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

by Shirley, Craig

  Standing at the back of the hall, taking it all in, were Jim and Patti Roberts. Jim said later, “You had a feeling that history was being made there.”75

  FOLLOWING THE CONFLAGRATION, THE parking lot outside the school was littered with Bush campaign stickers and posters that Bush volunteers, called “Bushwhackers,” had discarded.76 After the debate, Teeley told Bush, “The bad news is that the media is playing up the confrontation. The good news is that they're ignoring the debate, and you lost that too.”77 Sears, proud of the riot of which he was the architect, stood off to the side and sardonically told a reporter, “We're just trying to be party unifiers.”78 For a politico like Sears with an appreciation for high drama, it didn't get any better than this. Hannaford said Sears was “smiling like the Cheshire cat.”79

  The Nashua Four retired to the school's Band Room, where they were met by a mob of media and joyously bashed Bush. Dole was the ringleader of the exiled four. Bush “wants to be king,” Dole said. “I told him onstage there'll be another day.”80 Actually, he had leaned into Bush and loudly whispered, “I'll get you someday, you fucking Nazi!”81 Dole had also jammed a finger in Jim Baker's chest, promising retribution. Speaking to the media, he said that Bush “better find himself another Republican Party.”82 He even compared the hated Bush to the “Gestapo” and “Hitler's Germany.”83 Phil Crane made similarly dark references, intoning, “Shades of the beer-halls.”84 John Anderson joined in the Bush-bashing fun, saying, “He's awfully easily embarrassed for a man who aspires to sit in the Oval Office and deal with the leaders of the world.”85 Reporters had never seen the normally placid Howard Baker so mad. The four excluded candidates praised Reagan even though he hadn't asked for their participation until a few hours before the debate.

  Nearly all the contenders had their own reasons for not liking Bush long before the Nashua debate. This night only exacerbated the bad blood. With Dole, the problem was cultural; Dole had grown up poor and resented people born of wealth. With Connally, it was Texas stuff. With Baker, it was because Bush had usurped his moderate position in the race. With Reagan, it was ideological, but had also become personal after all the age innuendos.

  At midnight, Reagan was still so steamed that he called Howard Baker into his hotel room to vent about Bush.86

  Though the event had not been televised live, the networks and local news ran footage, repeatedly, of a frozen Bush and the booming Reagan. New Hampshire had 482,415 voters, and most of them probably saw the film at least once.87 Bill Loeb joyously editorialized that Bush looked “like the little boy who thinks his mother may have dropped him off at the wrong birthday party.”88

  Bush never knew what hit him. Shell-shocked, he kept muttering, “I kept my commitment. I kept my word.”89

  The next morning Senator Baker went on Meet the Press and called Bush “arrogant.” Going further, Baker said, “If he is the front-runner in this race, he's wearing his crown without much grace.”90 Bush's New Hampshire chairman Hugh Gregg said Senator Baker was “lying through his teeth.”91

  Sears later expressed his surprise that Bush froze under pressure so easily. Embittered years later, he also said he thought the reason Reagan was so charged up was that to him it was a “movie scene.”92 The comment was ludicrous on its face.

  WHILE THE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES had brought a surge of excitement to the New Hampshire primary, the Democratic race had far less drama. A final poll just before primary day showed Carter smashing Kennedy, 55 to 30 percent. Brown was stuck in single digits.93 Kennedy's long-gone chartered 727, dubbed “Air Malaise,” had cost thousands of dollars a day to operate. He would henceforth travel by commercial plane, or small, cheap charters—or by bus. Dozens of staffers were taken off the campaign's payroll.

