The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan

by Rick Perlstein

  The next night was the ceremony of nomination. One of the heroes of Watergate, Peter Rodino, put in Jimmy Carter’s name. Another Watergate hero, Archibald Cox, nominated Mo Udall, who said, “As I leave this convention hall, I’m going to have one of those green buttons that dogged me all over America. . . . And tomorrow morning I’m enlisting as a soldier in the Carter campaign.” Then Cesar Chavez nominated Jerry Brown.

  A televised image: Jimmy Carter in shirtsleeves, fiddling with the back of his hotel room’s TV—just folks.

  The roll call of states; Ohio put him over the top.

  On TV: Amy and Carter’s grandson Jason clambered onto the candidate’s lap, and his wife Rosalynn down in the convention hall said into a reporter’s microphone, “I miss Jimmy not being here with me,” and Jerry Brown was recognized on the convention floor: “I don’t think it’s going to be done in a hundred days or a thousand days. It’s going to be a long, difficult struggle to live within our environment, and work together and bring about justice. I think Jimmy Carter can do that; he’s proved it to you, he’s proved it to me, and I just want to be able to announce that the California delegation votes two hundred and seventy-eight votes to Mr. Carter and we’re on our way to bring this country back to the Democratic column.”

  A ceremonial committee was named from the rostrum to bring the news to Jimmy Carter that, some five hundred days since announcing his candidacy, he was the Democratic nominee, with 2,468 of 2,925 votes. Democrats went off to bed, six of them very nervously: Frank Church, John Glenn, Walter Mondale, Adlai Stevenson, Henry Jackson, and Edmund Muskie, who all got calls from Carter’s personal aide Greg Schneiders that they were under consideration to become Carter’s running mate, and would receive a call between 8:30 and 9 A.M. with his final decision.

  THE ASSOCIATED PRESS PULLED TOGETHER a more or less verbatim transcript of a call Thursday morning to one of the also-rans:

  “Hello?”

  “Ed?”

  “I just called to tell you I selected someone else.”

  It spoke to the awesome discipline of the Carter campaign: determined that there not be a leak, he didn’t even tell the losers who the winner was. And when the winner got his call—“Would you like to run with me?”—he was beseeched to tell not a single soul. Not even the printing plant knew: instructed to produce six green-and-white designs for campaign posters, each with a different running mate’s face, the staff there got the call to run off the sheets with Walter Mondale’s face only that morning.

  The selection process had also been awesomely disciplined—for Jimmy Carter, there were to be no last-minute fiascoes like George McGovern’s when he had to abandon his running mate, Thomas Eagleton, after the press learned that Eagleton had undergone electroshock treatment for depression. Having sealed the nomination more than a month earlier, Carter had more time to mull over his decision than any other Democratic nonincumbent in history—and the campaign had been planning for the decision since April, when Hamilton Jordan devised a literal point scale to weigh the possibilities (zero to fifteen for “ability”; zero to fifteen for “integrity”; zero to ten for “acceptance”) and graded every last Democratic senator and governor and a clutch of representatives and mayors, too. Those with fewer than twenty-seven points were culled from the pool. Only then were those left considered on factors like political philosophy.

  A June 2 memo from Hamilton Jordan reminded Carter this was the first decision “of presidential magnitude you will make,” and made the argument that an anti-Establishment presidential candidate had to choose an Establishment running mate: “The best politics is to select a person who is accurately perceived by the American people as being qualified and able to serve as President if that becomes necessary.” A new kind of balanced ticket was called for in the age of antipolitics.

  Twenty possible candidates were interviewed by aide Charles Kirbo—some not really possibilities, but the bluff put Carter on good terms with the candidates’ various political patrons. Hamilton Jordan made an adman’s sort of contribution: “reflecting the Carter campaign’s propensity for thinking in terms of the words that convey impressions,” Elizabeth Drew later learned, “Jordan listed the finalists and the words that he thought attached to their names.”

  Carter began calling candidates to Plains, Georgia, upon his return from his fishing trip in July. He’d found Muskie too stiff, and was worried about his temper. Senate colleagues reportedly told Carter that Frank Church, who polled best, had handled the CIA investigation poorly and was a weak senator, and Carter worried about their compatibility. (Church himself, who badly wanted the job, would later maintain that the CIA had sabotaged him by spreading a rumor about KGB infiltration of his staff.) But Carter hit it off with Walter “Fritz” Mondale, whom he’d met only twice before, in 1974 when the Minnesota senator dropped in on him in Atlanta, and earlier in 1976 on Capitol Hill. Carter liked that Mondale was a favorite with reporters, was popular with labor and liberals, and was a protégé of Hubert Humphrey, which gave Mondale points with the Establishment. A nice, safe, straddling choice.

  Carter walked into the Georgian Ballroom at the Americana Hotel with his wife an hour and a half after telling Mondale the news, mentioning nothing about point scales or advertising semiotics. Carter announced he’d chosen Mondale for his “comprehension and compassion for people who need the services of government most,” and that he was someone who’d shown “sound judgment in times of difficulty,” and had “the trust of a wide range of Democrats. . . . I feel completely compatible with Senator Mondale. . . . It is a very sure feeling that I have about that point.”

