, who couldn’t fathom why Reagan wanted to go each year to speak to a room full of young right wing nuts. Reagan, ever self-aware, told the CPAC audience of his staff’s objections, and then he knocked it out saying he told his staff, you “dance with the one that brung ya.”2

  On top of everything else, the funeral schedulers continued to contend with Bill Clinton. He was making things difficult with his insistent badgering of anyone and everyone about allowing him to speak at the National Cathedral. Intermediaries and go-betweens kept calling repeatedly, asking, pleading, and begging for Bill to speak. “Bill Clinton has asked me to call.”3 Each time, they were told no again. Nancy Reagan had already decided. There was no way she was going to allow Bill Clinton to speak at her husband’s funeral.4

  In 1996, Clinton’s reelection campaign had tastelessly aired commercials on gun control that included footage of the assassination attempt on Reagan. Clinton had politicized the event that nearly claimed the life of Ronald Reagan. Mrs. Reagan wrote Clinton at the White House to ask him to take them off the air but they were never taken down. In the weeks before the actual announcement of Reagan’s affliction, then–president Clinton was speculating publicly about Reagan’s condition, which also angered many Reaganites.5 Many people around Reagan world regarded the Clintons as vainglorious. Still, Clinton would not go away, even when told the speakers had been selected well before—by Mrs. Reagan and Ronald Reagan.

  The first “general mourning” in America had been for Benjamin Franklin in 1791.6 The first state funeral in American history was for William Henry Harrison, who died of pneumonia one month after his inaugural in 1841 after giving a three-hour speech in the driving rain.7 There was so much irony in the American presidency. Harrison had been the oldest man elected president. Until Reagan. Harrison’s demise also began the twenty-year jinx for 140 years that had plagued the American presidency. Until Reagan.

  From Harrison to Lincoln to Garfield to McKinley to Harding to FDR to JFK, all were elected at twenty-year intervals, and all had died in office, including four via an assassin’s bullet. Reagan, through the grace and hand of God, the speed of his Secret Service detachment, the decision of Jerry Parr to go to George Washington Hospital rather than the White House, the skill of the attending physicians, nurses, and staff, and his own strength, stamina, and mental toughness, broke the curse; he did not succumb to the assassination intentions of John Hinckley aka Travis Bickle.

  Always a man of devout faith, the experience of having narrowly escaped death drove Reagan’s Christian faith even deeper into his character. And no one would really k
now his immense capacity for Christian forgiveness until 1983 after Hinckley’s incarceration at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, a mental institution in Washington, DC.

  Astonishingly, Reagan sought a meeting with Hinckley to tell him in person that he forgave the young man. Reagan had first raised the idea of talking to Hinckley with the White House physician Dr. Daniel Ruge one weekend at Camp David. After Ruge initiated the conversation, Reagan reached out to the head of psychiatry at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, Dr. Roger Peele. “Ruge said that Reagan would like to talk with me . . .,” Peele recalled. A call was arranged but “the striking thing for me was how modest they were. They were concerned about interrupting my schedule . . .”8

  Reagan and Peele chatted amiably, and Peele said he recalled the kindness and professionalism of Reagan and his staff asking several times if he was being inconvenienced in any way. Further, he told of Reagan saying he wanted to pardon Hinckley, not legally but “personally”9 and “in private.”10 But Reagan also made clear he wanted to do what was best for Hinckley. After a fashion and a good talk, Dr. Peele said such a meeting would not be an advisable course for his patient. He had already spoken with Hinckley’s psychiatric team, and upon their advice Peele counseled Reagan against it, as he felt “Hinckley’s sense of responsibility should not be reduced.”11

  He told Reagan that a pardon or a meeting would only empower the young man, whose ego was out of control and whose sense of guilt was nonexistent. Hinckley was a sociopath who did not feel the pain of others but only his own. Indeed, Peele said Hinckley had four official diagnoses, including depression. At some point he said Hinckley was “the only patient that ever came to St. E’s and got four personality disorders . . .”12

  It was a principled decision by Peele and his team, as St. Elizabeth’s was underfunded, and telling Reagan to go ahead and meet with Hinckley might have brought more federal dollars to the hospital.13

  Peele said the phone call was anomalous because it seemed as if Reagan was talking “from the clouds.” He later found out to his amusement that indeed, Reagan had been on Air Force One when he made that call. He and Reagan parted warmly and later he was invited to have lunch with Ruge in the White House Mess. Peele was deeply impressed with the thoughtfulness of the Reagan White House.14 Dr. Peele and Reagan did have a good laugh together, though, when it was suggested that the president could join his “treatment team.”15

  One of Hinckley’s attorneys who helped develop the distinct “innocent by reason of insanity” plea was Greg Craig, who later served as counsel to Bill Clinton during his impeachment trial and, after that, counsel to Barack Obama. In between, he’d also represented Fidel Castro when the communist dictator of Cuba demanded the return of the young political refugee Elian Gonzalez, and on Craig’s advice, Clinton surrendered the defenseless child to the island’s communist authorities, denying him a life of freedom. Over the years, Craig also represented the Washington Post during Watergate and later when Ted Kennedy was a witness in the rape trial of his nephew William Kennedy Smith. He also served on the boards of various left wing groups.16 Only a cynic would suggest there existed a vast left-wing conspiracy though.