  The only thing Kennedy seemed to have left was a sense of humor. At a sparsely attended event, he turned to the press and joked, “Record crowds!” His campaign bus's theme song was “Take It Easy” by the Eagles. Kennedy had no choice.94

  On the eve of the New Hampshire primary, Carter had more than $2 million cash in hand while Kennedy had less than $250,000.95 Carter had been helped by contributions from avant-garde artist Andy Warhol and media baron Ted Turner, who thoughtfully sent $2,000 even though only $1,000 was allowable by law.96

  The media would not let Chappaquiddick rest. Voters in New Hampshire did not often bring up the subject, but a young high school student asked Kennedy how he could be trusted in a “crisis when he didn't report for nine hours his automobile accident.” The audience and media went dead. Kennedy paused in the embarrassing silence, then spoke in quiet tones about the many losses in his life. Afterward a reporter approached the student, Bruce Lary, for his response to Kennedy's answer. “I didn't think it was really an answer. I've been under a lot of stress, too. I've lost some family, too, but that doesn't make me qualified to be president.”97

  Out of the mouths of babes.

  10

  REAGAN ROMPS

  “They finally got Rasputin, didn't they?”

  There was a renewed bounce in Ronald Reagan's step after Nashua as he joyously hopscotched the Granite State in the final hours before the primary. Fresh in his mind was the lesson he had learned four years earlier, when he followed Hugh Gregg's advice to leave the state for the two days right before the primary and ended up losing by a razor-thin margin to Gerald Ford. “I'm not going to make that mistake this time,” the Gipper vowed to an aide.1

  Reagan was as firmly planted in the state as a stout maple tree. Over the final thirteen days, he spent ten of those in New Hampshire.2 The Washington Post's David Broder said it “was one of the most phenomenal pieces of personal campaigning I have ever seen.”3 Reporters on Reagan's bus, exhausted at the pace of a man twice their age, hung a sign that read, “Free the Reagan 44.”4

  Incredibly, George Bush did no personal campaigning in the state for the last seven days other than to appear at the two debates.5 Gregg, now running Bush's campaign, was afraid to change plans in the wake of the Nashua debate debacle, fearing it would look as though they'd panicked.

  Gregg was known for his temper but also a wry sense of humor. He once published a book titled All I Learned About Politics; all of the pages were blank. It was a joke, but the anecdote should have been a cautionary tale for Bush. Bush might also have taken note of the fact that Gregg had lost seven successive elections as either a candidate or a manager.

  Instead, Bush took Gregg's advice—he left the state after the Nashua debate and went back to Houston for the Sunday and Monday before the primary. He was imprudently photographed jogging in shorts, in the warm Texas sun, while Granite Staters were shoveling snow off their driveways and sidewalks, or shivering in their cold cars awaiting some heat.6 The contrast was anything but helpful for Bush.

  While Reagan tried to stay above the fray, joshing that the Nashua debate had been “kinda a fiasco,” the other candidates didn't mind taking the low road against Bush.7 Bob Dole, never at a loss, said that Bush “treated us like dirt under his feet.”8 From Chicago, John Connally piled on and said that Bush had displayed “pettiness and immaturity” in Nashua.

  Gregg angrily told reporters, “It is obvious to me that this was a calculated strategy engineered by Ronald Reagan to embarrass George Bush.” What was less obvious was why Bush's men let their candidate fall for the “calculated strategy.” Reporters, smelling fresh ink, carried Gregg's charges to Reagan after he'd gone to church, and he did not disappoint: “Mr. Gregg must be feeling very desperate right at this moment because Mr. Gregg knows that this is a lie.”9

  Gregg had been snookered by Jerry Carmen to an extent, but also by his own stubbornness. The afternoon of the debate, Carmen went to Gregg and told him that Reagan was going to open the forum unless Bush put up half the money. Gregg told Carmen to go to hell. In doing so, Gregg gave the Reagan team the moral fig leaf it wanted to invite the four excluded candidates.

