Ronald Reagan headed for Milwaukee's South Side, where he gave a rousing speech in Serb Hall. Speaking at this ethnic Mecca had been a rite of passage for Democratic presidential candidates over many years but verboten for nearly all Republicans. That is, until Reagan. The joint was packed to the gills, the cold beer was only fifty cents, and the crowd was rockin' with Ronnie.
This section of Milwaukee was 100 percent Democratic, 100 percent Catholic, yet Reagan wowed 'em that night. It was on the eve of the Wisconsin primary, and although the phrase “Reagan Democrat” had not yet been coined, everybody was coming to understand the Gipper's appeal with these flag-waving Americans. A young Democrat, Robert Ponasik, stood on a chair furiously waving a handmade sign that proclaimed, “Cross Over for Reagan.”1 Of the reaction to Reagan in Serb Hall, Lynn Sherr of ABC reported, “In judging from the way they showed up at a long-time Democratic meeting hall … a large number of blue-collar voters could go for Reagan.”2
The white pages of the Milwaukee phone book were jammed with listings of people whose last names looked as if they'd gone through a Mixmaster. These were immigrants and first- and second-generation Serbs, Poles, Czechs, Russians, Ukrainians, Hungarians, and others who had escaped Stalin or Hitler and consequently were intensely anti-Communist and antisocialist. They were not the least bit interested in being dependent upon government. These Slavic-Americans were fiercely self-reliant and deeply patriotic. They loved America and many had already proven it in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Serb Hall was adorned with the names of ethnic Serbs who had fought and died for America.
There were no “fortunate sons” in these neighborhoods, and even if given the chance to avoid the military draft by joining the National Guard or gaining a college deferment, they would have scoffed. They had to go and fight or else their fathers would have knocked them through a wall.
These ethnics were Catholic and Eastern Orthodox, and as a matter of course intensely pro-life. They settled in the big and small cities of America: Youngstown and Cleveland, Ohio; Buffalo and Cortland, New York; and Milwaukee, where there was work and where the local political machines were reliably Democratic. The scions of the Republican Party didn't want these people with funny last names traipsing around their country clubs and private estates. Heavens to Betsy! These people drank cheap beer and ate kielbasa! Millions of Slavs who by their outlook if not their culture could or should have been Republicans were not, largely because the snobby Republicans didn't want them.
So they became Democrats, voting for Adlai Stevenson, LBJ, and in 1968, “Happy Warrior” Hubert Humphrey, whom they especially adored. In many of those Slavic Catholic homes, in a place of honor over the mantel were photos of their two heroes: John F. Kennedy and the pope. Many even supported George McGovern over the commie-bashing Richard Nixon in 1972.
In the 1960s and even earlier, the shrinking Republican Party in some northeastern and midwestern states had changed course and begun to open their primaries to Democrats and independents, hoping that doing so would make the practice of voting Republican more comfortable for the outsiders. Democrats responded in kind, allowing Republicans to vote in their primaries. In 1976, almost all the states Reagan won over Ford were with the help of Democrats crossing over to vote for him. No one really took notice of the phenomenon at the time, except some Ford supporters who complained vehemently that these people shouldn't be allowed in the front door of the GOP. A political party with only 18 percent support—falling apart at the seams—was complaining about people who wanted to come in to vote for Reagan.
