American Experience

Former White House Chief of Staff and Secretary of Treasury James Baker on the Assassination Attempt on President Reagan

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JAMES BAKER: I was always impressed with President Reagan's courage but particularly so during the course of the assassination attempt. When we arrived at the hospital and he was on a gurney there, they were wheeling him into surgery and he looked up at us and he said, who's minding the store and when he made his famous comment to the doctors, I hope somebody's a Republican in this crowd. What people I don't think appreciated at the time, was how very close he came to dying, as a consequence of that assassination attempt. And there were some complications that developed several days after his surgery that could have been much more dangerous than they ended up being but I was impressed with his courage, you bet.

As you know, at the Hospital that day, we concluded that we would not invoke the 25th ammendment or at least not recommend to the Cabinet that it be invoked, because it really wasn't a White House staff's authority to do that, it was the Cabinet's authority. But it wouldn't have happened if we hadn't recommended it to him, I don't think. We didn't think it was necessary. The President was going to be unconscious during the period of the operation but he signed legislation the very next day, in fact I have the bill that he signed and the pen he signed it with -- a copy of the bill -- and the pen he signed it with. And we wrote a little inscription on it: "Dear Jim, this is the piece of legislation I signed the day after the operation. This proves that there was no gap in our operation. Oops, no pun intended. Ron." So he was active immediately after the operation. But I do think during his convalescence that there was a period when he was less involved. But I don't agree with Lou Cannon that he never regained the involvement that he exhibited when he first came into the White House. I just don't agree with that.

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