  Years later, Carmen said that the Bush team had attempted a bluff of its o
wn. The Bush people had hoped that Reagan would not go onstage if he couldn't bring the other four candidates into the debate, and that Bush would win the night and the bragging rights. “I think they thought we weren't coming in,” said Carmen. If Reagan had backed off as he originally wanted, “it would have been a disaster,” he added.10

  The Nashua Telegraph attempted to draw some fire away from Bush by issuing a statement saying that even if Bush had agreed to allow the others to participate, the paper would have halted the event.11 But Jon Breen had said just a day earlier that Bush's people had told him they would be comfortable with a change in the format.12 Gregg also issued a terse, two-page, singled-spaced chronology of his version of events. Bush released a letter at a press conference in Houston explaining to the Nashua Four his version of events and apologizing to them. “Reagan … never had the courtesy to contact me. Frankly, I feel he used you to set me up.”13 The Telegraph, heavily invested on Bush's side, ran an unflattering photo of Reagan, and its account of the actual debate said that the two men had disagreed on little.14 One had to wonder whether the reporter had covered a different debate.

  Not even John Sears could have scripted that Bush would have frozen like a cigar-store Indian or that Reagan would respond so forthrightly. If Bush had been more nimble, he could have easily trumped Reagan by simply welcoming the other candidates. He would have earned points for his magnanimity. Bush's blunder was serendipitous for Reagan, who had up to this point been on a long streak of bad luck. It could not have come at a better time for the Gipper. Just that morning, Tom Wicker, in his New York Times column, confidently predicted that Bush would win the New Hampshire primary unless “Reagan mortally wounds him in their … debate tonight.” What Wicker didn't foresee was that Bush might just mortally wound himself.15

  Gregg whimpered that all the other candidates were ganging up on Bush. Bush himself said Monday morning on ABC's Good Morning America, “I'm worried about Reagan. I think he sandbagged me frankly.”16 John Anderson called Bush's charges the “petulant response of a spoiled child.”17 Of Bush's post-debate comments, Reagan said grimly, “I thought better of him.” Red flags should have gone up in Bush's campaign at this statement by the Gipper.18

  Bush was taking knocks from all sides. Conservative publications such as Human Events were leveling Bush. For months, Bill Loeb had been softening up Ambassador Bush in one long account after another in the Union-Leader. Lurid stories of power, access, and money used phrases like “Bush has been a loser,” “Texas oil millionaire,”19 and Loeb's favorite standby, “elitist preppy.” Loeb also loved to torment Bush over the Trilateral Commission. In response, the Brahmin spluttered, “It just boggles my mind when I pick up newspapers and have allegations that I would belong to some conspiratorial organization. It simply isn't true.”20

  Bush's campaign wasn't paranoid. Everybody on Earth—or at least in New Hampshire—was out to get him, or so it seemed to his demoralized supporters. On Monday, Bush said from Houston, “I have been under constant attack in New Hampshire.”21 The Saturday before the primary, Loeb ran an editorial under the heading, “God Had Chosen Reagan to Lead Us.”22 Apparently even Heaven was now against Bush, at least according to Loeb.

  On the day of the primary, Bush bought a front-page ad in Loeb's paper, trying to soften the hammering he'd been getting from the old yellow journalist. The Union-Leader was one of the few papers in America in which front-page ads could still be purchased. Bush attempted some levity: “Sure I have a sense of humor; Bill Loeb's editorials always give me a kick!” It was to no avail. That day three Loeb editorials were headlined “Only a Bush Leaguer,” “George Bush Is a Liberal,” and “George Can Return to China with Ron in the White House.”23 Five of the newspaper's front-page stories either assaulted Bush or praised Reagan. A flattering picture of Mrs. Reagan awarding a sled-dog championship also appeared on the front page.

  JIMMY CARTER HAD NOT put one wet foot in New Hampshire, while Ted Kennedy was sloshing around the state, grubbing for votes. In the warmth of the White House, the president entertained the American Olympic gold medal hockey team.

