Ronald Reagan at his best

We wanted a verbatim interview with President Reagan as the book’s penultimate chapter, and I had called the president’s press secretary, James Brady, early in March [1981] to request one. When Rowly [Evans] and I walked into the Oval Office at four p.m. on March 23, we were surprised. Usually two or three senior aides are at any president’s side for a private meeting, but Brady was the only other person. There was no sign of bulky White House recording equipment. Every on-the-record utterance of a president normally is transcribed for posterity, but only our own little office tape recorder retained Reagan’s answers. Stranger still, after about five minutes, Brady glanced at his watch and left the room. We were alone with the president.
It was a sunny early spring afternoon, and Reagan’s mood matched it. In the presidency for only two months, he “was obviously having the time of his life” (as I later wrote in the book’s introduction to the interview). Reagan did not betray the turmoil in his official family centering around Secretary of State Alexander Haig, who was engaged in a power struggle with White House staffers headed by Jim Baker. Reagan was able to maintain a cheerful composure in the midst of internal strife.
The purpose of our interview for a book to be published six months later was to probe Reagan’s philosophy and his personal outlook as to how revolutionary his administration would and should be.

One week to the day from our session in the White House, John Hinckley shot Brady and Reagan outside the Washington Hilton Hotel. A disabled Brady kept the title of press secretary through the Reagan presidency’s eight years but never was able to perform the office’s duties. I think Reagan missed Brady’s relaxed style. Access to the president was sharply curtailed for all news media, and that included Rowly and me. Larry Speakes, the de facto press secretary, worked for Baker and treated Evans and me like the enemy. When we would write an inside dope column critical of Baker, Speakes would rip us in the morning briefing. Brady, I am sure, would have tried to work with us to get a better column next time.
Although Reagan’s wounds were much less grievous than Brady’s, I think that the president, as well as his press secretary, would never quite be the same after the shooting. Rowly and I caught him at his best on the afternoon of March 23. As outstanding as his performance was in changing America (and the world), it could have been even better were it not for John Hinckley.