As the 25th anniversary of the attempted assassination of President Reagan approaches, a former New York mayor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, remembers that day vividly.

“The morning of March 30, 1981, the White House had a breakfast with the president,” Mr. Giuliani told me. He was awaiting Senate confirmation as associate attorney general.

Reagan gave newly appointed officials “a talk about our role, and the importance of the administration, and the opportunity to change things,” Mr. Giuliani said. The president eventually shifted from national affairs to the national pastime. He discussed players he admired and reminisced about his days as a radio baseball announcer. “I must have asked him a question about baseball,” Mr. Giuliani laughed. “I can never remember a conversation about baseball that I haven’t participated in.”

That afternoon, Mr. Giuliani conferred with presidential adviser Michael Uhlmann.

“We were putting together a task force to consider proposals for reducing violent crime,” Mr. Giuliani remembered. During that meeting, ironically, they suddenly learned that a psychotic gunman named John Warnock Hinckley Jr. emptied his .22 caliber Rohm revolver outside the Washington Hilton Hotel at approximately 2:25 p.m. The bullet that hit President Reagan burrowed within an inch of his heart. Hinckley also struck and seriously wounded White House press secretary James Brady; a Washington, D.C. police officer, Thomas Delahanty, and a Secret Service agent, Timothy McCarthy.

“It was a tremendous shock,” Mr. Giuliani said, “particularly just having seen [Reagan]” at breakfast.

Mr. Giuliani raced back to his office and huddled with Attorney General William French Smith and Justice’s top brass.

“My job was to oversee getting Hinckley in federal custody, and then keeping him safe.” Mr. Giuliani said. “Several times that day, that picture came into my head: Jack Ruby coming out of a crowd and shooting Lee Harvey Oswald.” Moving Hinckley – with FBI and US marshal assistance, to “a place that nobody would know about or find – was made more tense by that recollection.”

Mr. Giuliani soon sought due process for the most reviled man in America.

“We had to get [Hinckley] arraigned within a reasonable period of time,” Mr. Giuliani said. “Although this was a crime of worldwide significance, it still had to be treated like any other crime.” Hinckley would see a judge, hear his rights, and could request bail.

After closing time, Mr. Giuliani dispatched FBI agents and US marshals to Washington’s E. Barrett Prettyman U. S. Courthouse. “They emptied it out. They searched it. They checked it for bombs,” Mr. Giuliani said. Hinckley “arrived for arraignment, if I recall correctly, probably around 10 o’clock at night.”

Mr. Giuliani sat in open court beside the FBI director, William Webster, and saw Hinckley face the charges against him, learn his legal rights, and ultimately remain incarcerated.

“You look at a person like that and you wonder how something like that could happen,” Mr. Giuliani said. “You’re looking at their outer image, right? … What could be going on inside this man’s head, that he would attempt to kill President Reagan, or any president for that matter?”

Mr. Giuliani finally went home and, like tens of millions of Americans, hypnotically followed the news. “I probably stayed up all night watching it on television,” Mr. Giuliani said. He heard the jokes Reagan told, even while suffering major internal bleeding.

“Honey, I forgot to duck,” he smiled at First Lady Nancy Reagan. Before undergoing surgery, the president told his doctors, “Please tell me you’re all Republicans.” Later, Reagan scribbled aides a note: “All in all, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.”

“That incident, that could have taken Ronald Reagan from us and therefore deprived us of someone I think will be one of our great presidents,” Mr. Giuliani explained, “also was a thing that created in the American mind the affection for him … It displayed a man of tremendous courage and an ability to handle anything.”

Does Mr. Giuliani call himself a Reaganite?

“Absolutely!” he exclaimed. “He had strong beliefs. He knew what those beliefs were. He stuck to them whether they were popular or unpopular. And he did it in a way in which he was civil and nice to everyone. It was a beautiful combination of tremendous commitment to what he believed in, but not anger.”

“Ronald Reagan was a role model for me,” Rudy Giuliani said. “I consider him a hero.”

Mr. Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a senior fellow with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in Arlington, Va. (www.atlasUSA.org).