As luck would have it
A .22 bullet is a small object, but had the one which struck President Reagan been an inch or so lower and more centrally placed it would have hit his heart rather than his lung a-nd George Bush by now might have been President. Had the bullet been a few inches higher, it might have damaged the President's brain without killing him, possibly forcing upon the Vice-President and the chief executive Officers the necessity of declaring the President incapable under the terms of the 25th Amendment. It looks as if President Reagan will not be relinquishing the presidency either through death or through incapacity: but young John Hinckley's finger on the trigger was clearly within a hair's breadth of transferring executive authority in the United States and the leadership of the Western alliance from a redneck right-winger to a comparatively moderate Ivy League product of the East Coast establishment. George Bush fought Ronald Reagan all the way for the Republican nomination, and Reagan only picked Bush as running mate When the ideologically more compatible ex-President Ford tried unsuccessfully to impose too many conditions upon his acceptance. Governor Reagan's choice as vice-presidential candidate attracted great attention because of Reagan's age: It has so transpired that it has not been natural causes which have brought George Bush suddenly so close to power but the would-be assassin's bullet. The chanciness of life and death is brilliantly illustrated; the democratic process of Primary elections is almost undone by a bullet no one could have anticipated; power flits at a gunman's whim then settles back, by virtue of an inch, where it had been democratically placed; and the world, it so happens, resumes its normal appearance and pace. It could have been very different, but it is not. A bullet kills the youngest President; the oldest shrugs off the blow. We are reminded Of Power's transience and of how its thread, as that of life, is thin and fragile. A young man from a wealthy home who tWas expelled from America's tiny National Socialist party because he 'wanted to shoot people and blow things up' ?aught a pistol in a Texas pawnshop, then travelled to ,Washington to shoot himself into history. He damned near did, but instead will have to settle for a footnote.
The general relief felt at President Reagan's survival is Partly relief that the United States has escaped another bloody and murderous stain. There is too much violence in America and in its history; four presidents killed in office is already more than enough; and the number of assassination threats and attempts since President Kennedy was killed in 1963, is appalling. The luck has held, and for this we must be grateful. But there will also be relief that President Reagan remains president. He has shown signs of settling into becoming a good president, and the calm, indeed jaunty, way in which he treated this assassination attempt ('Honey I forgot to duck') was markedly and favourably different from that of some around him. General Alexander Haig, in particular, behaved in disconcerting fashion, considering the importance of the position he suddenly found himself in. With a voice reported near to breaking, the Secretary of State found it desirable to inform America and the world, 'As of now, I'm in charge now' and to declare, 'Crisis management is in effect.' The boyish eagerness with which General Haig fancifully assumed temporary power was not at all reassuring; and we are bound to reflect that President Reagan was most prudent last week when he appointed Vice-President Bush over the objcetions of Secretary of State Haig to head the special crisis management committee he has set up to handle domestic and foreign emergencies as and when they occur. When a five-star general who once commanded NATO displays himself with shaking voice and under great emotional strain as he seeks to reassure his country by saying, 'We will stay right here until the situation clarifies', it may be thought hard to criticise ordinary troops. But the panicky behaviour of the secret servicemen in the President's entourage immediately after the shooting — behaviour which an astonished world saw on its television screens — was as disturbing as the Secretary of State's.
So: we are reassured that President Reagan has survived, but dismayed that he was so nearly assassinated. The assassination attempt showed the American propensities towards violence and panic simultaneously breaking through the veneer of calm, and that, too, is dismaying. We are reassured by Vice-President Bush but not by Secretary of State Haig. We wish President Reagan continued good luck and hope that his presidency is not again darkened by the stain of violence.
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