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

by Shirley, Craig

  Some Reagan boosters, fearing a loss in New Hampshire, were already making their rearguard, “we'll come back in the South and the West” argument they'd made four years earlier. But that was the last war, and the critical mistake too many make in politics and warfare is to fight the previous war instead of the one in front of them.

  Fortunately for the Reagan backers, Bush rushed out a radio commercial giving his side, yet again, of the Nashua story. The Reagan folks chuckled to themselves, as Bush was just keeping the story alive. They surmised that the contretemps must have hurt Bush worse than his people were letting on. Reaganites got a hold of the script for the commercial and distributed it far and wide. They were delighted to keep the story going.

  OUTSIDE OF DIXVILLE NOTCH, the New Hampshire polls opened at 6 A.M. and would not close until 7 P.M. or 8 P.M., depending on the town. Though it was cold and windy, the skies were clear in most parts of the state. Turnout in the major cities started slowly, but picked up as the day went along.

  New Hampshire had held its first primary in 1916, but it wasn't until 1952 that its presidential primary became the major proving ground for presidential candidates. Since then, no candidate had won the presidency without first winning New Hampshire's primary.36

  While most towns still used paper ballots (aside from a few that were trying out a newfangled punch-style voting machine), a significant change had occurred since 1976. Previously, New Hampshire voters had picked the delegates associated with each candidate, but this time they voted for the candidates themselves.

  The afternoon of the primary, the Telegraph ran a lead editorial praising not Reagan but John Sears for his “masterful stroke” at the debates. Calling him “skillful” and a “genius,” the paper noted that Sears was “extremely fortunate in having an easily programmable candidate.”37 To little surprise, the Telegraph endorsed Bush over Reagan.38

  The paper also reported that GOP pollsters said the race would be tight. This was the common refrain coming from the media. The previous day the Washington Post ran a story headlined “Bush, Reagan Even as New Hampshire Finish Line Nears.”39 Even as of Tuesday afternoon the Associated Press was releasing stories quoting experts saying that the Republican race was too close to call.

  It was not even close.

  Reagan romped in New Hampshire. It was a completely unexpected blowout, 50 to 23 percent. Turnout was huge among Republicans: more than 145,000 people.40 In 1976, the turnout had been 111,000 for the GOP primary.

  All were stunned at the margin of victory, including Reagan himself, his men, Bush, Bush's men, and the media. Dick Wirthlin's tracking polls had shown Reagan edging into a tie with Bush with less than a week to go and then going into a slight lead over the weekend, but even the esteemed pollster was taken aback at the Reagan landslide.41 Dixville Notch had created an aura of suspense for the day, but late-deciding GOP voters—who made up about a third of those who went to the polls—went heavily for Reagan, by better than a 5–1 margin. Reagan won in almost every category, except among the affluent; Bush took those voters. Reagan won almost 2–1 among those making less than $10,000 per year.42 He won among blue-collar voters, 51–20 percent, and among white-collar voters, 39–15. He won 2–1 in the rural areas and 3–1 in the towns.43 Reagan even got a respectful number of self-identified moderate voters; most of the Ford vote from 1976, which Bush had hoped to claim, went heavily for the Gipper. Reagan of course won among voters who believed the GOP should pursue a conservative course. Overall Reagan took all ten counties in New Hampshire and eleven of thirteen cities. Loeb delivered for Reagan as he got a skyscraping 75 percent of the Manchester vote. The Gipper also took Concord, seat of the state's small liberal populace. And as a bonus, he took Nashua.44 “Every single thing broke our way, everything,” Carmen fondly remembered.45

  “This is the first and it sure is the best!” an ebullient Reagan told the overflow crowd at the Holiday Inn in Manchester. Even in victory, Carmen was unrelenting with Bush: “I think George Bush is mortally wounded and not just in New Hampshire.… The silk stocking got a setback tonight.” Hundreds had descended upon the overstuffed hotel. The Washington Post noted that the combined Lexington and Concord rooms were filled with “beer-drinking blue-collar supporters.”46 The victory rally was thick with smoke, heat, people, booze, polyester, and joy. The city's fire marshal had to close the hall, it was so crowded. Carmen had picked the too-small room without consulting with Reagan's advance men, Jim Hooley and Rick Ahearn, and they were fit to be tied. As a result, many of Reagan's supporters could not take part in the victory celebration.47

