This would prove to be Nixon’s public strategy through the fall of 1980—appear to be neutral, but use every opportunity to sideswipe Carter and remind voters of his failures as president. But sometimes his public comments went a step too far. In one interview with Parade, Nixon suggested that he might have a role helping a President Reagan: “something like a counselor or negotiator.” He added that he “would be available for assistance and advice.”8
The interview sent Reagan aides into a fury. The last thing the campaign needed was the suggestion that Reagan would be bringing Nixon into his administration should he win. The Nixon comeback had made progress, but the public was likely not ready for Nixon to have a formal role in a presidential administration. One Reagan aide, speaking to the press anonymously, said the former president was “hallucinating” about a role helping Reagan.
This was too much for Reagan himself. He had always admired Nixon and thought he deserved to be respected as a great foreign policy mind. He called and apologized to Nixon for the words of the anonymous aide; Nixon assured him that there was no need to apologize.9
Meanwhile behind the scenes, Nixon continued to work the phones and talk to senior Reagan aides. In 1980, presidential debates were still a new feature of elections. Indeed, there had been only once since the Nixon-Kennedy debates of 1960—the 1976 Ford-Carter debate. So there was some discussion within the Reagan camp about whether to agree to a debate with Carter. There were plenty of Reagan aides worried about the possibility of another Reagan gaffe.
Nixon had no such concerns. He reached out to Reagan’s deputy campaign manager, Robert Gray, and sent a memo in which he personally lobbied for a debate. He joked that he wished he could give advice on winning a presidential debate, “but I don’t have that experience.” The memo argued that Reagan couldn’t ignore the fact that the debate could have “220 million Americans watching him” and that was an opportunity he should not pass up.10
In October, just a few days before the election, Reagan and Carter met for their only presidential debate. What Nixon had likely sensed—that Reagan’s camera-friendly presence would contrast well with Carter’s stiff persona—proved true. Nixon had sent pages of debate suggestions on various foreign and domestic policy topics to Mike Deaver, Ed Meese, and even Mrs. Reagan. He needn’t have worried. Reagan was ready. Reagan pounced during the debate when Carter accused him of opposing Medicare earlier in his career. “There you go again,” he said before methodically describing how he had supported a different version of Medicare in the early 1960s. The firm response combined with Carter’s sheepish expression created a powerful moment for Reagan.
But it was in the closing statements that the contrast was the most dramatic. Carter awkwardly talked about having a conversation with his daughter Amy about nuclear war. It was a missed opportunity to leave a lasting and favorable impression with the viewing public. Reagan did not make the same mistake. In perhaps the most famous closing ever delivered in a presidential debate, Reagan urged voters to enter the polling place and ask themselves a question before pulling the lever: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
Elections are always about choices, and Reagan had perfectly framed the American people’s choice in the 1980 election. With hostages in Iran, double-digit inflation at home, and uncertainty around the country, many Americans did not feel that they were better off.
Nixon felt increasingly good about Reagan’s odds in the closing days of the campaign. When a poll appeared showing that Reagan could lose New York state, Nixon reassured the Reagan team about his new home state. He called and told a campaign aide that Reagan would in fact win New York state. The Reagan team dismissed the idea; they were still preparing for a close election.
Nixon felt so confident of Reagan’s chances that on November 4 he sent a handwritten note to the candidate. “I have a gut feeling that your victory will be far greater than most of the pollsters and political columnists have predicted,” he said.
The former president also praised the candidate for proving the critics wrong at every turn. “They said you were a hard-hearted bomb thrower and you convinced millions of Americans who saw you on TV that this caricature was false,” Nixon wrote. He added that “the nation and the free world would be counting on” Reagan’s leadership.
“I know you will not let them down,” he ended the letter, signing it, “Dick.”11
But even as Nixon reveled in the chance to play a part in Reagan’s rise behind the scenes, he could never leave Watergate entirely behind. Just days before the election, Nixon testified in a courtroom inside the Federal District Court in Washington, D.C., where Edward S. Miller, a former chief of the FBI’s intelligence bureau, and W. Mark Felt, a former acting associate director of the FBI, were on trial for violating the civil rights of the Weather Underground.
The two men argued that they had authorized break-ins and wiretaps of Weather Underground members, but said that they had done so for national security reasons. As a witness for the defense, Nixon said he had indeed wanted the FBI to get tough with the Weather Underground. He further suggested that with America engaged in the Vietnam War at the time, he had viewed these actions as part of the war effort; after all, there was evidence of connections between the Weather Underground and foreign governments.
