Ronald Wilson Reagan

Even so, Reagan got deferential treatment from the press, so the news coverage almost always cast him in the best possible light. He was extremely comfortable in front of the cameras, as you would expect -- after all, he had been a movie star prior to becoming a politician. And he could be disarmingly affable. He often shared jokes and anecdotes and brilliantly-scripted one-liners that sounded spontaneous. But none of that explains why the journalists decided to take it easy on him.

The reason Reagan got a free ride in the media stemmed from his fortuitously-timed assassination attempt.

The man had been President of the United States for just 69 days when he was shot by a lunatic trying to impress movie actress Jodie Foster. On March 30, 1981 one of John Hinckley's bullets ricocheted off the Presidential limousine and penetrated Reagan's chest just below the armpit. An agent of the Secret Service shoved him into the vehicle and it sped away from the scene. At first glance, the President appeared to be unhurt. He even turned to the agent and complained, "You sonofabitch, you broke my rib." Then they noticed the blood.

He was rushed to George Washington Hospital, where he underwent three hours of emergency surgery. Before they put him under anesthesia, Reagan told the trauma team, "Please tell me you're all Republicans." The head of the team, Dr. Joseph Giordano, was in fact a liberal Democrat. Nevertheless, he reassured the President by telling him, "We're all Republicans today." They extracted a .22 caliber slug from the President's wrinkly, 70-year-old left lung. Next, the doctors filled the damaged areas with patching compound, waited for it to dry, then sanded, primed, and slapped on two coats of high-gloss paint, tinted to match the coloration of healthy tissue. In no time at all, Reagan was on the mend.

Following Dr. Giordano's lead, the American people immediately rallied around their wounded leader. Reagan's popularity ratings suddenly went through the roof, inflated by public sympathy. The nation's news editors and publishers chose to play along, rather than risk appearing cold and heartless. This deference persisted throughout his Presidency. So when Reagan would say something phenomenally stupid during a press conference, most news outlets just let it go. Even when he was obviously lying his ass off, he never really got called on it. Reagan received the nickname "The Teflon President" thanks to this phenomenon, the name being that of a nonstick coating applied to cookware.

After the shooting, First Lady Nancy heard from her part-time astrologer, Joan Quigley, that they could have and would have predicted that March 30 was destined to be a bad day for her husband... if only Quigley had been on the payroll. Rather than risk a similar incident happening, Nancy decided that it would be prudent to keep the astrologer in the loop. She ordered dedicated phone lines be installed at the White House and Camp David, just so she would never be without the wisdom of the Zodiac.

For the next eight years, Quigley determined the most opportune timing for all of the President's crucial activities. The First Lady would furnish Ronnie's tentative itinerary, which the astrologer would optimize and return. Then the White House staff would make the necessary adjustments. This tinkering affected the scheduling of press conferences, Air Force One departures, even the timing of international summits.

As former White House Chief of Staff Don Regan later wrote in his memoirs:

Although I had never met this seer -- Mrs. Reagan passed along her prognostications to me after conferring with her on the telephone -- she had become such a factor in my work, and in the highest affairs of the nation, that at one point I kept a color-coded calendar on my desk (numerals highlighted in green ink for "good" days, red for "bad" days, yellow for "iffy" days) as an aid to remembering when it was propitious to move the president of the United States from one place to another, or schedule him to speak in public, or commence negotiations with a foreign power.

Following the astrologer's instructions, the selection of Anthony Kennedy for the Supreme Court was announced to the press at precisely 11:32:25 A.M. According to Quigley's memoir, the President was cued by "a man with a stopwatch" to make sure he hit the exact moment. (She does not mention whether she gave similar assistance to the President's two previous selections to fill that seat, archconservative Robert Bork and former pot smoker Douglas Ginsburg, who both failed to gain Senate confirmation.)

Ronnie was himself a superstitious man. He always carried a lucky charm in his pocket. He knocked on wood, avoided walking under ladders, and made a habit of tossing salt over his left shoulder before each meal. So it shouldn't be surprising that the astrology stuff would appeal to him. Throughout the 1950s, Ron and Nancy sought out the services of Carroll Righter, astrologer to the stars. When Reagan won California's governor seat, he scheduled his inauguration for 12:10 A.M., on Righter's insistence. And in the 1960s, Ron had been consulting with psychic Jeane Dixon over whether to run for President someday.

Somehow, none of this ever seemed to bother the Christian right. Bear in mind that, to a fundamentalist Christian, astrology is practically witchcraft. It's divination, which is specifically prohibited by the Bible. So it's a little surprising that people like Jerry Falwell would be so happy to show his support. But despite Reagan's persistent and ongoing reliance upon the dark arts, they knew that he was their guy.

