Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America

by Shirley, Craig

  The corrupt bargain between some in the media and Republican Reagan-haters had finally taken its toll. The whispering that had started two years earlier in the highest echelons of the Republican Party—over lunches, drinks, golf, tennis, and squash at their country clubs—was that the only way to stop Reagan was to destroy Reagan. They could not destroy Reagan's ideas or character but they could destroy Reagan the man. Bush aide Dave Keene, referring to the Gipper, brusquely told Time magazine, “He is a great old dog, but he won't hunt this year.”46

  Reagan's enemies had tried the “he's too conservative” gambit but it hadn't taken hold. They had tried the “lightweight actor” bit but that hadn't worked either. In both cases, Reagan could not be typecast, because what people saw and heard from Reagan did not match the charges they heard from the GOP establishment. This was no “Bircher.” This was not a “dangerous” man. Listening to those speeches and commentaries, and reading those columns, they recognized a man who quoted Alexander Hamilton, Cicero, Churchill, and Thomas Paine. This was no lightweight. This was a scholarly, thoughtful, and solicitous man.

  But his age—ah, now there was the opening for the Washington insiders to obliterate Reagan once and for all.

  Going after Reagan's age—especially since Sears had pulled Reagan back from any real campaigning over the past year—played right into their rumor-mongering game. “See, Reagan is back at the ranch, relaxing,” they would say. “If Reagan were still alive …,” they'd say to sniggers and titters. “Reagan skipped all the debates because they were past his bedtime.” “Reagan doesn't jog like Bush.” “Reagan is lazy.” The slurs and innuendos took hold, like a virus, in the media and in Republican circles throughout 1979 and into 1980.

  The Reagan campaign's poor organization and failures to prepare the candidate properly fed the ugly talk. As the L.A. Times noted, Sears and other Reagan advisers had been accused of “deliberately shielding their candidate from close public scrutiny for fear, as one reporter put it, ‘that he'll stick his foot in his mouth with some outrageous remark, probably about foreign policy, and scare people half to death.’”47 But Sears wasn't being overprotective of Reagan now; having gone AWOL after Iowa, he was being under protective. On a rare campaign appearance in New Hampshire, Reagan was stressing foreign policy and was embarrassed to be caught flatfooted when reporters asked him about an important development in the Iranian hostage crisis. No one in his campaign had bothered to tell him that the Canadian government had secreted six Americans out of Tehran.48

  Sears, the venerable poker player, had had his pants taken off by the whist-playing Republicans and he didn't even know it. The campaign was out of money, out of morale, and out of steam because Reagan had been counseled to go against his own instincts by people who professed to know more about the American people and politics than he did. Reagan—who had crisscrossed the length and breadth of America for more than thirty years, who had spoken to millions and had met tens of thousands, who treated even the most common dirt farmer as if he were royalty—was listening to people whose view of America rarely extended beyond a barstool in Washington, D.C.

  Reagan had suffered many indignities in his career—he had endured lies, gone though a divorce he didn't want, lost much of his movie career to World War II, lost his General Electric career to politics, lost the Republican presidential nomination in 1968 and 1976—but this was the worst it had ever been for him. The nomination had been within his grasp, and it was now slipping through his fingers. Washington insiders were proclaiming Reagan to be the William Jennings Bryan of the GOP, just another three-time loser. The country-clubbers of the GOP made fun of Reagan's movie career. Clinking wine glasses, they were toasting, “Bedtime for Bonzo and Reagan!”

  David Prosperi, one of Reagan's young aides, suggested that at a campaign stop, a local band not play “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” but instead play the Bee Gees song “Stayin' Alive.”49 Black humor was running rampant in Reagan's waning operation.

  All that was left was for Reagan to go through one more humiliating episode in New Hampshire, and then pack his bags and go back to his ranch in Santa Barbara.

  Ronald Reagan was on the brink of political oblivion.

  NEW HAMPSHIRE WAS AN anomaly among New England states. Far more conservative, libertarian, quirky, and blue-collared than their neighbors, New Hampshirites generally had more affinity for the Reagan model than for the Bush model. But Bush had been ceaselessly campaigning in the state, sending notes, going hither and yon, while Reagan had been absent, it seemed, for years. The “asterisk” of American politics was on the verge of vanquishing the leader of American conservatism.

