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

by Shirley, Craig

  Nancy traveled often with her husband and rarely campaigned alone. The “Nancy gaze” had become something of a running joke in the media. “As she watches her husband give the speech she has heard countless times before, her look of rapt, wide-eyed adoration never falters,” went one typical report.74

  What they didn't know was that Reagan never would have come to the verge of the GOP nomination without her.

  She was his confidante, his radar, his encourager. She would have, one friend said, made him the best shoe salesman in the world if he'd wanted to be a shoe salesman. Nancy, fifty-eight, was tough and tireless in pursuit of Ronnie's political career. She had had a direct hand in the ouster of John Sears several months earlier and was a powerful presence in Ronnie's campaign. Staff often ran ideas by her for her consideration and approval. On more than one occasion, Reagan had been the verge of a verbal slip, only to have his wife gently interject and push him onto safer ground.

  Clearly, he was a happier candidate when she was with him on the road. On long flights, Nancy would put a pillow on his lap and take a nap. “They were crazy about each other,” said Nancy Reynolds. “Her physical presence was a great balm to him.”75 Staffers knew it was best to stay on Mrs. Reagan's good side, but she could be playful. On the campaign plane during takeoff, she would get out of her seat and try to roll an orange down the aisle hoping to reach the back of the plane without hitting any reporters' feet.

  When they were apart, Reagan wrote her notes and letters almost on a daily basis. Little drawings, too. One was a self-portrait showing him shedding tears over their separation. The caption read, “Look what happens when I'm without you. Your Roommate.” He also wrote, “Maybe that job in Wash. wouldn't be so bad—you'd be right upstairs.” He signed off as “Special Agent 33.” Reagan considered it his lucky number, as it was his jersey number in college.76

  By the last score of the twentieth century, all “first ladies” (the term may have been coined in 1863 by the British writer William Russell when describing Mary Todd Lincoln) were supposed to have pet causes.77 “Causes” had started with Eleanor Roosevelt but had died down with Bess Truman and Mamie Eisenhower. Then Jackie Kennedy made the refurbishing of the White House her cause. That was it. Lady Bird Johnson's cause was “beautification,” Pat Nixon's was literacy, and Betty Ford's was breast cancer. Rosalynn Carter went a step further than her predecessors, taking an active role in policymaking in her husband's administration to the point of sitting in on cabinet meetings. She also had a private lunch on Tuesdays with the president to discuss policy.78

  But Nancy Reagan had no cause except the cause of her husband. When Reagan was asked what his wife's main interest would be in his White House if he was elected, he replied, “Me, first.”79 The elites and feminists were truly appalled that Mrs. Reagan didn't have a cause. Why, it was like saying that you preferred California wine to French wine. It was just simply not done, unacceptable, unsophisticated, and offensive to modern sensibilities.

  Mrs. Carter made clear her differences with Nancy Reagan: “There was no way I could stay home and pour coffee and tea.”80 The divergence between the two men—and women—could not have been greater.

  Reagan stepped in, ever the gentleman, to defend his wife. “I'm happy to say she would consider her first responsibility being Mrs. Reagan.” He then pointed out that she had been involved in a foster grandparents program in California and had raised money for the families of Vietnam POWs.81

  Reagan zinged President Carter on the subject: “I think Nancy would find things of that kind to do, but she wouldn't attend cabinet meetings.”82

  16

  THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL

  “Voodoo economics.”

  It was in Pennsylvania where George Bush would make another assault on the formidable Mount Reagan. The state's difficult political terrain wasn't about to stop the stubborn Bush from trying to reach the summit and win the eighty-three GOP delegates at stake. Because John Anderson's campaign had not been able to land its candidate on Pennsylvania's Republican primary ballot, Bush was getting his long-hoped-for chance at a one-on-one against Ronald Reagan on neutral ground.

