Barrett elaborated on Bush's antipathy toward the Right: “One night … he told a few of us, ‘I despise it. It's terrible the way I've been abused. You'd think the national press would have been more indignant over this sort of thing. It's—well, it's anti-intellectual, that's what it is. It's worse than the Birch stuff. And Reagan acquiesces—like he did when his people used it against my son George.’”14 Bush was not one to let bygones be bygones. The Kennedys had little on the Bushes. The latter kept an unwritten “Enemies List” and checked it more than twice. Bush bitterly remembered years later how conservatives in his home state of Connecticut had attacked his father, Senator Prescott Bush.
He also resented having been passed over for the vice presidency three times in the space of three years—first by Richard Nixon in October 1973, after the resignation of Spiro Agnew; then by Gerald Ford in August 1974, when the new president opted for former New York governor Nelson Rockefeller; and most recently at the 1976 GOP convention, when Ford picked Bob Dole as more acceptable to the conservatives who dominated the convention. Reporter Jules Witcover, in his book about the 1976 campaign, wrote that Ford had passed over Bush because “everyone knowledgeable in Republican politics considered Bush incompetent to be president.”15 The rebuke stung Bush. He'd seen Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter at close range, and he believed they had nothing he didn't have.
Bush had been snubbed again in 1977, when Carter did not keep him on as CIA director, even after he had briefed the Georgian on covert intelligence and world affairs during the 1976 campaign and had heavily lobbied the incoming president to retain him as head spymaster. Bush loved the CIA; as director, he often signed his memos “Chief Spook.” The brass ring had repeatedly been dangled in front of him and then jerked back. It was enough to drive any man bonkers. Bush's quest for the White House seemed at times to be more about score settling and putting a capstone on his résumé than it was about bringing great ideas to the presidency.
GEORGE BUSH WASN'T THE only one who attacked Reagan in Iowa. The January 5 Des Moines Register debate took place before a live audience of 2,500 in the city's new Civic Center, was covered by more than 150 local and national reporters, and was broadcast live on PBS and tape-delayed for later broadcast on the CBS network. While Reagan was at his home in Pacific Palisades in sunny California, a thousand miles from the cold and mud of Iowa, the other six GOP aspirants pummeled the absentee Reagan throughout the course of the two-hour debate. Senator Dole said, “Ronald Reagan, wherever you are, I hope you're having fun.”16 Each candidate was asked individually where he differed with Reagan, and all did so with relish, especially John Connally. Fatuously, Connally said he had no idea where Reagan stood on the issues. He also said that they needed to do a few more debates to “smoke him out.”17 Charles Gibson, reporting for ABC, noted that “the only jabs were at Reagan.”18 All the candidates did well, save the one who didn't bother to show up. Everybody in Iowa now knew that Reagan had snubbed them.19
Dole and Bush were forced to sit next to each other in the setting, which did not make them happy, as they had nothing but contempt for each other. In character, during the debate, Dole needled Bush for losing a Senate race in Texas.
Fortunately, Dole was between Connally and Bush, which kept the two Texans from possibly coming to blows, as Bush and Connally detested each other even more than Bush and Dole did.
Before the debate, Bond, Bush's Iowa coordinator, had told the Washington Post that the debate “may hurt someone but I don't think it will help anyone very much.”20 Truer words were never spoken, and Reagan quickly found out how much he was hurt by not appearing. The Los Angeles Times took Reagan to task in an editorial, saying that “many should and will characterize his absence as a cowardly attempt to maintain a lead in the polls.”21 Reagan was steamed; he hated it when anyone challenged his manhood or his intelligence. Everybody was ripping into Reagan—David Yepsen at the Des Moines Register, Mike Glover at the Associated Press, all the local radio stations. “The media just went berserk,” Bond recalled. “Nobody defended him.”22
The day after the debate, while all the other candidates were squeezing as much campaigning into Iowa as possible, Reagan spent a single day in New Hampshire, whose primary was seven weeks off.
