John Hinckley Junior's Joyride
John Hinckley Junior's Joyride
It is an age-old adage of American politics that voters really start paying attention after Labor Day and that this is when campaigns are won or lost. True as this is, one nevertheless would not envy the task ahead of the Reagan camp as September rolled around and they headed into the fall campaign season. A few days after winning the nomination in Detroit, Reagan had decamped to the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi, mere miles from where three civil rights workers were murdered by the local sheriff and several Klansmen in 1964 and buried in a river dike - one of the most infamous instances of white supremacist violence in the Civil Rights Era other than the Birmingham church bombing. The fair itself was a common stopping ground for politicians of both parties, particularly to enjoy its famous harness racing and practice a stump speech. During his address, Reagan remarked, "I believe in states' rights," setting off a political firestorm due to the sensitive nature of the county where he uttered it and the context that expression has long held in Southern politics. Even infamously segregationist Senator James Eastland [1] suggested that the prepared remarks were "ill-advised." The campaign, which viewed the South as its major offensive area - Mississippi had, surprisingly, very narrowly voted for Ford and without Carter on the ballot the Deep South seemed like fertile ground for its continuing realignment particularly under the auspices of Reagan's conservatism - was on the back foot immediately, savaged by the Carey campaign and a number of Southern politicians.
Further complicating Reagan's "pivot" strategy for the autumn polls was the dogged campaign against him by Congressman Leo Ryan and his Jonestown Families group, who often appeared at his campaign events (particularly on the West Coast) to demand answers for exactly what Reagan had known about Jim Jones' activities during his time as Governor. Ryan's "one-man war" against the California political establishment was not seen as being particularly decisive in the 1980 campaign - Reagan would carry native California, albeit narrowly - but it was still an annoyance that his campaign was frustrated they had to answer. It was for that reason that as late September arrived, the first of two Presidential debates loomed on the horizon and a chance for Reagan to reset the tone of the campaign and speak more directly to American voters as a contrast to not only Carey but Ford and Nixon as well arrived.
Carey, of course, had little interest in allowing that. The campaign's strategy was after all not to make the vote so much a referendum on Reagan, himself, but on Republican governance in general. "Reagan: More of the Same" was a common refrain on television advertisements in addition to the famous "Had Enough? Vote Carey" bumper sticker and slogan. The first debate was probably the best opportunity for Reagan to undo his substantial, albeit somewhat narrowing, polling deficit, and in that sense it didn't quite work. That is not to say that Reagan did not perform well. An experienced communicator before the camera, as one would expect of an actor, Reagan was polished, disciplined and portrayed himself as "a common-sense, everyday American." Carey was seen to scoff at that remark and chuckle to himself while rolling his eyes, but other than that the debate was, for the most part, calm, courteous and professional. Reagan was regarded by most pundits as having done what he needed to do to not make his situation worse, but there was mixed reactions - typically along partisan or ideological lines - around whether he'd done enough to chance the trajectory of the race and separate himself from the Ford brand. Inside the Reagan camp, advisors were upbeat about Reagan's portrayal of a "cool, collected and capable conservative" - Ed Rollins, pioneering a concept that would soon be known as the "spin room," went out to a gaggle of reporters after the debate and declared, "the Carey campaign and their friends in the liberal media would have you think that Reagan can barely form sentences and is a wild-eyed, crazy man, but we all saw something else today - a true leader who's ready to be President on January 20th and hit the ground running day one, and I think Americans know that!"
Of course, the debate - which did in fact improve Reagan's favorables and polling deficit a bit - was quickly overshadowed by one of the most bizarre news stories of the nascent 1980s. On October 2, 1980, a young man named John Hinckley Junior boarded an Eastern Air Lines flight - mere weeks after its pending merger with Pan Am had been announced - Nashville, Tennessee, bound for Los Angeles. Hinckley was a mentally disturbed individual with delusions of grandeur and an unhealthy obsession with the film Taxi Driver, particularly its young starlet Jodie Foster, and identified with the movie's antihero Travis Bickle. He had been stalking Foster for months, to the point that she'd filed a restraining order against him and pondered hiring a security detail to avoid him. Frustrated that she was not reciprocating his feelings, Hinckley resolved to make a grand, epic display to get her attention: after initially pondering stalking and then assassinating President Gerald Ford, he instead resolved to hijack a plane and refuse to relent until she would speak with him. [2]
At 30,000 feet, Hinckley brandished two pistols, subdued a flight attendant and forced his way into the cockpit, holding both pilot and co-pilot at gunpoint and ordering them to fly to New Haven, Connecticut, where his demand was that Foster board the flight to speak with him. Naturally, Foster refused, and New Haven police attempted to surround the plane - leading to Hinckley demanding the pilots take off and fly to Detroit instead. In the end, Hinckley's "joyride" saw Eastern Flight 722 bounce around the country to six different airports to be refueled as he rattled off increasingly bizarre demands to FAA and FBI officials over the cockpit's communications system, only allowing two elderly passengers with heart conditions to disembark. In the end, dehydrated and exhausted after two days zipping around the country, Hinckley directed the pilots to fly to Los Angeles, their initial destination, where he agreed to surrender in return for a nationally televised interview which the FBI very distinctly did not grant him.
The strange affair dominated and fascinated American media for well over a week, drowning out campaign coverage even as Reagan and Carey both barnstormed the country, and reporters' questions to both candidates focused more on what they thought of one of the oddest American hijackings ever rather than the issues. Neither candidate was particularly keen to comment, and by the time the media circus was over, it was approaching late October - just in time for the anticipated Vice Presidential debate featuring Anne Armstrong as the first female Vice Presidential nominee, but also having burned precious time for Reagan to capture the country's attention...
[1] @peeter made a good point to me in a DM about why Eastland would probably have sought reelection in a 1978 where Carter lost and Ford was in the WH, so a bit of a retcon here. Not that his voting record is that different from Thad Cochran's - these are both very conservative men.
[2] So this is actually true - Hinckley had initially decided he was going to hijack a plane (as was popular in the 70s) and then got cold feet and decided he was going to shoot Carter in Nashville in late 1980, got cold feet again, and finally worked up the courage to be lying in wait for Reagan in Washington DC.