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

by Shirley, Craig

  Totten was running things for Reagan in Illinois, just as he'd done four years earlier. He was one of the few state operatives who were around in 1976 and hadn't been forced out or demoted by John Sears in the 1980 quest. Like Reagan's other men, Totten was a tough conservative whose hard work and loyalty were never in doubt. He was running an effective operation in Springfield, teeming with volunteers and an underpaid and overworked aide, Terry Campo, who was pressed into service one day as Reagan's spokesman because the woman assigned by the campaign had laryngitis. Campo didn't know a press release from a grape press but he struggled through, even as he was astonished at the unruly behavior of the horde of reporters, all barking questions at him.31

  CARTER'S ROMP OVER KENNEDY continued without interruption. The same day that he trounced Kennedy in the Alabama, Georgia, and Florida primaries, he also won big in the Oklahoma, Delaware, and Hawaii caucuses. Only in Alaska's caucus did Kennedy defeat the president.32 Carter also won the caucuses in Mississippi, South Carolina, and Wyoming, held four days later.33 Kennedy's campaign was on the verge of being chloroformed, just in time for him to go back to Cape Cod and get ready for the coming spring sailing season.

  The bad news never seemed to stop rolling downhill onto Kennedy. Long withheld evidence of the frantic phone calls he made in the hours after Chappaquiddick was released, and all the old questions arose anew about Kennedy's behavior that night in July 1969. Joan Kennedy stood by her man, even when reporters unchivalarously badgered her about Chappaquiddick. She also said bluntly, “I don't think much of President Carter.”34 The president's mother, “Mizz Lillian,” had caused a bit of a stir earlier when she indelicately said of Kennedy, “I hope nothing happens to him.”35

  In desperation, Kennedy's campaign had detailed eighty staffers from the national office to Illinois, and a dozen or so members of his family worked the state as well.36 Illinois would be the site of the first primary held on a neutral battlefield, neither Carter's South nor Teddy's New England. If Kennedy's campaign was to have any chance of rebounding, he would need to perform well in Illinois. Some Kennedyites were still in fighting spirit. Four women, including a Kennedy supporter, got into a fistfight at a Democratic precinct in Puerto Rico.37

  From day one his plan had been to re-create the old liberal coalitions that his brothers had built. Illinois was large and diverse, and its biggest city, Chicago, was urban, ethnic, and heavily Catholic. The trouble was that the minorities whom his brothers had attracted thus far had been going for Carter. Meanwhile, the political machine of former Chicago mayor Richard Daley had for the most part collapsed after his death in 1976, so Kennedy could not count on its ability to deliver any votes, alive or dead.

  A day before the Illinois primary, Kennedy marched in Chicago's St. Patrick's Day parade alongside the city's immensely unpopular mayor, Jane Byrne, who had endorsed him over Carter. Along the way, the boisterous crowd jeered and shouted obscenities at one of the most famous Irishmen in America. Kennedy flyers, in the shape of shamrocks, littered the wet sidewalks, making the puddles turn green. Joan Kennedy held close to her husband, a terrified look on her face.38 Kennedy betrayed an assassination concern when some punks set off a string of firecrackers near him. “His hands shot to his head, his knees bent and the color drained from his face—but it all passed in a flash,” one reporter wrote.39

  Kennedy was able to secure a commitment from Barbra Streisand to do two fundraising concerts for his campaign, which he hoped would raise $1 million. Streisand had notorious stage fright and hadn't done a political concert since 1972, for George McGovern. Before he bowed out, John Connally had tried to recruit Wayne Newton, but the singer had already signed up with Reagan a year earlier. Newton did Reagan concerts and raised hundreds of thousands for the Gipper. Jimmy Buffett had signed on with Carter and Rockford's Cheap Trick with hometown boy John Anderson. If there was only one thing the various campaigns agreed upon, it was that celebrities were a pain to deal with. Their agents were even more insufferable. “I'm the no. 1 guy in the business,” said music promoter and self-promoter Jerry Weintraub. “I can just pick up the phone and get anybody on the line … Kennedy … Bush … Mondale … the President, anybody.”40 The immodest Weintraub was a friend of the modest George Bush.