John Sears kept Reagan away from Iowa but arranged a three-day issues briefing for the candidate. The sessions, which started at 9 A.M. and usually finished by mid-afternoon, featured some thirty policy advisers, who briefed Reagan on all matters of national policy, from economics to trade to armaments. Participants included Art Laffer and Jack Kemp on economics, and Ken Khachigian, who had recently come aboard as a consultant to help Reagan with agricultural issues. Kemp aide Dave Smick kept getting peppered with notes from Congressman David Stockman, who was in the lobby, trying to horn in on the briefings.23
Smick was appalled at how little respect Sears and some of the others showed for Reagan behind his back. He did, however, remember Sears saying that Reagan's political instincts were “phenomenal … and that will carry him through.”24
Reagan mostly listened during the briefings but sometimes asked questions. He came out of the meetings with stepped-up attacks on Carter. He began by urging the president to aid the “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan who were trying to dislodge the invading Soviet army.
On January 11, the Des Moines Register released a new poll showing that Reagan's support among GOP voters had plunged from 50 percent in December to 26 percent; Howard Baker went from 7 percent to 18 percent; Bush zoomed up from only 3 percent to 17 percent, just 9 points behind Reagan.25 But Sears still saw Connally as Reagan's main competitor, and he remained unconcerned about Iowa. He rationalized that with such a big and diverse field, no one could get Reagan into a one-on-one contest early. “If we win Iowa, New Hampshire, Massachusetts … we'll have eliminated everybody and it will be a two-man race.”26
Though he was mostly avoiding Iowa, Reagan did find time to go to New York to appear on Bill Buckley's TV debate program Firing Line.27 He also sat down with the New York Times for a long interview. The questions ranged far and wide—from SALT II to energy to the federal government's Alaska land grab, which had prevented millions of acres from being explored for natural resources—and Reagan answered each with great detail and knowledge. He argued forcefully for returning authority and power to the states, demonstrating his refined understanding of federalism and conservatism. He was asked, “Do you favor a tax cut in 1980?” and with blue eyes twinkling, Reagan responded, “I favor tax cuts any time.”28
Anybody who took the time to read the interview with Reagan would have discovered a cultured, thoughtful, and articulate conservative whose clarity of thinking had only been sharpened by his experiences and omnivorous reading. Reagan's supporters griped that it was too bad this thinking man had not bothered to go to the Des Moines debate. Reagan's enemies were not about to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Bush, who had campaigned mainly by commercial travel for two years, traded up for a chartered Learjet that seated twenty and had a shower and, even more important, a bar. Leasing a private plane was a sure sign that a campaign was catching fire. His paid staff had grown to 215; most were in Alexandria, Virginia, across the Potomac from Washington, but 50 salaried staffers were toiling in Iowa. Each night, 300 volunteers and 60 paid locals worked the phones, calling Republicans in Iowa, exhorting them to support Ambassador Bush.29 Jim Wooten of ABC reported that the hardworking Bush had “fifty-seven stops scheduled in the next week.”30
On the other side of the aisle, Carter, like Reagan, had ducked the Des Moines debate, but it was to his benefit. Carter was smashing Kennedy, 57 percent to 25 percent, in surveys of Democrats in Iowa.31 Kennedy shifted tactics, telling reporters that unless Carter got 50 percent in Iowa, it would be a “major setback.” Reporters smirked behind their notepads at Teddy.
The less Carter campaigned, the more presidential he seemed and the more he went up in the polls. The les
s Reagan campaigned, the less courageous he seemed and the more he dropped. “Behaving almost as though he were an incumbent President,” a reporter noted, “the former California governor visited Iowa rarely.”32 But Reagan was not an incumbent president. Voters, derided by some of the unblinking lizards who called themselves “campaign consultants,” were a lot smarter than given credit for by these cold-blooded mercenaries. They clearly understood the important difference between holding the office and seeking the office. Carter was being rewarded for his “Rose Garden strategy” and Reagan was being punished for his.
