Tecumseh Strikes - Chapter One: The George Bush Administration 1981-1989

[KingSweden]

The Curse of Tippecanoe, or Tecumseh’s Curse: the eerie coincidence where every President elected in a year divisible by 20, starting with William Henry Harrison in 1840, dies...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_Tippecanoe

[KingSweden]

March 30, 1981

"...we're hearing reports, shots fired outside the Washington Hilton Hotel as the President left the venue..."

"...Secret Service says the shooter has been apprehended, however we're also hearing..."

"...President Reagan was hurried into the limousine and quickly pulled away from the Hilton Hotel..."

"...Press Secretary James Brady was among the wounded, we're hearing now..."

"...six shots were fired..."

"...ladies and gentlemen, I..."

"...it appears that the President has been shot."

"...we're now hearing that the President was hit twice..."

"...the footage you are about to see may disturb you..."

"...among those struck at the scene were Washington Police Officer Thomas Delahanty and Secret Service Agent Tim McCarthy..."

"...the President, we believe, is at this time at George Washington University Hospital..."

"...a number of aides, including Chief of Staff James Baker, are confirmed to have headed to the hospital along with First Lady Nancy Reagan..."

"...currently we do not have any reports of Vice President Bush's whereabouts..."

"...a press conference is soon to be held at the White House..."

"...James Brady has died."

"...who's running the government?" "I cannot answer that at this time..."

"...I am in charge here, at the White House."

"...we have confirmation from sources within the White House that the President was shot twice and is undergoing surgery as we speak..."

"...we earlier reported that Press Secretary James Brady had died, and that report was incorrect. However, Mr. Brady was struck in the head..."

"...we have the communications, captured on unsecured radio channels, of the White House speaking with Vice President Bush while the Vice President was in Texas..."

"...Ted, comparing this to the Kennedy assassination, I don't think there's really a comparison..."

"...a moment of silence observed at the 1981 NCAA national championship, between the Indiana Hoosiers and the North Carolina Tar Heels..."

"...the President remains in surgery now, after several hours..."

"...the tunnel is called the President's Walk, because of how it is secured. It was done specifically after the assassination of President Kennedy and his brother, Senator Robert Kennedy."

"...I can reassure the nation and a watching world that the American government is functioning fully and effectively..."

"...we go now to Lesley Stahl reporting at the White House..."

"...in a dark turn, one of my colleagues here in the press pool recognized Chief Justice Warren Burger entering the White House while out smoking. Suffice to say that there may be concerns here at the White House tonight about the President's condition..."

"...still no word from the hospital, now close to seven hours after the attempt..."

"Hold on, now, Vice President Bush is coming out again. He was out about an hour ago, to reassure everyone that he'd been in communications with the White House during the day..."

[KingSweden]

"My fellow Americans, I will make this as brief as I can. Today is... an overwhelming day. A few moments ago, I ended one of the most difficult phone calls I have ever received. I have received confirmation from both doctors and members of this administration that President Ronald Reagan has passed away. The doctors and nurses at George Washington University Hospital, led by the talented Doctors Joseph Giordano and Benjamin Aaron, worked tirelessly over the last seven hours to do everything they could to save President Reagan's life, both in the emergency room and in surgery.

Upon hearing of President Reagan's death, I was administered the oath of office in the White House Situation Room by Chief Justice Burger. It is not an oath I swear lightly, and I am fully aware of the gravity of the task before me. These are not the circumstances under which I, or anyone, would wish to find myself inhabiting this most lonely of tasks.

Two months ago, I made a pledge alongside my friend and President to serve the American people faithfully, dutifully, and honorably. I stand here humbly, and ask for little but your prayers in this most difficult time. Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America. We'll miss you, Ron."

