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

by Shirley, Craig

  When the exemplar of Soviet accommodation, Henry Kissinger, sat down to break bread—at Kissinger's request—with Reagan's top national security adviser, Richard Allen, the avatar of “peace through strength,” all knew which side had won. Allen had once worked for Kissinger in the Nixon administration, and Kissinger had fired the brash young man. Now Allen, on Reagan's behalf, was not interested in lording it over his vanquished foe. Much. Rather, he was extending an olive branch. Allen told the Washington Post that he and Kissinger “see the world approximately the same way.”31 Jaws dropped all around Washington as establishmentarians read Allen's comments in the Post that morning.

  Allen's move, and other Reaganite efforts to reach out to the Republican establishment, demonstrated a new level of sophistication not exhibited by either Barry Goldwater or Richard Nixon. Upon his nomination in 1964, Goldwater stuck a thumb in the eye of the moderate elements of the GOP by picking as his running mate Congressman Bill Miller of New York, another conservative who enjoyed tormenting liberals—and liberal Republicans—even more than Gold-water did.

  The supposedly “new” Nixon came to Washington in January 1969, president of a badly broken country, and proceeded to engage in antics that earned him not the coveted respect of the liberal establishment but only the ire and eventual contempt of the conservatives who had once cautiously supported him. In the end he was alone, sinking in the muck of corruption of his own doing. There was no one left to offer him any support. He'd simply made too many enemies on both the Left and the Right.

  Reagan wasn't about to make the mistakes of Goldwater or Nixon.32 Besides, it wasn't in his character or temperament to make enemies he didn't need. Over the years, he'd learned to become a pretty good politician and had always been a savvy negotiator. He was a good poker player in that he never cleaned out his opponents. He let them keep a little and was satisfied with a 70 percent victory, knowing he'd get another shot at their wallet—or legislation—later.

  Even at this late date, some doubted that Reagan was engaged in his campaign and philosophy, but as if to prove otherwise, he walked into a meeting where a half dozen of his economic advisers were huddling in San Francisco and said with a smile, “This must be what's known as the battle for my mind.”33

  Across the aisle, the Democrats' dismay was spreading like a virus throughout their party, even as George Wallace had announced he'd voted for Carter in the primaries.34 President Carter was drawing withering criticism even from the mainstream press corps. David Broder of the Washington Post wrote a column in early June comparing Carter and Nixon.35 Although Broder was skeptical of Reagan, he was downright scornful of Carter. Pat Oliphant, the acerbic cartoonist for the Washington Star, depicted Carter as literally a stuffed dummy in a mock debate with John Anderson.36 Reagan had kept that issue alive by once again telling reporters that John Anderson should be included in the presidential debates. Carter continued to oppose any debate that included Anderson, saying that the independent candidate was irrelevant. That was a difficult argument to make at a time when, according to a poll by Louis Harris, Anderson was pulling 29 percent compared with Carter's 31 percent and Reagan's 35 percent.37

  It didn't help Democrats that the Abscam indictments started trickling in. Congressman John Murtha, who hadn't taken the money during the FBI's sting operation but who but indicated on the videotape that he was interested in doing business in the future with the “Arabs,” now turned stool pigeons against two fellow Democrats, John Murphy of New York and Frank Thompson of New Jersey.38

  Worse, disdain for liberalism, big government, and public-sector solutions had settled across the land. The Democratic Party seemed tired and worn out. The New Deal and Great Society were being held up to ridicule. Liberalism became a dirty word. People, especially young Americans, wanted to make a buck, laugh, and have fun for once. Carter was the dour Baptist minister. Reagan was the happy and indulgent grandfather, giving the kids the keys to his car over the disapproval of the parents—in this case, government.

  THERE WERE ONLY ELEVEN weeks until the GOP's hoped-for love-in in the Motor City and there was plenty of work to go around for everybody. Debts had to be retired, platform work begun, a running mate found, the campaign reorganized and retooled, affairs at the Republican National Committee settled, the convention planned and scripted, and everything kept generally in motion. The greatest threat to Reagan was complacency. As ever, in the background, continued the burble of political talk about a “Reagan-Ford” ticket. It showed up in political columns and barroom talk and no one seemed to find any objection to it. Momentum for the Dream Ticket slowly gathered through June of 1980.

  As an example of the Republicans' newfound self-confidence, the mayor of New York accepted the invitation to address the GOP platform hearings. It was the first time anyone remembered a prominent Democrat going willingly into the lion's den. This Daniel, though, was quite a lion himself—for Ed Koch often took on bruising fights, and even Carter, when he thought it right.39

  With George Bush out of the race, the last remaining liberal Republicans began to issue sheepish statements of support for Reagan. RNC chairman Bill Brock grudgingly jumped on the Reagan bandwagon, saying that the Gipper would “beat Jimmy Carter like a drum.”40 Even Gerald Ford finally endorsed Reagan … kinda. “I have always supported the Republican nominee and will do so in 1980.” Ford also ruled himself out as the Gipper's running mate.41