  The Californian told his joyous supporters, “This is the way I want to continue campaigning, meeting the people of this country as I was able to meet you.”48 Reagan's supporters were even more jubilant than the Gipper himself. A truck driver, Ray Caron of Manchester, had driven Reagan voters to the polls all day. Caron said, “He's the only guy for us working people.”49

  Reagan couldn't resist taking a poke at Bush, saying that “the man who was supposed to be an alternative … is not really the alternative at all.”50 Nancy was beaming as Ronnie told the crowd, “I suppose you suspect that we're very happy! Well, we are!”51

  Reagan got thirteen delegates in New Hampshire to Bush's five, Baker's two, and Anderson's two. In terms of overall delegates selected, Bush and Reagan were tied at twenty-two apiece, but the win had been so dramatic and the comeback so complete that Reagan was firmly reinstalled as the frontrunner.52

  As Reagan departed the room around 10:30, he and Mrs. Reagan happened upon a young woman who went batty when she saw the former movie star. “Oh, what a wonderful face! I wish now I hadn't voted for Carter.”53

  Bush put the best face on his landslide loss, telling his supporters, “We've won two and lost one. That's .666. I used to hit about .240,” a reference to his days playing baseball at Yale. His disheartened fans were not consoled. The chance to beat Reagan had been missed. Bush, standing in front of his supporters with wife Barbara, daughter Dorothy, and sons Neil and Marvin, conceded only forty-five minutes after the polls closed at 8 P.M.54 He was asked whether the Nashua debacle had contributed to his loss, but he said little on the matter.

  He returned to his room, slumped in a chair with a drink, and said of his landslide loss, “There's no excuse for it.”55 Bush called Reagan to congratulate him, saying, “You beat the hell out of us.… I'm not happy about it, but I'll see you in Massachusetts.”56

  Bob Dole was shut out of delegates in New Hampshire and harrumphed that his campaign was “not going anywhere.”57 The campaign had spent $219.58 at Sears Roebuck for a safe, but no one for a minute thought Bob Dole had a campaign plan worth stealing.58 In short order, he dropped out of the upcoming debate in South Carolina and cut his already meager campaign staff to near nothing. He also speculated that President Ford, who had received a handful of write-in votes, would get into the race.

  GOING INTO PRIMARY DAY, Ted Kennedy's team knew that the Massachusetts senator was in deep trouble. Kennedy's in-state director, an attractive blonde with the improbable name Dudley Dudley, had lamely joked that the “oil shortage is extending to the ‘well-oiled Kennedy machine.’” The mood in Kennedy's headquarters was compared to “the end of a long death march.” At the Kennedy “victory” party that night, the bandleader asked Mrs. Dudley if she had a request and she replied, “Camelot.”

  “Don't know it,” he said.

  She retorted, “That's the last thing I need to hear.”59

  Kennedy supporters were bracing for another loss, and they got it. President Carter knocked Kennedy down, 49–38 percent, not in his backyard but just down the street and in front of Teddy's friends, too.60 Jerry Brown's campaign pulled up the rear, incredibly behind the even more eccentric Lyndon LaRouche.

  Democrats began to call on Teddy to get out and fall in line behind the president, for the sake of party loyalty. But Kennedy understood all too well what his older brother Jack had meant when he said, “Somet
imes party loyalty asks too much.”61 Teddy hated Carter. He declared, “Jimmy Carter ought not to be given a blank check. The last time we did that was to Richard Nixon.”62 In the Democratic Party, there was no lower blow than to compare someone to the odious Nixon.

  Kennedy didn't care a whit. He'd found his voice on the road, and had actually been liberated by the prospect of almost certain defeat. The liberal lion was free to roar.

