by Bob Spitz
They went back and forth about a second run for the presidency. Nancy expressed her misgivings, how she “was not crazy about it.” But Reagan seemed determined; there was so much unfinished business he wanted to tackle. In his memoirs, he cited “cutting the deficit and balancing the budget,” both of which had ballooned beyond all projections.* And he resented “polls showing the people have an image of [him] that [he] might recklessly lead the country to war.” He’d already dropped hints in his State of the Union message: “We will finish our job.” There wasn’t much doubt that he’d run. Nancy consulted Joan Quigley, who told her that “he was a cinch to win the election.” That helped to bring her around. Once they’d made up their minds, Quigley talked them out of announcing it to the public in December, a month, she said, whose “astral indications” were not promising. Instead, on January 29, 1984, without any prior indication about his decision to run one way or the other, Ronald Reagan delivered a television address from the Oval Office.
“It’s been nearly three years since I first spoke to you from this room,” he said, posed solemnly, hands folded, sitting behind his desk. “Tonight I’m here for a different reason. I’ve come to a difficult personal decision as to whether or not I should seek reelection.”
By this time, anyone tuning in probably recalled Lyndon Johnson’s speech sixteen years earlier, during which he withdrew his name from the presidential race in an almost similar setting. Reagan’s countenance seemed to suggest the same outcome. A bit of acting from his Hollywood training kept him in character as he ran down a grocery list of his accomplishments—a reduction in inflation and unemployment, interest rates cut nearly in half, an overhaul of America’s defense system, more homes being built, more cars being sold, the price of oil coming down. The economy was on the road to recovery, he insisted. When he declared that “America is back and standing tall,” it seemed as though his work as president was finished. He continued building tension, not giving too much away, until delivering the surprise twist at the end: “I am therefore announcing that I am a candidate and will seek reelection to the office I presently hold.”
“He made good sport of it,” the New York Times conceded. Checking the president’s daily horoscope, the Paper of Record noted it was “a good time for an Aquarius to avoid a confrontation” but also “a good time for ‘a memorable rendezvous.’” It would have cost Nancy Reagan the price of the paper for that advice had she not already retained Joan Quigley.
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The ’84 campaign, according to its de facto manager, Stu Spencer, had one overarching guideline: “Don’t screw up.” The polls, Spencer knew, were good to Ronald Reagan. More than half of the American public approved of his job performance, and voters felt some kind of affection for him, if not as their president then as a man. He invoked the traditional American values of family and community that were predominant in the movies of the 1930s—not the dark, gangster-laden Warner Brothers movies, many of which he’d starred in, but those made across town by MGM: the white-picket-fence America with archetypal American families. In a way, that dreamworld Ronald Reagan cherished and longed for might have been his most valuable asset. People of both parties identified with him, they were inspired by his optimism, felt he was honest and forthright, despite any specific missteps. He’d stood up to those PATCO bullies, which showed he had backbone, strength of character. It seemed, from his rhetoric, he was standing up to the Soviets. According to a Washington Post–ABC News poll, a third of registered voters approved of Ronald Reagan while disagreeing with his policies. Even to them, he appeared decisive—presidential.
Spencer assumed he had a lot to work with, but as he delved into his campaign research, he started to feel otherwise. The strategists assigned to the effort were unable to define a clear-cut agenda. “They don’t have a goddamn thing in the pipeline,” Spencer concluded. From what he determined, “the Reagan administration fired all its bullets very early and very successfully in the first two years—all their plans, all their priorities, all their programs.” “There is nothing left,” Dick Darman, Jim Baker’s deputy, told him. “We’ve shot our load.” The reelection committee desperately needed something to hang the election on, something specific, something important to Americans. Polls showed that much of the public feared the continual arms buildup, resisted any tinkering with Social Security and the tax code, were baffled by the Strategic Defense Initiative, and preferred to avoid hot-button issues like abortion and AIDS. The strategists weren’t able to lead with policy, so they decided to abandon it altogether, opting instead to promote a much broader message: We’re not turning back to the bad old days of the Carter-Mondale administration. “Reagan was focused—he was looking ahead. That was our strategy,” Spencer recalls.
The Madison Avenue image brokers came up with a suitable feel-good theme. “This is America, Spring of 1984,” a creative director from Della Famina, Travisano & Partners emoted to the ad agency “dream team” that was auditioning spots. “What do we see? Jobs are coming back. Housing is coming back. And for the first time in a long time, hope for the future is coming back.” Perfect! They instantly put a name to the campaign: “Prouder, Stronger, Better.” It was one of the most effective campaign spots ever created. Over soft, gold-toned, quintessentially American images—a paperboy on his bicycle, campers raising the Stars and Stripes, a farmer plowing his field—an announcer suggested, “It’s morning in America.” Morning in America. The symbolism was irresistible. At the conclusion a voice asked, “Why would we ever want to return to where we were, less than four short years ago?” A new day had dawned, a better day than before, and Ronald Reagan promised better days ahead. Let the Democrats cope with that.