But most important, Nixon argued on the stand, was stopping the Weather Underground bombings that had cost twenty-three Americans their lives. The former presidnet firmly stated that he had authorized the aggressive tactics so that he could prevent “innocent people” from being killed. In the end, the jury found the two men guilty anyway. Nixon was saddened by the verdict. It would not be until Felt’s death in 2008 that journalist Bob Woodward revealed Felt had been his famous “Deep Throat” source; without Felt’s insider information, it seems unlikely that Watergate would have ever brought Nixon down. Nixon never suspected Felt was “Deep Throat.” In fact, when President Reagan pardoned Felt, Nixon wrote to Reagan, “Pat and my reactions were the same: ‘Thank God for Ronald Reagan.’ ”12
With the trial over, Nixon returned to his regular routine in New York and prepared for Election Night. It was everything he could have hoped it would be. Reagan won in a landslide. And as Nixon had predicted to the skeptical Reagan campaign staffers, Reagan carried New York state.
With a new administration preparing to take over, Nixon was hopeful that new foreign policies would be put in place.
On November 17, he sent an eleven-page memo to the president-elect. He urged him to focus on the economy in the early months of the presidency. “Unless you are able to shape up our home base it will be almost impossible to conduct an effective foreign policy,” Nixon wrote. He went onto to suggest that “the time to take the heat for possibly unpopular budget cuts is in 1981, not 1982 or 1984,” referring to congressional elections and the presidential election.
This proved to be one area where the former president and the incoming president were not aligned. Reagan had little interest in cutting spending; he believed that inflation was a product of monetary policy and that Fed chairman Paul Volcker’s policy of high interest rates would eventually bring inflation down. He also believed that the stagnant economy could best be primed with fiscal policy, especially through tax cuts. Reagan’s subsequent economic plan of increased spending and reduced taxes was not an orthodox Republican approach to economics at the time.
Nixon’s memo also included suggestions on personnel—all the way from cabinet posts to staff positions. For secretary of state, he recommended Al Haig. For attorney general, he suggested William French Smith. For CIA head, he recommended William Casey. “I hope I have not been presumptuous in making some of these suggestions,” the ex-president ended the memo. It is a testament to Nixon’s revival that the incoming president accepted all of these recommendations—although Reagan likely already had the same people in mind. As Reagan prepared to take office, Nixon not only had direct access to the president, but direct personal relationship
s with all of the senior staffers making foreign policy, as well. He had come a long way since 1974 and the dark days of Watergate.13
And Nixon also possessed another means of influencing the new administration’s worldview through his latest book. The Real War had been released earlier in the year largely to critical reviews. Yet the book sold well. Few in America doubted Nixon’s ability to scan the world and provide analysis of foreign policy. And with the seemingly endless run of Carter's failures on the foreign stage, people were eager for a new approach on international affairs.
What undoubtedly inspired the critical reviews the book received was the perceived sharp turn to the right that Nixon seemed to take. Nixon’s target in the book was the Carter administration; more specifically, the target was Jimmy Carter. In almost apocalyptic terms he declared that America was “at war.” Then using a poker analogy, he suggested, “All but one of our cards are face up on the table. Our only covered card is the will, nerve, and unpredictability of the president.”
In some ways, Nixon used the book not to describe Carter, whom he viewed as lacking all these traits, but Reagan. The former president suggested that the foreign policy of the future would require “placing limits on idealism, compromising with reality, at times matching duplicity with duplicity.”
Nixon went on to draw a distinction between the United States and the Soviet Union, labeling it a difference between “Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, God and the Devil.” Nixon used the history he knew firsthand to frame the coming challenges. Citing his years as Eisenhower’s vice president, he wrote that Ike later regretted his decision to halt the British attempt to retake the Suez Canal. Nixon used this to story to argue for a more aggressive posture in the Cold War.
He specifically called for a dramatic increase in defense spending. “We can afford a vastly increased defense effort,” he wrote, “if we decide to. We can carry the twilight war to the enemy—if we decide to.”14
One person who seemed to be fully in sync with these views was the new president-elect. Reagan had sharply criticized the weakness of the Carter administration’s foreign policy and promised a more robust response to events like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In fact, Reagan was so convinced this was the right course that he was willing to risk the election on it. When an advisor urged him to tone down his foreign policy views during the campaign, Reagan remarked that the American people were perfectly entitled to know how strongly he held his foreign policy views and how fervently he intended to carry them out. If that bothered them, then they should vote for Carter. Reagan, perhaps influenced by Nixon’s evolution toward a harder line in The Real War, correctly believed that most Americans were ready for a more decisive commander-in-chief.
A few days after the election, Nixon sat in his study in his town house and worked on a new introduction for the paperback version of The Real War that was being readied for release. “I am confident that President Reagan and the members of his administration will have the vision to see what needs to be done and the courage to do it,” he wrote, pointing to the message of the following pages as the roadmap for foreign policy in the 1980s. He sent a personalized copy of the book to the president-elect.
Nixon wasn’t going to leave anything to chance. Just six years earlier he had been forced out of office and into a political exile unlike anything ever seen before in American history. He had faced physical challenges and almost died just a few months later. He had had to fight his way out of debt and begin the long process of public rehabilitation. Now at last he could see the fruits of his labor. His books sold briskly, he could go out in public, and he could even deliver public speeches on politics. But best of all, he had been an important, if small, part of the successful election campaign of a Republican presidential candidate. Not only that, but he also knew and liked the president-elect. Nixon was back—not as a political and public force himself, but as an elder statesman behind the scenes. He had access and he had some influence, and he intended to use it. Indeed, he already was.
