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

by Shirley, Craig

  TED KENNEDY RETURNED TO Pennsylvania in mid-April and got some unexpected good news. Arizona Democrats had held their state convention, and he'd surprisingly won there over Carter.65 He was hoping the trend would move northeast to a state where his brother the president had been greeted like a god. The other reason for the spring in Kennedy's step was that a poll taken by the Carter-Mondale campaign leaked and had Kennedy ahead of the president in Pennsylvania, 43–40 percent.66

  Kennedy was running tough television ads against Carter. One showed the president at bat in a softball game. A pitch slowly went by Carter and the bat never came off his shoulder. The heavy metaphors were impossible to miss about Carter's manhood, as he missed the “softball” pitch, a fat strike over the plate. Kennedy had another ad featuring Carroll O'Connor, television's “Archie Bunker,” telling audiences, “Jimmy's Depression is going to be worse than Herbert's,” a reference to Hoover and to a line from the All in the Family theme song. Carter responded with peel-your-skin-off ads eviscerating Kennedy over character and family.67

  IN THE JUST COMPLETED North Dakota convention, Reagan took twelve of the seventeen delegates chosen. Bush took only one. The other four were technically “uncommitted,” but if you scratched any of them, underneath you found yet another hard-core Reaganite.68

  In Arkansas, John Connally's “$11 million delegate,” Ada Mills, did not follow Big John's lead to endorse Reagan. Instead, she chose Bush.69 In better news for Reagan, he took all seventeen delegates in the Nevada state convention.70 Even more promising, Reagan hit the sweet spot in New Jersey, as a preliminary report said he would win sixty of sixty-six delegates there in June. Four years earlier, Reagan had taken only a few of the state GOP's sixty-seven delegates.71

  Ray Donovan, a contractor with a superb political reputation, was running things in the Garden State for the Gipper. Donovan had raised $650,000 for Reagan, more than had been raised in any other state except Reagan's California. He was being assisted by an original Reaganite, Thomas Bruinooge from Bergen County, who had been one of the few courageous New Jersey delegates to support Reagan over Ford in 1976.72 Reagan was also getting the reluctant support of much of the state GOP, which had snubbed him four years earlier. New Jersey politicians knew when they were licked.

  Speaking at his alma mater in Ann Arbor, Gerald Ford was asked whether he would consider going on the ticket with Reagan. He shot it down, saying the notion was “totally impractical.”73

  Just three days before the Pennsylvania primary, John Anderson dropped any remaining pretense and announced that he would run for president as an independent.74 Absolutely no one was surprised.

  WITH THE PENNSYLVANIA PRIMARY now just days away, Bush complained about the polls, which showed him losing the state to Reagan: “I don't believe all these damned polls. They've been wrong, wrong, wrong.”75 For the Sunday before the April 22 primary, Bush had bought a full-page ad in the Philadelphia Inquirer, taking on not Ronald Reagan but Jimmy Carter. The tagline, “He's the one man Jimmy Carter hopes he'll never have to run against,” was clunky, but it did the trick.76 For the first time since the Iowa caucuses, George Bush was giving a clear reason why Republicans should choose him to lead the GOP in 1980.

  Bush was back on message, spending a boatload of money and all his time in the state. Reagan's support was dropping; Pennsylvania Republicans thought he was snubbing them, because he had spent only a couple of days campaigning there. The Reagan campaign was repeating the mistake of Iowa.