- Inaugural address of President George Bush, 9:31 PM Eastern Time, 3/30/1981

[KingSweden]

The Nation Mourns: Spring of 1981

"For a generation that had seen Kennedy shot when they were young, to have it happen a second time, for their kids to have to experience that too... can't even imagine. The only silver lining in it all was that there wasn't a need for a Warren Commission, for all those lunatics to drum up their theories. The guy who did it, Hinckley? A total nut. As crazy as they come. He gunned down the President of the United States to impress an actress, Jodie Foster. She's never spoken about it in interviews. Don't blame her." - Former White House Chief of Staff James Baker

"There were six shots... one hit Jim Brady, one hit Officer Delahanty, and the third hit Reagan right in the back, at the base of the neck. Tim [McCarthy] got in front of the fourth, took it in the stomach, but he probably prevented the President from being hit right in the head. The fifth went off the window and the sixth ricocheted off the limo door and hit the President under the arm when we went in. I was... man, if that first shot hadn't hit him, if it'd just been the last one, or none at all... he'd have lived. I could have saved him." - Secret Service Agent Jerry Parr

"You had vigils every night for a week, two weeks even. Everyone was in mourning, even people who hadn't liked him, who hadn't voted for him. But it wasn't like JFK. This was just so random, so senseless, so bizarre. He'd been in office for 70 days, less than three months. That's a footnote, not a Presidency." - Senator Joseph Biden

"I didn't envy George. Ironically, he was the one we'd all been afraid of going into '80. Boy, were we wrong. (Chuckles). But this wasn't how you want to ascend to the Presidency. You know you might have to, that's part of the job, but he wasn't what had powered the landslide and the Senate flipping. So what was he going to do now? He does he fill those shoes? He wasn't a man with LBJ's acumen." - Former Vice President Walter Mondale

"And at the core of our democracy is a faith in our fellow Americans, that wherever we live and however we vote, we come together in times of need. Today, we come together to bid farewell and mourn." - Former President Jimmy Carter, State Funeral of Ronald Reagan, 4/5/1981

[KingSweden]

YAS! Is this going to be in the same format as your last timeline?

For Elections I plan to do a similar format, though I probably won’t do nearly the same level of granular detail. I’m undecided on the oral history stuff long term.

[KingSweden]

The VP Choice: Spring 1981

"As macabre as it sounds, there was a debate raging inside the Administration pretty much the moment George took the oath, before... while the... well, I'm not gonna say it. Too crude. But still: George is President now, the 30th of March. So who do we pick to be VP? The office is vacant." - James Baker, WH Chief of Staff

"I spoke with Tip before he passed away about those weeks when he was a heartbeat away from the Presidency. He said he would have found and nominated a respected elder statesman to take the reins if it ever came to it that he ascended to the Presidency. He viewed that period of time very seriously, and I know he was in constant contact with the Bush people the whole time, shuttling back and forth to the White House. It helped him develop a relationship with Bush, too." - US Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II

"History books only capture so much... the first half of April '81 was a wild time in DC. Wild time. The Senate wanted input on who Bush picked. Senate Republicans, that is. Tip would have whipped the votes to send pretty much anybody up, but the Senate had a GOP majority now, and Ronald Reagan was the reason many of them were there. They wanted in." - US Senator Carl Levin

"George is, and was, a mainstream conservative. He wasn't Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater, sure, but to hear guys like Strom and Jesse tell it in the Senate cloakroom, you'd think we'd just been saddled with Jacob Javits in the White House. So there was a lot of pressure on him to make the right pick. The country was reeling, the Republican Party was... well, if he'd gotten it wrong, there would have been civil war. The governing party tearing itself to pieces five months after the landslide." - US Senator Bill Cohen

"Back and forth, back and forth, shuttling back and forth to Capitol Hill. Strategy meetings with Howard Baker, kissing Strom's ring, making sure the moderates were onboard and the conservatives were onboard... and that's before the Poland Crisis began." - James Baker, Chief of Staff

"Most people don't know this, but Dad offered it to Gerald Ford first. Ford had been offered a "co-Presidency" by Reagan at the '80 convention, or so the rumor goes. Dad always said that was Ford's condition for appearing on a ticket with the man he felt had cost him a second term. Ford turned him down, of course. So... who next?" - George W. Bush, President Bush's eldest son

[KingSweden]

The VP Candidates

"President Bush was intrigued by the idea of a handful of Governors, thought it'd be good to have an "outsider" on his ticket since he was very much a consummate insider, but eventually, after consulting with all the stakeholders - Reagan holdovers, Senate Republicans, Senate Democrats, Tip O'Neill, members of the Cabinet, even some old business friends in Texas... it all came down to three men, three Senators, they started to weigh." - Bush biographer John Sirleaf