  Conservatives began a pressure campaign to keep Reagan from choosing Howard Baker for veep. The conservative weekly Human Events lashed Baker heavily in an editorial. This was not insignificant, as Human Events was Reagan's favorite conservative publication, much to the dismay of some around him. Reagan said, “Not a week goes by during my campaign that I don't … read [it] from cover to cover.” The publication had only sixty thousand subscribers but exerted influence out of proportion to its size. Co-owned by Tom Winter and Allan Ryskind, two rough-and-tumble conservatives, Human Events feared no one, not even Reagan. Earlier in the year it had blasted Reagan for opposing the grain boycott of the Soviets. Now the intense Ryskind said his publication might not support Reagan if Baker was selected as running mate.42

  The Right's anger over Baker's support for the Panama Canal treaties was well known, but conservatives were also angry with Baker for supporting the ERA and the creation of the Departments of Energy and Education, and for being questionable on homosexual rights and on abortion. Most conservatives were just as vehemently opposed to Bush, but New Right leader Richard Viguerie surprisingly told the Wall Street Journal, “I don't have as much a problem with Bush” as did the other conservative ringleaders.43 Viguerie's comments must have been music to the ears of another Houstonian, James Baker, who was attempting to lay the groundwork for Bush to go on the ticket with Reagan, despite Bush's public utterances.

  Baker planted the notion with the media that Reagan needed to do well in the big industrial states and his man Bush had done just that in the primaries, and that Reagan needed someone with Washington experience and with foreign-policy experience. Oh yes, and Bush wasn't interested in the job. Wink, wink.

  TURNING TO CARTER AND the fall campaign, Reagan's men focused renewed attention on staffing. They wanted to beef up operations both in the headquarters and on the plane. An old Reagan aide, Ed Gray, had been serving as the press officer on the plane with Reagan since the firing of Jim Lake several months earlier. Gray, however, didn't get along with the national media, and many reporters didn't respect him. In early June, Lyn Nofziger returned to the fold, replacing Gray.44

  Staffing moves prompted a burst of second-guessing—one of Washington's favorite indoor sports. Bill Casey made two personnel decisions, hiring respected conservative activist Morton Blackwell as the campaign's youth coordinator and Peter Dailey of Los Angeles to handle Reagan's advertising. The hue and cry from Washington's establishment Republicans could be heard from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial, as they had their own candidates for these positions.45 Blackwell
immediately tried to get the necessary funding—$75,000—for a youth operation but was being stymied at every turn. A flurry of memos went back and forth in the campaign, equivalent to a small forest of trees and maybe as much paper as it would have cost Blackwell's program before he finally got his funding.46

  Several days later, Casey announced that the well-regarded GOP operative Bill Timmons would serve as Reagan's convention director, and that Mike Deaver and Marty Anderson would return to the campaign, reprising their old roles. Timmons had worked for Nixon and Ford, but he moved easily between the GOP establishment and the conservatives, both sides impressed with his honest counsel.47 All the Californians and most of the old Reaganites were finally back with Reagan now.

  Always in the background was Reagan's original Kitchen Cabinet, the wealthy California businessmen he'd first met in 1964. Henry Salvatori, Holmes Tuttle, Justin Dart, William Wilson, and Alfred Bloomingdale were confidants and frequent dinner partners of Reagan's.48 They would exert a strong opinion on actions made and people hired by the campaign. And in a small townhouse in Old Town Alexandria, a group led by Ed Meese and assisted by Helene Von Damm was working quietly to assemble a government if Reagan won.49

  HAVING COME TO REAGAN'S rescue in the primaries with a massive independent expenditure, the Fund for a Conservative Majority reloaded its guns and announced a $3–10 million effort for Reagan in the general election under the heading Citizens for Reagan in '80.50 By the time of the convention, a half dozen more such efforts would be launched. They were all perfectly legal as a result of the landmark ruling by the Supreme Court in Buckley v. Valeo, which allowed for groups to pool resources and participate in elections.

  Yet another group, Americans for Change, led by Clare Boothe Luce and Republican senator Harrison Schmitt of New Mexico, announced that it would raise and spend $20 million to get Reagan elected. Pulling this operation together was an eclectic and brash young conservative, Brad O'Leary.51 Also gearing up were Jesse Helms's organization, Americans for Reagan, and the Ronald Reagan Victory Fund, which the National Conservative Political Action Committee was assembling.

  These political action committees (PACs) had to file quarterly returns with the FEC including background information on every individual who contributed over $200. They could not take more than $1,000 from any individual, could not take corporate money, and to maintain an independent status, could not “coordinate” activities with the candidate they were supporting, which made for tricky maneuvering in the small and very social world of Washington politics. Conservatives had many friends in the Reagan campaign; in order to not run afoul of the law, they had to be careful who they talked to and about what, in the summer and fall of 1980. Intrapolitical dating also became thorny, as pillow talk was considered the province of the FEC.