  AFTER NEW HAMPSHIRE, it became conventional wisdom to say that absent the Nashua debate, Reagan would have lost the primary. In fact, Reagan would have still won in New Hampshire but only narrowly—by less than 10 percent in all probability, which means the media would have portrayed the race far differently coming out of New Hampshire. Wirthlin's tracking polls had Reagan and Bush tied with five days to go—that is, even before the Nashua debate. Three days before that, Wirthlin's tabulations had Bush up by 9 percent over the Gipper.63

  What the Nashua debate did do was to create doubts about Bush's ability to handle pervasive pressure. Such concerns had been an open secret in the GOP for years. In August 1974, when the tapes revealing that Richard Nixon had indeed orchestrated the cover-up of the Watergate break-in were released, Bush, then the party's chieftain, “broke out into assholes and shit himself to death,” according to Dean Burch, one of last of the wise men of the GOP.64

  Bush had made a dreadful mistake in not listening to James Baker, Dave Keene, and his press secretary and confidant, Vic Gold, who urged him to talk about issues rather than his “Big Mo.” When asked why he was running for president, Bush had rattled off his résumé and then declared, “I look at it as the height of service.”65 For many Americans, Bush just didn't get it.

  Also, in the last days of the campaign, the media began to turn against Bush and toward Reagan. Many reporters covering the campaign thought Bush had become arrogant. Reagan, whether up or down, always treated the gentlemen of the press like gentlemen. He rode the campaign bus together with the media “in New Hampshire day after day” and was always accessible, as Broder, grand old man of the Washington Post, recalled.66

  ADDING TO THE HIGH drama of primary day was Reagan's startling, bloodless execution of John Sears, Charlie Black, and Jim Lake.

  Sears and company had been in New Hampshire, but lying low. Carmen was running the entire show. Exactly one year earlier, Sears's friend Lake had told the Washington Star that Sears “can talk anyone into anything … and not only convince you but get you to thinking it was your idea in the first place.”67 Now few in the Reagan camp were listening to Sears.

  Congressman Mickey Edwards of Oklahoma, Congressman Bob Dornan of California, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, and Paul Laxalt stumped for Reagan in New Hampshire the day of the primary, and all had taken note of the poor condition of the campaign and had registered complaints with the Reagans. Edwards, Dornan, and Hatch talked among themselves about meeting in Washington with Reagan to tell him he should fire Sears. Laxalt was more direct; when he bumped into Sears in the hotel lobby he bluntly told him, “If this was my campaign, you wouldn't be in it.”68 Sears had been on Laxalt's shit list for more than a year, but the Nevadan had become further inflamed when Sears “was briefing Ron and treating Ron like he was Charlie McCarthy,” as Laxalt recollected years later. “Really, he was on a head trip, and it finally got to the point that he was insulting Ron in terms of his own capability and Nancy really got pissed off over that.”69

  Behind the scenes, efforts to either ease Sears out or limit his powers had accelerated over the previous several weeks. Mrs. Reagan was heading to Chicago and at the last minute asked Black and Lake—but not Sears—to accompany her. Seated in the first-class section, she told the two that “Ronnie has lost confidence in John.” She then probed gently to see whether they would stay if Sears left. The two indicated that they thought Sears should continue to run the campaign and that if he went, they would be compelled to leave as well.70

  A couple of days later, while on the campaign bus during a swing through Massachusetts. Reagan asked Black to sit down with him. After telling a joke about an Irish gambler—one Black had heard a dozen times before—Reagan got down to business. “I'm really disappointed with the way John has been acting.… My friends are out of the campaign and I would like to bring them back in and he doesn't seem like he wants to do that.” Black recalled Reagan pressing: “If anything did happen to John, would you stay?” Again, Black stood by Sears loyally: “I love you … no matter what, but I feel it's important to have John run the campaign.”71 That was it. If one went, then all three would have to go. Black now knew there was trouble in River City.

  Reagan and his insurrectionists hit upon the idea of dismissing Sears—along with Lake and Black—the day of the primary, but before the results were in. They reasoned that if Reagan lost and then the three were fired, it would look like sour grapes and the campaign would be in even worse shambles. If Reagan won and then the trio was fired, Reagan would look ungrateful. On primary day itself, however, when no one yet knew the results, the news of the firings might be relegated to the back pages. It was a gamble.

