The gentlemen and gentle ladies of the press may have been more left-of-center than Reagan, but they had a refined sense of fair play, and after four years of covering Carter, some had had it with the Georgian's sanctimonious behavior. While Carter now wanted the whole incident to go away, Myers noted that the White House had made “no similar complaints … when the media was hammering away at Reagan during the initial days … after the Republican incorrectly stated that Carter launched his re-election drive in the Alabama city which gave birth to the Klan. Then, Carter and his lieutenants labored to keep the issue alive.”42
Reagan filed an “equal-time” request with all three networks to respond to Carter's statements, but they turned him down, saying the president's press conference was a legitimate news event. Nonetheless, CBS went on record as stating that it had been badly used by Carter.43
Then the Carter campaign really got down and dirty. It ran ads in black-owned newspapers charging that Reagan wanted to defeat Carter because of the president's record on appointing African-Americans. The ad read, “Jimmy Carter named 37 black judges, cracked down on job bias, and created 1 million jobs. That's why the Republicans are out to beat him.”44 But Carter had overplayed his hand. He had done precisely what he did not want to do: he made Reagan a victim.
Republicans screamed bloody murder, and many in the press, still steaming over being used in the White House press conference, thought Carter had gone too far again. The Carter campaign withdrew the ads. Gerald Rafshoon released a statement that sheepishly read, “We will not run this ad again. We believe that the facts support the statements in the ad. However, because of the publicity about the ad, we feel that it's lost its effectiveness, and we won't run it again.”45 The Carterites knew what they were doing. Pat Caddell years later made clear that there was a purpose to the ongoing hammering of their opponent: “It was part of the risk strategy, anything to drive up that variable that [Reagan]'s too risky to be president.”46 They didn't mind taking on water, as long as they could drown Reagan in the process.
The Washington Post editorialized that Carter was “running mean” and said he had a “miserable record of personally savaging political opponents.”47 The Washington Star referred to Carter's campaign against Reagan as a “squalid exercise.”48 Jack Germond and Jules Witcover, normally critical of Reagan, upbraided Carter over his tactics. They noted that Carter had used the same devices in the 1976 primaries and that no one, in Reagan's years in politics, had ever seriously suggested he was a racist.49 Even the reliably liberal columnist James “Scotty” Reston said that Carter's supporters were “deeply disappointed by the mean and cunning antics of his campaign.” Reston concluded that Carter “is extremely confident, angry and vindictive, and thinks that concentrating on the weaknesses of his opponents is the way to win.”50
The wise and urbane Hugh Sidey of Time said of Carter, “The past few days have revealed a man capable of far more petty vituperation than most Americans thought possible even in a dank political season. The wrath that escapes Carter's lips about racism and hatred when he prays and poses as the epitome of Christian charity leads even his supporters to protest his meanness.”51
Though the Carter campaign had pulled the appalling newspaper ads, it went ahead with a television ad that asked, “When you come right down to it, what kind of person should occupy the Oval Office? Should it be someone who, like Ronald Reagan, has a fractured view of America, who speaks disdainfully about millions of us as he attacks the minimum wage and calls unemployment insurance a ‘prepaid vacation’? Or should another kind of man sit here, an experienced man who knows how to be responsive to all Americans, all 240 million of us? Figure it out for yourself.”52
Paul Laxalt had seen and heard enough. The ultra-cool Nevadan stormed that Carter had “slandered and vilified a decent and honorable man—but, more than that, he brought dishonor on the high office of the presidency.”53 Laxalt had the goods on Carter. He said that in 1964, while Carter was in the Georgia state senate, the future president had voted “for legislation which for all intents and purposes circumvented the Civil Rights Act” by “preventing school desegregation” while prohibiting any county in Georgia from “enacting open accommodation and fair employment laws.”54 Carter, in 1964, was a Jim Crow man. He hadn't changed by 1970, when his campaign distributed brochures with photos of his opponent, Carl Sanders, with African-American members of the Atlanta Hawks basketball team. Laxalt said of Carter's style, “This is his record. This is how he plays—hard ball, below the belt.”55
Indeed, both Hubert Humphrey and Ted Kennedy had complained bitterly about Carter's style of campaigning in the past.