  Quite apart from cynics, the Washington Times had deferentially covered the week of the Reagan funeral with more accuracy than most other papers in the country. The conventional wisdom among liberal journalists was that the motives of conservatives and wisdom of conservatism were always to be questioned. Liberalism, however, was never to be questioned. All of that is for sociologists and historians and ethicists to sort out later, but the simple truth was the Times was the favorite paper of the Reagan White House, and Reagan read it avidly. It had a reliable conservative editorial policy and while the religious affiliation of the paper bothered many in Washington, they seemed less offended by the Christian Science Monitor or the Deseret News, owned by the Mormon Church.

  Some of the reporting and opinion writing was nothing short of superb, and this week men and women who really knew Ronald Reagan, like Jack Kemp and Don Lambro and Don Feder, John Leo, Georgie Anne Geyer, and others wrote pieces that would be important to history’s understanding of Ronald Wilson Reagan. Unlike the Post and its embarrassing and damaging Janet Cooke scandal, the Times suffered no major ethical embarrassments during the Reagan years. It also came to light that during the assassination attempt, the Post worked overtime to attempt to prove that the Reagan budget cuts had somehow endangered Reagan’s life.

  Nancy Reagan had never stipulated a certain kind of flower for the service at the National Cathedral, so the ladies of the church’s flower guild went to work using thousands of “red and white roses and blue hydrangeas.” All told, five thousand flowers were tastefully displayed throughout the church.17

  The three networks, along with C-SPAN, FOX, CNN, et al., were planning live coverage of the funeral beginning with their programing at 7:00 a.m. (EST) and continuing through to 1:00 p.m. Then Fox and ABC would break back in at 7:30 p.m. (EST) for the interment ceremony in California. The day before, a conversation on air between Peter Jennings and George Stephanopoulos caused comment. Talking to Stephanopoulos, Jennings said, “And as you alluded . . . this morning . . . we haven’t seen many African American faces up at the Presidential Library or this morning . . .”18 It was sadly ironic, as Reagan was one of the most non-judgmental men to ever occupy the White House. As a child, his father refused to allow him to see the racist Birth of a Nation.19 In chapter and verse, he’d shown himself to be color-blind before the phrase became popular.

  Some presidents turned down state funerals. Andrew Jackson, out of character, was one who did and, in character, Calvin Coolidge was another. The funeral of Andrew Jackson at the Hermitage was flawed when his pet parrot had to be removed because it kept squawking out the profanity Jackson had taught the foul fowl.20

  Harry Truman and Richard Nixon, both of whom agreed on nothing except their hatred for each other, separately agreed that neither would lie in state in the Capitol of that cursed city. At the end of their presidencies, both left Washington nearly run out of town on a rail. While Truman did not live to see his Phoenix-like rise in the estimation of historians and the American people, it was a lead pipe cinch that Nixon would never see any resurrection of his reputation. It was a funny country that way.

  Truman grew up poor, had racist and anti-Semitic tendencies, came out of the corrupt Pendergast Democratic political machine, and was known to have a foul mouth. Still, he did some gutsy things as president. Nixon grew up poor, had racist and anti-Semitic tendencies, ran a corrupt White House, and was known to have a foul mouth. Still, he did some gutsy things as president. But, years later it was Truman who got the elevator and Nixon who got the shaft.

  George Washington was terrified of being buried alive, so among his last requests was that he not be interred until two days after his death.21 The custom of the day was to bury the deceased individual as soon as possible to stave off the chance for a diseased body to spread contagion.

  The general who defeated the greatest standing army in the world; who then laid down his sword and went back to Mt. Vernon, Cincinnatus style; who presided over the drafting and implementation of one of the greatest documents in history and then became the greatest president in American history, said he wanted to be buried “without parade or funeral oration.”22 It was completely in character with the man who rejected all the proposed titles as the nation’s first chief executive and said he wished to be simply addressed as “Mr. President.”

  In fact, there was a tremendous outpouring for George Washington across the country; many made the pilgrimage to Mt. Vernon for his funeral, and in the days that followed many more came. Mock funerals for President Washington were also held around the fledgling country of which he was the father.

  The funeral and public reaction to the death of a president can be a fascina
ting thing. Washington was always beloved, though in life he did have his critics, including some broadsheets and writers of the era. Abraham Lincoln was reviled by at least half the population below the Mason-Dixon line and by plenty of people above it as well. But after his assassination, the neck-straining turnaround in opinion that quickly became adulation was amazing. No president transformed more quickly from questionable to venerable than Lincoln. His reelection had been in doubt even as of the fall of 1864, even while he beat the Democratic nominee George McClellan by a solid 55–45 popular vote margin and an Electoral College landslide.

  There were actually many funerals for Lincoln as his cortege train slowly—almost two weeks—made its way from Washington to Springfield, Illinois. Along the way, his coffin was opened for memorial services and public viewing in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and other locations.

  Lincoln was the first chief executive to be embalmed, but even so a mortician accompanied his funeral train to “touch up the corpse several times.” Lincoln was dressed in a black suit, white shirt, and tie as could clearly be seen in one surreptitious photo taken in New York—photos had been forbidden. Dwight Eisenhower was buried in a World War II uniform—the tunic famously became known as the “Ike jacket.” On his chest were only three decorations and he was buried in “a standard $80 military coffin.”23

  Eisenhower, like most presidents, was interred in his adopted home state—in Ike’s case, Kansas—even though he’d actually been born in Texas. Reagan, of course, was from Illinois, and Lincoln’s humble origins had begun in Kentucky. The only two presidents buried at Arlington were JFK and William Howard Taft. Woodrow Wilson was not buried in his birth state of Virginia or his adopted state of New Jersey but instead in the Washington National Cathedral. Monroe was actually buried in New York until Virginia forked over the money to have him disinterred and then reinterred in his beloved Commonwealth. Grant was buried in, well, Grant’s Tomb.24