First and foremost, Reagan was a firm adherent to Biblical prophecy; specifically, he believed that the end of the world -- the Battle of Armageddon -- was close at hand. As you know, the fundamentalists just love that eschatalogical stuff.

While he was running for office in 1980, candidate Reagan announced during an interview with televangelist Jim Bakker that "We may be the generation that sees Armageddon." But that certainly wasn't the first time. At a 1971 banquet for California state senator James Mills, then-Governor Reagan broke it all down for the honoree during the dessert course:

"In the 38th chapter of Ezekiel, it says that the land of Israel will come under attack by the armies of the ungodly nations, and it says that Libya will be among them. Do you understand the significance of that? Libya has now gone Communist, and that's a sign that the day of Armageddon isn't far off. "Biblical scholars have been saying for generations that Gog must be Russia. What other powerful nation is to the north of Israel? None. But it didn't seem to make sense before the Russian revolution, when Russia was a Christian country. Now it does, now that Russia has become communistic and atheistic, now that Russia has set itself against God. Now it fits the description of Gog perfectly. "For the first time ever, everything is in place for the battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ. It can't be too long now. Ezekiel says that fire and brimstone will be rained upon the enemies of God's people. That must mean that they will be destroyed by nuclear weapons."

In an interview published in a December 1983 issue of People magazine, the most powerful man in the world revealed that:

"[T]heologians had been studying the ancient prophecies -- what would portend the coming of Armageddon-- and have said that never, in the time between the prophecies up untiI now, has there ever been a time in which so many of the prophecies are coming together. There have been times in the past when people thought the end of the world was coming, and so forth, but never anything like this."

During an October 1984 Presidential debate, the Commander-In-Chief was asked to clarify his position on the matter. Which he kind of dodged:

REPORTER:

Mr. President, I'd like to pick up this Armageddon theme. You've been quoted as saying that you do believe deep down that we are heading for some kind of Biblical Armageddon. Your Pentagon and your Secretary of Defense have plans for the United States to fight and prevail in a nuclear war. Do you feel that we are now heading, perhaps, for some kind of nuclear Armageddon? And do you feel that this country and the world could survive that kind of calamity?

PRESIDENT REAGAN:

Mr. Kalb, I think what has been hailed as something I'm, supposedly, as President, discussing as principle is the result of just some philosophical discussions with people who are interested in the same things. And that is the prophecies down through the years, the Biblical prophecies of what would portend the coming of Armageddon and so forth. And the fact that a number of theologians for the last decade or more have believed that this was true, that the prophecies are coming together that portend that. But no one knows whether Armageddon -- those prophecies -- mean that Armageddon is a thousand years away or day after tomorrow. So I have never seriously warned and said we must plan according to Armageddon.

But President Reagan did more than just talk the Talk. He was also an ardent supporter of school prayer and anti-abortion laws. He withheld funding from international contraception programs. Over complaints by the ACLU, he officially declared 1983 to be "The Year of the Bible." And he appointed likeminded Jesus freaks to his cabinet. During a 1981 Congressional hearing, Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, revealed the depth of his commitment to preserving America's environment for posterity:

"I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns."

As a member of the cabinet, Watt represented the best and brightest that America had to offer. Reagan gave him and the other underlings wide latitude to make and implement policy. Fortune magazine ran an interview with the President in September 1986 wherein he described his theory of management:

"Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere."

A few months later, the full implications of this hands-off managerial philosophy would be made clear when the Iran-Contra scandal broke.

Iran-Contra

As part of a secret deal to purchase the release of American hostages held in the Middle East, the White House agreed to sell arms to the government of Iran. But that was really just the catalyst for their real objective. The NSC sold Iran weapons, and then funneled some of the proceeds to the Contra insurgency in Nicaragua. This was a blatant and intentional violation of federal law.

It was also ripe for embezzlement. Nobody was doublechecking the books. How could they? The operation was more than secret; except for maybe a dozen people in the White House basement, it was absolutely nonexistent. No oversight whatsoever. So no wonder NSC buttboy Oliver North wound up with $200,000 in a Swiss bank account.

While all this was going on, Reagan pretended that there was nothing illegal going on. At one press conference, a journalist addressed the issue point-blank:

REPORTER:	Mr. President, why don't we openly support those 7,000 guerrillas that are in rebellion rather than giving aid through covert activity?
PRESIDENT REAGAN:	Well, because we want to keep on obeying the laws of our country, which we are now obeying.
REPORTER:	Doesn't the United States want that government replaced?
PRESIDENT REAGAN:	No, because that would be a violation of the law.