Reagan spoke to these urban, ethnic Democrats in a way that no other politician had since JFK. He talked about community, responsibility, privacy, patriotism, the evils of Communism, and their children's future. Although Reagan was Protestant, his father had been Roman Catholic and he had inculcated in his young son a parish perspective. As an adult campaigner, the Gipper still preferred the pronouns “us” and “we” over “me” and “I,” and these voters loved him for it. He made them feel good about themselves and, by extension, America. “Reagan has a personal following all his own,” noted Time magazine.3
One member of that following was Muriel Coleman, who was organizing Wisconsin for Reagan. She'd been working in the Reagan scheduling office in Los Angeles, but was detailed to her native Wisconsin. She was one of many young conservatives who had walked their own separate path to Reagan. In 1967, an old beau had been killed in South Vietnam. At his military burial, she vowed to make it her life's goal to fight Communism however she could. She found her means to do so in conservative organizations and in Reagan's 1976 and 1980 campaigns. Coleman adored Reagan. When her father died, she got a handwritten letter from her hero. Later in Madison, as they were going to the airport in the back of a car, Coleman gave Reagan a thank-you note and suggested he read it on the plane. Reagan replied, “Well, can't I read it now?” Taken aback, she told him of course. Reagan read it and then reached for her hand. Their eyes brimmed with tears as they both thought about fathers.4
Later in the year, Coleman became an elector to the Electoral College. In 1981, she saw Reagan at the White House and told him she'd had the pleasure of voting for him three times in 1980, without once breaking the law. Reagan laughed with delight.5 Working with Coleman was Mike Grebe, a low-key but effective attorney in Milwaukee, and Joni Jackson, another longtime conservative activist in the Badger State. At one rally, the great ballplayer Sal Bando of the Brewers introduced Reagan.6
Restless Democrats in Wisconsin and elsewhere were ripe for Reagan's picking. By 1980 the fundamentals of America's economy and society had radically changed. Well-paying manufacturing jobs that allowed unskilled and semiskilled workers to enter the middle class had mostly dried up. Union membership was dwindling and the upheavals of the 1960s had left many traditional blue-collar Democrats alienated from society and from their party's intellectual elite. These reflexive Democrats in the heartland who had simply inherited their Democratic affiliation were tired of the party taking them for granted. Reagan, a product of the Great Depression himself, resonated with these voters on a profound, emotional level. In politics, timing is everything. A confluence of political and cultural factors ensured that, in this electoral season of discontent, Reagan's time had come.
The Washington Post assembled a focus group of voters in Albany, New York, to watch the television commercials of all the candidates. When the group viewed George Bush's commercials and heard the tagline, “A president we won't have to train,” they broke out in laughter.7 As for Reagan, the Post discovered an astonishing fact: the Gipper's commercials were more popular with Democrats than they were with Republicans. “Reagan's support among conservative, blue-collar Democrats has been one of the most underreported phenomena of the 1980 presidential race,” the Post noted.8 Reagan was pro–organized labor. He had proudly proclaimed in his autobiography, Where's the Rest of Me?, that he was a “rabid union man.”9
Journalists were truly amazed at how lifetime urban Democrats were going bonkers for Reagan, and they began to speculate that Reagan was no Goldwater. He could not only keep his base of motivated Republicans, he could invade Jimmy Carter's base of traditional Democrats as well. Reagan's Milwaukee coordinator, Louis Collison, grasped the phenomenon immediately: “Reagan has the same image as these people have of themselves.”10
Democrats at the grassroots were frustrated with the economy and the world situation. They believed that their party had become a tool of special interests. Reagan was “offering them a new home,” as Jack Germond and Jules Witcover wrote.11 This remarkable turn of events was noted in the White House. Carter's men recognized how well Reagan had done with Democratic crossover voters in Illinois, and suddenly they weren't so sure that they would knock the stuffing out of him. “To dismiss Ronald Reagan as a right-wing nut would be a very serious error—for us or anybody else,” one Carter aide admitted.12 At the end of March, Carter and Reagan were in a national dead heat, 45–44 percent, according to G
allup.13 Reagan was getting a lot of Democrats, because there weren't that many Republicans around, certainly not almost half the country.
For three years, Jimmy Carter had been waiting to catch Br'er Reagan. It looked as if Carter the fox had indeed caught what he wanted: the Reagan rabbit. Only now, would he throw Reagan into the briar patch, just where Reagan wanted to be?
BEFORE CARTER COULD FOCUS on halting Reagan's momentum, he needed to stop the newly resurgent Ted Kennedy. The president stepped up his efforts in Wisconsin. More than 350,000 Democrats received get-out-the-vote phone calls from the Carter campaign, and Carter's son Chip, his wife Rosalynn, and Vice President Walter Mondale all campaigned aggressively there.14 Dozens of “vacationing” White House aides descended upon the state to stave off Kennedy, and new federal sewer construction grants were suddenly announced for Wisconsin.