  A new Boston Globe poll had Bush's lead in New Hampshire growing over Reagan, 45 to 36 percent.50 Reagan had fallen well below the 49 percent he'd taken in 1976.51 Dick Wirthlin's polling in New Hampshire had it even worse for Reagan. According to Carmen, Reagan had fallen 21 points behind Bush.52 Bush's polling in August 1979 had shown Reagan with a commanding 53 percent of the primary field. That was all gone now.53

  Bush moved in for the kill. At a town hall meeting in Lebanon, New Hampshire, a man in the audience asked, “Do you think 69 years old is too old to be president of the United States?” Bush cleverly answered, “Let the voters make that determination,” and then dropped his anvil on Reagan, saying, “I am fit. I feel 35. I am 55.”54

  Reporters on the campaign plane got into a competition to see who could make the most vicious jokes at Reagan's expense.55 One said Reagan's brain would be the most valuable for a transplant because it had never been used. When Reagan was tardy one morning, a network reporter got approving laughter by saying, “They're still rubbing life into his legs.” Among themselves, they wondered which other campaign they would be assigned to cover once Reagan was driven out of the race.56

  Reagan was sinking not only in New Hampshire but across the country. Just weeks earlier he had held a lead of 26 points over Bush among Republicans nationwide, but now an ABC News–Harris poll showed Reagan and Bush tied at 27 percent apiece.57 Bush was handily ahead among moderate and liberal Republicans. Reagan led among conservative Republicans by only a 5–3 ratio.58

  Worse for Reagan, Bush was ahead by 10 points in the East. Sears had obsessed about the East for Reagan since 1976, but it had come to naught.59 And now the primaries in Vermont, Connecticut, and Massachusetts were looming soon after the New Hampshire vote. Each of these states was believed to be more hospitable to the moderate Bush, a former New Englander, than the conservative Reagan, a westerner. “With his shaggy good looks, Yale diploma and Ivy League wardrobe that give him the aura of an aging preppie,” the Nashua Telegraph noted, “Bush feels at home in New England.”60

  Where Reagan was once confident of sweeping the southern GOP primaries, he was now talking guardedly about his chances there, saying, “I'm sure going to try.”61 Bush's pollster, Bob Teeter, ran the numbers in Florida and his man had vaulted to a 4-point lead there over Reagan, 35–31 percent, in the span of just a few days.62 Among those Sunshine State Republicans who expressed a second choice, Bush was even stronger, while Reagan's support was soft. “This confirms Bush can increase his vote further in Florida,” Teeter wrote. Potentially, Bush could defeat Reagan in Florida by a 2–1 margin, according to Teeter.63

  It looked to everybody like it was all over but the shouting.

  Reagan's campaign had collapsed.

  8

  DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM

  “Reagan is a loser.”

  Ronald Reagan finally got angry.

  Reagan was always at his best, most resolute, and toughest when he was angry. He hated losing. Losing Iowa, losing his national issues to the other candidates, and losing his old aides were more than he could stand. The lies and personal attacks by his political enemies only sharpened his anger. Hugh Gregg, Bush's New Hampshire coordinator, said, “I'll tell you, when Reagan gets tired, he's no good.”1

  The ridicule from some in the media was also contributing t
o Reagan's wrath. Political columnists Jack Germond and Jules Witcover described their poker buddy John Sears, the presumed puppet master, as “the man whose lips move when Ronald Reagan talks.”2

  Reagan furiously put his foot down. He impatiently told Sears that he would “campaign the way I like to campaign.” That meant going to every corner of New Hampshire and not leaving the weekend before the vote, as he'd done in 1976.3 It also meant speaking his mind and articulating his concerns to the American people, especially on the Soviet threat.

  The Californian unveiled the “Reagan Doctrine,” which was a complete refutation of the bipartisan Cold War containment and détente policies embraced by the intellectual classes of the previous four decades.4 The Soviets were marching across the globe, with the acquiescence of much of the West. “Not so fast,” said Reagan. His approach was, in essence, “What's ours is ours and what's yours is negotiable. Let's debate your ill-gotten territories.” The elites hated it but the American people loved it. Reagan had found his voice.