  Joan Kennedy had gained a great deal of confidence on the hustings. Since beating her alcoholism she looked radiant and exuded confidence, even as her husband's campaign was about to be buried under Avalanche Carter. Unfortunately, Mrs. Kennedy was constantly peppered with questions about their personal life and she kept repeating, “The state of our marriage is excellent.”24

  On Monday, February 25, the day before the vote, Reagan put in an eleven-hour day of campaigning and told supporters late that night, “I'm going to sleep well tonight.”25 He didn't take any chances, though, going out the next day and campaigning right down to the wire. He and Mrs. Reagan returned to their hotel late on Tuesday afternoon and Nancy wryly asked someone whether “they had a good remedy for a tummy ache” because she was headed to their room “to be nervous.”26

  After months of surviving on caffeine, nicotine, and adrenaline, Jerry Carmen likewise had frayed nerves. “The next 22-year-old snot that comes up to me is going to get his face pushed in,” he stormed. He ordered a Reagan advance man out of his offices, threatening to call the police and the Union-Leader “to take the picture.”27 Carmen in calm moments was amiable. When riled, he swore like a longshoreman.

  Most in the media thought the Reagans had good reason to be nervous and aggravated. Political observers felt that Bush still had the momentum and that the Nashua debate contretemps had come too late to help Reagan. Characteristic was the piece that E. J. Dionne of the New York Times wrote on primary day. Dionne praised Bush's ability to “transcend the factional fights that so roiled” the Republican Party in previous contests, and speculated that “the Reagan camp may be too late” in attempting to regain the offensive.28

  Two of the few journalists who did see movement toward Reagan and away from Bush were Rowly Evans and Bob Novak in their syndicated column, published just one day before the primary. They had hired Carter's pollster, Pat Cad-dell, to do private polling for them. Caddell had gone into the town of Derry to sample GOP opinion. Bush was seen as just too “fuzzy” on the issues, while many liked Reagan and his positions. Of the sixty-two interviewed, fully thirty-nine planned on voting for the Gipper and only twelve for Bush.29

  Some Bush aides fretted for the first time that the Nashua debate may have altered the dynamics of the race. Jim Baker second-guessed himself and said aloud that he wished Bush had met with the other candidates.

  The first balloting on Tuesday, February 26, came in from Dixville Notch, whose two dozen cranky citizens voted—as was their peculiar custom every four years since 1960—beginning one minute after midnight. The tiny village was located high in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, only twenty miles from the Canadian border, and one had to question the sanity of these people going out in the subfreezing temperatures of midnight, deep into the February winter. For the other three years and 364 days, no one thought of Dixville Notch, but for one day—well, for a few hours on the morning of the New Hampshire primary—everybody following the results knew about Dixville Notch. Indeed, there were three times as many reporters on hand in the little town as there were people voting. Cameras whirred as the people went into the flag-covered voting booth in the Balsams Hotel.30

  Reagan had lost to Ford in Dixville Notch four years earlier. When the ballots were counted this time around, Reagan initially won with six votes, followed by Bush with five votes, and Baker with four. Then a miscount was discovered and one vote was taken away from Reagan, so he and Bush tied in the metropolis of Dixville Notch.31 When the reporters interrupted their late-night drinking in Manchester and Concord to learn of Bush's tie with Reagan there, it indicated to them that he hadn't been sufficiently damaged in Nashua and that the primary would be close, just as they had all written.

  On the Democratic side, Carter won Dixville again, just as he had four years earlier, beating Kennedy in a landslide, three votes to two.32

 
ON THE DAY OF the New Hampshire primary, the ever-rumpled Carmen, who had slept only a few hours, said that the past week had been “the first good week we've had since Iowa,” but that “Bush is widely regarded to be slightly ahead of Reagan.” Indeed, yet another ballyhooed weekend poll had Bush up over Reagan by 6 points in the Granite State.33

  Bush's people had to the end been pushing the envelope, suggesting to the media that when “the Ambassador” won New Hampshire, the other candidates, low on money, would collapse, including Reagan. More clear-thinking operatives not associated with any campaign said, “That's the kind of stuff, late at night, it's fun to drink and dream about.”34 Still, a new poll covering four southern states—South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Alabama—had Bush leading Reagan, 42–36, and reporters drew the obvious conclusions.35