What 'The Reagan Diaries' tell us about our 40th president

Reagan's diaries shed light on both his daily schedule and his thinking.

By John Hughes

from the June 26, 2007 edition

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In the otherwise scrupulously maintained diaries of Ronald Reagan there is one significant gap. It is between March 30 and April 12, 1981. March 30 was the day he was shot by John Hinckley. April 12 was the president's first full day home from the hospital. A near encounter with death tends to trigger introspection. In Reagan's case it caused him to write the following passage in his diary:

"Getting shot hurts…. But I realized I couldn't ask for God's help while at the same time I felt hatred for the mixed-up young man who had shot me. Isn't that the meaning of the lost sheep? We are all God's children & therefore equally beloved by him. I began to pray for his soul and that he would find his way back to the fold."

A little later, he wrote: "Whatever happens now I owe my life to God and will try to serve him in every way I can."

We do not know how Ronald Reagan perceived his relationship with God before his shooting, but these words in a hitherto private diary do much to explain his reliance on prayer, the many instances of his unpublicized caring and compassion, and his sturdy public insistence on principle, in the years thereafter.

In 1983, after one animated cabinet meeting "based totally on political considerations," he wrote in his diary: "I finally reminded everyone we came here to do what was right not what was politically expedient."

At 765 pages The Reagan Diaries, edited by Douglas Brinkley, do not make for light summer reading. But they do shed fascinating light on the daily schedule and thinking of this president.

His critics have suggested that Reagan was a goof-off, but when he was in Washington his days from early morning to late evening – sometimes very late evening – were filled with meetings, sessions with foreign leaders; speeches; briefings by, and instructions to, his national security aides; jawboning with congressmen; formal state dinners and luncheons; and a never-ending stream of "desk work."

When he traveled abroad, Washington was not left behind and the schedule came with him. Small wonder that he enjoyed working weekends when possible at Camp David and allowed his thoughts to turn longingly to the ranch in California he and Nancy had temporarily forsaken.

Amid this schedule the diaries show numerous supporting calls he made to ordinary citizens, often children, whose hardships or medical problems had come to his attention, perhaps in the newspapers or on TV.

Once when he was leaving the White House for speechmaking in Florida, he saw a "little boy on the lawn jumping up and down waving a paper pad and pen."

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