by Bob Spitz
George Bush, on the other hand, practically lived in Iowa. No one had given him much of a chance in the race. He had low visibility and notoriously awful political instincts. At large rallies with formal speeches, he came off stiff and uncomfortable. “He was awkward, with a thin voice,” says Jim Leach, Bush’s co-chair in Iowa. But he turned out to be great at what strategists call retail campaigning—shaking hands, speaking to small groups assembled in somebody’s living room, asking for votes on a one-on-one basis. And he had secret weapons: Barbara Bush, whom Leach credits as being “in many ways more impressive than her husband”; and Roy B. Keppy, the most respected farmer in the state, who became an emissary for the Bush campaign.
Keppy spoke on Bush’s behalf to the Corn Growers Association, the Soybean Growers Association, the Cattlemen’s Association, and the Pork Producers. “It meant that many farmers who naturally would have voted for Reagan, voted for Bush,” Leach recalls. And anyone who even intimated they might vote for George Bush was courted by his aides. Their name was put on an index card, they were called repeatedly, sent updates, and encouraged over and over to get out and vote. Bush himself would follow up, calling people and writing them personal notes. What Bush lacked in political instincts he made up for in pure enthusiasm.
“We could sense him coming on,” recalls Charlie Black, who had assumed the role of Reagan’s national political director. Still, Ronald Reagan maintained a comfortable lead in the polls, and his operatives directed his efforts elsewhere. Perhaps their biggest mistake was holding him out of the all-candidates Iowa debate sponsored by the League of Women Voters on January 19. “Why give those other guys a chance to gang up on Reagan in a forum where he could only respond to any of their remarks when his turn came fifteen minutes later?” John Sears says.
Unfortunately, his absence at the debate spoke volumes to the voters and enabled the other candidates to direct all their energies to savaging the front-runner. The backlash was swift and brutal. A Des Moines Register poll taken the day after the debate showed Reagan’s numbers plummeting by half. Workers at a local Reagan campaign office in the southwestern corner of Iowa were beside themselves with exasperation. “You’ve pissed off everybody in the state!” they complained to anyone who would listen. “Most of us still thought that Reagan was going to pull it out and win the caucuses,” says Jim Kuhn, at the time a regional aide to the campaign, but the playing field had certainly been releveled to an extent.
The evening of the caucuses, the Reagan brain trust—John Sears, Charlie Black, and Jim Lake—convened in a suite at the Fort Des Moines, a hotel where forty-five years earlier Dutch Reagan had socialized with friends. One of their regional assistants was monitoring the vote count, county by county, and reported in by phone every hour. “This is not looking good,” he said around nine o’clock. By one in the morning it was all over. George Bush had won.
Reality set in immediately that Ronald Reagan was no longer the front-runner. To drive a stake through the heart of his campaign, Tom Pettit, NBC’s political commentator, announced: “You have just witnessed the political obituary of Ronald Reagan.” George Bush now had the momentum—or “Big Mo,” as he was calling it.
Big Mo, indeed. Two days earlier, Ronald Reagan was ahead of Bush in New Hampshire by twenty-five points. The day after the Iowa caucuses, Reagan lagged twenty points behind him.
“We were really shocked,” Charlie Black admits. “It never crossed our minds that we could lose Iowa.”
Ronald Reagan managed to take it in stride; he had a long-range view of things and resolved not to let a setback throw him off his pace. Nancy, however, was frosted—she wanted answers. The Reagans had been campaigning in Illinois, where they reconnected with their team, and on the flight to New Hampshire, they—Nancy especially—grilled John Sears, Charlie Black, and Jim Lake. “In Iowa we got caught with our pants down,” Sears admitted, accepting full blame. “But the big contest is New Hampshire, where we are solid as a rock. We’re going to do a poll tonight, Governor, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Bush is ahead. But if we get within five points of him in New Hampshire, we’ll win in South Carolina and be back on track.”
Sears had a trick up his sleeve. Later that afternoon, after everyone was squared away in a hotel near Andover, Massachusetts, he gathered Black and Lake and laid out the strategy. “This time,” he said, “no let-up. We’ll do the League of Women Voters debate, though Reagan won’t get much traction from it. What we need is a one-on-one debate with Bush. I think we could kick his ass.”
