Ronald Reagan was the first actor ever elected president. Dozens of his Hollywood friends showed up for his inauguration. Even though Reagan had been governor of California, people in Washington still weren’t sure what to think. Did Ronald Reagan know how to be president? Or was he just an actor, playing the role of president?
Ronald Reagan was also the oldest person to become president. Less than a month after taking office, he turned seventy. Would a man in his seventies be strong enough for all the work and responsibility that went with the job?
On March 30, 1981, just nine weeks after taking office, Reagan faced his first big test. That morning, he had made a speech at the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C. One of the people with him was Jerry Parr. When he was a boy, Parr had seen Ronald Reagan in Code of the Secret Service. The movie had made him want to join the Secret Service. Now he was an agent, guarding the president.
As the president and his aides came out of the hotel, two shots rang out. Pop! Pop!
James Brady, the White House press secretary, fell to the ground, shot in the head. Seconds later, there were four more shots. Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!
At the sound of the first shots, Jerry Parr and another agent grabbed Reagan and threw him into the backseat of his waiting limousine. Parr jumped on top of him. Reagan felt a sharp pain. “I think I broke a rib,” he said.
Reagan coughed into his handkerchief. The blood was bright red and laced with tiny air bubbles. Parr ordered the driver to head for George Washington University Hospital. At the emergency ward, Reagan got out of the limo and walked to the door. Just inside, he sank to his knees, unable to breathe. The doctors discovered a bullet hole under his left arm. The president was rushed into surgery.
Four people in all were shot that day, including a policeman and a Secret Service agent. James Brady, the most seriously injured, was disabled for life. The assassin was a young man named John Hinckley. He claimed that he did it to get the attention of the actress Jodie Foster. Later on, when John Hinckley went to trial, a jury decided that Hinckley was insane. He was put in a special hospital.
For Reagan, it was a narrow escape. The bullet had lodged an inch from his heart. Still, he came through in good spirits. When he saw his wife Nancy after his operation, the first thing he did was make a joke. “Honey, I forgot to duck,” he said.
Fortunately, he was able to make a strong recovery. Reagan had always liked outdoor exercise. He and Nancy had a ranch in the hills north of Los Angeles where he rode horses and chopped wood. After being shot, Reagan also took up weightlifting. He was seventy years old, but he worked out every day.
After twelve days, Reagan was out of the hospital, and he had to get back to the problems of the economy. In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy had cut taxes to get the economy moving. Reagan wanted to reduce the tax rates even more. He believed that if people got to keep more of their wages, they would work harder and save more. People would be able to start new businesses. That would mean more new jobs. And more people paying taxes on bigger incomes.
In the meantime, Reagan felt it was important to keep prices and wages from rising. Congress was still debating the tax cut when nearly 13,000 air traffic controllers went on strike. They were government workers. Their union was asking for a substantial raise. The demand put Reagan on the spot. The controllers’ union had supported him when he ran for president. But how could he ask Americans to put off pay raises if he gave the controllers a big raise? There was also a law against government workers striking. And with no air traffic controllers on the job, the airlines would have to shut down. It was a hard decision, but after Reagan gave the strikers forty-eight hours to return to their jobs, he fired those that did not return. When Reagan announced the firings of the controllers, he said, “I am sorry for this, and I am sorry for them. I certainly take no joy out of this.”
Reagan wanted to cut government spending. He wanted a smaller budget. But some programs, like Medicare and free school lunches, were so popular that Reagan gave up asking for any cuts at all. In the end, the budget did not get smaller. It just grew at a slower pace.
One day, a letter came that made Reagan laugh. It was from a seventh-grade student in South Carolina. “My mother has declared my room a disaster area,” wrote Andy Smith. Government funds are used in areas hit by disasters such as fire or flooding. So Andy asked for government money to help with the cleanup. Reagan wrote back that “funds are dangerously low.” He suggested that Andy make cleaning up his room a volunteer program.
Reagan loved to tell jokes and stories. Like another president, John F. Kennedy, he drew funny doodles during meetings. He thought most people took themselves too seriously, and he wasn’t afraid to look silly. Once, he walked into a cabinet meeting wearing a Bozo the Clown wig!
But even though he seemed relaxed, Reagan got a lot done by keeping to a schedule. A jar of jelly beans, his favorite snack, stood on his desk in the Oval Office. “You can tell a lot about a person’s character from the way he eats jelly beans,” Reagan often said. Some people grabbed handfuls. Others carefully picked out their favorite colors. When Reagan ate jelly beans, it was usually a sign that his visitor had been talking too long.
It took time, but the economy improved. Meanwhile, Reagan had other crises to deal with. In October 1983 the prime minister of the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada was murdered. There were Cuban soldiers on the island. The leaders of other islands nearby were nervous. Was this part of a Communist plot to take over the whole region?
President Reagan decided to act quickly. Nineteen hundred army rangers and marines made a surprise landing on the island. They fought and defeated the Cuban soldiers. Eight hundred American medical students who had been trapped in all the confusion were rescued. Later, the Americans found documents that said the Cuban soldiers had been part of a plan to spread Communism through Central America.
The Grenada invasion was popular. Almost two-thirds of all Americans believed that the president had done the right thing. But not everyone agreed. Some thought it was wrong for the United States to interfere in the politics of other nations. Others just worried that trying to fight these battles would cost too many American lives.
Around the same time as the Grenada invasion, 234 U.S. marines in war-torn Lebanon were killed by a terrorist bomb. They were stationed there to try to keep peace. Reagan called this the “saddest day of my presidency, perhaps the saddest day of my life.”
“Are we in Lebanon for any reason worth my son’s life?” the father of one dead marine asked the president. Reagan told the father that the answer was yes. What happened in the Middle East was “everybody’s business,” and it was important to fight terrorism.
“Brave men and women have always been willing to give up their lives in the defense of freedom,” he explained. But Reagan was faced with a big decision. He would have to send many more troops to Lebanon or remove the ones that were already there. Congress and the people weren’t ready to get more involved. So the troops were withdrawn.
It was also part of the president’s job to help the country deal with tragedies at home. In January of 1986, the Challenger rocket exploded on takeoff. All seven astronauts on board were killed. One was Christa McAuliffe, who had been picked to become the first schoolteacher in space. In schools across the country, children had gathered around TVs to watch the blast-off. They were devastated.
Reagan flew to Florida to speak at the memorial service. In his speech, he spoke directly to schoolchildren who had seen the accident: “I know it’s hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It’s all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It’s all part of taking a chance and expanding man’s horizons. The future doesn’t belong to the faint-hearted. It belongs to the brave.”
Reagan’s ability to give graceful speeches on occasions like this led to his being called the “Great Communicator.” But Reagan never cared for this nickname. While he enjoyed making speeches, he said there was nothing special about his communication skills. It was just that he spoke about basic values that his audience understood and shared. As he put it, “I just communicate great ideas.” |