Weighing down Carter politically was that fact that more than fifty Americans were still being held hostage in Tehran. The ayatollah had still released only one American, who was very sick. The others continued to languish with no hope in sight.14
MARTY ANDERSON WAS LOOKING after Reagan's interests as the GOP gathered in Detroit to write the document spelling out the party's philosophy. Anderson was a slight, bookish type with an undergraduate degree from Dartmouth and a Ph.D. from MIT. He certainly had the rumpled, slightly disheveled look of an academic, complete with papers under one arm and a briefcase in the other hand. Anderson was a passionate conservative who got along well with the other Reagan insiders. And with his charming, unassuming manner along with his heavy campaign experience, he could reason with Republicans and conservatives outside the Reagan inner circle. He was the perfect choice to calm the stormy waters of the Republican platform fights.
The platform battle royal kicked off over the pro–Equal Rights Amendment plank, which had been in the party's platform since 1940. In the subcommittee, it easily went down to defeat, 11–4.15 Watered-down language making vague promises about equality for women was substituted, which pleased neither side. Still, it was a small victory for conservative grassroots activist Phyllis Schlafly and her legions of women supporters, who had wanted a strongly worded denunciation of the amendment.
A plank supporting a Human Life Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was easily adopted, though a majority of GOP delegates to the convention opposed the measure, according to a partial survey by the Washington Post.16 The platform committee also approved language opposing federal funding for abortion. Pro-choice and pro-ERA supporters made noises about bringing their positions to the full convention for its consideration, but they could not muster the twenty-seven signatories among the full platform committee members needed to file a minority report.
RNC cochair Mary Dent Crisp was photographed dissolving in tears as her beloved ERA was cut from the platform. Crisp had not been removed from her post, but she was not running for reelection the following week, as she knew she would have been in for a crushing defeat. The convention scene only heightened speculation that she would bolt the party and endorse John Anderson.17
For the past four years, Reagan had gotten one report after another on Crisp's nasty comments about him, to the point that even his good manners were tested. “Mary Crisp should look to herself and find out how loyal she's been to the Republican Party for quite some time,” he said tartly.18
The controversial Crisp left Detroit several days before the beginning of the convention to the catcalls of her conservative enemies. The Reagan forces moved quickly to nominate a successor to Crisp: Betty Heitman, chair of the National Federation of Republican Women. Heitman, from Louisiana, was a conservative, a Reagan fan, and a team player who was popular at Republican headquarters.19
Crisp's departure wasn't enough to mollify some conservatives. Senator Jesse Helms and his followers were unhappy with the “compromise” on women's rights and wanted punitive language on the Panama Canal, Taiwan, and other foreign-policy matters in the platform. One plank offered by the Helms forces called for the resurrection of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the controversial commie-hunting group of the 1950s.20 Helms, unwittingly, was serving Reagan's purposes. In taking such hard-line stances, he was moderating Reagan's image with the media.
Other subcommittees adopted language supporting Reagan's tax cuts and billions for a defense buildup, as well as military superiority over the Soviets. Conservatives and Reaganites rammed through one initiative after another.
Ted Kennedy was having far less luck on the Democratic side. His proposed planks to allow the delegates already pledged to President Carter to be freed essentially to revote at the Democratic convention were going down in flames, one by one.21 Carter's men had a hammerlock on the platform process.
THE FINAL DRAFT OF the 1980 Republican platform was approved on Thursday, July 10. It might as well have been lifted from Reagan's commentaries and speeches over the previous four years. The platform dealt with pro-life judges, the decontrol of oil and natural gas, more domestic exploration, repealing the national 55-mile-per-hour speed limit, busing, gun control, new defense systems, and increased pay and incentives for the American GI and military reserves.22 It called for rejection of SALT II and for “military superiority” over the Soviets. It was the most conservative and most specific platform in the history of the party.23
The 1980 Republican Party platform was clear and unequivocal: “Mr. Carter must go! For what he has done to the dollar, for what he has done to the life savings of millions of Americans, for what he has done to retirees seeking a secure old age, for what he has done to young families aspiring to a home, an education for their children and a rising living standard, Mr. Carter must not have another four years in office.” When the final draft was offered to the committee for passage, Representative Ed Bethune of Arkansas offered a floor amendment to add the exclamation point at the end of the first sentence. The motion was carried unanimously, to the cheers of the members of the platform committee.24 The final sentence of the preamble presented to the full committee read, “Let us now together make America great again, let us now together make a new beginning.” Mrs. Patric Dorsey, a delegate from North Carolina, proposed that the sentence begin, “With God's help,” and this amendment, too, was accepted.25
The final GOP document, a tough denunciation of all things Carter, all things Communist, and nearly all things liberal, would have been even harsher had not Marty Anderson and other Reagan men been on watch to prevent the hard-liners from inserting even stronger verbiage. Jack Kemp had been one of those deputized by the Reagan forces to mollify Helms and his team so as to keep the platform from lurching too far to the right. Kemp had helped dial back the more assertive members of the platform committee, so much so that he joked that he looked “like a Communist.”26