  JESSE HELMS WAS A Reaganite's Reaganite, although the conservative North Carolina senator and his powerful political organization, the Congressional Club, had yet to publicly back Reagan, largely because they had been steamed at Reagan for keeping on John Sears as campaign manager. But Reagan would not have run at all in 1980 if it hadn't been for Helms and his top political aide, Tom Ellis; they had thrown their support behind Reagan at a crucial time in 1976. Reagan had been defeated in the first five primaries that year and was expected to lose to President Ford in North Carolina as well. Helms and Ellis furiously organized for Reagan in the Tar Heel State, with mailings, literature drops, phone calls, voter registration drives, and advertising. Combined with Reagan's last-gasp campaigning, this activity produced one of the greatest upsets in modern presidential political history. The victory revived the dying Reagan campaign and propelled him though the rest of the primaries and to the convention. Without the “Club,” Reagan, as a political force, would have simply faded away after the 1976 North Carolina primary.

  Now, with Sears dismissed, Helms's Congressional Club finally came off the sidelines and announced its support for Reagan. Reagan would benefit not only from the political and fundraising support of the powerful senator but also from Ellis's help. Ellis understood Reagan as did few other pros. One of his critical moves in 1976 was to put on all of North Carolina's television stations a half-hour address by Reagan. Even with the technical problems of the videotape, Tar Heel voters were drawn to the Reagan persona and message.41

  In the early stages of the 1980 campaign, Reagan's advertising team had failed to appreciate this lesson. Before Jeff Bell rejoined the Reagan family, the campaign's television spots had been mostly a disaster. The old spots, produced by a Madison Avenue firm, had Reagan talking about inflation to schoolchildren, telling them it “could cost Joan and Billy here seventy-five thousand dollars to go to college.”42

  Bell and the new adman he had brought into the Reagan fold, Elliott Curson, worked on new television spots. The new commercials were simple and to-the-point. They opened with Reagan talking into the camera, saying, “This is a great country, but it's not being run like a great country,” and ended with the slogan “Let's Make America Great Again.”43 The reaction among the elites was decidedly mixed; CBS analyst Jeff Greenfield was one of the few who recognized the power of the commercials, saying, “Reagan ran the least elaborate, least gimmicked-up, most issue-oriented ads of the entire campaign.” Bush's ads, Greenfield said, were the most gimmicky.44

  Bush had junked his earlier bio commercials in favor of talking-head ads in which he told voters, “Let's get down to cases.” Carter, meanwhile, ran attack ads that left no doubt whom they were referring to, as the voiceover said, “You'll never find yourself wondering if he's telling you the truth.” Kennedy's commercials were universally panned. One was a close-up of Teddy's hands, signing letters.45 Another one contemplated but never produced was of him and his wife and children walking on the beach, which would have simply raised all the old questions about his marriage.

  Curson was a big reason for the success of Reagan's ads. Curson, a long-haired and hip young conservative who lived in Philadelphia, was one of the young breed of new GOP ad makers who “got” Reagan. He eschewed trying to manage the Gipper or put him in a goofy setting, such as walking down the beach with his wife and dog, a coat slung over his shoulder—a style adopted in almost every other candidate's commercials in 1980. (The only candidates who did not do puerile “Man on the Beach” commercials were Reagan and Kennedy.) No balloons, jingles, or trite slogans for Curson. He put Reagan in front of a camera and just let the candidate talk. Curson defended the unslick commercials by saying, “We're trying to win an election, not
an Academy Award.”46

  In short, Curson and Bell let Reagan be Reagan.

  SHORTLY BEFORE THE ILLINOIS primary, Bob Dole at long last made it official and retired from the presidential field, saying he'd always been a long shot. The Kansan paid homage to Reagan in his remarks, a graceful move.