  Bush wasn't ready to concede the race to Reagan. He was fighting tooth and nail to mount a comeback in Pennsylvania, devoting fourteen days to campaigning exclusively in the Keystone State. His campaign bought half-hour slots on local television stations to broadcast “Meet George Bush” extravaganzas in an attempt to flesh out what Bush stood for. He went after Reagan hard, claiming “jingoistic” comments by the Gipper over evacuating Cubans who wanted to flee Castro. Bush wanted to make clear how and where he differed with Reagan on the issues. “That was something I wasn't willing to do before,” he said. “I made a mistake [by not doing it] months ago.”1

  Bush had won the support of the GOP state party chairman, old friend and fellow moderate Elsie Hillman, who, despite her breeding, had a tendency to say nasty things about Reagan to the media.2 A young liberal Republican, Jim Coyne, a candidate for Congress, was part of a coterie of state politicians working hard to defeat Reagan.3 Overall, however, Bush's support among elected officials in Pennsylvania was slim. The popular governor and lieutenant governor, Dick Thorn-burgh and William Scranton, though ideologically closer to Bush than Reagan, wisely decided to stay neutral, knowing how popular Reagan had grown in the state over the years.4

  Pennsylvania was in many ways a microcosm of America. It was urban and rural, industrial and white-collar, sophisticated and simple, traditional and ethnic, nouveau riche and old-money. It had rivers and mountains, farmers and bond traders, colleges and cows, professional sports, halls of fame, skyscrapers, and grain silos. Like most of America, it was heavily Democratic yet attitudinally conservative.

  The country was in a full-blown recession by now, but few states were as bad off as Pennsylvania. It was falling apart at the seams. The coal and steel industries, once the pride of the state, were mostly closed. Unemployment was rampant. The infrastructure was crumbling—roads and bridges were badly in need of repair. The cities were crime-ridden and filthy. The confluence of three rivers in Pittsburgh was a septic tank of grunge and waste. Years of neglect, corruption, and decay had taken their toll, and Pennsylvania's young citizens were fleeing for the Sun Belt, hoping to find opportunity. Farm prices in Pennsylvania were dropping even as grocery costs were going up. President Carter's secretary of agriculture, Bob Bergland, was scheduled to meet with the Pennsylvania Farm Association, which was composed of a number of Republicans. When he discovered this, Bergland refused to meet with the Republican farmers. This did not sit well with the rest of the farm community.5

  Real wages had declined sharply across the country, and Carter's economists forecast high inflation through most of the 1980s. They seemed to have no consistent answer for the out-of-control price spiral. Americans' purchasing power had dropped an alarming 7.3 percent since April 1979. The New York Stock Exchange was down to 778, having plunged 14 percent in one month, one of the steepest declines in history.6 Everything was either too expensive or in short supply or both. The national mood had sunk even further. An amazing 81 percent of Americans thought their country was in real trouble, the highest it had ever been in the history of the Yankelovich polling company.7

  WHILE BUSH WAS DEVOTING his energies to Pennsylvania, many observers had already counted him out. Names were being floated as candidates for Reagan's running mate. The media made much of the selection because of Reagan's age; conservatives considered the issue crucial as well, but for them it was a matter of ideology.

  The name that reporters most frequently mentioned was their favorite, Howard Baker, with the rationale that he would help in the border states. The Reagans were fond of the well-respected Tennessean, but Paul Laxalt knew that with conservatives, the moderate Baker was a nonstarter, especially because he had supported the Panama Canal treaties.

  Laxalt harbored his own ambitions for the number-two slot. He was Nancy Reagan's favorite, but he made little poli
tical sense as a running mate. Laxalt was from the West, like Reagan; Laxalt was as conservative as Reagan; and Nevada had only three electoral votes, which Reagan was sure to take anyway. Also, the libertine nature of the state, exemplified by its gambling and legalized prostitution, made “Reagan's Best Friend” a problematic choice at best. Rumors of Laxalt's ties to shady characters, including Howard Hughes, were unfounded, but they posed a potential political risk for Reagan nonetheless.