Senator Bob Dole (R-Kansas)

"I argued for Dole. Bush had been on Ford's shortlist twice - when he ascended to the Presidency in 1974 and again at the '76 convention. Bush and Dole weren't particularly close but they'd both risen the GOP ranks in the Seventies more or less in tandem, and I think Dole was always a little sore about how close he came to the Vice Presidency and then how poorly his own run in '80 went. He had been a hard-liner at first, a true Goldwater man, but he'd mellowed out, and was respected across the party. I thought he was the best... I thought he was the man for the job." - James Baker, Chief of Staff

Senator Howard Baker (R-Tennessee)

"This was Dad's gut choice. Really. Howard was universally respected, not just by Republicans but by everybody. It was valuable... it was valuable to have somebody who came out of Watergate with his reputation not just intact but enhanced, and now he was Senate Majority Leader. It was like Kennedy tapping LBJ. Dad knew the bureaucracy - party bigwigs at RNC, foreign policy, intelligence. He was steeped in the stuff. Baker was the legislator. It was a clear fit." - George W. Bush, President Bush's son

"I was intrigued by Howard. I liked Howard, we went way back. And he was from the South, like I was. I thought it made a good fit, to look at a guy like that who really had something about him. We began discussing the particulars soon after Barbara came back from California, when she'd escorted Nancy and President Reagan's body. I argued in his favor, and a number of Senators who had... well, who had their own ambitions would have been fine with seeing Howard go up to the Naval Observatory, too." - Former President George Bush

Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)

"An... out of the box choice. Stevens was Majority Whip, so he was in leadership, and he was about the same age as George, and he was a reliable guy. Very reliable. I wasn't arguing in his favor, but some of the guys in the room were. Caspar [Weinberger] liked him. Al Haig liked him. Barbara liked him. You got all the upside of Howard, in a leadership guy, but you weren't plucking away the Majority Leader. You also avoided what George felt was the downside of Dole, in a man who clearly saw a President in the mirror and had his own ambitions. The only thing was... Alaska. Alaska! Picking a number-two guy from Alaska... we had 1984 to think of. Already, a week after the assassination, we were looking ahead. George had to stand on his own feet and get the Reagan coalition out again in a few years, with Goldwater's heir and champion dead. Was Ted the guy? Could he go the distance for us? We knew the Senate GOP would be onboard, I mean hell, he was their whip, but... well, let's just say the conversations went this way, bouncing around, quite a bit." - James Baker, Chief of Staff

[KingSweden]

April 15, 1981

“...reporting now from the White House, where in a few moments President Bush will introduce his choice...”

“...sources on Capitol Hill and in the West Wing confirm that the President has chosen Senator Robert Dole, Gerald Ford’s ticket mate in 1976, and that Dole accepted the nomination to the Vice Presidency on a Phone call late last night...”

“...this will create a vacancy in Kansas...”

“...heard from a senior Republican Senator that there was a last minute discussion with former Pennsylvania Senator Richard Schweiker, also a Vice Presidential candidate from ‘76...”

“...Majority Leader Howard Baker had taken his name out of consideration earlier in the week...”

“...Dole will now go before both Houses of Congress...nomination expected to be quickly and overwhelmingly passed.”

[KingSweden]

“I stand here today humbled by the nomination to serve as Vice President of the United States. We are a nation in mourning and in crisis, with Presidential succession invoked for the second time in the span of a decade. President Bush, you and I both were among the millions who were inspired by the voice that spoke so clearly last fall, that dared to dream and look ahead to an America restored. I accept this task you have chosen me for, with full knowledge of the gravity of the request that has been made of me and of the somber circumstances in which it is made. But much like you and I and millions of men of our generation, I serve when I am called upon to serve, and I will serve for as long as I am able.”