  Panicked, Reagan returned to Pennsylvania for a final two-day swing.77 Team Reagan now feared that Bush might just win the state. Bush picked up some additional momentum on the eve of Pennsylvania by seizing seventeen of Maine's twenty-one delegates in its final selection round.78

  The Sunday before the primary, Senator Howard Baker startled everyone when he swung his support to Reagan. Baker got out of a sickbed and abruptly appeared in Pennsylvania, where he warmly endorsed and then embraced a very pleased Gipper. Baker minced no words about Bush, the animosity still evident: “Reagan would make a much better GOP nominee and a better president.”79 Jim Dickenson of the Washington Star had the best take on the Baker endorsement: “An increasingly confident and assertive Reagan put Baker on display much as ancient Roman generals paraded defeated chieftains who then swore fealty to the conqueror.”80

  Before appearing with Reagan, Baker had called Bush to inform him of his decision. Bush was not happy. But he sloughed off the Baker endorsement by citing the support he had won from Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, a godlike figure in the state: “One Joe Paterno is worth five Howard Bakers.”81

  Bush and Reagan raced through a frenetic schedule in the final days. Bush was well received at Villanova University, where he took it to Carter.82 Reagan went to a horse auction in Lancaster, put on a funny straw hat, and helped auction off a baby donkey. He had fun, telling the prospective bidders, “All these months that's what I'm trying to do is get rid of a jackass.” Several people gasped at the harsh reference to Carter, but Reagan recovered when he quipped, “I have to pretend it's an elephant with a short trunk.” Later in the day, children from a nearby Christian school, dressed in red, white, and blue, held up a sign, “God Bless America and Ronald Reagan.” The state was thick with candidates and surrogates. In Wilkes-Barre, Reagan had his remarks drowned out by the approach of Air Force Two carrying Vice President Mondale.83

  The vice president was in rare form. Though he was booed at a labor speech in Pittsburgh, he joked, “There are always more Democrats than Republicans, and for a good reason: we're sexier and it's inevitable we have more kids. That's why Republicans are so sour all the time, things aren't good at home.”84

  WHEN THE POLLS CLOSED in Pennsylvania on the night of April 22, the Keystone State shocked the political world with a pair of upsets. Ted Kennedy stunned Carter and won the state narrowly, despite having been outspent $750,000 to $300,000.85

  George Herbert Walker Bush emerged with a stunning victory of his own. He had come from 30 points behind to defeat Reagan.86 Bush closed fast and his win was wide and deep. He won with 53 percent of the GOP vote to Reagan's 46 percent, beating his opponent by almost 100,000 votes.87 Drew Lewis had run a shoestring Reagan operation as well as he could, but in the end he could not overcome being outspent $1 million to somewhere around $100,000.88

  Having lost the beauty contest, Reagan consoled himself with the fact that he had taken fifty of the eighty-three delegates at stake.89 Reagan was now at approximately 460 delegates.90 Bush's win had clearly slowed the Gipper's momentum, though. Bush's forces called attention to the fact that most of Reagan's delegates were “pledged” but not “mandated” to vote for him.91 Dick Schweiker knew the Reagan team had blown a big opportunity. “The pressure from all party sources [for Bush to withdraw from the race] would be overwhelming” if Reagan won, he said.92 Reagan kissed off Bush's victory, calling it “meaningless.”93 He predicted flat out that he would win the nomination. But at this point, who knew? Reagan had let Bush get off the mat.

  ON MAY 3, REAGAN and Bush would come to death grips in the dusty streets, country roads, bumpkin byways, and city-slick high-rises of Texas.

  17

  WEST OF EDEN

  “Nothing can stop Reagan from getting the nomination unless he gets hit by a bus.”

  Ronald Reagan wasted no time. He headed to George Bush's hometown for a League of Women Voters debate with his last remaining opponent. All the others had fallen by the wayside. Only the resilient Bush was still in the race. There in Houston, the two weary contestants eyed each other, circled each other, and sized each other up. Bush promised to “hammer at the differences” between the two.1

  The one-hour session, moderated again by Howard K. Smith, was contentious. The candidates fell into sharp disagreement over Reagan's tax-cut proposal, with Bush arguing for balancing the federal budget instead, and charging that the radical plan offered by Reagan would “emasculate government.”2 When Reagan accused his
opponent of wanting to continue the status quo, Bush sharply retorted, “That's not what I'm proposing!”3 Bush shook his finger at the Californian, and Reagan looked anything but pleased.