AFTER MONTHS OF NEGOTIATIONS, the League of Women Voters was finally ready to host the first presidential debate, but between Reagan and Anderson, and sans Carter. The GOP nominee had been truly astonished when Mike Deaver told him some time earlier that Carter would not participate. “What? I don't believe it,” he said to Deaver. He then ordered his aide to make some phone calls and reconfirm the information. Reagan's “sense of fair play was totally offended,” as one a senior aide told Newsweek.56 Of Carter's refusal to debate, Reagan said bitingly, “He couldn't win a debate if it were held in the Rose Garden before an audience of Administration officials with the questions being asked by Jody Powell.”57
Baltimore was the location for the debate between Reagan and Anderson, which was held on Sunday night, September 21. The city was delighted to host the event. It had fallen on hard times after the Second World War, and only in the 1970s, with urban homesteading and the revitalization of its Inner Harbor, did Charm City begin to sparkle again. Mayor Donald Schaefer, one of most creative and effective city executives in the country, had engineered the renaissance. Schaefer, a Democrat, had also worked some magic on behalf of President Carter. The League of Women Voters had promised the Reagan campaign that the debate stage would feature an empty chair to represent the missing president, which Jim Baker had negotiated for.58 Carter was furious about the planned chair stunt, and Schaefer at the last minute convinced the league to nix it.59
The debate was held in the Baltimore Convention Center. The arena seated 2,600 people, but after the campaigns, the media, and the league took their tickets, a princely one hundred seats were available for the general public.60
The moderator of the debate was Bill Moyers, whom the Associated Press identified only as a “news producer and reporter for public television” but not as the highly partisan former press aide to Lyndon Johnson. The panel of questioners featured several journalists, including the popular economic writer Jane Bryant Quinn of Newsweek. Both NBC and CBS broadcast the debate, but ABC took a pass.61
As soon as the Baltimore debate kicked off, it was clear that the real target of the two combatants was the absent President Carter. Anderson set the tone early when he said, “Governor Reagan is not responsible for what has happened over the last four years, nor am I. The man who should be here tonight to respond to those charges chose not to attend.”62 Reagan, relaxed and in control, referred to the deficient Carter as “the man who isn't here tonight.” Later he said, “It's a shame now that there are only two of us here debating, because the two that are here are in more agreement than disagreement.”63 Reagan was exaggerating, as he and Anderson agreed on little. They disagreed, albeit gently, over tax cuts; Reagan pointed out that a year and a half earlier Anderson had supported the original plan offered by Jack Kemp. They disagreed over defense spending and whether conservation was the only way to fight the energy crisis. They disagreed on abortion and a gas tax.
Some had expected this debate to be a sideshow since Carter wasn't there. But Reagan and Anderson benefited from the event. Some fifty million people watched the debate on NBC and CBS, millions more than watched the movie (Midnight Express) offered by ABC.64 Both debaters won plaudits from the media and viewers. Anderson even scored an endorsement from the influential liberal magazine The New Republic, which in sixty-six years had endorsed only D
emocrats for president.65 Reagan's performance, meanwhile, lifted the morale of the campaign and of the candidate. He hit a couple out of the park and committed no errors. The Gipper had been guided in part by a memo authored by Dick Wirthlin advising him to have a good time, show that he was “capable of enjoying a laugh,” and keep his answers short and tight.66
Reagan had been the candidate most clearly helped by agreeing to show up in Baltimore. Voters who saw the debate preferred Reagan of the three candidates.
Carter and his men had miscalculated. In arguing for not participating, they got hung up on the internal minutiae of politics—“inside baseball” stuff. Their arguments were lost on the American people, who wanted concrete solutions to their plight. Anderson and Reagan offered those in their reasoned and reasonable debate. Carter, who gave up the chance to offer any such solutions by ducking the debate, bore the brunt of criticism.
