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

by Shirley, Craig

  And she was becoming more and more concerned about Sears.

  TOWARD THE END OF September, Reagan improved his financial situation by raking in more than $175,000 in one fell swoop at a dinner in New Jersey organized by Ray Donovan, owner of a construction company.26 Donovan went on to become Reagan's beleaguered secretary of labor, but that would come later. For this one night, Donovan was a champ.

  Reagan got an unexpected boost when his onetime aide Jeff Bell came back aboard the campaign. Bell, who had worked with Reagan from the early '70s right through the 1976 campaign, had been nursing a bruised ego since 1978, when Reagan refused to endorse him in his New Jersey Senate primary bid, which he won. Bell, in a fit of pique, refused Reagan's offer to come to New Jersey to campaign for him and asked Ford to do so instead.27 Bell lost the general election, hooked up with a New York think tank, and became a charter member of the “supply-side mafia” of Jack Kemp, Art Laffer, Jude Wanniski, and Bob Novak. Now all was forgiven and Bell was back with Reagan. Bell would eventually take on a difficult and challenging part of the campaign, one that would help Reagan at a time when it looked as if all was lost.28

  Although November 1 had tentatively been declared as the day of Reagan's formal announcement, the date was pushed back to November 13. The campaign had hoped to have a cash stockpile of around $4 million by the time of the declaration, but those plans were now inoperative. Just as bad, all three networks had turned down Reagan's request to purchase a half hour of broadcast time for the night of his announcement. It wasn't clear that the campaign could afford it anyway. The campaign had no recourse, as the networks had also turned down President Carter's similar request. The unwritten rule was to not sell any time to candidates before 1980.29

  Although Reagan had lost the Iowa straw poll by a wide margin, amazingly he did not show when the Hawkeye State's GOP held its annual fundraising dinner in October. Every other candidate did. Sears told reporters, “The obligation of a frontrunner is to keep moving ahead. They can't hurt you as long as you're moving.”30

  Many observers thought Sears's strategy was ridiculous, and some saw it as dangerous. Reagan had deep roots and many friends in Iowa. In the 1930s, he'd become a local celebrity in Des Moines broadcasting on WHO radio and had returned many times to speak, including while he was on the “mashed potato” circuit. The Gipper had as much a claim on Iowa's Republicans as anybody—more than most—but he blew the chance to romance four thousand hard-core activists attending the box dinner.

  George Bush won yet another Iowa straw poll, impressively, garnering almost 36 percent of the vote. Connally was a poor second at 15 percent. Bob Dole came in third, just behind Connally, though he had purchased hundreds of tickets for his “supporters” and should have gotten a far higher vote total. Reagan was a poor fourth, with 11 percent.31 Bush's showing seemed extraordinary to everyone … except Sears and those in the Reagan high command. Bush was throwing a right hook and Reagan was about to lean into it.

  Bush's young organizer in Iowa, Rich Bond, was exultant, gloating over Bush's win and Reagan's loss. Only twenty-nine, Bond was a brash, intense New Yorker and a huge fan of Bush's. In fact, Bond had started a scrapbook about Bush after meeting him seven years earlier. The young man was providing for his new wife, Valerie—a widow who had been married to Bond's closest friend—and for Valerie's four-year-old son. To save money, Bond lived in Ames, forty miles outside of Des Moines.32

  Bond had been hired by Dave Keene. When Bush campaign manager Jim Baker had expressed cultural and ideological qualms about the liberal Republican from New York City, Keene said, “That's true … He also is so ambitious and hungry that he would kill his mother for the main chance and Iowa is the main chance.”33

  Bond assembled a political version of an Amway distributorship, with each person in the chain expected to recruit more people. He was a taskmaster, holding staff meetings at 8 A.M., even kicking Bush's son Marvin, the family cutup, out of the office, as he was a distraction to Bond's volunteers. “Marvin wanted to leave the office at 5:00, go to Vicky's Pour House, shoot pool and drink beer,” Bond remembered. Jeb Bush was more helpful and was a hit with the College Republicans. All the Bush sons—Marvin, Jeb, and George W., the few times he came in for his father—slept on the couch at Bond's Ames apartment.34

  George Bush was precisely following the plan executed by Carter four years earlier, but the Reagan team did not alter its approach one bit in Iowa. Sears consoled himself and the Reagans with some polling, which showed Reagan with handsome leads in Iowa and New Hampshire. In a Boston Globe poll, Reagan had 50 percent of the GOP primary vote in the Granite State.35 What's to worry?

