Reagan: The Life

by H. W. Brands

  31

  THE RESULTS OF the New Hampshire primary corroborated the media judgment of Reagan’s ascendancy. He swamped Bush by more than two to one, with the other candidates even further behind. Bush never recovered, though he kept fighting. Reagan rolled through the subsequent primaries until his nomination became irresistible. The minor candidates dropped out, leaving only Bush, who continued to rebuff the counsel of party elders to concede and fall in behind Reagan. “Bush is very competitive,” James Baker observed later, by way of explanation. “He didn’t want to drop out.” Bush himself credited his deceased father, the former senator Prescott Bush. “Every time I weighed my options, I could hear my dad’s voice saying, ‘You have to see this through,’ ” Bush remembered. “He taught all of his children not to be quitters. Maybe that advice did not necessarily apply to campaigns, but I couldn’t help but think it did, and I should not quit.”

  Yet reality eventually set in, and Bush too acknowledged defeat. His doggedness, however, had won him respect among Republican voters who thought that though Reagan was the party’s first choice, Bush might not be a bad number two.

  Reagan reached the same conclusion more slowly. He didn’t like Bush at this point, and he thought Bush had weakened the party by prolonging the primary season. He flirted with Gerald Ford after a Palm Springs visit that was intended to demonstrate party unity turned into a lovefest. The two agreed that Carter must be defeated at all costs. Reagan apparently broached the idea of a Reagan-Ford ticket. Ford waved the gesture aside but didn’t forget it.

  The Republican convention, held in Detroit, was a coronation. The only issue that provided any drama was Reagan’s choice of a running mate. Reporters got wind of what Reagan had said to Ford, who remembered he liked the limelight. Erstwhile members of the Ford administration perked up. “All the old Ford guys wanted to make it happen,” James Baker recollected. “They wanted their old jobs back.” Ford was invited to open the convention, and he did so in a speech that startled observers with its energy and its promise that Jerry Ford was ready to take the field again.

  Reagan again offered Ford the vice presidential slot. Ford again declined, but less decisively than before. Reagan grew optimistic about what reporters were calling the “dream ticket.” Several of his advisers, however, thought it was a terrible idea. How would a former president adjust to being the nonentity vice presidents were supposed to be? What if he resisted?

  Ford suggested he might resist. He told Walter Cronkite of CBS News he would not be a mere “figurehead” as vice president. “I have to go there with the belief that I will play a meaningful role across the board in the basic and the crucial and the important decisions that have to be made in a four-year period,” Ford said.

  Reagan and Michael Deaver watched the Ford interview together. “As I had done so many times in the years (now fourteen of them) that had brought us there,” Deaver recalled, “I studied the face of the man next to me.” Ford’s remarks snapped Reagan out of his fantasy about a dream ticket. “He was stunned. His eyes sparked. He said, ‘This has gone too far.’ ” Reagan knew he couldn’t give away some of the responsibilities of the presidency without running afoul of the Constitution; more to the point, after all the effort he had expended getting this far, he wasn’t about to share the presidency. The great stage of American politics was going to be his alone.

  He realized the Ford interview might be interpreted as indicating that Ford had the number-two slot wrapped up. He didn’t want to embarrass Ford, but in a hastily arranged private meeting he made clear that he couldn’t agree to Ford’s terms. Ford understood, and the almost-agreement was off.

  Reagan turned at once to Bush. He had to hurry lest the media dwell on the deal that fell through. He called Bush and asked him two questions, one broad and the other specific. “Can you support my policy positions?” Bush said he could. “Can you support my position on abortion?” Reagan had come to regret his role in liberalizing California’s abortion law, and he now took a conservative, restrictive line. He wanted to be sure Bush did too. Bush again said yes. Reagan thereupon offered Bush the vice presidential nomination. Bush accepted.

  Reagan went to the convention hall. Nearly all the delegates expected him to announce that he had chosen Ford, and so they were flummoxed when he explained that this was not the case. “He and I have come to the conclusion, and he believes deeply, that he can be of more value as the former president campaigning his heart out, as he has promised to do, and not as a member of the ticket,” Reagan said. Before the delegates could react, Reagan went on to say that instead of Ford he had chosen “a man we all know and a man who was a candidate, a man who has great experience in government, and a man who has told me that he can enthusiastically support the platform across the board.” By the end of this description he hardly needed to add the name: George Bush.

  The vice presidential candidate took the stage. “If anyone wants to know why Ronald Reagan is a winner,” Bush said, “you can refer him to me. I’m an expert on the subject. He’s a winner because he’s our leader, because he has traveled the country and understands its people. His message is clear. His message is understood.”

  The next night Reagan reiterated that message. He hammered Carter and the Democrats for failing the people of America domestically and in foreign affairs. “The major issue of this campaign is the direct political, personal and moral responsibility of Democratic Party leadership—in the White House and in Congress—for this unprecedented calamity which has befallen us,” Reagan said. “They tell us they have done the most that humanly could be done. They say that the United States has had its day in the sun; that our nation has passed its zenith. They expect you to tell your children that the American people no longer have the will to cope with their problems; that the future will be one of sacrifice and few opportunities. My fellow citizens, I utterly reject that view. The American people, the most generous on earth, who created the highest standard of living, are not going to accept the notion that we can only make a better world for others by moving backwards ourselves.” Those who believed this lie should have no role in governing the nation. “I will not stand by and watch this great country destroy itself under mediocre leadership that drifts from one crisis to the next, eroding our national will and purpose.”