EVEN WHILE CONSERVATIVES WERE fighting over the Republican platform, they had stayed focused on the issue of Reagan's running mate. Richard Viguerie's Conservative Digest devoted most of one issue to making the case against Howard Baker. The magazine's cover ruthlessly portrayed Senator Baker wearing a yellow dunce cap.27Human Events, no slacker in the ideological wars, was still running its own jihad against Baker. The newspaper was championing Kemp as Reagan's running mate.28
Human Events was not alone in backing Kemp. Many conservatives and most of the GOP's delegates wanted the former quarterback on the ticket. The independent group Republicans for Victory, organized by Jim Roberts and Bruce Eberle, had already raised $70,000 for its draft-Kemp effort, which included distributing bumper stickers, posters, and free copies of Kemp's book.29 The group even opened up a storefront in Detroit to tout the young congressman for the ticket. Kemp worried that the grassroots effort might actually backfire and hurt his chances. He must have been surprised, then, when Bob Dole, a longtime skeptic of supply-side economics, spoke up in favor of Reagan's selecting Kemp for the ticket.30
Reagan liked Kemp a lot, and intellectually he was most comfortable with the New York congressman. Maybe it was their unusual backgrounds: as a former movie actor and pro football player, respectively, each man had to deal with those who doubted his intellectual capacity. Perhaps as a way to compensate for being thought of as a lightweight, both Reagan and Kemp read everything under the sun, especially on economics and political science. After the platform committee passed the huge tax-cut plan, Kemp proudly proclaimed, “This is a radical plan for us. Republicans can no longer be called conservatives. We are radical and I am proud of it.”31 Only a few, including the Gipper, understood the significance of what Kemp was saying.
Although Kemp was rumored to be a Reagan favorite, an insider told the Washington Post that the former quarterback was “too immature” for the ticket. George Bush, meanwhile, did not appeal to the Gipper himself—according to the insider, Reagan didn't think the Texan was “presidential”—but he was dr
awing the eye of many other Republicans.32 Surprisingly, a handful of southern state Republican chairmen came out for Bush as the best choice for Reagan. Bush also got support from an even more unexpected quarter. The American Conservative Union held hearings in Washington to review the merits of potential running mates. Afterward, the attendees were surveyed, and Bush tied conservative favorite Bill Simon at 25 percent, one point ahead of Jack Kemp. It boded well for Bush that he had made so much headway with some in the Old Right and the New Right.33
Other candidates were in the mix. More and more attention was centering on the respected Richard Lugar of Indiana, a moderate-to-conservative senator who offended no one but whose public-speaking style put people to sleep. The joke running around in Reagan circles was “Most people think Lugar is a pistol, not a senator.”34 Lugar was also laboring with a millstone hung around his neck some years earlier, when he was mayor of Indianapolis: Nixon's henchmen had let it be known that Lugar was Nixon's “favorite mayor.”35 Lugar was still trying to recover.
On the eve of the convention, a leak to the Los Angeles Times said that Reagan had suddenly ruled out his old friend Paul Laxalt for the second slot.36 It appeared that Reagan, despite his and his wife's affection and high regard for Laxalt, recognized that choosing the Nevadan would bring little if any political benefit to the ticket and could actually hurt in the general election because of his state's legalized gambling and prostitution.
Even with Laxalt out of the running, a number of prospects were still under consideration. One thing Reagan steadfastly refused to do was to have the prospective candidates trudge up the long road to his ranch in Santa Barbara for an embarrassing dog-and-pony show the way Carter had put everybody on his short list through an awkward display in Plains, Georgia, four years earlier. One of Reagan's goals was to maintain dignity for all.
Reagan insiders fretted over the seemingly slim pickings for the number-two slot. One told the Washington Star, “Is that all there is? There's got to be something better out there.”37
Reagan himself betrayed doubts over at least some of the candidates. Stu Spencer saw this firsthand. It was just before the convention that Spencer came back aboard the Reagan campaign. Spencer noted that after all the old fights and animosities, the Reagans simply picked up the friendship where it had left off five years earlier. Reagan, though, was anything but pleasant when Spencer raised George Bush's name. “He just looked at me like I hit him in the stomach,” Spencer later recalled. “He spent fifteen minutes jumping on George Bush.”38
Spencer made a case for picking Bush, given the conservative nature of the platform, Bush's second-place finishes, and his impressive foreign-policy credentials.
Reagan only replied, “Hmmm, interesting, interesting.”39
ON SUNDAY, JULY 13, Reagan, Nancy, his key staff, and several journalists flew into Los Angeles before his passage to Detroit the next day. As the plane nosed its way through the clouds, Reagan sat down to chat with the traveling reporters. One tried to bait him, asking whether he still believed, as he had charged years earlier, that a “progressive” income tax was the vile contrivance of Karl Marx. Reagan didn't bat an eye: “Well, it was. He was the first one who thought of it.”40
Some of the newer members of the Reagan team were at cross-purposes with their boss. They kept telling reporters that Reagan was really “compassionate” and “kinder and gentler,” but Reagan kept talking about Godless Communism and faceless bureaucrats. Confronted with the conflict, Reagan's new adman Peter Dailey suggested that it was simply a matter of trying to “change the speeches.” Even at this late date, some of those around Reagan still thought he was an empty suit.41 These underlings did not understand him.