  He was asked if he was worried about whether Mondale was up for a tough campaign, given that he’d dropped out of the presidential running in 1974. He answered that Mondale had dropped out because “he knew that he could not win”—which was not true, and a strange thing to say about a running mate in any event. Mondale entered with his wife, Joan, and one of the things he was asked about was how he prepared to be interviewed by Carter. He answered, “The first thing I did was to read the most remarkable book ever written, called Why Not the Best? I found every word absolutely magnificent.”

  It was so different from the kind of joke Jimmy Carter would ever make that reporters had to wonder about this vaunted “compatibility” Carter was supposedly so sure about.

  Carter moved on to his next event, speaking beside Jerry Brown in a ballroom at the Hilton. Brown introduced him with evident lack of enthusiasm. Carter said of Brown, “we’ve grown to be close friends”—which was not even close to true. Then he rhetorically insulted his vanquished foe: “There’s no limits on us. Material limits, yes. Governmental limits, yes. But I’m not ready to recognize that there’s a limit to hope, to freedom, to individuality.”

  Then it was time for Madison Square Garden, where all was celebration.

  A GIANT RED-WHITE-AND-BLUE BEACH BALL boinged festively from one cheering delegation to the next. A section of the gallery flashed cards reading, TEXAS LOVES NEW YORK. Others broke out into singing. The banners flanking the rostrum read, “FOR AMERICA’S THIRD CENTURY, WHY NOT THE BEST.” Mondale made his maiden speech, a post-Watergate jeremiad. The line that got the biggest applause of the night: “Roosevelt said that the presidency is preeminently a place of moral leadership. But we have just lived the Worst, Political, Scandal, in American history”—stab, stab, stab, went his finger with each word—“and are now led by a President who pardoned the person who did it.”

  He concluded, “The year of our two hundredth birthday, the year of the election of Jimmy Carter, will go down as one of the greatest years of public reform in American history.” The standing ovation was so enthusiastic that Robert Strauss had to beg for order.

  The lights went down; a movie screen was lowered: Jimmy Carter in jeans, in a peanut field; Jimmy Carter in a suit, speaking noble words. Jimmy Carter rendered in cartoon form—or at least Jimmy Carter’s teeth: “Jimmy!” Rosalynn calls out from the dark. “
Cut it out and go to sleep!” Uproarious laughter.

  Strauss introduced “the next President of the United States.” Carter’s smile was at least that glowing as he walked forth in an unprecedented way: from the rear, through the delegate floor, working his way through the crowd, shaking hands, shouting greetings—a man of the people. A man of love.

  He bolted up the stairs. He planted himself on the rostrum, family by his side:

  “My name is Jimmy Carter, and I’m running for President!”

  Roars.

  It was an even funnier joke than the glow-in-the-dark teeth. That was the line he’d said a thousand times before, in Iowa, in New Hampshire, in primaries across the fruited plain. I’m running for president: “President of what?” his mother had asked when he told him that more than three years before. No one was asking that now.

  He made a kind of Democratic inside joke: it was a pleasure “to see that our Bicentennial celebration and our Bicentennial convention has been one of decorum and order without any fights or free-for-alls. Among Democrats that can only happen once every two hundred years.” He was interrupted by applause for the fifth time—and it was only his fifth sentence.

  He promised that 1976 could be “a year of inspiration and hope,” a year “when we give the government of this country back to the people of this country,” the year of a “new mood in America.” He said, “This has been a long and personal campaign—a humbling experience, reminding us that ultimate political influence rests not with power-brokers, but with the people.”

  He spoke of his memories of himself as a farm boy; hailed the great Democrats who came before him; and said, “Our country has lived through a time of torment. It is now a time for healing. We want to have faith again. We want to be proud again. We just want the truth again. It is time for the people to run the government, and not the other way around!” He spoke of America’s “mistakes”: “the tragedy of Vietnam and Cambodia, the disgrace of Watergate and the embarrassment of the CIA revelations”—all of which could have been avoided if only “our government had simply reflected the sound judgment and the good common sense and the high moral character of the American people.”

  And they interrupted him with acclaim for the twenty-fifth time. He built up momentum:

  “It’s time for our government leaders to respect the law no less than the humblest citizen”—he was interrupted with lusty cheers in the middle of the sentence—“so that we can end once and for all a double standard of justice. I see no reason—I see no reason!—why big-shot crooks should go free and the poor ones go to jail.”

  That got a standing ovation.

  “We have an America that, in Bob Dylan’s phrase, is busy being born—not busy dying!

  “We can have an American government that has turned away from scandal and corruption and official cynicism and is once again as decent and as competent as its people. . . .

  “As I’ve said many times before, we can have an American President who does not govern with negativism and fear of the future, but with vigor and vision and aggressive leadership—a President who’s not isolated from the people, but who feels your pain and shares your dreams and takes his strength and his wisdom and his courage from you. . . . And once again, as brothers and sisters, our hearts will swell with pride to call ourselves Americans.”

  The official record noted the fifty-fifth ovation of the speech. And then the emotion crescendoed yet more.