- Robert Dole, remarks upon being nominated for the Vice Presidency

[KingSweden]

For historical context, I’ve drawn heavily on this article:

http://res.dallasnews.com/interactives/reagan-bush/

[KingSweden]

Picking Dole: The Aftermath

"Bob Dole got the nod in the end. Jim Baker and Reagan's top guys - Deaver and Meese - they won out. Dad would later say it was the only time Jim Baker ever gave him bad advice in all the years they knew each other." - George W. Bush, Eldest Son of President Bush

"Ed [Meese] was instrumental in delivering Bob Dole to the Naval Observatory. He was always very plugged in with the conservative wing of the party, instinctively speaking. He advised us to make sure that at least two of the Big Three, as he called them, were onboard. That is to say - Barry Goldwater, Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond. If we had their buy-in we were good to go. Helms didn't care for Dole, but the other two were onboard, and Ed pushed hard. George liked Ed, and Jim preferred Dole too, and so he won out." - David Gergen, White House Staff Secretary

"They always say something about hindsight, and things becoming clearer with age. One thing that's clear to me is that I should have said no. Of course, you never know what the future will hold, and here I'd been given a new lease on life. I was a failed ticketmate to a President the party didn't love, then in my own run in 1980 I did worse than the Texas Democrat who sat next to Kennedy when he was shot. I was planning on working my way back through the Senate, but even then... had I known Howard [Baker] was going to call it a career after 1984 I would have stayed put. It could have been me as Majority Leader, and it could have been me who ran for President instead... instead of getting dragged down in George's mess." - Vice President Bob Dole

"We had a very difficult few months ahead of us. We were still sending appointees to the Senate and now we had to shepherd Dole through both Houses, per the 25th Amendment. It was easy for Nixon with Ford, everybody loved Jerry Ford. But Ford struggled at first with Rocky, for Christ's sake! And a lot of Democrats had long memories. They remembered Dole's behavior in '76. They remembered "Democrat wars" and all that other crap. If it weren't for the goodwill George was riding, and the weird funk the country was in after the assassination... we might honestly not have won those votes." - Ed Meese, Counselor to President Reagan

[KingSweden]

April 1981 Approval Ratings

George Bush: 76% Approve, 19% Disapprove

[KingSweden]

This is looking great. Curious to see what you have in mind here.

Thanks! The butterfly effect will become more pronounced the further and further from 1981 we go, suffice to say

[KingSweden]

Feedback so far? Style, content? How much detail do we want?

[KingSweden]

Is anybody still interested in this? I’d be happy to co-author, too.

[KingSweden]

May 13, 1981

“...stunning news from the Vatican City...”

“...we are...no, this can’t be.”

“...the Pope has...”

“...we are told Pope John Paul II is now in critical condition...”

“...he was approached and fired upon...”

“...now in surgery...”

“As of right now, we do not have any indication of the...”

“...still in surgery tonight in Rome...”

“Well, Barbara and I want to extend to His Holiness in Rome that we are... well, we’re praying for him tonight.”

[KingSweden]

May 13, 1981

“...stunning news from the Vatican City...”

“...we are...no, this can’t be.”

“...the Pope has...”

“...we are told Pope John Paul II is now in critical condition...”

“...he was approached and fired upon...”

“...now in surgery...”

“As of right now, we do not have any indication of the...”

“...still in surgery tonight in Rome...”

“Well, Barbara and I want to extend to His Holiness in Rome that we are... well, we’re praying for him tonight.”

Why would anyone shoot the pope reeeeeee

A Turkish nationalist did really almost kill Pope JP2 on 5/13/81

[KingSweden]

Is this a hint about the future "George W. Bush, President Bush's eldest son."

Maybe...

[KingSweden]

Pope John Paul II Assassinated in Rome

“In an event that has shocked the world, the Vatican announced that Pope John Paul II has succumbed to his wounds after seven hours in surgery. Tens of thousands of mourners have descended upon St. Peter’s Square as the third papal conclave in as many years is called.”

“...hundreds of thousands have descended on public places across Poland, the homeland of the slain Pope, where just last year he had declared ‘do not be afraid.’ With tensions already high...”

“President Bush extended his condolensces this morning to the nation and the world’s Catholics.”

[KingSweden]

So... now the Pope was dead, too. A President and a Pope slain within two months of each other. It seemed like in the spring of 1981 that the world was on fire. - Dick Allen, former National Security Advisor

It was a crippling thing for America’s Catholics, and the world’s Catholics. But you may as well have taken a tire iron to Poland’s knees. Or maybe lit a match after pouring gas on a woodpile. - Former President George Bush