  Since Dole had been a nonfactor in the race for so long, his departure did little to alter the dynamic in the Republican race. Anderson's unexpected success and now front-runner status in Illinois brought him a fundraising windfall and lots of media attention. But with that came increased scrutiny. As one of the last of a dying breed—a liberal Republican—he faced more and more questions about whether he would seek a third-party bid if he was not the GOP nominee. The sanctimonious Anderson, who on Capitol Hill had earned the nickname “St. John the Righteous,”47 drew disparaging remarks from Republicans and Democrats alike. At one press conference Reagan poked fun at Anderson by saying that, unlike the Illinois congressman, “I have not endorsed Senator Kennedy.”48 Kennedy also had some fun at Anderson's expense. At one stop he noted Carter's absence and said that all the other Democrats were there, “including John Anderson.”49

  Although many in the media saw in Anderson's candidacy the chance for a new alignment in politics, merging the moderate Republican with the rural farm vote and the urban sophisticates, he could not avoid uncomfortable questions forever. Now the press began pressing him about his flip-flops. He'd once been a supporter of the Kemp-Roth tax cuts and nuclear power, but had switched in 1980.50

  Anderson picked up another problem in the form of a new ad man, David Garth, a pushy, loud, and brilliant New Yorker with a flair for self-promotion. Any candidate had to understand that along with Garth's massive talent came an equally massive ego.

  As Reagan had been aided in some primaries by crossover conservative Democrats, Anderson had been aided by crossover liberal Democrats. Since voters did not register by party in Illinois, anyone could vote in either the Democratic or the Republican primary. An under-the-radar fight was going on between Kennedy and Anderson for these prized voters, including college students and minorities. Anderson's presence in the race had hurt Bush and Kennedy. And both Reagan and Carter were benefiting as a result.

  Bush tried to play his strong suit and restart his flagging campaign. He gave a major foreign-policy address in which he called for “economic warfare” to be used against Iran as a way to dislodge the hostages. Bush ripped into Carter, saying he'd demonstrated “an infinite capacity to be misled.”51

  Reagan stuck to his central message about tax cuts, government bureaucracy, and standing up to the ayatollah and the Soviets. In speech after speech, he thundered that “we're going to be so respected that never again will a dictator dare invade an American embassy and hold our people as hostages!”52 Having lost badly to Ford in Illinois in 1976, he spent the entire week before the primary traipsing up and down and across the state. He was giving fewer prepared speeches and more off-the-cuff remarks, with plenty of time for questions and answers with voters.

  Reagan kept his focus on Anderson in Illinois, hitting the congressman's liberal views and pointing up his disdain for his own party. Reagan told reporters, “A party isn't a fraternity; it isn't something you join because you like the school tie.… It is a gathering together of people who basically share the same political philosophy.”53 Anderson returned the volley, accusing Reagan of costing Ford the election four years earlier. “He could have elected Gerry Ford instead of sulking at home.”54 Reagan fired back by suggesting that Anderson was so out of touch with the GOP that he ought to consider leaving it.

  The old Wizard of Oz knew what he was doing. As long as he engaged Anderson in a left-right squabble, he was depriving Bush of both media attention and liberal votes that might have gone to him but were going to Anderson because Reagan was attacking him.

  Anderson had slipped a bit in his own internal polls, so he flew off for one final tour of the state. He charged that Reagan was embracing “Coolidge-era economics” and went hard after the Californian on foreign policy and national defense, saying that Reagan was unnecessarily saber rattling.55

  Reagan was not backing away from issues of foreign affairs. In fact, that same day, speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations in Chicago, he gave what Dick Allen, his adviser on global and national defense matters, touted as a “major foreign-policy address.” In the speech Reagan outlined his call for rebuilding the U.S. Navy and his support for an all-volunteer Army, provided that military salaries were raised enough to attract good people. He also called détente an “illusion” and tore into Carter's foreign policy, stating that it was marked with “vacillation, appeasement, and aimlessness” and that Carter was bringing shame to America. The audience warmly applauded Reagan.56

  Reagan took questions from the crowd afterward. When asked about the Soviet Union, he said he would negotiate with the Soviets, but only from a position of strength. He called it his “grand strategy” based on three principles: that America was morally right and the Kremlin was morally wrong; that to have a strong military, America must have a strong economy; and that the way to peace was through strength.57

  The media noted once again that Reagan was in fine form. He had worked hard on the speech with Allen, having met for three hours in Atlanta with seven experts, including Fred C. Iklé, former head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. It was only the second time in the campaign that the text of a Reagan address was distributed to the media beforehand.58

  Bush, however, was unmoved by the Reagan address. Challenging his opponent's lack of specifics, he said sourly, “Let's call it the Reagan secret plan for ending the Iranian hostage crisis,” an allusion to Richard Nixon's secret plan in 1968 to end the Vietnam War.59

  The day hadn't started well for Bush. In Chicago, several reporters had asked him when he was going to drop out of the race. Things didn't look good heading into the primary.