Carter needed to change the subject back to questions about Reagan. The next day in Illinois and then in California, the president said the 1980 election would determine “whether we will have war or peace.”67 Carter thought he had found his opening with the “Tolstoy” issue.
Reagan privately seethed when informed of Carter's newest assault. He publicly labeled it “beneath decency.”68 Stumping in the panhandle of Florida, thick with retired military, Reagan said, “History will record that under Jimmy Carter, our military personnel had first-class equipment taken out of their hands—and food stamps put in them.”69
Carter went right back at Reagan's throat, criticizing him for too often suggesting the use of power to confront enemies of America and the West. Calling Reagan's aggressiveness “disturbing,” Carter said that “to call for the use of military forces in a very dangerous situation has been a repeated habit of his.”70 Jody Powell handed out reams of clips going back to 1968 highlighting instances in which Reagan suggested military interventions by the United States.71 In an interview with Los Angeles station KNBC, Carter said, “I don't know what he would do if he were in the Oval Office, but if you judge by his past highly rhetorical calls for the use of American military forces in these altercations, it is disturbing. What he would do in the Oval Office I hope will never be observed by the American people.”72 On the “warmonger” issue, unlike the others rolled out, Carter was not going to back down.
Reagan had indeed called for military action at least ten times in twelve years, including as a means to rescue the Americans held captive by North Korea aboard the USS Pueblo in the late 1960s, as a way to keep the peace in Rhodesia in 1976 as it transitioned from a minority white government to a majority black government, and as a response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In 1975, when Ecuador took American fishing boats, Reagan had suggested a naval escort to prevent it from happening again.73
It was all Reagan could do not to leap for the bait and respond too aggressively. To win, Reagan must come across to the American public as a man of reason and depth and not given to angry outbursts. Carter was doing his best to goad the Gipper and attempt to show that he was unfit for the Oval Office. To tear too aggressively into Carter would have been exactly what Carter wanted Reagan to do.
When told that Carter refused to apologize for his most recent remarks, Reagan shook his head and said, “That doesn't surprise me. That's in character.”74 Later, he calmly pointed to the war that had just erupted between Iran and Iraq to call attention to Carter's weak-willed foreign policy. Iraq only days earlier had invaded Iran. Reagan believed, had President Carter supported the shah of Iran, this newest war between Iran and Iraq might never have happened, and Americans would not have been taken hostage, as the Ayatollah Khomeini would not have come to power. “What is happening in Iraq and Iran,” Reagan said, “is the consequence of policies this administration has followed during the last three-and-a-half years—a vacillating foreign policy and a weakened defense capability are largely to blame.”75
It was not the response that Carter's men expected. Rather than crying foul for days on end, putting himself on the defensive, Reagan in measured tones redirected the voters' attention to Carter's military and foreign-policy weaknesses. The response was a testament to Reagan's new discipline and how much his campaign operations had improved in a few short weeks. Reagan said, “I'm not going to bother every day trying to answer those things. The issue of this campaign is his record and I'm just going to keep talking about it.”76
Carter's warmonger insinuations, coming hard on the heels of his racism allegations, drew even more condemnation from journalists. Germond and Witcover called Carter's latest remark “a rabbit punch in its way even lower than his earlier suggestion of racism on Reagan's part.”77 Another reliably liberal columnist, Mary McGrory, castigated Carter, acerbically penning, “It isn't exactly hit-and-run, because Carter sticks around the scene of the accident long enough to say he didn't mean it.”78
Carter's comments on foreign affairs also provided an opening for Reagan. Every time Reagan, Anderson, or their surrogates talked about the hostages, Carter and his aides “sternly lectured them on the risk of upsetting secret but delicate diplomacy,” in the words of Adam Clymer of the New York Times. But then the president made the odd comment that the war between Iran and Iraq might “induce [the Iranians] to release the hostages.” Here was Carter engaging in the same sort of unfounded speculation for which he had attacked his opponents.79 The president's comments freed Reagan. When asked what he would have done differently from Carter, Reagan replied, “Everything.”80