  THE HAMLET-LIKE GERALD FORD made a seemingly firm decision not to seek the 1980 GOP nomination. He had barnstormed the country for two weeks in the fall of 1979 and then, in early October, met with five key supporters at his home in Rancho Mirage, California. Attending were Dean Burch, an old GOP hand; Bob Teeter, his pollster from 1976; John Marsh, a former White House aide; Stu Spencer, his chief strategist in 1976; and Dick Cheney, his former chief of staff and now a first-term congressman from Wyoming. Teeter's presence was odd, because he'd signed up with Bush's campaign months earlier. Teeter was from Michigan, like Ford, and was a moderate like Ford. This wasn't the first or the last time that Teeter would choose Ford over Bush, even while Bush was paying him. The group told Ford, in no uncertain terms, that if he wanted to be president, he would have to run in the primaries. Ford balked.36

  Ford was still steadfastly opposed to a Reagan nomination and made it clear that he was available for a draft. He told his friends and supporters at the meeting and around the country to support anyone else, as long as it was not Reagan. George Bush and Howard Baker breathed a sigh of relief. Ford's retreat meant they would benefit from the release of those moderate voters waiting for the old Wolverine to jump in.37

  Baker had carefully planned for an early win in the straw poll at the Maine state convention in Portland on the first weekend of November. He announced for president just two days before, in a mostly downbeat statement about America and the future. Baker had the support of his Senate colleague Bill Cohen of Maine.38 Curiously, although Bush had spent most of the summers of his life just down the road in Kennebunkport, his campaign made little apparent effort in the Maine straw poll. He drove to the convention hall with only one lowly aide and his daughter, Doro, while Baker arrived with a plane full of national journalists, all ready to capture the moment when Baker won and solidified his position as the alternative to Reagan.39

  Bush, though, gave a rousing speech that brought the crowd to its feet several times. Baker's speech did not go well. Bush, apparently not expecting to win, departed for Houston before the counting began. Baker waited anxiously for the voting. Alas for him, he lost narrowly, with 33 percent to Bush's 35 percent, and Bush grabbed the Sunday morning headlines across the country. The media had appointed Baker as the “thinking man's” alternative to Reagan, but they forgot to tell the Maine Republicans. A chagrined Baker appeared before the media and told them, “I have to move out of second.”40 He had, but in the wrong direction. Baker was dealt a severe blow, and would never be much of a factor again.

  Reagan had not appeared in Portland for the event—as usual—and got a pathetic 7 percent of the vote.41 Bush was on a roll, having won three straw polls in a row. The political establishment was beginning to take a closer look at Ambassador Bush.

  REAGAN FINALLY PLUNGED INTO the campaign on November 13, 1979. Rather than launching his last quest for the GOP nomination from California or Dixon, Illinois, he made his announcement in New York City at a gala fundraising dinner at the New York Hilton. The campaign chose New York because it was still the media capital of the world, and because John Sears remained intent on wooing moderate northeastern Republicans. Sears invited some 250 neutral GOP political apparatchiks from the Northeast—state party heads, elected officials, and influential county chairmen.42

  The morning of the ann
ouncement, Reagan went on NBC's Today show to be interviewed by Tom Brokaw. The only thing Brokaw seemed interested in talking to Reagan about was … his age.43 By now, Reagan had become exasperated with the issue. He had joshed about his age for the past year or two, but he confided in private, “I've given all the light answers I can.”44 It didn't help that rival John Connally was taking an increasing number of shots at Reagan's age; columnist George F. Will wrote that “Connally's veiled references to Reagan's age … are nasty.”45 Connally's cutting remarks were making their way into political stories and columns, as political reporters like Tom Wicker of the New York Times frequently noted that Reagan's front-runner position was made tenuous “by the hazardous fact of Mr. Reagan's age—69 next year.”46 Frustrated, Reagan spluttered to reporters, “What am I supposed to do, skip rope through the neighborhood?”47