Charlie Black shook his head. “They are too smart for that. They’re ahead right now.” He was adamant. “There is no fucking way they are ever going to do it.” Recounting the conversation forty years later, Black can barely suppress a grin. “It took us an hour to figure out how to pull it off.”
Reagan had been invited by both the Manchester Union Leader and the Concord Monitor to participate in a series of debates. Instead, Jim Lake proposed a debate sponsored by the Nashua Telegraph. “It’s in the more liberal part of the state near Massachusetts,” he explained, “which is Bush country.” The trick was persuading Hugh Gregg—Reagan’s New Hampshire state chairman in 1976, now performing the same job for George Bush—to agree. “I can get him to go for it,” Lake said. “I know the guy. I know how to play this.”
That night, following a speech of Reagan’s at St. Anselm College, just north of Manchester, Jim Lake stole into the college president’s office and phoned Hugh Gregg. “Looks like you’re on your way to the White House,” he said. “We’re twenty points behind and two weeks out—you guys seem poised to win this big. So what we really need to do is get all these other turkeys out of the race. They’re just stirring up things and making it more difficult for you and us. If we can get this down to a two-man race coming out of New Hampshire, it’ll be all over except for the two of us.” He explained to Gregg how a two-man debate would demonstrate the strength at the top of the ticket, forcing the other candidates to drop out.
“A week later,” Lake would recall, “the Nashua Telegraph has a front-page story—a debate they are sponsoring on February 20, 1980, a week before the primary. Just the two of us: Reagan and Bush! Sears and Lake couldn’t believe it, but I knew Hugh Gregg like a book. He couldn’t resist taking the bait.”
Sears warned his lieutenants to expect an uproar. “The other candidates will never take this sitting down.”
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Bob Dole was the first one out of his seat. “This is preposterous!” he fumed after arriving in New Hampshire. “You guys are arrogant. Jerks! This is nothing but a corporate contribution to two candidates.” To stress his point, he filed a grievance with the Federal Election Commission, claiming the Telegraph was not a neutral observer. After all, he argued, wasn’t Hugh Gregg, George Bush’s chairman, on the board of the paper? Howard Baker joined Dole’s complaint: it wasn’t fair for a newspaper to underwrite such an event.
The FEC agreed. A day later, one of the Reagan aides called Jim Lake to notify him that the Nashua Telegraph was pulling out of the debate. The FEC ruled that the paper wasn’t permitted to pay for it. “Tell them we’ll pay for it,” Lake responded. The campaign had more than enough money in the budget allotted to New Hampshire. Because there were ceilings placed on what a campaign was allowed to spend in each state—and because New Hampshire was considered crucial to the race—the Reagan forces had been staying in a hotel just across the border in Massachusetts so that the expenditure wouldn’t count against the New Hampshire filing ceilings. “Tell them we’ll pay for it,” Lake repeated. “We’ll pay for the whole debate.”
When George Bush heard the offer, he accepted it with pleasure. Sure—let Ronald Reagan pick up the check. “That became the biggest damn gift he could ever have given us,” Lake says.
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New Hampshire was Reagan’s last stand. He stumped through t
he state on a brutal dusk-to-dawn schedule, often sixteen hours a day for two weeks at a clip before grabbing a rare day off to recharge. Side excursions to Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and New Jersey were mixed in. “He was dog tired,” says Charlie Black, “but even when we worked him to the bone we made sure he got eight hours’ sleep.” Up to now, Nancy had ruthlessly limited her husband’s schedule to four-day outings in order to protect his health and stamina, while carving out hours for naps and downtime, but she made concessions in must-win New Hampshire. From now on, his only off days would be Sunday. And Sears dispatched Nancy on her own itinerary of appearances.
The Bushes, George and Barbara, were tearing through the state. Big Mo—it was all Bush could talk about. The minute he hit the tarmac in New Hampshire, with snow practically obscuring his arrival, he was beguiling the press with the wonders of Big Mo. But Big Mo wasn’t his only secret weapon.