  Conservative outsiders were pushing Jack Kemp, but Reagan insiders winced because they viewed the hyperkinetic and voluble forty-four-year-old as uncontrollable. Also, the idea of a ticket that featured a former movie star with a former football star offended some Reaganites' sensibilities. Even worse, nasty but baseless homosexual rumors had dogged Kemp from the time when he'd interned in Reagan's gubernatorial offices in Sacramento in the 1960s. These objections did not stop a group of starstruck New Right supporters from creating a draft committee to “Back Jack,” with the winking support of Kemp's congressional office.8

  Bill Simon was another possibility. He had governmental experience, was a Roman Catholic, and was a close friend of Bill Casey. Gerald Ford, however, was attempting to blackball Simon over offenses from four years earlier when Simon was in Ford's cabinet.9

  Other names bandied about included Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, RNC chairman Bill Brock, temperamental former Nixon and Ford aide Don Rumsfeld, and a handful of moderate senators and governors.

  Some guessed that Reagan wouldn't pick anyone at all. Speculation swirled in Washington that he would throw the convention open to the delegates and let them decide who should be his VP, just as Adlai Stevenson had done at the Democratic convention in 1956.

  A name rarely heard in the running-mate discussions was that of George Bush. He was low or nonexistent on most lists—especially those of Ron and Nancy Reagan. There was just too much lingering hostility and bad blood. That antagonism would only intensify in Pennsylvania.

  THE MAYOR OF PHILADELPHIA, Bill Green, owed Ted Kennedy dozens of favors plus interest. Green ducked repeated entreaties to pay Teddy back before he finally came out and endorsed the senator. It was a significant if belated boost.10 Kennedy also picked up the support of several important labor unions. He was in motion for the first time since winning New York and Connecticut and was undoubtedly helped by the fact that Carter had not been to Philadelphia once since winning the state in 1976. There was not much brotherly love for Brother Carter in April 1980.

  John Anderson attempted a fool's errand of trying to mount a write-in effort in Pennsylvania. He seemed to be talking himself into the third-party effort, telling reporters that he would disappoint so many who had voted and contributed and who believed that “they thought John Anderson was different.” The Harvard-educated pol told reporters he hadn't yet completed his “ratiocination,” which sent them scurrying for their pocket dictionaries.11

  It didn't seem to matter to Anderson that several years earlier, in a debate with former senator Gene McCarthy, he had criticized McCarthy for running as a third-party candidate in 1976 and had forcefully defended the “two-party system.”12

  Reagan, meanwhile, was coming under increasing scrutiny. The “gaffe issue” was growing. He claimed that Vietnam vets did not qualify under the GI Bill for benefits, a statement he later had to retract. Reagan took responsibility for his mistake, though two retired, high-ranking officers had in fact told him otherwise.13 He joked “that having only been a captain himself he figured they were right.”14 But as reporters pushed, Reagan got testy, saying their preoccupation with his verbal mistakes was the result of “journalistic incest.”15

  Several days earlier, CBS had done an extensive report about a claim Reagan had made regarding the size of Alaska's proven oil reserves. Reagan did not back away on this question, charging, “They were doing exactly what they accused me of doing.… [They] went out and found some source that would give them a different answer and they then took that source as an absolute guarantee.”16 CBS also claimed that Reagan exaggerated the size of the 1963 Kennedy tax cuts and the extent to which the federal payroll had grown under Carter. Reagan, in turn, took a swipe at the network, saying that his figures were “not entirely [correct] but more correct than CBS.”17 The truth was, however, that the story nailed Reagan on several items, showing where he was just plain wrong.