Of course, while Carter was admonishing his opponents not to politicize the plight of the hostages, Hamilton Jordan and other members of the staff were plotting to do precisely that. Carter said he worried about being seen as “using [the hostages'] return improperly.” Jordan said, “What I would like to do, Mr. President, is use their return improperly and not be blamed for it.” Carter laughed.81
REAGAN'S SWING THROUGH THE South took him not only to Florida but to Tennessee and Louisiana as well. Polls still put Reagan behind in Carter's “Solid South,” and his campaign needed to press its opportunity in this culturally conservative region
In Florida, Reagan spoke to Cuban-Americans, fervent anti-Communists and just as fervent Reaganites. He praised most Cubans, except those “hardened criminals” Fidel Castro had cleaned out of his prisons and dumped on the United States.82 Most were quarantined in Florida, but Carter had moved some to Arkansas, where they became the headache of Governor Bill Clinton, who was running for reelection. Carter made a calculated move: since Arkansas was his second-best state after Georgia in 1976, he thought he could take a hit in the state and still win it. Clinton, however, was furious with Carter.
In Tennessee, Reagan once again had to assure voters that he had no intention of dismantling their beloved Tennessee Valley Authority. Then, just as he had promised, he kept talking about the Carter record, hitting it hard. “By every way we have of measuring failure, his policies have failed.”83
Reagan's move through the South was his best yet, as media polling confirmed. The Gipper was having fun on the stump for the first time in days. He drew energy from the audiences; the warmer they were, the better he was in addressing them. In Missouri, Reagan was caught on film autographing the arm cast of a beaming little boy.84 He told audiences—above the Mason-Dixon Line—“Jimmy Carter is the South's revenge for Sherman's march through Georgia.”85
Morale in the Reagan campaign was rising.
THE DECISION FOR REAGAN to debate Anderson had been, in retrospect, more critical than anyone knew at the time. Since Detroit, Reagan had been reduced to a one-dimensional figure by his own mistakes and the Carter battering. Coming out of the debate, he began to climb back into contention. Carter had slipped and Anderson, despite what the media thought of his performance, had gone backwards. Was it possible that the “Anderson Difference” was just warmed-over liberalism? Most reporters and sages settled in with the idea that the election would be very close, as in 1960, 1968, and 1976.
Now the League of Women Voters abruptly altered plans and offered to sponsor a two-man debate between Reagan and Carter, to be followed by a three-way debate. Carter accepted the invitation for a one-on-one debate. Anderson naturally objected to the new offering. Reagan, too, rejected the offer.87 He would not go back on his word by excluding Anderson.
Besides, the new setup meant that Reagan would have to debate three times and the other two men only twice. With his campaign nearly righted and Reagan hitting his stride on the road, Reagan's team saw no need for any more debates, though it meant he might lose the high-road argument.
Bizarrely, the league called on the public to whip up a grassroots campaign to pressure Reagan and Anderson to accept the new parameters.88
A Mondale–Bush debate had also been kicked around. In fact, shortly after accepting the GOP's vice-presidential nomination, George Bush had been in Kennebunkport relaxing when he received—and accepted in principle—an invitation from Vice President Mondale to debate.89 Later, when more formal discussions began, Bush said no to the idea of debating, and now, that confrontation was off the table. In interviews years later, Bush recalled, incorrectly, that no debate had been planned at all, while Mondale recalled accurately that one had been in the works.90 The Reagan team must have breathed a sigh of relief when the VP debate idea was shelved. Bush had a shaky debate record, and Mondale was such a pro that he had whipped Bob Dole in 1976. (In 1984 Mondale would become the only person to defeat Ronald Reagan in open debate.)
Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America Page 68