“Barbara Bush was a dynamo,” Charlie Black says, “George’s greatest asset. Everyone who met her couldn’t help but like her.” She was the yin to Nancy Reagan’s yang. There were no designer dresses in her trousseau, she didn’t travel with her hairdresser or diet religiously or factor in the astrological details. Barbara Bush smiled engagingly, warmly, in a crowd of housewives. She projected a homespun, down-to-earth image: outgoing, earthy, unvarnished—“fake pearls and real family,” as one writer described her effect. New Hampshire women gravitated easily to Barbara Bush, especially when she shared cookie recipes and needlepoint patterns and family stories. “I think women like me because they don’t think I’m competitive, just nice,” she reflected years later. But insiders knew she was a warrior who could go nose-to-nose with Nancy Reagan. “On the face of it, she is so benign,” says Sheila Tate, “but she can be ruthless, tough as nails.”
Nancy Reagan sensed this and picked up her pace. She was determined not to be outmatched by a jolly, silver-haired, cookie-baking mercenary. She also took more of a role in the Reagan campaign machinery, keeping close tabs on the team as they marched through the state. As far as she or anyone could tell, they were making headway, chipping away at George Bush’s lead, which stood at 37 percent to 28 percent with two weeks to go. Everyone felt they could close the gap, but morale had hit an all-time low. The Reagan campaign was bleeding money; so far, under the extravagant direction of John Sears, it had spent “close to $12 million, two-thirds of the $18 million total they were allowed to spend throughout the entire primary campaign” under federal financing laws. A review of the books showed they were $600,000 in debt. Moreover, a serious rift had developed between members of Reagan’s California staff and the Sears faction, which had walled itself off from the rest of the team. Nancy Reagan sensed it and tried to defuse the mounting tension. “Every night, when we returned to the hotel,” she recalled, “I would go from one room to another meeting in corridors and corners with John and the others, trying everything I could think of to bring people together and smooth things over.” But Sears had grown moody, inscrutable—Napoleonic, many thought. “He was never one to talk a lot,” Jim Lake recalls, “and he would stew inside and process things internally.”
Ronald Reagan was shielded from the in-fighting as much as possible.
But there was no avoiding it: John Sears seemed to have lost control of the campaign. “Things started to unravel fast,” says Ed Meese. “There were real problems with John, who was unwilling to delegate authority, while using every opportunity to make many of us look bad.” The two factions often operated at cross-purposes, causing one staff member to comment: “It’s like a civil war in here.” The disharmony went straight to the top. “Sears became impatient and irritable with Reagan,” Jeff Bell recalls. “You could sense they’d become alienated from one another.” And Reagan still carried a grudge over the firing of Mike Deaver. “The chemistry between [Reagan and Sears] wasn’t good to begin with, and now it was worse,” Nancy Reagan recalled. Something had to give.
Ed Meese suggested that Ronald Reagan consider bringing in an ally to stabilize the staff, someone with good management skills who would be on an equal footing with Sears the rest of the way through. Reagan agreed and asked Bill Clark, his former executive assistant in Sacramento, to step in and help, but Clark had taken on a judgeship that prohibited his absence from California. As an alternative, they turned to William Casey.
Casey was an unconventional character with an eclectic résumé. He’d come out of law school during the Depression and made his fortune developing practice books for lawyers on tax regulations. During World War II he ran the secret war in Europe for the Office of Strategic Services and became involved in the management of the company that became Capitol Broadcasting. He had run for Congress, developed issue papers for the Nixon White House, and become the first undersecretary of state for economic affairs. Later, Casey resurfaced as the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. An ardent conservative, he’d bought an interest in National Review upon its debut in 1955 and contributed unselfishly to Republican causes. “He’s a smart guy with good management experience,” Meese assured Reagan, and they invited him to discuss joining the campaign.