  ROBERT STRAUSS TOOK TO THE podium and called up all the opponents who were opponents no more, Udall and Jackson and Bayh and Shapp and Church and Brown and Wallace and Shriver—then, “with all the subtlety of a nuclear explosive,” Witcover wrote, called up still more dignitaries: New York’s mayor and New Orleans’s mayor, the governors of New Jersey and Arizona, all the vice presidential runners-up, “literally dozens of the party’s second- and third-string luminaries to the platform,” by now “like a drinker who has to have one more, and another, and one more after that.”

  And then he called up Daddy King—the father of the civil rights martyr.

  The hall had already begun to empty. Now people rushed back to their seats. The stout old preacher said, “I would like very much that we would cease walking, talking. In fact, not a word be uttered, unless that word is uttered to God.”

  He preached: “Surely the Lord is in this place. Surely the Lord sent Jimmy Carter to come on out and bring America back where she belongs.”

  He beseeched his congregation to fall to its knees: “It’s time for prayer.”

  And America’s Democrats, assembled at the big Baptist church called Madison Square Garden, bowed their heads, and some indeed fell to their knees. He bent over double, he raised his fists to the heavens, he preached some more: “I’ve been doing this sixty-odd years, I have had my trials, my tribulations, my ups and downs, my losses, but I’m determined I’m not going to let nothing get me down!” He thundered: “I’m going on and see what the end is going to be to all of this! This Lord blesssss you! And keeeep you! The Lord makes His face to shine upon you, and be gracious unto you. The Lord lifts up the light of his countenance upon you!—and gives you!—peace. Nooooooow! And alllllllways!”

  The convention orchestra struck up “We Shall Overcome,” and an audience that had become a congregation sang along with tears streaking down their faces. Then raised up once more in the biggest standing ovation yet. They believed. “If there were differences remaining in the Democratic Party, they were laid aside in this one emotional wave that swept over all reservations,” Jules Witcover wrote. Another professional curmudgeon, Mike Royko of Chicago, believed, too. “I hate to get corny at this late date in a cynical life, but the arrival of Jimmy Carter at the affectionate, emotional bedlam of Madison Square Garden, staged as it all may have been, was one very memorable experience,” he began his syndicated column. “This was a guy who, less than two years ago, was almost considered some kind of kook. An unknown Southern local politician, a peanut-picker, a man with virtually no power base, setting out almost like a traveling salesman with a dream to be President of the United States.

  “Now he was walking into the convention hall of his party’s national convention to get the nomination, and the delegates, including most established powers, were on their feet cheering their heads off. Some were even crying. . . .

  “We’ve grown used to politicians appealing to our baser instincts. . . . But here comes this guy who dusts off an old word like love, and he managed to persuade the most cantankerous group of individuals in the country—the Democratic Party—to practically fall into each other’s arms. . . . It was the cornball American dream come true, and it was something to see and remember. . . . I hope he can be believed. We don’t need any more highly skillful liars. We’ve already been pushed to the brink of a national nervous breakdown by that. We deserve a break.”

  Harris polled the American people to see what they thought. They wanted Carter over Ford by 66 percent to 27, Carter over Reagan 68 to 26—the greatest postconvention margin ever. Which meant that Republicans and independents believed, too.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  * * *

  “You’re in the Catbird Seat”

  JIMMY CARTER HAD SAID IN his acceptance speech, “With this kind of a united Democratic Party, we are ready and eager to take on the Republicans, whichever Republican Party they decide to send against us in November.” Which was no more clear in the middle of July than it had been in the middle of June. “Republican professionals,” Newsweek reported, feared “a nasty summer, a bloody convention—and a party split so badly that only a shotgun pairing of Ford and Reagan on the same ticket could heal it.” But Ronald Reagan had categorically ruled out running on the same ticket with Ford. So there was no healing to be had.

  The name of the game was now the 150 or so “uncommitted” delegates—and the game was so heartily silly that when a political cartoon depicted Marine One hovering over a remote country store, one woman explaining to another, “That must b
e President Ford again . . . Merle’s an uncommitted delegate, you know,” it hardly felt like a joke at all. One obscure Republican official from Suffolk County, New York, emerged from a ten-minute audience announcing that the Leader of the Free World had agreed to take a closer look at the problems of his local sewage district. And when the queen of England arrived at the White House for a sumptuous state dinner, the gentleman the president chose to seat next to her was Clarke Reed, chairman of the largest uncommitted delegation—Mississippi’s, with thirty convention votes. The joke went around that another uncommitted delegate, from New Jersey, had received the same invitation from the president. He paused, then asked: “What’s on the menu?”

  Ford was hardly governing. He was campaigning, like a ward heeler—one voter at a time. A crew of uncommitteds would be ushered into the Cabinet Room or the East Room or the Blue Room or even the State Dining Room. The chairs would be set up as at a press conference. The president would mingle informally for a half an hour, then stand behind a podium for ten minutes relating his accomplishments, then open the floor to questions—tough questions: about his pardon of Nixon; about his views on abortion, on offshore oil drilling or the closing of a military base in a delegate’s backyard. The ritual went on for as long as it took, for an hour or sometimes more.