The Democrats had enough to grapple with, determining their nominee to take on the president. The Iowa caucuses in mid-February hosted an eight-candidate field that included senators Alan Cranston, Ernest Hollings, and George McGovern, but former vice president Walter Mondale led the pack by more than a nose. He finished well ahead of all challengers, giving him enough confidence to boast, “I am ready to defeat Mr. Reagan.” A week later, however, in the New Hampshire primary, Gary Hart challenged Mondale’s claim, upsetting him by a two-to-one ratio.
Gary Hart gave Nancy Reagan pause. He was young and handsome—Kennedyesque—and his “New Ideas” message was “so broad and unspecific,” newspapers said, “that voters interpreted it to suit themselves,” giving him a flexible political appeal. It was conceivable to her that Hart’s charisma could swing independents and undecideds to his side, especially after his campaign picked up steam in March 1984 by winning the Massachusetts, Florida, and Rhode Island primaries.
Ronald Reagan, however, was undeterred. He saw himself as maintaining a steady hand on the campaign throttle, with a willful detachment from the crucial decision-making process, but aides worried he wasn’t as engaged as was necessary. Nancy Reagan picked up the slack, keeping the strategists on track and her husband on message. Yet she couldn’t prevent his screwing up. On an appearance on Good Morning America, discussing the plight of the country’s dispossessed, Reagan suggested that “the homeless, you might say, are homeless by choice.” That certainly didn’t play well with urban audiences. Later that summer, when doing a voice check before his weekly radio address, he joked, “My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing will begin in five minutes”—unaware that the microphone was live on the air. Incredibly, these gaffes failed to dent his momentum. Even more serious blunders survived critical blows.
His initial refusal to honor Martin Luther King Jr. with a national holiday, a fact that Jesse Jackson continued to hammer home, did little to endear him to a black constituency. The failure to acknowledge the AIDS epidemic alienated him from gays and others affected by the disease. James Watt, his insensitive secretary of the interior, was forced to resign for a wisecrack he made about appointments to a
commission to study the leasing of federal lands to coal companies, in which he blithely remarked, “I appointed five members . . . I have a woman, a black, two Jews, and a cripple.” The failed mission in Lebanon and the death of Marines was still hanging in the air, and in late April, revelations emerged that, on orders from the president, the CIA was secretly mining Nicaraguan harbors, which violated international law. Any one of these issues might have hobbled another sitting president, but not Ronald Reagan.
Reagan seemed invulnerable to anything but kryptonite. The New York Times anointed him “Teflon Man.” In a rambling Sunday Magazine think piece by Steven Weisman, the paper concluded that the president’s astonishing success hinged on the fact that “whether or not they agree with him and his policies, Americans like him.” Despite his “untold public bloopers and . . . dozens of factual mistakes and misrepresentations,” despite “the abortive mission in Beirut [that] cost 265 American lives,” despite the “sharp escalation in United States military involvement in Central America,” and despite “an extraordinary number of Mr. Reagan’s political appointees who have come under fire, with many forced to resign because of ethical or legal conflicts . . . nothing sticks to him.”
Teflon Man.
Teflon was a difficult protective coating to penetrate if you were running against Reagan.
The only real threat to the President’s Teflon armor was a self-inflicted wound. The Nicaragua entanglement, which grew more complicated and mazier by the day, was increasingly displaying that very potential.
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Ronald Reagan was unconditionally committed to supporting the Contras, his idea of “freedom fighters,” in their effort to overthrow Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government. “I’ve always thought it was a tragic error for President Kennedy to abandon the Cuban freedom fighters during the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion,” he wrote in his memoirs. It was a direct result of Kennedy’s inaction, Reagan believed, that Cuba was a fully entrenched Soviet satellite. He didn’t intend to make the same mistake on his watch. He had a chance to stop the spread of Soviet colonization in the Western Hemisphere, and he would.
Congress wasn’t supporting him in this mission, nor was most of the American public, which feared that involvement in Central America would lead to another Vietnam. Only a mere 18 percent of the 37 percent who had even heard about Nicaragua endorsed the president’s handling of the situation. Congress had effectively tied his hands. His only alternative was to resort to covert operations conducted by the CIA under Bill Casey’s direction.
Because of the Boland Amendment, the 1984 appropriation for aid to the Contras was capped at $24 million, less than half of what the White House had requested. On May 22, 1984, the House of Representatives approved an additional $62 million in funds for an aid package to El Salvador, which had just staged its first democratic election, but voted overwhelmingly to cut off all aid to the Contras, even the $21 million already approved by the Senate. Even the Republicans deserted the president. Outrage over the mining of Nicaragua’s harbor was too strong. It was a stinging defeat to the administration’s initiatives, especially following the president’s nationally televised plea for more Contra aid two weeks earlier. To make matters worse, another Boland Amendment was passed restricting the use of any funds appropriated for the intelligence community to be used in support of the Contras. Despite these roadblocks, Ronald Reagan remained determined to see the Contras succeed. He pulled aside Robert McFarlane and said, “Bud, I want you to do whatever you have to do to help these people keep body and soul together. Do everything you can.”