  Reagan painted an alternative vision. “I ask you to trust that American spirit which knows no ethnic, religious, social, political, regional or economic boundaries; the spirit that burned with zeal in the hearts of millions of immigrants from every corner of the earth who came here in search of freedom. Some say that spirit no longer exists. But I have seen it—I have felt it—all across the land; in the big cities, the small towns and in rural America. The American spirit is still there, ready to blaze into life if you and I are willing to do what has to be done.” He pointed to the Pilgrims as examples of the American spirit. He cited the founding fathers and Abraham Lincoln. And he again drew on Franklin Roosevelt. “I believe that this generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny,” he said. “The time is now, my fellow Americans, to recapture our destiny, to take it into our hands.”

  He concluded with a carefully considered ad-lib. “I have thought of something that is not part of my speech and I’m worried over whether I should do it,” he said, gazing out over his audience. But he went ahead and brought God into the conversation. “Can we doubt that only a divine Providence placed this land, this island of freedom, here as a refuge for all those people in the world who yearn to breathe freely: Jews and Christians enduring persecution behind the Iron Curtain, the boat people of Southeast Asia, of Cuba and Haiti, the victims of drought and famine in Africa, the freedom fighters of Afghanistan and our own countrymen held in savage captivity.” He paused and again looked out across the convention hall. “I’ll confess that I’ve been a little afraid to suggest what I’m going to suggest—I’m more afraid not to—that we begin our crusade joined together in a moment of silent prayer.” The hall fell duly silent.
Then Reagan dismissed them with the sign-off that would become his trademark: “God bless America.”

  REAGAN REMEMBERED THAT Franklin Roosevelt had won the presidency in 1932 chiefly because he wasn’t Herbert Hoover. He guessed that he himself would similarly benefit from not being Jimmy Carter. By mid-1980, Carter’s position had become politically unsustainable. The misery index of unemployment plus inflation topped 21 percent in May and June and remained above 20 percent through the election. Considering that this was nearly as high as it had been in 1932 (when unemployment was higher than in 1980 but inflation was inconsequential—in fact, negative), Carter was doomed on economic grounds alone. The international situation merely made things worse. Soviet troops and aircraft brutalized Afghanistan, reinforcing the Republican message of Carter’s early naïveté about the communists. The American hostages still languished in Tehran. Carter had authorized a rescue attempt during the spring, but the opera tion went badly awry, killing several U.S. servicemen and marking Carter as more inept than ever.

  Yet Reagan wasn’t good at playing to protect a lead. He overthought things and lost his spontaneity. And precisely because he was ahead, his slips received more scrutiny than they would have in an underdog. Addressing a convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, he described the American effort in Vietnam as a “noble cause.” The veterans applauded, but Reagan’s managers grimaced. They didn’t disagree with the sentiment, but the comment led to a debate over the Vietnam War that distracted the media from Reagan’s central message: that the economy was in shambles and that fixing it required a change in the White House. On another day some ill-considered words by Reagan appeared to link Carter to the Ku Klux Klan. Carter’s side naturally protested, and Reagan was forced to apologize. At a convention of Christian evangelicals, Reagan was asked for his views on creationism, as opposed to evolution. He knew what the audience wanted to hear, and he said creationism should be taught in the schools. Again his handlers shuddered, although one put the incident in context. “The only good news for us at this time was that we were making so many blunders that reporters had to pick and choose which ones they would write about,” this staffer said afterward. “ ‘Creationism’ made Reagan look like an idiot, but he got away with it.”

  POST–LABOR DAY OPINION polls showed the typical tightening of the race. By some tallies Carter pulled even with Reagan. But the polls were misleading, for Reagan retained his advantage in the states that would give him the electoral votes he required.

  The two sides jockeyed for position regarding debates. John Anderson had bolted the Republican Party to run an independent campaign; potential voters unsatisfied with Carter but unattracted by Reagan gave Anderson just enough support to make his campaign viable. Carter’s managers didn’t want a three-way debate, for they believed that Anderson would siphon more votes from Carter than from Reagan. Reagan was canny enough to realize that his boffo performance in the Nashua debate couldn’t be repeated; he consented to debate Anderson without Carter. Anderson was more articulate than Reagan, but Reagan didn’t embarrass himself. And the experience afforded him sufficient confidence to accept Carter’s one-on-one terms.