  Peter Hannaford said that Reagan's taking control of the campaign “was the beginning of the end for Sears.”5 Sears “was almost sulking … on the bus,” remembered Ed Meese.6 Poker-faced, Sears told the media, “It remains to be seen whether I'm great or a fool.”7 Reaganites already had an answer for Sears's self-query, but they were delighted that Reagan was finally taking control of his own destiny. Reagan wrote in confidence to one supporter, “I never thought the nomination was a sure thing [and] I don't think so now, but I'm going to fight like h—l.”8

  Only twenty-two delegates were at stake in New Hampshire, but much more was involved for Reagan. If he lost to George Bush in New Hampshire, his campaign would be over. Forever. There was no tomorrow. This was it for the Gipper.

  Just a few days earlier, all the Reagan regional political directors had gathered together in secret to come to some consensus about the campaign. At this point, they were all temporarily off the payroll. There was no money to pay them. Together, they decided that the “handlers”—Sears chiefly—were getting in the way. Ernie Angelo, now running Texas, was deputized to go see Reagan and deliver their message. Angelo did in private, and though Reagan said little, the regional director could tell he was taking it in and was deeply troubled about his campaign.9

  In late January Sears was summoned to Washington to face thirty of Reagan's congressional supporters, led by Congressman Tom Evans of Delaware. But Sears ducked the meeting at the last minute and instead sent Charlie Black. The furious Reaganites peeled Black's skin off and told him that the Reagan campaign manager should stop worrying about his own goddamn press and start worrying about Reagan's.10 Black barely escaped.

  Reagan and Sears were hardly speaking to each other now. When they did talk, Reagan complained, Sears “didn't look you in the eye, he looked you in the tie.”

  Late on a plane trip, Reagan was standing in the aisle, twirling his glasses at one o'clock in the morning while most of the press corps were sleeping off their evening booze session after filing their stories. Reagan joked aloud—to see whether anyone was paying attention—that maybe he needed a new campaign manager.11 In fact, Reagan was not joking, but none of the slumbering and anesthetized journalists stirred.

  NEW HAMPSHIRE WAS TYPICALLY cold, but the February chill was no match for the frosty relations between Jerry Carmen and John Sears. Carmen rarely spoke to the national office of Reagan for President anymore, except to tell them to stay out of his state or to schedule more days in New Hampshire for the Gipper to press the flesh. “From now on we are going to see the kind of campaign I have been wanting,” he told the Associated Press.12 Carmen, a chain smoker, was going through four packs a day of filterless Camels. The fingers on his right two fingers had been stained a sickly yellow.13 He was locking horns almost daily with Reagan aide Helene Von Damm over money and the candidate's schedule. “He wanted all of Reagan's time,” she lamented.14 Carmen was also butting heads over all manner of things with Reagan's advance men, including the redoubtable Jim Hooley and Rick Ahearn. (The two burly Irishmen proved to be inventive as well as formidable. Off salary like the rest of the campaign, Hooley and Ahearn scavenged for food at receptions; after one poorly attended event, they gladly appropriated boxes of sad-looking roast beef sandwiches and lived off them for days.)15

  Carmen sent word that Reagan must campaign much more than originally planned in New Hampshire or he would lose. Period. In the 1978 New Hampshire Senate campaign the conservative underdog, Gordon Humphrey, had shown the power of advertising on Boston television stations, which reached the populous regions of the southern half of the state, when he scored the biggest upset of the year over incumbent Democrat Tom McIntyre. But Reagan's campaign, nearly broke, had precious few dollars for the expensive Boston market. The cost to air a sixty-second prime-time commercial in Boston had gone up from $4,800 in 1976 to $7,400 in 1980.16 If Reagan hoped to have any chance, he'd have to engage in the retail campaigning that traditionally had been the hallmark of the New Hampshire primary.

