Command and Control Tested Under Fire

[Valin]

Dallas Morning News

When Ronald Reagan was shot, Al Haig famously declared that he was “in control,” but it was the vice president from Texas who stepped calmly into the breach.

Alan Peppard

May 13, 2015

 

At the center of a diamond formation of Secret Service agents, Ronald Reagan stepped from the secure VIP exit of the Washington Hilton and onto the damp sidewalk. When a small crowd yelled greetings from across T Street, his movie-star smile instinctively materialized.

 

The new president crossed the pavement to a Lincoln parade car and heard the familiar voice of ABC White House correspondent Sam Donaldson rise above the din: “What’s the latest on Poland, Mr. President?”

 

Command and Control: Tested Under Fire — When Ronald Reagan was wounded in an assassination attempt, Vice President George Bush raced to Washington from Texas.

 

It was 2:27 p.m. on March 30, 1981, and the Soviet Union was poised to invade Poland to suppress a labor uprising.

 

Reagan merely turned toward the press line and waved.

 

Next to Donaldson, a 25-year-old man in a trench coat flexed his knees and raised his hands in a marksman’s stance. With a revolver he had purchased at a Dallas pawnshop, John W. Hinckley Jr. fired six shots.

 

It was the 70th day of the Reagan presidency.

 

Accounts of the afternoon tend to be dominated by the sensational storyline of Secretary of State Alexander Haig’s declaration that “I’m in control here.” But Vice President George H.W. Bush’s pitch-perfect reaction to the crisis lies largely unexplored in the shadow of history. He had only recently been Reagan’s energetic opponent, a fact that was fresh in the memories of Reagan loyalists. The steady hand he showed after the assassination attempt would linger in the minds of his admirers as one of the defining moments of his public career.

 

Now 90, Bush consented to an email interview for this story. His comments, along with hours of tapes from inside the White House Situation Room, never seen photographs taken aboard Air Force Two and interviews with participants in the crisis shed new light on the day Reagan became the fifth sitting president to be shot and the only one who lived.

 

“I recall thinking about Nancy and the president when I first heard how bad the situation really was,” Bush told The News. “Even though it was still early in the administration, I didn’t think about them as president and first lady, but rather as friends.”

 

(Snip)

 

 

 

H/T Ricochet

 

 

Not one of Al Haig's bright shining moments.

[Valin]