Pat Caddell conceded that his polling showed the race closing there and Carter, in an interview for the Milwaukee Journal, savaged Kennedy just one day before the primary, accusing him of “cowardice and demagoguery.”15 Carter knew he was in trouble when Mondale reported back that while he was speaking at a high school in La Crosse, the kids laughed and mocked him when he mentioned the president by name.16
In the Milwaukee Journal poll, Kennedy had been behind Carter by a demoralizing margin of 61–11 percent—until New York and Connecticut, that is.17 Kennedy was forced to concede that he could not beat Carter in the upcoming Kansas primary, so he focused on Wisconsin and other states. He should have looked more closely at the Sunflower State. Farmers were increasingly angry with Carter, and defense cutbacks had resulted in unemployment in big airplane manufacturing plants in Wichita.
Kennedy had Pat Lucey on his side in Wisconsin. Lucey had been lieutenant governor in the 1960s and a popular governor in the 1970s. He was one of the most charming and gracious men in politics, with friends on both sides. Lucey had engineered John Kennedy's upset over Hubert Humphrey in Wisconsin in 1960, aided by his sidekick, the shadowy Paul Corbin. He hoped to do it again for Jack's youngest brother. The United Auto Workers had endorsed Carter, but that was it—none of the usual phone calls, organization, and graveyard voting that labor often did to help favored candidates.18
Kennedy decided to play the “Badger Game” in the Badger State. Originally, four days of campaigning had been planned, but it was then announced that this had been scaled back to one day. He was hoping to lower his expectations in Wisconsin, but he also realized that John Anderson might suck a lot of liberal Democrats into the GOP primary. Kennedy reasoned that if he performed poorly, he had an excuse, and if he beat expectations, then he would win the psychological day.
GEORGE BUSH HAD PULLED out a victory in Connecticut, but as the race moved to Wisconsin he slipped into an awkward mode of campaigning. His campaign instituted an “issue of the day,” and Bush would talk only about that day's topic. When questioned about anything remotely related to campaign strategy, he refused to answer. Bush, offstage, was relaxed and could show a biting sense of humor with the media. Onstage, he too often tightened up.
He benefited, however, when Reagan's long-simmering “gaffe” issue finally boiled over onto the front page of the Washington Post, in a story written by Lou Cannon. In addition to stumbling over farm parity and several other issues, Reagan had fumbled answers about aid to New York City and the federal bailout of the Chrysler Corporation. “What emerges,” Cannon wrote, “is the seeming paradox of a candidate who can out-debate rivals in candidate forums and outmaneuver contentious reporters in press conferences, yet still kindle questions about his intellectual capacities.” The question Cannon posed was not whether Reagan was too conservative but “Does Ronald Reagan know what he's talking about?”19
Reagan knew all about farm parity; he just didn't want to say he was against it. He later admitted that he opposed parity because it subsidized inefficient farmers and kept them unfairly in the marketplace. But Reagan didn't want to turn potential voters away, especially conservative rural folks.
On other issues, though, Reagan had indeed fumbled. It was his campaign's fault and it was his fault: he wasn't prepared with the facts. The problem wasn't his command of issues; he had to read something only once and then he knew the issue cold. The “gaffe” problem was the result, rather, of his being too accessible to the media. On Reagan's chartered bus crisscrossing Wisconsin, reporters had pretty much unfettered access to the candidate, which inevitably led to “gotcha” questions.
Other chinks in the Reagan armor appeared. The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial, praised Reagan's apparent march to the nomination, but also expressed concern that he'd better learn more about his own campaign. After Reagan's appearance on ABC's news program Issues and Answers, some political reporters had been astonished that Reagan did not know the content of all his television ads. The Journal advised Reagan that he'd better bone up on the issues and read his briefing books—or else.20
Those briefing books, however, would not explain the philosophical debate inside the Reagan campaign over whether he should run in the general election as a populist reformer or a traditional Republican. Should he focus on government and government spending, or should he focus on massive tax cuts that would stimulate the economy while downplaying government spending cuts? Reagan tried to paper over the differences in his camp, but one thing was certain: he was foursquare for the Kemp-Roth tax cuts.