  Television airtime wasn't the only major cost taxing the cash-strapped Reagan operation. Campaigns were getting more and more expensive, especially with double-digit inflation. The cost of brochures had doubled, as had the cost of a per-person interview by a pollster, from $8 to $16. A ninety-six-passenger Boeing jet, for a four-day charter, cost $37,500 in 1976, but by 1980, that same plane for the same amount of time cost more than $70,000. Consulting fees, natch, also went up. In 1976, Charlie Black was making $1,500 per month working for Reagan; in 1980, he was making $2,500.17 However, if one calculated the untold hours staffers like Black put in, their take-home pay was less than that of a garbage collector. Sometimes these weary political operatives felt they were no different from trash men, cleaning up after their candidates.

  Along with the growth in the consulting community, so too had the Secret Service grown in size, budget, and functions. In 1963, the “Service” had 389 agents and an annual budget of around $5.5 million. By 1980, there were 1,552 agents and a hefty budget of $157 million.18 After the assassinations of President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, Congress greatly expanded the role of the Service to include protective details for, besides presidents and vice presidents, their spouses and children, former presidents—and viable presidential aspirants. This meant that Ted Kennedy was assigned a detail, as were Reagan, Phil Crane, John Connally, and George Bush; the Service deemed them viable candidates because of the amounts they had raised.

  The Secret Service agents had to guard against becoming indifferent to someone who treated them badly, like Jimmy Carter. That was not a problem for Reagan's detail, who adored Reagan and looked forward to working with him. Sometimes, though, they were too obsessive in keeping supporters away from Reagan, and complaints were heard. Reagan had looked too imperial to Iowa Republicans; for that reason Bush had wisely refused the protective contingent before the Iowa caucuses.

  Carter's code name was sometimes “Lock Master,” sometimes “Deacon.” Mrs. Carter's was sometimes “Lotus Petal,” sometimes “Steel Magnolia.” Kennedy's was “Sunburn.” Bush's was “Sheepskin” and Mrs. Bush's was “Snowbank.” The then hard-drinking “George Bush Jr.,” as the Secret Service had him erroneously listed, was “Tumbler.” Reagan's was “Rawhide” and Nancy's was “Rainbow.”19 The Reagans were so fond of their code names that they asked the Service to break precedent and keep them for the entire campaign, and later his presidency.20

  Ted Kennedy's protective detail was the largest and most bureaucratic. He had three teams working to guard him, one that worked in advance of each stop, a second that traveled with him, and a third whose job it was to work with the local law-enforcement officials to block roads and traffic so Kennedy's motorcade could barrel through red lights and stop signs. It didn't win him a lot of votes, but these agents were doing their utmost to ensure that Kennedy was not lost on their watch. Because of the Service's zealousness, agents often ran roughshod over state and local law-enforcement officials
. It was not unusual for fistfights to break out. Still, with thousands of nuts out there and more than four hundred people in the active files of the Service—people the agency believed were truly capable of killing a president or a candidate—diplomacy often took a backseat.21

  Kennedy also traveled with a full-time doctor and nurse, skilled in trauma medicine … especially for gunshot wounds.22

  Even as campaign costs were skyrocketing, new federal regulations imposed onerous spending limits on candidates. The sweeping reforms after the excesses of the 1972 Nixon campaign had resulted in the creation of the FEC. Reagan's campaign was bumping its head against the spending limit in New Hampshire, which was just under $300,000.23 To stave off the FEC dogs, Reagan was staying at the Sheraton–Rolling Hills Hotel Andover, just across the state line. Whenever possible, expenditures were being allocated against the Massachusett's FEC limits. Like many well-intentioned reforms, the post-Watergate campaign-finance laws spawned a host of unintended consequences that actually made regulation more difficult. Notably, the number of political action committees (PACs) had quadrupled since Nixon's day, because they provided a handy outlet to exceed proscribed limits.

  HOWARD BAKER'S CAMPAIGN LIMPED into New Hampshire. Oddly, Iowa governor Robert Ray endorsed Baker after the caucuses, doing Baker absolutely no good in New Hampshire. Vermont governor Richard Snelling also endorsed Baker, but the support of this moderate-to-liberal Republican would prove of little help in New Hampshire.24 Baker was now seen as a spoiler for Bush, since they were both competing for the same moderate votes.