  The Reagan-Carter debate occurred the week before the election. Carter, as expected, showed himself to be a master of detail but deficient in personal appeal. Reagan was just the opposite. And where Carter had to defend the past, Reagan could promise the future. Carter had prepared for the debate by immersing himself in the issues, Reagan by considering one-liners and bons mots he might drop on his opponent. Reagan received an unexpected boost by the mysterious acquisition of a Carter briefing book. James Baker had been brought into the Reagan campaign along with Bush; the Californians around Reagan realized they needed the experience Baker commanded. “I was the only Republican who had run a presidential campaign and not gone to jail,” Baker commented later, referring to the Watergate woes of the Nixon team. Baker’s chief task was preparing Reagan for the debates; he later said he got the briefing book from William Casey, who had taken over as Reagan’s campaign manager when John Sears alienated the rest of the team and was fired. Casey said he had no recollection of the book. “Casey was not telling the truth,” Baker asserted in the aftermath. Baker nonetheless resisted taking a polygraph test to resolve the matter, as the media helpfully suggested. Casey had become director of the CIA and had a reputation for skulduggery. “I was scared,” Baker admitted. “He could game the lie detector and I couldn’t.” No one was strapped to a machine, and neither party ever proved the other wrong, not least because the briefing book was not very important. Mostly news clippings, it revealed nothing crucial of Carter’s strategy. “It wasn’t worth the paper it was written on,” Baker said.

  Reagan had a more important advantage in the debate. “All you have to do is hold your own in these things, because nobody wins or loses these debates on points,” Lyn Nofziger explained later. “They do it on perception. Since the press always thinks that Reagan is dumber than the other guy, just by holding his own, Reagan wins.”

  Reagan held his own on points, and he won on perception. The highlight of the evening came as Carter was chiding Reagan for being against national health insurance, as he had been against such worthy programs as Social Security and Medicare. One camera focused on Carter; another showed Reagan readying his reply. When Reagan’s turn came, he smiled indulgently at the president and said, “There you go again.” The remark didn’t rebut Carter logically, but the audience in the Cleveland music hall laughed, and millions in the television audience concluded that Reagan was a much more appealing fellow than the humorless Carter.

  Reagan rode the approval into his closing remarks. “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” he asked. “Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel that our security is as safe, that we’re as strong as we were four years ago?” The questions needed only to be asked for the answers to be plain. The appropriate response for voters was equally plain.

  32

  ONE THING ALONE worried Reagan’s team as the election approached. William Casey and others feared that Carter would spring an “October surprise” by arranging the release of the Iran hostages. Casey established what the campaign’s chief of staff, Edwin Meese, later called the “October surprise watch” to keep a lookout for signs of a breakthrough in the administration’s negotiations with Tehran. Richard Allen, who headed the group, explained, “Our business was to react to what happened as the result of a resolution, a successful resolution of the hostage crisis.”

  The watch team spared no effort in imagining possible scenarios for a release and devising appropriate responses. On October 19 the team produced a confidential memo for Ed Meese declaring, “The Iranians know that the race is very close and that Carter will be susceptible to pressure in the next two weeks”—until the election. On the assumption that Carter might yield to the pressure, the team advised that Reagan be ready. “It is recommended that beginning now, up to the time the hostages are released, Governor Reagan’s posture be to emphasize the following: 1) note that there are increasing signs that the hostages’ release may be imminent. Greet this news cautiously, but favorably. Ronald Reagan should express his hopes and prayers that the hostages will be coming home soon, even if it is the day before the election. 2) Insist, though, that the U.S. not complete any deals or trades until all our people are home, and the conditions are made public. Add that we must be mindful of the long-range consequences of any arrangement we make.” Such a posture would have two positive effects for the Reagan side. “1) If the hostages are actually released, it does not come as such a surprise. By generating the expectation that this will occur, we could dull somewhat the outpouring of enthusiasm to be expected from the hostages’ return. 2) If the hostages are not released before the election, Carter faces a heightened credibility problem beca
use of the greater expectation of their release.”

  But the negotiations stalled, and as the election drew nearer, the Reagan team breathed more easily. Bill Casey urged the candidate to keep quiet about the hostages. Speaking of Carter, Casey wrote to Reagan and Meese two days before the election, “I believe he will be widely perceived as having engaged in a desperate last attempt to manipulate the hostages again for political benefit and to have once more bungled it. If this analysis is correct, we should say very little and leave it that way.” Upon the rest of the campaign staff, Casey imposed a gag order. “Precautions must be taken to make sure nothing is attributed to our campaign organization that could in any way be said to jeopardize the possibility of securing the release of the hostages,” he wrote. “That means that nobody, except those who are specifically authorized, express opinions to the media from now until Election Day.”

  Casey might have had particular reason for his sensitivity to allegations that the campaign was trying to delay the release of the hostages. He soon acquired a reputation for letting little stand in the way of accomplishing ends he deemed worthy and for taking an activist, no-holds-barred approach to covert operations. With others on the Reagan side, Casey considered Carter a disaster as president. It would not have been out of character for him to seek to stall the release of the hostages until after the election so that Carter would be retired to Georgia.

  This was precisely what certain Carter supporters later alleged, most pointedly after the Iran-contra scandal revealed that the modus operandi of Reagan’s administration included methods that couldn’t stand public scrutiny. The strongest indictment came from Gary Sick, a member of Carter’s National Security Council staff who was closely involved in the hostage negotiations. In a 1991 book Sick asserted that Casey had met with persons with ties to the Iranian government and offered arms aid if the hostages were held until after the election.