Not long after the election, Nixon appeared at the Russian Embassy for a celebration of the Bolshevik Revolution. In front of his old friend Henry Kissinger, Nixon spoke to Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin about the incoming president.
“There will be a new style,” he said to the ambassador about Reagan, and “it will be different.”15
Chapter Ten
Advisor to the President
“Don’t change a game plan that is working.”
“This letter is a first,” Nixon began a note to Nancy Reagan on January 12, 1981. “Former presidents on many occasions have given advice to their successors and have written about the presidency. None as far as I know have written to or about the role of first ladies.”
Nixon had always admired Mrs. Reagan’s strength. And as the new president prepared to take office in a few days, Nixon had little doubt of how important Mrs. Reagan’s voice would be. He started his back-channel diplomacy with the incoming White House by reaching out directly to the first lady.
“You are blessed with intelligence, charm, and beauty,” he continued as he lavished his praise on the former Hollywood starlet. “You have subordinated your own career to that of your husband’s.” Nixon then praised the iron hand in the velvet glove, which so many on the Reagan team had experienced. “The way you have conducted yourself has helped Ron achieve one of the greatest election victories in American history. Don’t change a gameplan that is working.”
The former president went on to give specific advice for dealing with the press: “The general rule should be to reward your friends and ignore your enemies.” He gave advice on helping to smooth the relationship between the administration and Congress: “I would suggest that on occasion it would be useful if you were to have luncheons in the State Dining Room for congressional wives. . . .”
He also urged the future First Lady to make sure to include conservatives on the guest lists at White House parties. To illustrate his point, he said he had often told Kissinger that instead of having a “séance with the Los Angeles Times” on trips to California he should see the Reagans. He never did. “He tells me now that he thinks this was a great mistake,” Nixon wrote.
He also wrote that Connally talked to him about campaigning with Reagan in Texas after he dropped out of the race. “He called me on the phone and told me he was amazed,” Nixon wrote, “he hardly saw anyone he knew at Reagan’s rallies.” Nixon’s point was that Reagan was reaching a new and different crowd. And he wanted Mrs. Reagan to continue doing just that in her role of controlling invitations to the White House. Given the chance to invite someone from Wall Street or someone from Main Street, Nixon wrote, “take Main Street.”
He went on to discuss renovations at Blair House, hiring a new White House chef, and the importance of using Camp David “in the middle of the week as well as on weekends.” Nixon ended the letter by again praising Mrs. Reagan: “You look like a first lady, act like first lady and talk like first lady. You will bring beauty, class, and dignity to the White House.”1
Meanwhile, Nixon—and the nation—prepared for Inauguration Day on January 29. The Reagan presidency began differently than other presidencies. Under the advice and counsel of Mike Deaver, Reagan decided to hold the inauguration on the west side of the U.S. Capitol. Rather than staring at the Supreme Court building like so many of his predecessors, Reagan would look out on the vast expanse of the National Mall. The symbolism was not lost on the Reagan team—early Americans had often pointed their rocking chairs toward the West to sit back and look toward the future. Now, the oldest president ever elected up to that time would look West as he spoke of American renewal.
That renewal would have a strong conservative bent to it. “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problems,” Reagan said, clearly referencing the staggering inflation and recession facing Americans at home. He said that “government is the problem.” The new president suggested that limited government was t
he future of American government: “From time to time, we have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?”
Near the climax of the speech, Reagan waxed poetic, saying that those who believed there were no heroes left in America “just don’t know where to look.” The speech—and the subsequent announcement that the Iranians were releasing the hostages—provided just the beginning the new administration wanted.
Nixon was quiet about the speech in public. Privately, he had offered some suggestions to Reagan staffers. And one of the main speechwriters who worked with Reagan was Ken Khachigian.
Nixon undoubtedly approved of the speech and clearly appreciated Reagan’s gifts as a communicator. And he also saw that one of those most responsible for Reagan's carefully crafted image was Mike Deaver. Deaver had served Reagan in California and many considered him to be a master of political stagecraft. Deaver was famous for his image wizardry. But the unassuming, longtime political aide always downplayed his genius. “I didn’t make Reagan,” he would tell people, “Reagan made me.” Deaver also liked to joke that his only role in staging Reagan was to “light” him well and fill up “the space around the head.” Reagan did all the rest. Nixon quickly began cultivating a relationship with the publicity wizard. Memos and letters came forth from his New York office that provided Deaver with many suggestions, including a unique idea that Nixon developed to capitalize on Reagan’s communication skills.
Nixon had suffered from his own shortcomings as a public speaker, most famously in the debates with Kennedy in 1960. So he reveled in the fact that the GOP standard-bearer possessed a unique ability to communicate big ideas in simple ways.
After the Fall Page 12