The disagreement over tax cuts versus cutting government was a serious theoretical debate inside the GOP. The tax-cut gang—Kemp, Art Laffer, Jude Wanniski, and Jeff Bell—were not interested in the small-government arguments. People on the other side, like Bill Simon, Marty Anderson, and Alan Greenspan, felt that big government was the cause of many problems in the country and it had to be scaled back. They also believed that for the first time since the New Deal, Reagan's arguments for curtailing the size and scope of government were popular with the American people. Some on Reagan's team were hypersensitive about his looking like the candidate of moneyed GOP and big-business interests, which would undermine his appeal to blue-collar Democrats. The working poor and middle class wanted tax cuts, while the upper crust of the GOP wanted government reined in and tax cuts for businesses.
Anderson, Reagan's policy wonk, was struggling to produce an overdue white paper that would reconcile the two positions. But Reagan was not focused on the parlor-room niceties of economic theory. His interest was in restarting the American economy, which had slipped into its seventh official recession since the end of World War II. Inflation had risen sharply to 18 percent annually, even though Carter had hoped to hold it under 11 percent.21 Interest rates, meanwhile, had rocketed to 19.75 percent.22
For Reagan, there was no debate to be had: in truth, he favored both cutting taxes and shrinking government. Endorsing both positions led to complaints from the media. How could he cut taxes, fund a military buildup, and still balance the federal budget? The Reagan campaign was desperate to find an answer. It feared stumbling into another political minefield over economics, as Reagan had in 1976 when he called for $90 billion in federal programs to be transferred back to the states without the apparent means of paying for them.23 But Reagan told his staff, “Tell me what has to be done to restore economic health to this society—and let me worry about the politics of it.”24
Reagan's tax-cutting commercials had been pulled after New Hampshire until the internal debate was settled. But his young regional field director, Frank Donatelli, insisted that the spots be aired in Wisconsin, believing that Democrats there would like the message, especially the link to John Kennedy's tax cuts.25 The affable Donatelli had grown up in Pittsburgh, one of four boys, the son of Italian-Americans. Donatelli had worked for Reagan in 1976, had been courted by Bush and Phil Crane, but had chosen to stay with the Gipper for the 1980 effort. Mustachioed, he was also by reputation one of the nicest guys and one of the worst dressers in Washington, favoring god-awful polyester leisure suits. Like the rest of the field staff, he drove
thousands of miles, was paid little, but always had a pocketful of dimes for pay phones to call his various coordinators across the Rust Belt.26
Besides targeting these new “Reagan Democrats,” the Gipper's campaign also saw an opportunity with younger voters. Younger voters had for years tended to be more receptive to the happy-go-lucky Democrats than the staid and boring GOP. But inflation, unemployment, and high interest rates had led many demoralized young Americans to believe that the Democratic Party no longer was concerned about them and that the future was gone. They wanted the same chance at the American dream that their parents and grandparents had had. Eighteen-year old college student Walter Hermann told the Wall Street Journal, “The Democrats haven't done a good job with the economy, especially not Carter.”27
Reagan spoke in dozens of high school gymnasiums in the Badger State and the kids responded heartily. Though they were for the most part too young to vote, the imagery was great for the local television stations. Except in one, where a student sharply questioned Reagan and he replied, “I'd like to suggest some outside reading for you.”28
AT THE END OF March, Olympic hero Jesse Owens died at the age of sixty-six of lung cancer. Some Americans had urged the boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, in protest of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Instead, the Americans sent a full complement of athletes, and Owens, a black man, beat the Nazis at their own games, winning four gold medals and doing so with grace. He later wryly noted that Hitler had not snubbed him at the Sports Palace in Berlin, but FDR did by never even sending a telegram of congratulations.29
Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America Page 34