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

by Shirley, Craig

  Bush's campaign was beginning to make tactical errors. In addition to not elaborating on what he stood for, he was also trumpeting the endorsements of moderate and liberal Republicans, such as Elliot Richardson and Henry Cabot Lodge, two scions of the Massachusetts liberal Republican establishment, and William Ruckelshaus, a prominent moderate Republican from the Midwest who became famous for being fired by Richard Nixon. Press secretary Teeley told reporters “we should be somewhere in the middle” between Reagan and John Anderson.71 The Bush campaign completely misunderstood the dynamics of Republican politics in 1980. The GOP had swung wildly away from the progressive, pro-government Republicanism of its past. That fight had been won and it was the populist conservatives who ruled. The back door to the hunting club, not the front door to the country club, was now the main way into the Republican Party. Richardson, Lodge, and others were as out of place in the new GOP as George Wallace at an NAACP convention.

  The cultural rivalries between the Bushies and the Reaganites led to a nasty, out-in-the-open fight in New Hampshire. Carmen picked the fight in an attempt to fire up the conservative base. He blasted the Bush effort for its “old school tie and inherited influence against the working middle-class Americans.… We're really running against the preppy … establishment.”72 Carmen and his Reaganites were convinced that the Bushies made fun of them behind their backs while meeting at “the club” for cocktails and cards. Loeb described Bush as a “clean-fingernail Republican” in his Manchester Union-Leader.73

  Though Reagan was finally going all-out on the campaign trail and the Bush operation was now committing errors, the national media were convinced that Reagan's efforts would be “too little, too late,” as ABC put it in one report.74 After all, the New Hampshire vote was fast approaching and Bush remained well ahead. The Vermont, Connecticut, and Massachusetts primaries and the Maine caucuses were coming up as well, and Bush was poised to sweep all of them. And why not? He was born in one of the states and grew up in another, and his family owned a summer home in a third.

  AS THE NEW HAMPSHIRE vote neared, Ted Kennedy's standing among Democrats was nosediving. Carter was now favored by a 3–1 margin nationally by his party.75 Kennedy was desperately trying to shake the Chappaquiddick can tied to his tail, telling voters to consider other “traumas” in his life as a way of taking the full measure of the man: “The loss of two brothers under very traumatic circumstances. A son who has experienced cancer and whose life I thought was going to be lost and a sister who was lost in a plane crash.”76 Kennedy was letting his morbid Irish show, which he very rarely did. Democratic voters were unmoved. The NRA was also unmoved, as it unveiled a campaign against Kennedy that was themed, “If Kennedy wins, you lose.”77

  On February 10 Kennedy got off the mat in Maine. Kinda. Though he didn't win, he beat expectations, losing by “only” 6 points to Carter, 45–39 percent.78 Carter was still sticking to the White House, promising not to campaign until the hostages were released. The ploy was still working. Political cartoonist Jeff Mac-Nelly depicted two New England farmers walking from the barn to the house on a cold and snowy evening with one saying to the other, “Sure I voted for Carter. I'm for any politician who's smart enough to stay outta my sight.”79

  The Democrats' event in Maine was a one-day affair, but the Republican process was strung out over three months. Bush had started the ball rolling by winning the straw poll at the GOP state convention, which initiated the nightmarish and endless meetings by the dour Mainiacs.80 They still had another month to go, but Bush was leading Reagan narrowly.

  Bush showed continued strength when he came in a surprisingly close second in a Mississippi straw poll. Most had thought that Connally would come in first or second in the poll of more than a thousand Republicans at a GOP dinner. He had worked the state hard; Bush, not at all. But in fact Connally came in third, with 26 percent of the vote; Reagan won with 37 percent, and Bush finished in a strong second with 29 percent.81 Iowa was continuing to pay dividends for Brahmin Bush.

  The Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, kicked off February 13. America was expected to be competitive in several sports, but certainly not hockey. The Soviets were heavily favored to win the gold again, as they had done every four years since 1964. The Americans hadn't been in a hockey medal round since 1960.

