Killing Reagan Read Free

microphone. He speaks to the president of the United States as if he were lecturing a cub reporter. “Under what circumstances would you use military forces to deal with, for example, a shutoff of Persian Gulf oil, if that should occur, or to counter Russian expansion beyond Afghanistan into either Iran or Pakistan? I ask this question in view of charges that we are woefully unprepared to project sustained—and I emphasize the word sustained —power in that part of the world.”
    Carter will reach for his water glass eleven times tonight. It is his tell, as gamblers call a nervous tic. Another tell is that Carter blinks constantly when ill at ease.
    â€œWe have made sure that we address this question peacefully, not injecting American military forces into combat but letting the strength of our nation be felt in a beneficial way,” he answers, eyelids fluttering as if he were staring into the sun. “This, I believe, has assured that our interests will be protected in the Persian Gulf region, as we’ve done in the Middle East and throughout the world.”
    This is not an answer. It is an evasion. And while Carter is hoping to appear presidential and above the fray, the fact is that he looks indecisive and somewhat weak.
    When it comes Reagan’s turn to field the same question, he stumbles again—though only for an instant. His thought process seems to be clearing. Reagan has rehearsed this debate with adviser David Stockman, whose sharp intellect rivals that of Carter. That practice now shows in Reagan’s new confidence. Statistics suddenly roll off his tongue. He rattles off the 38 percent reduction in America’s military force under the Carter administration, the refusal to build sixty ships that the navy deems necessary to fulfilling its global mission, and Carter’s insistence that programs to build new American bombers, missiles, and submarines be either stalled or halted altogether.
    The outrage in Reagan’s voice will connect to those viewers sick and tired of America’s descent into global impotency.
    Jimmy Carter reaches for his water glass.
    *   *   *
    More than one thousand miles west, in the city of Evergreen, Colorado, a twenty-five-year-old drifter pays little attention to the debate. Instead, John Hinckley Jr. fixates on schemes to impress Jodie Foster, the young actress who starred opposite Robert De Niro in the 1976 movie Taxi Driver —a film Hinckley has seen more than fifteen times. Even though he has never met her, Hinckley considers Jodie the love of his life and is determined to win her hand.
    Hinckley’s obsession with the eighteen-year-old actress is so complete that he temporarily moved to New Haven, Connecticut, to stalk her while she attended Yale University. Hinckley is a college dropout, unable to focus on his own studies, yet he had little problem sitting in on Foster’s classes. In New Haven, he slid love notes under the door of her dorm room, found her phone number, and, in a brazen move, called Foster and asked her out to dinner. Shocked, she refused. So stunned was Foster by Hinckley’s advances and subsequent actions that she will not speak of them for years to come.
    Now, nearly penniless and having moved back in with his parents, John Hinckley ruminates over how to make Jodie Foster change her mind. His plans are grandiose and bizarre. Hinckley has contemplated killing himself right before Foster’s very eyes, or perhaps hijacking an airliner.
    He has even plotted the assassination of President Jimmy Carter.
    The pudgy Hinckley, who wears his shaggy hair in bangs, has yet to see a psychiatrist for the schizophrenia that is slowly taking control of his brain. That appointment is still one week away. But no amount of therapy will ever stop him from thinking about Jodie Foster—and the lengths to which he must go to earn her love. Now, sitting in a small basement bedroom, Hinckley considers