Reagan's campaign staffing problems continued. Bill Casey had an organizational chart in his office that showed the lines of communications flowing from staff through himself to Reagan, but everybody knew it was nonsense. Dick Allen, Marty Anderson, Lyn Nofziger, Dick Wirthlin, Mike Deaver, Peter Hannaford, and a couple of the others inside the bubble had direct access to Reagan. When they wanted to talk to him about something, they just stopped by his hotel suite or office, called him at home, or wandered up to the front of the plane. Some had this relationship with Reagan going back years and they weren't about to put up with some damned organizational chart.
THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION OPENED in Detroit on Monday, July 14. The three networks estimated that more than forty million Americans would tune in, even though everybody knew what the outcome would be—or at least thought they knew the outcome. A GOP functionary, Ken Reitz, told reporters, “The whole idea is to make the event into a TV production instead of a convention.”42
With the media swarming Detroit and so many millions tuning in on television, Mayor Coleman Young and city officials did all they could to put lipstick on their pig. The city's garbage and bus strikes were settled just before the convention opened. The remaining trash was picked up, potted plants lined the streets and interstates, graffiti were painted over, hoboes were given the bum's rush, potholes were filled in, and the marquees of X-rated movie theaters were covered over. Since hotel space was so limited in the Renaissance Center, many delegates and reporters found themselves in third-rate hotels in other parts of the city or in the suburbs—or even in another country, probably a first for an American political convention. Numerous attendees stayed across the river in the Canadian city, Windsor.
One thing Mayor Young and his officials couldn't control was the weather. The week of the GOP convention was hot and humid, and the afternoons were punctuated several times by violent thunderstorms. Still, Detroit did its best to entertain the visitors. The city allowed bars and restaurants to stay open until 4 A.M. to accommodate the GOP night owls. A madam thoughtfully offered to make her prostitutes available to the male conventioneers and even offered to throw in a “free sample” for the head of Detroit's finest. Another gentleman said he would use his divining rod to help the city find water, since he predicted that all the thirsty Republicans would cause the municipality to run out.43 City officials declined both charitable offers.
None of these sideshows could distract Reagan from his mission. His acceptance speech would be the most important moment in his political life. He had a small lead over Carter, but at the same point four years earlier, Carter had enjoyed a much greater advantage over Ford and yet had almost lost on Election Day. The media were full of advice for Reagan. Lou Cannon offered this: “Reagan must demonstrate on … his acceptance speech Thursday, that he can reach beyond his standard rhetorical banquet fare and speak to the needs and aspirations of the nation.” Cannon observed that Reagan “remains a vaguely out-of-date and somewhat stereotyped political figure in key sections of the northeast and Midwest.”44
David Broder recognized that something bigger might be at stake than just another election. Broder wrote, “Ronald Reagan began his political life as a 21year-old follower of Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Now there are sober people who think Reagan, at age 69, might become the FDR of a born-again Republican Party.”45
Peter Hannaford, a Reagan favorite, was hard at work on drafting the acceptance address, but as with everything else the Gipper said in speeches, commentaries, or his columns, the final work would be pure Reagan. And Reagan knew what he had to do.
FOR THE FIRST TIME in years, the GOP was earning praise in the media. Many had grown weary of the holier-than-thou Carter and his tired, run-down Democratic Party, but they were equally impressed that the Grand Old Party had become a Brand New Party with a coherent philosophy, confidence, and the will to win. The stench of Watergate had been vented. Most of the old, creaky alliances of convenience were gone. Regional differences still existed, but far less so than in years past.
Behaviorally and attitudinally, the party was in many ways one big extended family. There were fights, to be sure, but blood loyalty kept the fights in the family. Liberals in an increasingly conservative party were not gone, but those left knew to keep their mouths
shut or mouth the party line if they wanted to take part in the spoils of victory.
Consequently, Reagan arrived in Detroit without the burden of having to make the type of deals many of his predecessors had been forced to make. In 1952 Eisenhower had to pick Richard Nixon to placate the anti-Communist elements in the party. In 1960 Vice President Nixon humiliated himself by detouring from the GOP convention to pay homage—and make concessions—to Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York, the prince of the East Coast establishment. The agreement between the two became known infamously as the “Compact of Fifth Avenue,” but Barry Goldwater acidly referred to it as the “Munich of the Republican Party.”46 Goldwater himself failed to make any deals in San Francisco four years later, and thus liberal Republicans ran for the hills. In 1968 Nixon made many deals but broke all of them, and with them the hearts of Republicans. In 1976 Ford chose Bob Dole as his running mate to try to appease the conservatives who had nearly given the nomination to Reagan.
Reagan was freed of the petty, sail-trimming politics that had bedeviled the GOP men who went before him. He was assuming command of a party that had mostly grown to adore him. He was a politician, like the others, but he was also about to take the helm of a new GOP, unbattered, unbowed, unencumbered by political deal-making. One delegate from Arkansas hand-lettered a sign for her convention boater that simply and pointedly read, “This Time.”47
Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America Page 47