  GEORGE BUSH GAVE A speech in Connecticut in which he promised “two guaranteed decades of peace” if he was elected president.82 He was speaking of world peace, not political peace, because he and Reagan and the other candidates were about to explode into full-scale warfare.

  The spark was the planned two-man debate sponsored by the Nashua Telegraph. All three parties—the Telegraph, Bush, and Reagan—had more or less agreed to the debate, and it was scheduled for February 23, just three days before the primary. The excluded candidates and their supporters were livid. Bob Dole and then Howard Baker announced that they would pursue legal challenges to the newspaper-sponsored debate as an illegal corporate contribution to the Bush and Reagan campaigns.83 The government watchdog group Common Cause also protested the debate. Jon Breen, the paper's executive editor, pooh-poohed the complaints. He said that no one had seemed to care about the debate until Reagan and Bush both agreed to it, and that it would now be “logistically impossible” to include the others.84

  The Gipper was aware of the stakes and now considered the one-on-one debate with Bush to be “necessary.”85 Reagan needed to draw distinctions between himself and Bush on several social and cultural issues, including gun control, abortion, welfare, and the Equal Rights Amendment. He also wanted to stress his commitment to across-the-board tax cuts and standing up to the Soviets.

  But Reagan lost this much-needed opportunity when the FEC, responding quickly to Dole's complaint, ruled the Nashua Telegraph debate an illegal corporate contribution because it excluded “major candidates.” The big showdown between Bush and Reagan was canceled.86

  Though in motion, Reagan still sometimes stumbled. Always fond of a good laugh, he told an ethnic joke to several aides and then was asked by a reporter—off the record—to repeat it. Reagan did: “How do you tell the Polish one at a cockfight? He's the one with the duck. How do you tell the Italian? He's the one who bets on the duck. How do you tell when the Mafia is there? The duck wins.” The reporters all laughed, but the joke earned the condemnation of several sanctimonious elements in the national media, including ABC, which incredibly aired the off-the-record gag.87 Ed Meese quipped, “There goes Connecticut,” an allusion to the state's heavy Italian population.88

  The New York Times surprisingly defended Reagan in an editorial, saying the joke reflected his “geniality” and not “bigotry.”89 The whole thing became ridiculous when the president of Yale, Bart Giamatti, released a statement calling on Reagan to apologize to everybody, “including the ducks.”90 Reagan did a bit of tap dancing for the media, apologized, and promised to tell only Irish jokes in the future.

  A RIVAL POWER CENTER inside the Reagan operation was coalescing, although Sears was slow to recognize the threat. Sears had all along relied on his two faithful allies, Charlie Black and Jim Lake. But Ed Meese, about the only old Reagan friend whom Sears had not forced out, did not like what Sears was doing to the campaign and was talking to the Reagans about it.

  Sears, who had once considered becoming a “headshrinker,” was good at reading people and their intentions. But here he was up against Meese, who gave the word “circumspect” new meaning. Though Sears didn't know it, he was also up against William Casey, who had ostensibly been called in to help Reagan prepare for the upcoming debates. Casey, the former Nixon administration staffer and one of the wise men of Wall Street, was an unlikely Reaganite, having supported Ford in 1976 as a New York Republican. But in fact he was part of a plan to replace Sears. Casey was tough to read, too; during World War II he had worked in covert operations for the OSS—the precursor to the CIA—and was experienced in psychological warfare and counterintelligence.

  The unde
tected hand of Nancy Reagan was at work. Days before, she and Reagan were alone at the ranch, dismayed about the state of the campaign. Frustrated, she picked up the phone and called their old friend Bill Clark, whom Reagan had appointed as chief justice to the California Supreme Court. Clark immediately drove to Rancho del Cielo and the three huddled in front of a fire with a plate of cold cuts. The Reagans asked their old friend if he would replace Sears and take over the campaign. Clark thought the world of Reagan but demurred, as several important cases were before his court.