  Reagan and his men had gotten along well with many in the media, including ABC and NBC, but less so with CBS, which they believed had an institutional liberal bias against the Gipper. This particular story was assembled by a longtime Reagan basher, Bill Plante. His six-minute piece ended with him speculating on Reagan's intelligence: “Does it really matter? To some, it's a sign that Reagan isn't smart enough for the job he seeks.”18

  The strain of the campaign trail got to all the candidates, and Reagan was not immune. Some were bothered more than others. Carter easily showed displeasure with reporters and his staff. Bush was almost unfailingly polite, as was Kennedy. Reagan for the most part had a superb temperament, but even he had his moments. On a bus during the Connecticut primary, Reagan wanted to read a newspaper before meeting with some reporters. Why? “I want to see what the bastards are saying so I can protect myself. You can sure tell when you're in hostile territory.”19

  The Los Angeles Times published an extensive account in which Reagan's claims as governor were challenged. Reagan had often done battle with the Times, but this piece was symptomatic of the growing scrutiny Reagan faced as the front-runner. A Reagan aide patronizingly explained away one gaffe: “He read that in Reader's Digest. He reads everything he can get his hands on and he remembers this stuff. Unfortunately nobody has been checking it out for him.”20

  Ed Meese saw the growing problem and told reporters that he would ensure that Reagan's team would review everything “with a fine-tooth comb” before showing it to the governor.21 The gaffe difficulty wended its way up the food chain to Paul Laxalt. Laxalt was no spin doctor. He said simply, “I think it's a problem. It's going to have to be met and it's going to have to be met factually.”22

  Reagan was asked at one press conference why he was making so many mistakes on the road. Rather than blaming his staff, Reagan said he was doing his own research and not checking his facts thoroughly the way he should have been.

  Newsweek published its own detailed story compiling Reagan's string of misstatements. When the magazine asked Congressman Guy Vander Jagt, head of the GOP's House campaign committee, whether he thought Reagan was “shallow,” he coldly replied, “It depends on how you define ‘shallow.’”23

  The gaffe issue became an out-of-control brushfire. Long reports in the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, and other media outlets detailed Reagan's problem with misstatements. Reagan was right when he spoke about “incest” among the media: one story tended to generate another story in which the first story was cited. This had happened to Reagan the year before with the age issue, and now he was going through it again with questions about his intelligence. Some of the “catches” by the media, such as how many employees worked just on government compliance forms at General Motors, were legitimate errors by Reagan. He said the number was 23,000. In fact, 24,000 worked on government-mandated programs at the automaker, but only 5,000 actually filled out reports for Washington. Other errors were niggling. Reagan sometimes mentioned that the third chief justice of the United States, John Marshall, was not a lawyer. Reporters jumped on him for this. Actually, Marshall had not gone to law school but had “read for the law.”24

  In April, the remaining candidates of both parties appeared in close succession before the annual convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington. Reagan, in his speech before the newspaper editors, seemed uneasy and tentative. He read from a prepared text instead of from his usual note cards. His campaign was test-driving some new themes: that “blue-collar workers, ethnics, registered Democrats and independents with conservative values” would be part of his new maj
ority coalition. They would be brought together because of shared values: “the family, neighborhood, work, peace-through-strength and freedom-through-vigilance.”25

  The Los Angeles Times noted that Reagan's speech “was received in utter silence” by the editors.26 Before taking questions from the hostile crowd, Reagan nervously joked, “Do I get a cigarette and a blindfold?”27 One editor in attendance, Edwin Guthman of the Philadelphia Inquirer, expressed his disdain for Reagan, saying that the governor “is living in a world that is as remote from the realities and challenges of the 1980s as any 1930s Hollywood happy ending could be.”28

  Americans, though, did not agree with the mandarins of the press. About 60 percent of his countrymen now thought Carter had been too weak in dealing with the ayatollah and that his handling of the Soviets had been too soft, according to a survey commissioned by Time magazine. Carter's image as a strong leader was in full retreat and Bush's had evaporated. The only candidate whom the American people regarded as a strong leader was Reagan.29

  Bush still could not figure out that Reagan's appeal wasn't just about delivering a good speech. In his own remarks before the newspaper editors, Bush said, “The process has put a lot of emphasis on theater, on charisma. What I must do is recognize that I will not be able to outdo my principal opponent on the 30-second clip. Nor can I outperform him on the applause meter.… He's just better than I am at that.”30