Is the president still able to perform his duties from Walter Reed?
On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot as he entered his limousine after a speech at a Washington hotel. Reagan’s condition soon stabilized. He was released from the hospital April 11 and spoke to a joint session of Congress on April 28. But in the first few hours, it was not clear whether the president would live or die. Paperwork was prepared to appoint Vice President George H. W. Bush as acting president. You can see it here, courtesy of the Reagan Library. The paperwork was never executed. Instead, the day after the shooting, three top aides visited Reagan in the hospital. They brought with them a piece of legislation that had to be signed that day. Reagan signed it, and was photographed doing so. American citizens and foreign allies were assured: The presidency still functioned. Adversaries who might have been tempted to take advantage of a break in United States governance also got the message: Be warned. (The legislation, in case you were wondering, blocked a scheduled increase in dairy price supports from going into effect the next day.) The faction-riven Reagan White House was not always a happy place. But under the deft management of Chief of Staff James Baker (now the subject of a superb new biography by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser), the Reagan White House was a supremely functional place. They got the job done.