After the story broke, the President continued to deny everything. When he was finally forced to discuss the growing scandal in November 1986, Reagan declared:

"In spite of the wildly speculative and false stories of arms for hostages and alleged ransom payments, we did not -- repeat did not -- trade weapons or anything else for hostages; nor will we."

The following month, the White House was impatient about receiving a report on the arms-for-hostages deal by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Senator Leahy commented on the administration's insistent requests for the report:

"The President ordered this whole operation on Iran. He ordered his Administration not to tell the intelligence committees what he was doing. Now he wants the Intelligence Committee to tell him what his Administration was doing during the time they were under his orders not to tell the Intelligence Committee. Even Alice in Wonderland doesn't get this twisted around."

In his January 1987 testimony before the Tower Commission, President Reagan specifically acknowledged having approved the Iranian arms sales back in August 1985. Two weeks later he reversed himself, claiming that his prior statement was erroneous. Reading from his notes, Reagan fucked up when he read some of his stage directions aloud:

"If the question comes up at the Tower Board meeting, you might want to say that you were surprised."

D'oh.

A couple of weeks later, Reagan sent a memo to the commission to clarify his testimony yet again. It stated that he had been mistaken during his January deposition, wherein he claimed to have approved the Iranian arms shipments:

The only honest answer is to state that try as I might, I cannot recall anything whatsoever about whether I approved an Israeli sale in advance or whether I approved replenishment of Israeli stocks around August of 1985. My answer therefore and the simple truth is, "I don't remember, period."

But all doubt seemed to have disappeared from his mind in March. Following the revelations of the Tower Commission investigation, Reagan told the American people that he had never approved any such thing.

"A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."

Reagan also addressed the subject of his much-ballyhooed delegating technique (MBA students, take note):

"Much has been said about my management style, a style that's worked successfully for me during 8 years as Governor of California and for most of my Presidency. The way I work is to identify the problem, find the right individuals to do the job, and then let them go to it. I've found this invariably brings out the best in people. They seem to rise to their full capability, and in the long run you get more done. [...] When it came to managing the NSC staff, let's face it, my style didn't match its previous track record."

In another triumph of keeping the government small and nimble, the NSC evidently did not keep records of its meeting minutes. Reagan explained that this was a woeful oversight, and not a deliberate attempt to cover the tracks of an illegal operation:

"One thing still upsetting me, however, is that no one kept proper records of meetings or decisions. [...] Well, rest assured, there's plenty of recordkeeping now going on at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."

Perhaps so, but that didn't mean those documents were being produced for lawful inquiries. Vice President George HW Bush began dictating a daily journal in 1986, which included many references to NSC operations. When Bush's documents were subpoenaed by Congress, he failed to mention the diary despite the fact that diaries were specifically included under the court order. And no wonder. When portions of it were finally produced, one entry from July 1987 seemed to explain Bush's reticence to comply with the mandate:

Howard Baker in the presence of the President, told me today that George Shultz had kept 700 pages of personal notes, dictated to his staff [...] Notes on personal meetings he had with the President. I found this almost inconceivable. Not only that he kept the notes, but that he'd turned them all over to Congress [...] I would never do it. I would never surrender such documents and I wouldn't keep such detailed notes.

George HW Bush personally attended many of the NSC meetings, and the President himself attended a few as well. But the apparent lack of documentation allowed Bush and Reagan to claim that neither man had been "in the loop" regarding the Boland amendment violations. It's funny how things like that always seem to work out.

When Reagan's VP became President, he pardoned six participants in the Iran-Contra scandal who were facing trial. Bush claimed that the prosecutions amounted to nothing more than the "criminalization of policy differences." 15 years later, his son George W Bush ordered the National Archives to withhold 68,000 pages of Reagan administration documents, including papers belonging to his father, who was then the VP. Nobody knows whether this paperwork includes anything germane to the Iran-Contra scandal. Perhaps we will never know.

As for himself, in all likelihood Ronald Reagan genuinely no longer remembers whether he approved the sale of arms to a terrorist nation, in order to illegally fund guerrilla forces in Nicaragua. He probably doesn't remember that he was ever Governor of California, or even President of the United States for that matter. In November 1994, Reagan announced to the world that he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease -- an incurable, progressive deterioration of mental faculties.

In August 2002, it was reported that Reagan no longer recognizes his own wife Nancy. According to an unnamed friend: "Some days he seems to recognize her as someone who's familiar, but most of the time she's just a blank to him."

Ronald Reagan's Presidential Pardons

Timeline