Iowa's GOP voters were not mollified when Reagan made an abbreviated appearance in the state in mid-January. His Iowa tour did not go well. The media saw it as a panicky move, designed to stop his “severe erosion.”33 “One signal to emerge from all this,” reported John Laurence with ABC News, “is that Reagan seems to be slipping not only in the polls but in his ability to concentrate as well. Even with his notes he has been having difficulty putting complicated new issues into understandable language.”34
Reagan had also been to Florida and to South Carolina, to blunt the Connally effort there. One newspaper report said that he'd held “2,500 people spellbound” at an event in Florida.35 Unfortunately, none of these folks would be voting in the Iowa caucuses.
HOWARD BAKER WAS UNDER no illusions about his chances. He knew his organization paled when compared with Bush's. He managed expectations, telling reporters, “Right now Reagan and Bush are ahead of me and Bush may be ahead of Reagan.… I wouldn't be surprised at all to see George make a serious challenge of Gov. Reagan.”36 Baker's campaign was faltering, but he was a disciplined man. In getting ready for the Senate Watergate hearings in 1973, Baker had lost twenty pounds in preparation through an unusual diet: “protein … and resuming smoking.”37
Third place in the expectations game was getting crowded. Baker, Connally, and Dole all claimed they would come in third, while predicting Bush would come in first. Bush testily threw off the premature crown, and Reagan, showing weakness, openly said he'd do better in a primary than a caucus.38
The sharks of the national media smelled blood in the water. They began using words like “senility” and “staleness” when describing Reagan.39 Reporters questioned Reagan's “stamina” and mockingly nicknamed his campaign plane the Ponce de Leon after the explorer who vainly searched for the fountain of youth. On the plane, Reagan would sometimes wander back to the press section to josh reporters that he was still awake or get on the intercom and announce a “four hour disco party when we land.”40 But they were more interested in cutting up Reagan than cutting a rug.
Reagan was telling reporters he was “very cautiously optimistic” about the outcome in Iowa—this was a long way from the arrogance of his team just several weeks before.41 It was a bad time.
Two days before January 21, the Reagan campaign hit upon the bright idea that Reagan should return to his old radio station, WHO, for an appearance. WHO was no mom-and-pop operation; it was a clear-channel, 50,000-watt station. Trouble was, Reagan called in from New York, which got things off on the wrong foot. He called in fifteen minutes late, which made things even worse. Reagan had expected a softball interview with the morning hostess, Susan Bray, but she hurled one beanball after another at the candidate. “Why haven't you campaigned more in Iowa? Why didn't you come to the Iowa Republican debate? Why are you acting as a recluse? Are you trying to conserve your strength?”42
If that weren't enough, one Iowan called in and said to Reagan, “You don't sound like a young man.” For the fifteen minutes Reagan was missing, listeners were treated to commercials for George Bush (“We're going all the way,” cried Bush in the spot) and Bob Dole. During Reagan's disastrous interview, an ad ran for a magazine with articles on restoring “potency to men whose sex lives are over” along with “ten ways to grow healthier as you grow older.” The embarrassing show brought gales of laughter to the headquarters of other GOP candidates.43
Listening to the unmitigated failure, a Reagan aide shook his head and muttered the old conservative joke, “It's a Communist plot.”44
There was a small bright spot in his January schedule when Reagan spoke to a group of high school students in New Hampshire. He received two standing ovations from the kids. Sixteen-year-old Tommy Duprey was not deterred by the fact that he couldn't vote, saying, “We're going to be 18 in two years and if he's president, we can re-elect him.”45
IN A TESTAMENT TO the media's new regard for Bush, he was invited to appear on CBS's Face the Nation the day before the caucuses. Bush wisely refused to predict how Reagan would do in Iowa. He did tell the national audience, “But he's got to be stopped by me and he's got to be stopped before Illinois.”46 He was again talking more like a campaign manager than a presidential candidate. Bush missed his opportunity in the spotlight to talk about what he later derisively referred to as the “vision thing.” Indeed, he lamented to a reporter that voters didn't know about “all these fantastic credentials” he had on his résumé.47