Casey met with Reagan on February 15 at the Holiday Inn in Worcester, Massachusetts, where Reagan was speaking over the weekend. Without beating around the bush, Casey said he’d looked over the campaign’s books and confronted a financial disaster in the making. They needed to cut staff by half and retrench or they’d be bankrupt within weeks. He’d be willing to come aboard and realign administrative operations, which would leave John Sears with more time to concentrate on political strategy. Reagan thought it all made good sense, and conveyed as much to Sears later that night in his suite.
Sears listened to the proposal that he share duties with Casey and agreed at least to think it over. If he had left well enough alone and gone back to his room, the outcome might have been different. Instead, he launched into a tirade about the state of the campaign that touched a raw nerve of Ronald Reagan’s. The gloves came off, and a shouting match ensued that could be heard up and down the hotel corridor. At some point, Sears must have expressed his desire to get rid of Ed Meese, because occupants in adjoining rooms overheard Reagan scream: “You got Lyn Nofziger. You got Mike Deaver. You’re not getting Ed Meese!” Nancy Reagan hid out in the bedroom through it all and grew fearful as the hostilities escalated. Toward three o’clock in the morning, her husband’s emotions seemed set to boil over. “I was sure he was going to hit John,” she recalled. Bursting into the living room, she refereed as best she could and said, “It’s late. We’ve got another long day ahead of us. I think we should all get some sleep.”
Before they went to bed, however, it was decided that an indelible line had been crossed. The campaign needed a fresh, more cooperative outlook.
John Sears would have to go.
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A transition strategy came together fast. Bill Casey agreed to take over the entire campaign, as soon as Sears was out of the picture. The details, for the most part, were kept under wraps, but on a bus the night before the Nashua debate, Reagan summoned Charlie Black to sit with him. “I’m very upset with John,” Reagan confided in a whisper. “If we make a change, can we count on you to stay?” Nancy Reagan asked Black and Jim Lake the same question during a flight to a one-day event in Chicago. Both of Sears’s men dodged answering, insisting it was imperative for the Reagans to stay the course. “It’s not a matter of whether or not you like John,” Black explained. “Nobody else is equipped to make Ron the president.”
It was too late for a reprieve. The decision was made to replace Sears on Tuesday, February 26, while New Hampshire voters were still at the polls. The timing for the dismissal was crucial. “If Reagan lost the New Hampshire primary, we’d blame it on Sears,” explains Dick Allen, one of the architects of the coup. “If he won, Sears would be a page-two story.” That way, Reagan could never be accused of being an ungrateful winne
r or a sore loser. Bill Casey had already arrived to take his place. But first things first: the Nashua debate.
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John Sears had one strategy left in his arsenal. Earlier on the Friday night that he’d sparred with Ronald Reagan, he summoned Black and Lake to his hotel room and laid out a plan. “You know, we ought to let the other candidates in the debate,” he said. “Call them and invite them to take part.” His two cronies were speechless. The maneuver was certain to cause mayhem. Everyone knew George Bush was salivating to go head-to-head with Ronald Reagan. The Bush team, they knew, would feel sandbagged and fight this tooth and nail. “John had it in his head to do this from the beginning,” Black insists, although Sears only smiles cryptically when asked to confirm. In any case, he instructed his men to call the others and say, “Reagan’s had second thoughts, and it’s not fair to exclude you.” Only John Connally, who was campaigning in Minnesota, was unable to accept.
Jim Lake had a press release drawn up to announce the last-minute change. When he showed it to Nancy Reagan, there was immediate relief. “We have to do that. It’s exactly right,” she said. She waved at her husband, who was on the phone, and after getting his attention she pointed furiously to the sheet of paper in Lake’s hand. “I don’t know what you’re selling,” Reagan said after hanging up, “but my wife’s buying.” As it turned out, he was buying, too, feeling that inviting the other candidates was absolutely the fair thing to do.
Now, all they had to do was to convince George Bush.
It went without question that Bush was not buying. “You can’t do this,” his field manager, Bruce Rounds, objected, “otherwise we’re going to cancel the debate.” Jim Lake shook his head. “You can’t,” he replied. “We paid for it. We’re paying for everything.” The tickets were already sold out. The whole town was abuzz. At seven o’clock, exactly as scheduled, the high school auditorium would be packed.