  Nancy had a yellow legal tablet and they began coming up with alternatives. One was Casey. No one remembers who actually came up with the name, but the Reagans asked Clark to call him and take his temperature. “I called him at his home on Long Island, got him out of bed,” Clark later wrote. “And grumpy old Bill said, ‘Let me think about it. I'll get back to you tomorrow.’” They spoke again the next day and Casey agreed, although not necessarily to take over the whole campaign.91

  Casey's position was as yet undefined, and when a reporter in New Hampshire asked him about a more formal role in the Reagan campaign, he sent a shot across Sears's bow, saying, “I'm open on that.”92 Sears vowed to fight an insurrection or rearguard action, though he was unsure what exactly was going on behind his back. Casey met privately in Worcester, Massachusetts, with Reagan, unbeknownst to Sears. Reagan had also called Casey at his Florida retreat to discuss the top slot. Casey called Paul Laxalt to seek his advice. Laxalt told Casey that Reagan was affable and easy to work with, and that Nancy Reagan was a “smart, tough lady.”93 Publicly, Laxalt continued to criticize Sears's handling of the campaign. When a reporter asked about the charges that the Reagan campaign was error-prone, he drolly replied, “That's the understatement of the year.”94

  Around this time another old Reagan friend rematerialized. Peter Hannaford—Mike Deaver's business partner—returned early from an extended trip in Africa with his wife, Irene, after speaking with Ed Meese and Dick Allen about the state of their friend's campaign.

  Casey spent several days in Los Angeles with Meese, and no one who knew about the covert meeting assumed they were talking about the upcoming Dodgers season. The Reaganites had finally decided to replace Sears with a triumvirate of Casey, Meese, and Dick Wirthlin. The only question now was how and when to ease Sears out. The Californians plotting against Sears feared that if they pushed too hard for executive control of the campaign and at the wrong time, Sears might resign in a fit of pique. This could set off a new round of anti-Reagan stories in the media, since Sears had better relations with the media than anyone else in the GOP. Reagan's campaign was just getting rebalanced after the disaster of Iowa, and an angry Sears could make life unbearable at precisely the wrong time for Reagan.

  With less than three weeks to go before the crucial New Hampshire primary, Sears was in New York. He held a press conference to announce the filing of Reagan delegate slates for a primary that was almost three months off—and even then, he failed to file slates in two congressional districts, effectively ceding six delegates to Bush.95 Rather than ministering to his wounded candidate in New Hampshire, Sears was holding unnecessary press conferences in the Big Apple. It was another strike against Reagan's manager.

  AS THE AMERICANS AND the Russians squared off in the world arena, everybody saw the Winter Olympics being held in the cold of Lake Placid as a metaphor for the Cold War. The Russians were scary, many believed they cheated, and they used intimidation tactics effectively in the sporting arena, just as they did in international politics.

  The Soviets' predicted domination of the Winter Olympics got off to a rough start, though, when Eric Heiden of the United States upset the Russian in the 500-meter speed-skating competition. Also, the young American hockey team beat Norway handily, 5–1, after a surprising 7–3 win over Czechoslovakia. Most felt this represented the extent of their success. They were 2–0–1 but had yet to come up against the powerhouse Soviets.

  IN THE FIRST WEEK of February, the newly active Reagan zipped through seven states in the South and the East. He gave a major foreign-policy speech in Macon, Georgia, in which he leveled Carter for the high number of members of the Trilateral Commission in his administration, including Zbigniew Brzezinski. Though he never mentioned Bush, he didn't need to. Everybody in the conservative movement knew by now that Bush had been a member of the commission but had resigned in preparation for pursuing the nomination.

  William Loeb's Manchester Union-Leader beat Bush about the head and shoulders for this sin: “It is quite clear that this group of extremely powerful men is out to control the world.” Loeb also charged that Bush was using a Trilateral network of “banks, the media and oil companies” to steal the primary.96 Loeb even asserted that Bush's campaign was part of a CIA plot.97 Mr. William Loeb, meet Mr. Oliver Stone.