Bush's operatives were telling reporters half-jokingly that a blizzard on Monday was what they needed, in order to keep Reagan's soft support at home. Bush was frenetically campaigning; he attended fifty-four events in the month of January alone.48 Connally decided to make a last-minute effort, spending more than $150,000 on television ads trying to catch up to Bush and Reagan.49 Big John was now actually deigning to meet the little people of Iowa. Bob Dole spoke “midwestern” better than anyone else in the campaign, but dogs just didn't go for this dog food. More embarrassing for Connally, on the eve of the caucuses he was also hit with lawsuits charging that he had stiffed campaign vendors for hundreds of thousands of dollars.50
ON THE DEMOCRATIC SIDE, Ted Kennedy was jetting hither and yon, making a last-minute bid in Iowa. His wife, Joan, accompanied him. She got good reviews for her poise and a good laugh when she asked a group to vote “for the future of the country and for the future of Teddy.” She gracefully defended her husband's behavior at Chappaquiddick.51
One of Kennedy's top lieutenants, Pat Lucey, the former governor of Wisconsin and until recently Carter's ambassador to Mexico, did his best to bring order to the stumbling campaign. Lucey was a Kennedy man through and through. He'd helped JFK in his crucial win in the Wisconsin primary in 1960 and had become close to the family. Still, he raised eyebrows when he abruptly left his diplomatic post in late 1979 to join Teddy's effort. Lucey's longtime political fixer, Paul Corbin, was small in stature but had often been at the center of big problems in American politics. Corbin had worked with Lucey in Wisconsin and caught Bobby Kennedy's attention, becoming the attorney general's political eyes and ears. Corbin now was naturally working on the campaign of RFK's younger brother.
Jerry Brown was campaigning in Iowa, but politicos considered his candidacy a punch line at this point. All the while Carter sat serenely above the fray, “acting presidential.” The economy was in the toilet, the Soviets had overrun Afghanistan and were threatening the West in other arenas, Americans were being held hostage by a crazed religious fanatic in Iran, inflation was high, unemployment was high, gas prices were high, gold was at more than $500 per ounce, and American morale had bottomed out.52 Carter had a nearly 60 percent approval rating. Go figure.53
BEGINNING AT 8 O'CLOCK on the windswept, wintry night of January 21, Iowa Republicans turned out in 2,531 precinct caucuses, which took place in churches, schools, bars, and living rooms, to begin the process of picking delegates to county conventions. Who in turn would pick delegates to go to congressional district conventions. Who in turn would pick delegates to go to the state convention. Who in turn would pick thirty-seven delegates to go to the national GOP convention. There was also a nonbinding straw poll, and it was on this that everybody's attention was focused.
Reagan had made radio commercials encouraging a big turnout. There was a big turnout—indeed a record turnout. Steve Roberts, the state GOP chairman, had thought that about 55,000 Republicans would sh
ow up. He was off by only 51,000. This rush of caucus voters ironically did Reagan in.54
The night of the caucuses, while Bush was squeezing the last bit of media coverage out of his foray into the Hawkeye State, Reagan was in Los Angeles, at home having dinner with friends and then watching a private screening of the new movie Kramer vs. Kramer.55 The movie was about an ugly divorce and many saw it as a metaphor for the state of the Reagan-Sears marriage.
Sears called the Reagans that night to tell them the stunning news that Bush had won the caucuses. “They took it not well,” he later said.56 Reporter Lou Cannon said that the Reagans were “shattered” by the loss in Iowa.57 Sears also called syndicated columnist Pat Buchanan and complained that Reagan had been using the same stump speech for the past year, even though the Gipper had barely been out in that time.58
Bush had not only upset Reagan but had left all the other Republican candidates in the dust. Howard Baker won the fight for third place with about 15 percent of the vote. Poor Bob Dole brought up the rear with a humiliating 1.5 percent.59
All three networks broadcast live coverage of the Iowa caucuses and Bush was seen all across the nation, with a slightly dazed look, in a room full of shrieking kids who looked as if they had just stepped out of a J. Press catalogue. One reporter said Bush “acted like a Yale undergraduate after the Elis had beaten Harvard.”60
Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America Page 15