  They also clashed over a blockade of Cuba as a means of pushing back against the Soviets over the invasion of Afghanistan, with Reagan favoring the action and Bush opposing it. An edgy exchange took place over illegal immigration: Bush supported allowing the children of illegal aliens into public schools, while Reagan favored requiring work permits and mandating that illegal aliens pay taxes.4

  The next day the Dallas Morning News boomed a headline: “Chance of Reagan-Bush Ticket Slim.” Toward the end of their debate, Reagan had said that whoever his running mate was would have to agree with him on his tax-cut plan.5

  The debate was a victory for Bush. They'd had three confrontations up until then, in Manchester, Nashua, and Chicago, and Reagan had gotten the best of Bush in each instance. In the Houston debate, Reagan coasted and it showed, while Bush was sharp, unrelenting.

  Meanwhile, a super-secret “worst-case scenario” report in Reagan's campaign projected that by early June, at the conclusion of the primaries, he could have just 951 delegates, which would leave him short of the nomination by 47 votes.6 He'd lost by a handful in 1976 and it was possible he could do so again. Bush's men, led by James Baker, were whispering sweetly in the ears of GOP delegates that they'd be throwing away their votes on Reagan. Why not go with someone younger, like Bush, someone who could beat Carter? Reagan was prone to verbal mistakes and no telling when his age might catch up with him, Bush's men argued.

  Baker knew that of the delegates headed to Detroit, 49 percent were only morally but not legally bound to vote for the candidate to whom they were pledged. They'd have to be convinced of the error of the Reagan ways, that Reagan's ideas were so much carrion on the side of the road, and that he wouldn't be able to win states in the Northeast if he were the nominee—a case the Bush campaign could press harder now that Reagan had fallen short in places like Pennsylvania and Connecticut.7 For obvious reasons, a political operative went on background when he told the Los Angeles Times, “Both Teddy and George are like vultures, circling, waiting for their opponents to die.”8

  Jimmy Carter had the same problem with Ted Kennedy as Reagan had with Bush: neither could put the other man away. Reagan was battling unfounded complacency, in both himself and his campaign. His money problems continued, too. In the month of March, Bush had outraised him by better than 2–1, $5.3 million to $2.5 million. The campaign was still in debt, and Reagan was perilously close to his primary-season financial limits with some twenty contests to go. As a result, he had nothing to spend on television advertising in Texas, while Bush had a massive advertising budget ready.9 Bush's ads attempted to exploit Reagan's gaffe problem with the tagline “Vote for the man who has the deepest knowledge and understanding of the facts.”10 It was a less-than-subtle swipe at the Gipper's supposed lack of mental acuity. Added to all that, Reaganites grew concerned that conservative Democrats in Texas so loathed Teddy Kennedy they would be tempted to vote in that primary for Carter instead of crossing over for Reagan. A key source of Reagan's strength would then be neutralized.

  With his newfound impetus, Bush was hoping to win his adopted Lone Star State and then move to more favorable territory in the Michigan, Maryland, and Ohio contests. His chances to do just that improved when he received the endorsements of many Texas newspapers.11 Still, the shrewd Jim Baker lowballed his man's chances in Texas, saying Bush would be pleased to get one-third of its eighty delegates.12 Not without reason, perhaps: an early poll by the Austin American-Statesman had Reagan blowing Bush away in Texas, 75–21 percent.13 Fred Biebel, a vice chairman of the Reagan campaign, said overconfidently, “Nothing can stop Reagan from getting the nomination unless he gets hit by a bus.”14 Everybody thought Reagan would win Texas comfortably. The newspaper poll was the last public poll taken before the primary, still two weeks away.