  Peter Hannaford had been out of the country, but when he returned, Ed Meese asked him to come to New Hampshire. Also part of the cabal was Laxalt, foreign-policy adviser Dick Allen, and Dick Wirthlin. All except Allen had been onetime supporters of Sears and all believed he had betrayed or burnt them. Reagan secretary Helene Von Damm heard rumors that Sears was now gunning for Allen as well.72

  Sears knew straws were in the wind. Some time earlier, he had claimed to Nancy Reagan that he'd overheard Ed Meese in a men's room talking about how the campaign manager's departure was imminent.73 Meese denied Sears's allegation and chalked it up to paranoia. At one point Sears directly confronted Bill Casey, when it was still unclear as to Casey's precise role in the campaign and when some felt it might be possible to keep Sears on, but without control of the checkbook. “Sears told Casey he could take any title he wanted,” Hannaford later wrote. Casey was unable to determine whether Sears was bluffing or considering quitting.74

  Five days before the voting began in New Hampshire, a gloomy dinner was held involving all the key players in this mini-drama—Sears, Black, Hannaford, Casey, Allen, Meese, Lake, and Reagan. The only one at the table in good spirits was the candidate himself. After Sears and company left, Hannaford urged Casey to formally join the campaign. That night the Reaganites hatched their plan for Sears's dismissal and presented it to the candidate for his approval.75 A conference call took place the next day involving nearly all the conspirators and a new addition—Mike Deaver, who had his own giant ax to grind against Sears.

  Just a couple of days earlier, a meeting between Reagan and Sears had not gone well. They had barely spoken in weeks, especially since Deaver had been thrown over the side. Now this meeting dragged on until two in the morning with nothing resolved. Sears and his allies started in on Meese, saying that he was a detriment to the campaign. Reagan dug in his heels. “Dammit, John, why do you always have to get your way? Why can't I get mine?”76 Sears refused to back down and again went after Meese, throwing in Dick Allen for good measure.

  Reagan finally exploded, became profane, and yelled at Sears, “Oh no, you're not going to get Ed, by God!”77 Flushed and angry, Reagan jumped up and moved toward his campaign manager. Black thought Reagan was going to punch Sears, so he stepped in between the two and quickly escorted Sears from the room. Nancy Reagan pulled at her husband, saying, “Ronnie, Ronnie, come away.”78 But Reagan was still yelling at Sears, even as Nancy was tugging on him.

  Reagan was so mad that Black feared they all might be fired right on the spot. Lake thought the Secret Service would break in because of all the shouting. Listening through the paper-thin wall in their hotel room and cheering Reagan on were two young campaign aides, Colin Clark and David Fischer.79 Reagan later obliquely told Jim Dickenson of the Washington Star that he and Sears had “several meetings, you might even say confrontations.”80

  Meese desc
ribed the contentious meeting as a “knock-down, drag-out thing.” The problem, Meese said, was that “John always thought he was the smartest guy in the world … smarter than Ronald Reagan.”81

  Earlier, Sears had sought Stu Spencer's advice about the Californians around Reagan. Spencer, an on-and-off-and-on-and-off friend and adviser of the Reagans, told Sears that he'd better recruit an ally among the group. Sears had done so for a time with Deaver, but now he stood alone. Spencer warned Sears that “as things get tough … Reagan gets up in the morning, he likes to see a familiar face.”82 Meese was the one familiar face left. But he was more than that to Reagan. A constitutional lawyer and a thoughtful conservative, he never lost his cool and possessed an underappreciated sense of humor. Meese was Reagan's port in the storm of national politics. When asked to whom he would first turn in a crisis, Reagan once replied without hesitation, “Ed Meese.”83

  And Sears was now trying to get rid of Meese.

  On the Sunday night before the New Hampshire voting, Reagan met one more time with Nancy, Meese, Allen, and Hannaford. Dick Wirthlin called with the happy news that his polling had shown Reagan opening a lead over Bush. But the order of business was the unhappy state of the campaign. Mrs. Reagan told her husband, “You know we just can't go on this way.” Reagan replied, “Do we have to fire Jim and Charlie too?” Hannaford told Reagan yes, because the three of them had three times threatened to quit if they didn't get their way and it just didn't make sense to have people in the campaign more loyal to Sears than to Reagan. Reagan reluctantly agreed, telling Hannaford, “I understand.”84