  John Anderson was also a member of the commission, but he did not resign and brushed off the conspiracists as “just old biddies.” Bush finally was compelled to put out a statement on the Trilateral Commission saying any charges of a conspiracy were “absurd.”98

  At each campaign stop Reagan was making proposals, making news, and thrilling audiences with thunderous speeches. While in Georgia, Reagan spoke forcefully to students at Columbus College: “No more Vietnams! No more abandonments of friends by the U.S.… We don't care if we're not liked! We're going to be respected!” His young fraternity brothers of Tau Kappa Epsilon raised a banner that read, “RON-TKE-AND APPLE PIE.” Two students performed a dance routine and Reagan joined them in a bit of soft shoe. He was having fun again, he wasn't soft-pedaling his conservatism, and he was back in motion.99

  Also, in a nice redirection on his age and Bush's jogging for the media, Reagan told one individual who asked him about his years, “We don't elect presidents to run foot races. We elect presidents to display experience and maturity.”100

  Charlie Black was comforted by the serendipitous early primary schedule. New Hampshire was five weeks after Iowa. “If New Hampshire had been the week after Iowa, we'd be in tough shape.”101 But Reagan's poll numbers still had not recovered, and there were now only ten days left before the primary. Dick Wirthlin conceded that for Reagan to win, he'd have to “come from behind.”102 And Bush only added to his momentum when he won the Puerto Rico primary on February 17.

  Reagan finally got his television ads going. Initially, a Madison Avenue firm that knew nothing about politics produced commercials of Reagan in a schoolroom, talking to children about energy in front of a blackboard while holding a piece of chalk.103 The spots were ridiculous.

  Black then called the old Reagan aide Jeff Bell and asked him to look at one of the Madison Avenue commercials. “I told Charlie this was piece of shit,” Bell later recalled. Black concurred. The ads and the Madison Avenue empty suits were sent packing, and Bell was brought on to produce new ads for the campaign in New Hampshire. Bell also called in Elliott Curson, who had helped produce Bell's 1978 Senate campaign ads, to help on the Reagan spots. Bell and Curson went to Los Angeles to make the new spots. There they encountered two immediate problems. One was that Reagan had forgotten his contact lenses. “He was blind as a bat without them,” Bell said. They had to make oversized cue cards that Reagan could see. The second was that Mrs. Reagan kept calling, telling Bell that “Ronnie” had to be home at 4 o'clock for a dinner party. Bell obediently followed Mrs. Reagan's urgent requests.

  Despite the problems, Bell and Curson produced eleven commercials for $11,000 that were aired heavily in New Hampshire. Most touted Reagan's unvarnished support for tax cuts, and the effective ads helped bring the conservative base back to their hero.104 The spots were in jest dubbed “The Good Shepherd” because Reagan, at the end of the ad, said, “We have to move ahead. But we can't leave anybody behind.”105

  Bush's commercials never got specific. According to Jim Baker, Bush canceled the long-planned issue ads in favor of continuing the “bio stuff.”106 Bobby Goodman, a man of indistinct ideology who had once wr
itten jingles for New York firms, was Bush's adman in 1980. The “bio spots” told the viewer that Bush had been a star baseball player at Yale and was a “legitimate American hero” because of his service in World War II. The five-minute commercial added that Bush offered “optimism and the promise of future accomplishment” but said nothing about what he would do as president. Goodman defended the spots, saying that “people vote for people they believe in as human beings.”107

  The increased media scrutiny was clearly taking its toll on Bush, as the other candidates had begun attacking him, following Reagan's lead. At one point he complained to the press about attacks from fellow Republicans, saying that their consultants were telling them to “go out there and go after George Bush.”108

  Cracks were beginning to appear in Fortress Bush. The New Hampshire primary was still more than a week away, and in politics a week is at least several eternities.