  ON PRIMARY DAY, MARCH 18, John Anderson came crashing back to earth. Reagan won again, taking just under 50 percent, with Anderson at a disappointing 37 percent. Bush had collapsed to only 11 percent.60 He had done worse than expected. He spent the day campaigning in Wisconsin, where he was heckled by a man who accused him of orchestrating murders while serving as head of the CIA.61

  Anderson, voting in his home precinct in Rockford, told reporters that voting for himself made him feel “kind of funny.”62 Apparently, hundreds of thousands of GOP primary voters shared that view.

  More than one million people voted in the Illinois GOP primary, up nearly half from 1976. Reagan was helped by the influx of conservative Democrats. He took 39 delegates and Anderson only 26. Bush got a paltry 2 delegates in Illinois. Reagan was now ahead in the delegate tabulation with 206 to Bush's 47 and Anderson's 39.63 The only bad news of the day was that Reagan's Don Totten lost to an Anderson delegate. But across the rest of the state, Anderson had been swamped by Reagan's “rednecks,” as Anderson derisively referred to Illinois conservatives.64

  Reagan and his rednecks had a better feel for Illinois than did Anderson and the elites of the daily newspapers. The Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times endorsed Anderson and the rest of the state's daily newspapers endorsed Bush. Not one daily newspaper in the state endorsed Reagan.65

  The debate in Chicago had been crucial for Reagan. According to Dick Wirthlin, 52 percent of Republicans said Reagan had won the debate, 14 percent said Anderson, and only 3 percent said Bush. “Bush was the big loser,” said Reagan's pollster. “People knew where [Reagan] stood on the issues. In the debate, however, they saw a different kind of man, a warm human being with a touch of humor. That's where Reagan picked up the extra votes that made this contest come out the way it did.”66

  Reagan had been born in Tampico, Illinois, growing up in various parts of the state; yet this primary and this campaign were not about where Reagan was from, but where he was going and where he wanted to take the country. He pledged to his supporters to keep goin
g and not relax.

  Anderson tried to say it was now a two-man race between him and Reagan—and since Reagan could not win in the fall against Carter, Anderson claimed he was the GOP's logical nominee. Losing his home state so badly, though, was a devastating blow. Jim Baker, while not happy with Bush's distant third, saw the silver lining in Anderson's not being able to win on his home court. Bush promised to make a last stand in upcoming Connecticut.

  ON THE DEMOCRATIC SIDE, Carter routed Kennedy in Illinois, 65–30 percent.67 Carter took 165 delegates to only 14 for Kennedy.68 Mayor Byrne's endorsement had only hurt Kennedy's already faltering campaign. She was radioactive, and all of her endorsed local candidates lost that night as well. Kennedy had also been endorsed by Albert Shanker, head of the half-million-strong American Federation of Teachers.69 Shanker's support was not the nuclear shot in the arm Kennedy had hoped for in Illinois. Kennedy had lost 2–1 among Irish and among Catholics.70 He never had a prayer in Illinois.

  Kennedy had now lost more than a dozen Democratic contests while winning almost zilch. Amazingly, he was performing so poorly in primaries while Carter was performing so poorly in the Oval Office. Despite unveiling plan after plan, President Carter had done nothing to get a hold on the dreadful economy. Interest rates had lurched up again, this time to 18.25 percent; mortgage rates were out of control.71 Carter attacked the economy as half a budget-balancer and half-Keynesian. He proposed a ten-cent-per-gallon tax on gasoline, elimination of Saturday mail delivery, some cuts in the federal budget, and a mishmash of regulations, but also large increases in social spending and some largesse for the cities.