The Kennedy Half-Century (126 page)

5
. Ibid.

6
. As
Time
reported it: “The letter was unearthed from a trove of Nixon’s papers in a branch of the National Archives in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Last week Walter Mondale read the passage to campaign audiences to back up his charge that Reagan is guilty of ‘political grave robbing’ when he invokes the names of such Democrats as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman—and, yes, John F. Kennedy. Presidential Spokesman Larry Speakes replied that Reagan ‘had been pleasantly surprised to find the difference between Kennedy the candidate and Kennedy the president.’ “Source: “Dear Mr. Vice Pres.,”
Time
124 (November 4, 1984): 24. In addition, “Dayton Duncan, Mr. Mondale’s deputy press secretary, said the campaign learned about the letter last Wednesday from a hand-writing expert who was doing research on Mr. Nixon’s pre-presidential papers at a branch of the Los Angeles Federal Archives in Laguna-Niguel, Calif.” Bernard Weinraub, “Mondale Says Reagan Note Compared Kennedy to Marx,”
New York Times
, October 24, 1984.

7
. Michael Reagan with Jim Denney,
The New Reagan Revolution: How Ronald Reagan’s Principles Can Restore America’s Greatness
(New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2010), 103; Larry J. Sabato,
Feeding Frenzy: How Attack Journalism Has Transformed American Politics
(New York: Free Press, 1991), 33–42.

8
. Ronald Reagan,
Speaking My Mind
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 23.

9
. Reagan,
New Reagan Revolution
, 110. Whether or not the allegation had a basis in truth, Ronald Reagan believed it to be true and told his son about it.

10
. Reagan’s speech was entitled “A Time for Choosing” and included such memorable lines as “No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear” and “You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.” See Ronald Reagan, “Address on Behalf of Senator Barry Goldwater: ‘A Time for Choosing,’ ” October 27, 1964, Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley,
American Presidency Project
,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=76121
 [accessed April 2, 2012].

11
. “The Ronnie-Bobby Show,”
Newsweek
, May 29, 1967: 26–31; Paul Kengor, “The Great Forgotten Debate,”
National Review Online
, May 22, 2007,
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/220949/great-forgotten-debate/paul-kengor?pg=1
 [accessed December 28, 2011]; William Kristol, “In 2008 It’s Ronald Reagan vs. Bobby Kennedy,”
Time
, March 29, 2007,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1604937,00.html
 [accessed December 28, 2011].

12
. Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson, and Martin Anderson, eds. 2001.
Reagan in His Own Voice: Ronald Reagan’s Radio Addresses
. New York: Simon and Schuster. Compact disc.

13
. Del Quentin Wilber,
Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan
(New York: Henry Holt, 2011), 65–82.

14
. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, “The Handgun Crime Control Act of 1981,”
Northern Kentucky Law Review
10, no. 1, 1982: 1; Charles Mohr, “Guns Traced in 16 Minutes to Pawn Shop in Dallas,”
New York Times
, April 1, 1981,
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/04/01/us/gunstraced-in-16-minutes-to-pawn-shop-in-dallas.html?scp=i&sq=A%20Guns%20Traced%20in%2016%20Minutes%20to%20Pawn%20Shop%20in%20Dallas&st=cse
 [accessed April 5, 2012].

15
. Wilber,
Rawhide Down
, 203–25.

16
. Ron Reagan,
My Father at 100
(New York: Viking, 2011), 195–97.

17
. Nancy Reagan,
My Turn: The Memoirs of Nancy Reagan
(New York: Random House, 1989), 5. E-mail from Ron Reagan, Jr., May 10, 2012.

18
. Reagan,
My Father at 100
, 195–97.

19
. Wilber,
Rawhide Down
, 215.

20
. “The Day Reagan Was Shot,” CBS News, February 11, 2009,
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500164_162-287292.html
 [accessed April 3, 2012].

21
. President Ford’s two assassination attempts provoked little intense emotion, since Ford was not hit and the disturbing news was immediately linked to the good news of Ford’s safety.

22
. Unfortunately, Hinckley may soon be back on the streets. In 2009 a judge extended the length of his furlough visits to his aging mother in Williamsburg, Virginia, and Hinckley’s doctors have told authorities that he no longer presents a danger to himself or the public. James Polk, “Doctors: Reagan Shooter Is Recovering, Not a Danger,” CNN.com, March 26, 2011,
http://articles.cnn.com/2011-03-26/justice/hinckley.today_1_john-hinckley-furloughs-insanity?_s=PM:CRIME
 [accessed April 3, 2012].

23
. Eliot Brenner, “Bulletproof Vest for Hinckley,” United Press International, April 2, 1981.

24
. “Kennedy Gets Secret Service Guard,” Associated Press, March 31, 1981.

25
. Mike Shanahan, “Secret Service: ‘We Were Competing With a Bullet,’ ” Associated Press, April 4, 1981.

26
. Michael K. Deaver,
Nancy: A Portrait of My Years with Nancy Reagan
(New York: William Morrow, 2004), 140.

27
. Draft report, “Report on the Performance of the United States Department of the Treasury in Connection with the March 30, 1981 Assassination Attempt on President Ronald Reagan,” 07/02/1981, CFOA 28, p. 75, Edwin Meese: Files, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

28
. Wilber,
Rawhide Down
, 70–71, 225.

29
. Regan published
For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington
in 1988. Joyce Wadler, Angela Blessing, Dirk Mathison, and Margie Bonnett Sellinger, “The President’s Astrologers,”
People
29 (May 23, 1988),
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0„20099022,00.html
 [accessed April 3, 2012].