Do everything you can. The directive was loaded with peril. Since the spring of 1984, Bill Casey and Bud McFarlane had been exploring alternative ways of getting money and weapons to the Contras. Normally, such ventures would go through the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a body that met regularly and whose minutes were circulated to the appropriate congressional committees. But a smaller offshoot—the Intelligence Oversight Board—operated within the PFIAB when more sensitive situations demanded confidentiality. “The IOB concluded that the Boland Amendment didn’t have any impact on the National Security Council staff because the NSC was not officially part of the intelligence community,” says John Poindexter. “That allowed Bud and Ollie North to take over the operation supporting the Contras with non-appropriated funds.”
The most likely place to obtain large sums of cash and weapons was from foreign allies—countries beholden to the United States for assisting them with financial aid, equipment, or armaments. Saudi Arabia, Israel, and South Africa nicely fit the bill. A week after the House vote, McFarlane had extracted a promise from Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, for a million dollars a month to be placed in a Miami bank account belonging to the political director of the Nicaragua Democratic Force. In exchange for the money, the White House announced during the Memorial Day weekend, when most members of Congress were out of town, that it was shipping Air Force tankers to Saudi Arabia, along with an emergency sale of four hundred Stinger ground-to-air missiles and two hundred launchers—emergency in order to avoid a thirty-day mandatory delay in which Congress would have certainly rescinded the sale. The following Tuesday, during the president’s morning security briefing, Bud McFarlane passed Reagan a note about the Saudi money for the Contras. On the back, the president wrote, “Mum’s the word,” and slid it back to McFarlane.
The president didn’t have to worry about spilling the beans. Two days later, on June 1, 1984, he left for a ten-day trip to Europe, which included the annual G7 economic summit in London followed by a visit to Ballyporeen, his ancestral village in Ireland. It was there, 150 years earlier, that Michael O’Regan made plans to better his circumstances, moving to London and finally to the United States. No one had to remind Ronald Reagan that for immigrants America was the land of unlimited opportunity. He underscored that theme on June 6, the fortieth anniversary of D-Day, when he stood on Pointe du Hoc, the cliff overlooking Utah Beach in northwest France, where, choked up and close to tears, he described American soldiers who gave their lives there as “champions who helped free a continent.”
He saw the Contras in the same spectral light. Upon his return to Washington, their plight once more rode the top of the agenda as he continued to explore alternative ways to aid them with funds and military support. A National Security Council meeting on June 25 was devoted almost entirely to Contra aid. In an extraordinary two-hour session, eighteen of the administration’s highest-ranking officials weighed in on the subject. Talk focused on soliciting money from U.S. allies, which few in attendance knew was already in the works. George Shultz, for one, expressed skepticism. “Going to third countries is very likely illegal,” he counseled. Cap Weinberger, who disagreed, implied that any outside funding would not be officially earmarked for the anti-Sandinista program. “It is merely helping the anti-Sandinistas obtain the money from other sources.” McFarlane knew they were walking a fine line. “I certainly hope none of this discussion will be made public in any way,” he said. The president seconded McFarlane’s concern. “If such a story gets out, we’ll all be hanging by our thumbs in front of the White House until we find out who did it.”
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Walter Mondale surely longed to host such an event.
The first week in June, following primaries in California and New Jersey, Mondale had captured the 1,967 delegates necessary to sew up the Democratic nomination. Gary Hart, who slipped after a scandal and ran a close second, vowed to wage a convention fight, but most observers saw the outcome as incontrovertible. The presidential race was a classic match-up: Mondale versus Reagan, liberal Democrat versus conservative Republican. Their differences were perfectly clear. The American public had a choice.
Mondale enjoyed visibility as Jimmy Carter’s former vice president with a solid labor endorsement. But his challenge to Ronald Reagan was an
uphill slog. From the outset, the polls showed the president with an eight-point lead, and Las Vegas oddsmakers gave him a four-to-one edge. Statistics lined up to support the numbers. The economy was now robust, inflation had plummeted to an all-decade low, and unemployment had fallen from double digits to 7.4 percent. The president’s approval rating was a vigorous 65 percent. “Reagan only has himself to beat now,” a pollster observed, and even Mondale’s supporters tended to agree.
Mondale needed to pull a rabbit out of a hat, and it just so happened he had a big one in reserve. Sidestepping a traditional running mate, he unveiled someone he considered “an exciting choice,” Representative Geraldine Ferraro. A woman. It was the one constituency that continued to give Ronald Reagan trouble. “Questions about Social Security, education, abortion, public housing are bound to take on a special quality when a woman addresses them,” Roger Rosenblatt wrote in an editorial in Time. No one knew what the effect of a woman national candidate would be on the female vote—or the male vote, for that matter.
There was excitement, but laced with anxiety. If Mondale hadn’t broken the glass ceiling of American politics, he’d at least put a pretty good crack in it. His choice was bold, unprecedented—historic. The female factor gave his stagnant candidacy a lift out of the gate. In the days immediately after the convention, Mondale, who had been sixteen points behind Ronald Reagan, pulled even. But polls revealed that only 22 percent of women were excited about Ferraro’s selection, and in any event the election was not a referendum on women in politics. An age-old political philosophy held that people vote for the president, not the vice president. The race came down to the two candidates at the top of the ticket.