  ON JUNE 3, REAGAN swept the eight remaining primaries without breaking a sweat, taking almost all of the 418 delegates available. Bush was out, but the Reaganites still wanted to party, so the campaign rented a room at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, the same room Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated in twelve years earlier. Reagan told the gathered, “My message has not been for Republican ears alone. I am deeply grateful for the large number of Democrats and independents who have supported my candidacy.”52

  On the Democratic side, matters were more complicated. Having failed to persuade Kennedy to drop out of the race, Carter proceeded to lose five of the eight primaries that night. The president was doing little to strengthen his case, either against Kennedy or to the American voters. But he had backed into the Democratic nomination; he had secured enough delegates to give him a comfortable cushion, 1,965 to 1,214 for Kennedy, according to the Washington Star. Carter's forces held a celebration in Washington, but so did Kennedy's.53

  Carter continued his “peace offensive” and invited Kennedy to visit him at the White House. The two Democrats met alone in the Oval Office for more than an hour, but Kennedy remained adamant. He was not getting out. When the meeting ended in the late afternoon, more than two hundred reporters were waiting for Kennedy on the White House lawn. It was a media circus, and Kennedy was clearly having fun. He told the reporters, “I finally saw the Rose Garden—through the window.”54

  Relations were just as bad between the candidates' wives. Joan Kennedy sniped, “Rosalynn Carter doesn't have a master's,” referring to her own advanced degree in comparison to Mrs. Carter, who had attended junior college.55 Wisely, Mrs. Carter didn't take the bait.

  Reagan was engaged in his own peace offensive. He headed for Rancho Mirage to see none other than Gerald Ford. After meeting privately in Ford's home for an hour and a half, the two stepped outside to chat with the press, on the thirteenth hole. They spoke so kindly of each other, so warmly that reporters ribbed each other, knowing these two old antagonists were snowing them.56

  JIMMY CARTER WAS PLANNING to make foreign policy an issue against Reagan in the fall campaign. Even though the Soviets were still in Afghanistan and Americans were still in captivity in Tehran, Carter wanted to remind the American voter that on the “keeping America out of war” issue, it was he and not Reagan whom the American people could trust.57

  After Reagan secured the nomination, his team contemplated sending him on a trip to Western Europe as a way to keep him in the news and burnish his foreign-policy credentials. But nothing came of the idea. He was coasting again, always dangerous for Reagan. His momentum since clinching the nomination had slowed, and the age and gaffe issues started creeping into stories again.

  Blue-collar voters who had supported Carter in 1976 were ready to abandon the president, and the erudite Anderson was not their cup of tea, but they worried whether Reagan was up to the task. “He's articulate, smooth, handsome, but just too old,” a female union worker lamented.58

  AFTER LONG AND GRUELING fights among many competitors, the parties' candidates for the presidency—along with a rare independent competitor—were finally in place. Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and John Anderson would now slug it out through the summer and into the fall.

  At this point the financial assets of Reagan, Carter, and Anderson were released. Anderson, after a lifetime in the public sector, was worth around $350,000. Carter, the thrifty and successful farmer, was worth just over $1.3 million. Reagan, for all the criticism about his being for the rich, was worth just a bit more than Carter, with $1.5 million in assets.59

  Both the Democrats and the Republicans had staged thirty-four primaries in 1980; Carter had won twenty-four primaries to Kennedy's ten, while Reagan had won twenty-eight to Bush's six.60

  At first blush and from the safe perch of history, Reagan's nomination seemed as if it was a cakewalk. But in fact, it had been the toughest and most grueling street fight of Reagan's career—a fight he had nearly lost because of his own inattentiveness to his campaign, because he underestimated Bush, because of the infighting and incompetence of some of his staff, and because the Republican establishment and elements of the media were in league to destroy him.

  Reagan, having faltered badly, had been compelled to fight with all his might to get back in the game. He had gritted his way back into the race, but he did so with his customary aplomb.

  He only made it look easy.

  21

  THE ROAD TO DETROIT

  “Dr. Jimmy Carter is fixing to carve up Mr. Reagan and show the voters he hasn't got what it takes to be President.”

  The gaffe and age issues collided into one big mess in mid-June 1980, when Ronald Reagan announced to the media that if elected president and later found to be senile, he would resign.1

  The Gipper had been given a better-than-clean bill of health by six physicians. He proclaimed that he “never felt better.” According to the actuarial tables, he could expect to live to almost eighty-one years of age.2 Reagan was simply trying to reassure Americans that he understood what was at stake. Among the bloodhounds of the national media, however, the statement resurrected all the long-festering concerns about Reagan's age
and mental acuity. Pack journalists were always sniffing around for an issue to sensationalize; Reagan's age filled the bill yet again.

  Jimmy Carter could only watch and smile as his opponent committed another faux pas. Carter's campaign had yet to develop any positive reasons why he should be reelected, but it was fine-tuning its line of attack on Reagan. The president's men were bent on sowing panic among the electorate by suggesting that Reagan suffered from incipient senility, and Reagan's remarks—together with the media's tabloid fixation on the issue—only aided their cause.

  Joining in Carter's anti-Reagan efforts was the Chinese Communist government. Beijing blasted Reagan for daring to suggest that America pursue a “two-China policy”—that is, recognizing both the pro-Western government on Taiwan and the Communist government on the mainland.3 Reagan had been on record for the past year and a half opposing the Joint Communiqué issued by the Carter administration and China renouncing American diplomatic relations with Taiwan.