  That night at the Hilton, Reagan's old friend Jimmy Stewart introduced him to the dinner crowd with a short biographical film. The staff referred to the film as “Tarzan Reagan” because Reagan had been depicted working at the ranch without his shirt on, young advance man Jim Hooley recalled.48

  The packed hall of nearly two thousand included Bill Buckley and his wife, Pat, and many of the members of the Reagan Kitchen Cabinet. Ominously, Mike Deaver boycotted the event, a further sign of the internal deterioration of the campaign. In another indication of problems, only days before it had looked as if Reagan might announce before a half-filled ballroom; while some Reagan supporters paid $500 apiece to attend, campaign fundraisers had been forced to send out a last-minute telegram to those already attending, telling them that they could bring along a guest free.49

  Reagan took the podium. Many of the 250 reporters covering the event probably anticipated that his remarks would be yet another variation on what they referred to as “The Speech,” his milestone address for Barry Goldwater in 1964. Over the years, Reagan had endlessly polished the speech, all on four-by-six-inch index cards (not three-by-five, as the media often mistakenly said). Constantly updating the dozens upon dozens of index cards with new information from newspapers and letters, he would put the cards in a particular order for a particular group, varying things enough to keep the speech fresh. Always, though, Reagan's remarks advanced his philosophy of less government and more freedom.

  The media thought they had heard it all before. But this speech was fresh, bracing. The address concerned itself with the national mood. He spoke movingly of a loss of confidence in government in America; unlike Carter, he blamed not the American people but rather the government itself. He said that he saw America as “a living, breathing presence, unimpressed by what others say is impossible, proud of its own success; generous, yes, and naïve; sometimes wrong, never mean, always impatient to provide a better life for its people in a framework of a basic fairness and freedom.”50

  Later in the speech he proclaimed, “The crisis we face is not the result of any failure of the American spirit; it is failure of our leaders to establish rational goals and give our people something to order their lives by. If I am elected, I shall regard my election as proof that the people of the United States have decided to set a new agenda and have recognized that the human spirit thrives best when goals are set and progress can be measured in their achievement.”51 Reporters hadn't heard that before from Reagan.

  Reaching his peroration, Reagan did invoke a favorite phrase, saying that Americans had had a “rendezvous with destiny” ever since the moment in 1630 when John Winthrop told his followers, “We shall be a city upon a hill.” Reagan concluded, “A troubled and afflicted mankind looks to us, pleading for us to keep our rendezvous with destiny; that we will uphold the principles of self-reliance, self-discipline, morality, and, above all, responsible liberty for every individual; that we will become that shining city on a hill.”52 Reagan's address had been pitched to the media as less strident than many of his previous speeches. John Sears and others wanted the national media to see that Reagan was a seasoned, thoughtful leader in a time of dwindling American morale.

  The three networks stuck by their decision to withhold selling advertising time to any of the candidates. Reagan would have to settle for stringing together roughly eighty independent stations across the country, from which his campaign could purchase thirty minutes for his taped national address for the same night.53 All told, these stations hit around 80 percent of the country. CBS had sold two five-minute slots to Reagan, one for the morning and one for the evening.

  The Reagan speech was very good, with plenty of new content, and the candidate delivered it extremely well, even by his high standards. Yet reporters complained that they had a hard time getting their arms around it, charging that it lacked a central theme. Reagan just couldn't catch a break.

  THE NEXT DAY, REAGAN struck out on a five-day, twelve-city tour, accompanied by a contingent of Secret Service agents newly assigned to his campaign.54 Despite his intelligent delivery of good and substantive lines, there was great consternation and debate among some conservatives over the content and tone of the Reagan announcement. Had the moderates won the battle for the soul of Ronald Reagan? Had he lost his passion, his fire? What happened to bashing welfare queens and the Washington establishment?

