Rawhide Down_ The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan - Del Quentin Wilber [79]
After finishing the belly tap, Giordano and Gens stepped out of the OR to brief the first lady in a small office near the operating rooms. The office was so cramped they sat knee to knee. Giordano explained the significance of the fact that the president’s abdomen was clear of blood. The next step, he told Mrs. Reagan, was for Ben Aaron to perform chest surgery and stop the bleeding. The surgery would last a couple of hours, but they expected the president to emerge from it in fine shape.
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WHILE HER HUSBAND was in surgery, Nancy Reagan found Sarah Brady sitting quietly in an ER break room. The nurses and social workers had kept the television off to spare Mrs. Brady the trauma of watching the video of her husband getting shot. The room was almost eerily silent, a refuge from the hallways swarming with medical and law enforcement personnel.
The first lady gave the press secretary’s wife a gentle hug.
“I’m so scared,” Sarah Brady said.
“So am I,” Nancy Reagan said.
The first lady then followed George Opfer to a small chapel on the second floor of the hospital. A few minutes earlier, a doctor had mentioned the hospital’s chapel to Agent Opfer, thinking that it could provide a refuge. The chapel had plain walls, a wooden altar, and a single piece of stained glass illuminated by artificial light.
At first, Mrs. Reagan and Opfer were alone in the simple and quiet space. The agent held the first lady’s hand, and they both kneeled as Opfer said, “All we can do is pray.”
A little later, Sarah Brady joined them in the chapel, as did the wife of the wounded Secret Service agent, Tim McCarthy. They were soon followed by Jim Baker, Ed Meese, and Mike Deaver. Baker, a devout Episcopalian, kneeled and prayed.
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BAKER AND MEESE left the chapel and found another sanctuary—an out-of-the-way janitor’s closet—where they could discuss matters of state. Huddled in the closet, they debated whether to temporarily transfer presidential authority to Vice President Bush under the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution. It was an option both were loath to take. White House officials had been laboring to reassure the public that the government was functioning normally, and Baker and Meese agreed that transferring power to Bush would send the opposite signal. Moreover, since Bush was on a plane that didn’t have secure voice communications, it would be difficult to execute the transfer.
The question of presidential authority also posed personal and political challenges, especially for Baker. Conservatives and Reagan loyalists considered the chief of staff, like the vice president, a moderate, and they therefore viewed him with considerable suspicion. Some thought Baker had too much influence in the White House and was already curtailing Reagan’s conservative agenda. Sensitive to these concerns, Baker did not want to be seen as overly eager to hand presidential powers to his close friend.
Baker and Meese understood that even a brief transfer of power would invite further questions about Reagan’s age and vigor. Further, they had reason to hope that the president would recover fairly quickly.
After wheeling Reagan into the operating room, doctors had told Baker and Meese that they expected the president to survive the surgery and expressed cautious optimism that Reagan would be able to make decisions by the following day.
Taking all these factors into consideration, Baker and Meese decided that it would be wisest not to transfer presidential authority to Bush, at least not yet. Before leaving the closet, they agreed to closely monitor the president’s progress and reassess their decision if he took a turn for the worse.