  Ernie Angelo was running Texans for Reagan. Angelo, along with several others, had engineered Reagan's huge win over Gerald Ford in 1976, taking all one hundred of the state's delegates. Aiding Angelo was Rick Shelby, a pleasant, soft-spoken, and respected Oklahoman who had also worked on the '76 Reagan campaign. Shelby handled a giant swath of the country for the Reagan operation, from North Dakota all the way south, but he later said that he spent “an inordinate amount” of his time focused on Texas, “probably … 75 percent.”15

  Shelby needed to devote as much time as he could to Texas, since Angelo's whole budget was only around $200,000.16 The Reagan headquarters in Virginia bought into the notion that it could scrimp in Texas, especially since Reagan had taken 66 percent to Ford's 34 percent there four years earlier.17 Reagan had a following in Texas but Bush had one as well. The national Reagan office failed to appreciate the severe split in the Texas GOP between the Reagan folks and the Bush brigades. The divide was exacerbated when Reagan had campaigned against young George W. Bush in his 1978 congressional primary. “The Bushes took it personally,” said one insider. “The senior Bush has always been credited with a long memory about things like that.”18

  THE DIRE SITUATION IN Iran took center stage. A joint U.S. military rescue operation called “Desert One” failed ignominiously in the sands outside of Tehran. For several weeks, rumors had flown around Washington that President Carter was preparing to take military action to free the hostages, since all attempts at diplomacy had failed miserably.

  The mission was a disaster from the beginning. The filters on the helicopters were not sufficient to strain out the fine Iranian sand and the engines consequently overheated. One of the rescue helicopters slammed into a parked C-130 plane and together they exploded in a fireball. Eight young American soldiers died in the desert. Carter belatedly canceled what was left of the operation. Photos of the ravaged landscape, which included charred American bodies and incinerated aircraft, flashed across the world. If it were possible, American morale sank even lower.19 The hostages found out later and their morale was crushed too, according to Bruce Langdon, the chargé d'affaires.20

  The response from the Carter White House was initially confusing and garbled. Clearly, they did not know how to handle the crisis. Carter was personally devastated. He addressed the country, obviously shaken by the disaster. In a bizarre understatement, he said the action had been performed “without complete success.”21

  Tens of thousands of frenetic “students” descended on the American embassy in Tehran. Some thought the mob might tear the American hostages apart there and then. Khomeini batted Carter and America around to the world press, which in turn attacked Carter for the feeble military attempt. Families of the hostages took to the airwaves, denouncing Carter and pleading with the ayatollah to spare their loved ones' lives. The Iranians separated the hostages to deter another attempt to rescue all of them in one fell swoop.22

  Despite the catastrophe, Carter was not, in the short term, wounded politically. In fact, he shot up 10 percent in his approval ratings, and 70 percent of Americans supported the action even though it had been a disaster.23

  The Iranians eventually turned over the remains of the American military personnel to the International Red Cross for transference to loved ones, but only after displaying their charred remains in the compound of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Jody Powell condemned this “moral depravity.”24 The wounded but surviving members of the rescue attempt went to Texas, and the president went to visit them at their bedsides. As he left, he met the five children of one of the injured servicemen and paternally told them, “Behave yourself while your father is in the hospital.”25

  Carter then held a prime-time press conference where he turned in a well-received and heartfelt performance, though he privately feared that a reporter might ask him “why he should not resign.” Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, the leading dove in the administration, sent a handwritten letter of resignation, partly in protest over the rescue mission but also because he'd l
ost a power struggle with National Security Agency head Zbigniew Brzezinski. Privately, Brzezinski was underwhelmed with most of Carter's minions; they in turn referred to him behind his back as “Dr. Strangelove.”26

  Kennedy and Bush supported Carter, John Anderson blasted him, and Reagan, after spending a few hours studying the situation, supported the action yet called it “long overdue.”27 Reagan hurled words like “delayed,” “vacillated,” and “grave peril” at Carter. He also addressed the global ramifications, becoming the first politician to speak to the issue beyond just the lives of fifty-three Americans. He called attention to the weakness of the Carter administration in its dealings with the ayatollah—and what this meant for the security of all Americans.28 Reagan's condemnation was fueled by the fact that military advisers had told him that the force used was far too small for a decisive action and that Carter should have sent in as many as thirty-five helicopters and four hundred troops.29