30
. Johanna McGeary, James Kelly, and Jonathan Beaty, “Protecting the President,”
Time
, April 13, 1981,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,954702,00.html
 [accessed April 5, 2012].

31
. Stuart Spencer, interview, excerpted in “Reagan Officials on the March 30, 1981 Assassination Attempt,”
http://millercenter.org/academic/oralhistory/news/2007_0330
 [accessed July 13, 2011]. Ron Reagan, Jr., told me that when he asked his father not to run for a second term, citing safety concerns, the president demurred, insisting that there were “a lot of things he needed to do and do for the country and it was really important, and so he appreciated my concern but he was just going to have to run anyway.” Telephone interview with Ron Reagan, Jr., March 8, 2012.

32
. Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi,
His Holiness: John Paul II and the Hidden History of Our Time
(New York: Doubleday, 1996), 357.

33
. See Ronald Reagan, “Why I’m for the Brady Bill,”
New York Times
, March 29, 1991,
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/03/29/opinion/why-i-m-for-the-brady-bill.html?src=pm
 [accessed April 5, 2012].

34
. See the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence website,
http://www.bradycampaign.org
 [accessed April 5, 2012].

35
. See Gallup poll (AIPO), April 10–April 13, 1981, iPOLL Databank, Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut,
http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/data_access/ipoll/ipoll.html
 [accessed May 1, 2012], and ABC News /
Washington Post
poll, April 20–April 22, 1981. iPOLL Databank, Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut,
http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/data_access/ipoll/ipoll.html
 [accessed May 1, 2012].

36
. Ronald Reagan, “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the Program for Economic Recovery,” April 28, 1981, Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley,
The American Presidency Project
,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=43756
 [accessed April 2, 2012].

37
. Ronald Reagan, “Remarks on Signing the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 and the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981, and a Question-and-Answer Session with Reporters,” August 13, 1981, Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley,
The American Presidency Project
,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=44161
 [accessed April 2, 2012].

38
. Paul D. Erickson, “The Once and Future President: John F. Kennedy in the Rhetoric
of Ronald Reagan” in Paul Harper and Joann P. Krieg, eds.,
John F. Kennedy: The Promise Revisited
(New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), 313.

39
. Richard Hansen, “John F. Kennedy Quote Compendium: The Reality Behind the Image,” ID#190458, FG002–34, WHORM: Subject File, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. The Reagan Library could not tell me when Hansen’s report was written, but Frank Fahren-kopf, chairman of the Republican National Committee at the time, believes the report was done in “late ’83 or early ’84,” just as the Reagan team was gearing up for reelection. E-mail from Frank Fahrenkopf, April 2, 2012. Fahrenkopf’s recollection is backed by Bill Greener, the RNC’s Director of Communications at the time. Reagan White House political director Ed Rollins suggested a date of October 1983 or perhaps a bit before that. In any event, it is clear that Hansen wrote the report in the critical months leading up to the successful 1984 Republican campaign.

40
. John F. Kennedy, “Special Message to the Congress on Tax Reduction and Reform,” January 24, 1963, Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley,
The American Presidency Project
,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9387
 [accessed April 5, 2012].

41
. See Ronald Reagan, “Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session on the Program for Economic Recovery at a Breakfast for Newspaper and Television News Editors,” February 19, 1981, Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley,
The American Presidency Project
,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=43428#axzzihlMJQkyM
 [accessed December 27, 2011], and “Remarks in Denver, Colorado, at the Annual Convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,” June 29, 1981, Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley,
The American Presidency Project
,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=44016
 [accessed December 28, 2011]. Stacey Chandler, an archivist at the JFK Library, sent the following e-mail message on 4/6/12: “The earliest record we were able to find of JFK using this phrase is in the “Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy at Picnic, Muskegon, Michigan,” September 5, 1960. The Muskegon speech is available here: John F. Kennedy, “Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy, Picnic, Muskegon, MI,” September 5, 1960, Online by Gerhard Peters and John T Woolley,
The American Presidency Project
,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=60414
 [accessed April 6, 2012].

42
. Ronald Reagan, “Remarks at the Illinois Forum Reception in Chicago,” September 2, 1981, Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley,
The American Presidency Project
,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=44192
 [accessed December 28, 2011].

43
. Steven F. Hayward,
The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution 1980–89
(New York: Crown Forum, 2009), 79–80.

44
. Dinesh D’Souza,
Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader
(New York: Free Press, 1997), 81.

45
. See Benjamin Friedman, “Learning from the Reagan Deficits,”
American Economic Review
83, no. 2 (May 1992): 299–304; and Paul Pierson,
Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Retrenchment
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

46
. Syndicated columnist Robert Samuelson has described Kennedy’s tax cut as an economic “disaster” which spawned runaway inflation in the 1970s and 1980s and a permanent “loss of budgetary discipline” in Washington. Samuelson is right about one thing: JFK and his economic advisers set a fiscal precedent that later was misused and led to massive deficits. But the columnist overlooks key root causes of inflation and other economic problems, such as LBJ’s “guns and butter” spending in the 1960s and the oil shocks of the 1970s. See
Robert Samuelson, “How JFK’s Mistake Led to the Sequester Mess,”
Washington Post
, March 3, 2013,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/robert-samuelson-how-jfks-mistake-led-to-the-sequester-mess/2013/03/03/ca4ba654-82bf-ne2-a350-49866afab584_story.html
 [accessed March 5, 2013].

47
. Ronald Reagan, “Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session with Regional Editors and Broadcasters,” April 18, 1985, Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley,
The American Presidency Project
,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=38498
 [accessed December 28, 2011], and “Address to the Nation on the Federal Budget and Deficit Reduction,” April 24, 1985, Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley,
The American Presidency Project
,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=38536
 [accessed December 28, 2011].