A tale of incompetence
Nicholas von Hoffman
Washington Alexander the-not-so-great Haig has taken off for a spin in the Middle East, leaving b. ehind a nation convinced that he is an Ineffable jerk. Seldom has a man ruined a reputation faster than the Secretary of State, with his cameo 'I'm-in-control-here' television appearanc,e after the shooting. No one yet knows quite what got into him. Apparently he was with a number of other Cabinet members, acting in a manner which Passed for normal Haigian behaviour, when he got up without explanation and went to the press room and did his number. I thought he was going to the bathroom,' said one of his nonplussed colleagues. The twitterings and chippings of Washington gossip also had the monomanical general engaging in unpleasantness With the Secretary of Defence, Caspar Weinberger, over who would play boss in the White House 'situation room' during the hours of confusion and fumble after the attempt to assassinate the President. After acknowledging that a politician like Haig Cannot be shamed or embarrassed, it still seems impossible that he can hang on. The top staff in the White House have been telling reporters that the man is a prima donna, a pushy, petulant personality. The Secretary of Agriculture is ranging around been publicly complaining that Haig has been discussing the sale of French wheat to th.eRussianswithoutconsulting him, and the w_Idely broadcast whisper is that Mr Reagan himself was overheard at a banquet Wondering if all-star Al is the man to head the State Department, after all. Mr Reagan is emerging from this neartragedy with enhanced respect. Beyond marvelling that he is the most robust 70-Year-old since Konrad Adenauer or Charles de Gaulle, much admiring exclamation can be heard about the Presidents steadiness under fire, his jokes and his Concern for others when being wheeled into the operating room. Similar but entirely unmerited festoons of praise are being i directed to the secret service whose job it s to protect the chief executive. An examinationof the still photographs of Mr Reagan leaving the Washington Hilton hotel seconds before being shot shows that, Whatever the secret service may have thought it was doing, it decidedly wasn't guarding the boss. Both secret service agents and ordinary District of Columbia Policemen are to be seen, their backs to the crowd at the barricade where Mr Hinckley., the gunman, stood, regarding the President.
Unless they were under the misapprehension that Mr Reagan was going to whip out a revolver and shoot himself, they should have been looking 180 degrees in the other direction: the only direction whence danger could come. If they had been doing their jobs properly, they would have had to see a blond young man at the barricade pull a gun, and would have had at least some chance to get him before he got them. Their lack of discipline and diligence thus may have resulted not only in the President's wounding but the shooting of two of their own.
After the gunfire, the television tapes reveal not icy valiance in a crisis but panicky men running around shouting and waving guns like Mexican banditos trying to hold up the stage to Sage Brush City. A less collected, less well-schooled group of law enforcement officers cannot be found throughout this nation of sloppy, baggypants cops.
The White House itself, whatever may have been going on behind the scenes, did not look as if it was rising to the occasion — and looks can mean a great deal to the people of a nation fearful that yet another of its presidents has been murdered. The impression you got of the White House in those first hours was one of jumps and jitters. The only personage who looked as if he had himself under control was Lyn INTofziger, Reagan's old California friend and political adviser, who went to the hospital and began giving out the calm, accurate information which a moment like this demands.
In such an hour, network television coverage becomes something other than a private sector business operation to be conducted in any old slovenly manner that suits the proprietors' fancy. There being no official government radio, it is up to the commercial operations to tell 230 million Americans whether their President is alive or dead, and other details about the assassination attempt. In actuality, the homicidal maniac who shot at the President saw his bullet ricochet off Mr Reagan, transverse the heart of Al Haig's public career and carry on through with enough velocity to knock off broadcast journalism. Cub police reporters routinely cover attempted murders with more competence than the high-priced talent working for the television networks. After having interrupted their regular programming to announce an attempt had been made on the President's life, they went on to say that Mr Reagan had escaped unharmed and stuck with their erroneous story for the better part of three quarters of an hour.
Later in the day we were to hear that the President was 'undergoing open heart surgery' (untrue) and that the President's Press Secretary, Jim Brady, had been killed (equally erroneous). Most of this voluminously well-intentioned fiction came from fogged out people in the White House who, Lord save us, were depending on television for much of their information.
The news of Brady's death and resurrection so disturbed Frank Reynolds, ABC's anchor man, that he ceased functioning as he lapsed into a finger-biting silence, turning slowly away from the camera as though about to go into tears, shock or his orisons. A second anchorman materialised next to Reynolds, sitting with the discombobulated chap until he recovered from his attack of nerves, or whatever it was that smote him. On NBC a pretty-faced pearshaped announcer rushed on the air to say something like, 'I just ran into my sister-inlaw's gynaecologist who overheard an orderly tell a nurse that Mr Reagan's condition was. . . 'etc etc. CBS put Brady's death on the air on the strength of a statement about it made by Howard Baker, the Senate majority leader, who was two or three miles away from the hospital.
The root cause of the absence of routine journalistic checking is the habitual dependence of ordinary Washington reporters on public information officers and press secretaries. In this case, though, the man who fed them their facts, Brady, the Press Secretary, was lying on the pavement with a bullet in his head — so the darlings were hors de combat, unable to work without the milk of information coming from the official nipple into their toothless mouths.
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