#31: Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of President Reagan by Del Quentin Webber

2011, Henry Holt. 296 pages

I remember when Reagan was shot in 1981. I was in 2nd grade at Herbert Hoover Elementary in Iowa City, Iowa. Our teacher, Ms. Petty, told us about it in class and told us that everything would be OK. I thought then, and still think now, that Ms. Petty was cool.

Webber, a reporter for the Washington Post, pieces together what happened that day, along with short biographies of the main characters in the drama. "Rawhide Down" refers to the code name that Reagan had with the Secret Service. What other name could Reagan have had? He "absolutely loved it" according to Webber. His limo was called stagecoach, for God's sake. BTW here are some others, which Webber lists in his prologue:
1. Kennedy -- Lancer, "invoking the image of Camelot." I have to admit, to have the code name "Lancer" is awesome. Seeing as how Kennedy was a well known Ladies Man, this could have other connotations as well. Happy Birthday, Mr. President!
2. Carter -- Deacon, "because he was a former Sunday School teacher"
3. Clinton -- Eagle. There is really no reason for this.

Anyway, back to Reagan. This text reads like a detective novel, which in some ways it is. Through interviews and source research, Webber gets to some rather astonishing stories coming out of this day. Here are the five things I took away from this text, in no particular order.

1. Secret Service: a fascinating group that I want to know more about. The agent that shoved Reagan in the car that day was well known for reading Greek Philosophers and Romantic poetry. Another made himself big and took a bullet in the chest, just on reflex and instinct. Very impressive, no matter what you think of the President.

2. Hinckley was/is a complete fucking head case. Webber delves in detail into the gunman's obsession with Jodie Foster, and it is just weird. Even my thick skin was slightly punctured by his movements and writings. "Troubled" does not even begin to get to the depths of that guy's problem. As Reagan, in his first statement to his nurses after being taken off a respirator, said "What was this guy's beef?" Find out in this book.

3. Reagan, however much I am not a fan, remains someone who I would have liked to meet. The man is 70 years old, loses nearly 40% of his blood during the course of the day, and has the ability to crack jokes throughout and walk into the ER on his own two feet after taking a bullet in the chest. That, as the kids say today, is Beast. I mean, the first communication he makes with his doctors after he wakes up is to write the famous W.C. Fields quote, "On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia."

4. Perhaps the most frightening part of the book, besides the description of the terrible head wound to Jim Brady and its aftermath, was the scramble at the White House among Jim Baker, Richard Allen and Al "I am in control here" Haig. There really was no precedent for a President to have been injured in an assassination attempt and be in that gray area of the discharge of presidential duties. Webber's writing is particularly strong in this part of the text.

5. The descriptions of the surgeries made me think:
a) under no circumstances do I ever want to be shot, or to shoot at someone, or see someone get shot.
b) under no circumstances could I have ever gone to med school. My poor ass would have keeled over from shock. I would have run screaming from the ER. I don't know how those people do it.
c) under no circumstances do I ever want to have chest surgery. EVER. Good God. Just the mere mention of "Rib Separator" made me queasy. Of course, where are most of my health problems located? You guessed it, the ol' ticker. Lousy genetics; of course my caffeine and beer consumption do not help matters. Oh well, at least I know what to look forward to.
d) this was a book I did not expect to like, but I could not put it down.

#30: Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War by Andrew J Bacevich

2010, Metropolitan Books, 304 p

Bacevich, a former Lt. Colonel in the US Army and current Professor at Boston University, goes straight at what Ike called the "military industrial complex" in this text. I try to use Ike's farewell speech in 1961 in my history class every year, as it was a true pointing out of the danger to representative democracy that a large elite reliant upon federal monies presents to the rest of us. Far from being one of the popular "Washington Elites are ruining the country" books popular with the Beckites and Left-Wing Ninnies, this text pushes it back on us.

Bacevich  presents what he calls "the trinity" of American action since WWII: maintain a global military presence, project military power over the globe and intervene "at will" in countries throughout the world. We all know (or should) that the Department of Defense soaks up nearly $700 billion per year if you include supplemental bills to pay for Iraq and Afghanistan. But, every president since Kennedy has been reticent to cut military spending. This is one of the Left's big indictments of the Obama Administration. According to the NY Times Interactive Budget Obama's 2011 budget raises military spending by roughly $11 billion. Of course, the cuts to the "education for the disadvantaged" amounts to nearly $5 billion. What did you expect? Change? Bacevich, like Ike, puts it in stark terms. As Ike pointed out in the late 1950s, one bomber could build close to 200 schools.

In this day and age, think about the F-18 Hornet. For one F-18, the US could :
1.According to the SSA, the average social security payout per recipient is $1077.20 per month. For the cost of one F-18, the US could pay 29,706 of those monthly benefits.
2. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Right Wing Bogeyman where Carl Castle plots the demise of all decent folks, has a budget of....$551 million! Or, roughly 17 F-18s. But the planes provide so much more. They don't talk back.
3. At the maximum allowed level ($5300), one F-18 is equivalent to Pell Grants for 6037 students. So let's cut the Pell Grants. They are simply to fucking expensive. I mean, really, what good is $5300 when the average public 4-year university is currently running $7605. Of course, the private colleges that most of the people that make these decisions went to run about $27,000. Average Cost of College

Bacevich stresses that American military action now (especially Iraq) has gone far to reducing the credibility of the U.S. While bashing McGeorge Bundy, Allen Dulles and the rest of the crew that brought you The Bay of Pigs and Vietnam, he also takes to task Presidents Carter, Reagan and both Bushes. Bacevich sees no difference between administrations when their actions are viewed through the powerful lens of his trinity. More than this, Bacevich explicitly invokes the idea that we are a country who should not seek to impose our senses of freedom on the world through military strength but rather provide a great example of freedom and opportunity. Americans have always been involved in a dialogue about living up to our creed and our ideals, and this is really the message of the text. While our states go bankrupt, the US threatens to default on its debt and knuckle dragging jackasses such as Paul Ryan and Rand Paul blather about the perils of debt, the spending on our military continues apace in the name of the very freedoms that we shut out from people in this country every day.