  Some of the disgruntled conservatives had in fact been off the Reagan bandwagon for several years now, convinced that he'd sold out or was too old. Or perhaps they just resented that they had too little influence.

  At a press conference in Washington, Reagan announced that Congressman Jack Kemp would be the campaign's principal spokesman and the chairman of the “policy development committee.”55 Paul Laxalt had ably and tirelessly filled the role of spokesman in 1976, and had expected the role once again. But Sears saw Kemp as a means both to make inroads with northeastern Republicans and to lessen Laxalt's influence with Reagan. Laxalt, having put in thousands of hours for his friend in 1976, was deeply hurt by Sears's move.

  Kemp's role as the campaign's “chief spokesman” unnerved those in Reagan's camp who knew the independent-minded Kemp could be difficult to control.56 At the D.C. press conference, Kemp called the Gipper the “oldest and wisest of all the candidates who has embraced the youngest and freshest ideas.”57 The “oldest” comment did not sit well with Mrs. Reagan.

  Word was leaking out that Kemp had been Sears's original choice to be campaign chairman until Laxalt caught wind of it. Laxalt went to Nancy Reagan to plead his case, but he didn't have to; Laxalt was a favorite of Mrs. Reagan's and the feeling was mutual. He was also popular with the political media, more so than Kemp, who some saw as arrogant. Others in the campaign, including younger Reaganites such as Jeff Bell and Roger Stone, the campaign's Northeast director, were already touting Kemp as the natural running mate for Reagan. Kemp had ruled out a primary challenge to liberal Republican senator Jacob Javits, and many saw a Reagan-Kemp ticket as the California–New York “dream ticket” for the GOP in 1980. Kemp's chief aide, Dave Smick, thought Sears was greasing the skids for Kemp not only to go on the ticket but also to become a presidential candidate in his own right eight years later.58

  Reporters pressed Reagan on another issue: his refusal to do any joint appearances or debates with the other candidates, which was not sitting well with GOP voters. Reagan replied that he saw “no reason for a debate with other Republicans,” and that such events would be “divisive.”59 The decision to bypass the debates came from Sears, of course, and was just more evidence that the candidate was overprotected. If Reagan had appeared at a few, there would have been no discussion about his missing debates. But Reagan ducked all of them in 1979, and this was fine as far as the other candidates were concerned. They could squawk about Reagan ducking the debates, plant innuendos about his age and mental prowess, and not have to compete with him for media attention at each GOP “cattle show.” Sears scarily told reporters, “If we don't get licked early we don't get licked.”60 Problem was, what happened if Reagan did get “licked early”?

  Although Ford, once again, dropp
ed a hint that he might, just might, get into the race, citing “unforeseen circumstances,” he would not elaborate on what those might be. Clearly, he wanted to stop Reagan, but by dangling himself out there he was freezing potential money and support for Baker and Bush. Many moderate GOP governors were aching to organize a late-starting Ford campaign, yet Ford held back. Reagan was holding on to his tenuous first-place position.61

  Reagan's brief campaign for the GOP nomination in 1968 had begun badly and ended ignominiously. His campaign in 1976 had come out of the gate just as awkwardly, but finished magnificently though not victoriously. Now, once again, his drive for the GOP nomination was off to a blundering start, but the script had yet to be written for how this final grasp for the brass ring would end for Ronald Wilson Reagan.

  5

  THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRYSIDE

  “It's awfully hard to run a campaign in Iowa without the candidate here.”

  The Thanksgiving season greeted Ronald Reagan with more bad news. Despite Ted Kennedy's bumbling start, he was still overwhelmingly ahead of Reagan in the polls, 54–38 percent. Reagan was also losing to Carter, 48–42, according to Gallup.1 The twelve-city tour that had followed the Californian's announcement had received generally good but not excellent reviews. Squabbling among the staff continued. Alarms were being sounded about his operation in Iowa, but they were going unheeded. A partial survey in October of two-thirds of Iowa's ninety-nine county GOP chairmen found that 34 percent favored George Bush and 24 percent were for Dutch Reagan.2 Furthermore, the campaign was going deeper and deeper into debt.