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

by Shirley, Craig

  The 1980 Olympics to be held in Moscow were no less controversial. Carter's boycott had faltered, and many American allies now were planning on sending delegations. Originally, Reagan had supported the boycott, but as time went on, he changed his mind and suggested that the athletes themselves vote on whether to go. Carter said he would enforce the boycott by not allowing visas to be issued to any of the Americans. He was dealing harshly with the athletes and this did not set well with their fellow countrymen, including Reagan, who said, “I find myself worrying about the young people who've worked so hard.”30

  President Carter fired a salvo at Reagan in a long interview with the Washington Post. While praising Reagan's skills as an orator, Carter dismissed his opponent's intellectual firepower, saying that Reagan could only “recite answers to the question concerning current events almost by rote” and that the Republican took “relatively simplistic approaches to issues.”31

  Walter Mondale also went after Reagan on the campaign trail, one time going too far with his humor. In a gag, he told a crowd of encountering an angry (mythical) Republican who was complaining about things in America and said, “You know, this would never happen if Ronald Reagan were alive.” Later asked about the joke, Reagan said he thought it was “unkind,”32 and the vice president got a call from an intermediary telling him that Nancy Reagan found the joke “very offensive.” Years later Mondale recalled, “I said, ‘Tell Nancy that it was a mistake and she'll never hear that joke again.’” Sure enough, Mondale, a gentleman, never told the joke after that.33

  Mondale made a mistake in not recognizing what Reagan himself understood—that “the greatest humor is humor you use against yourself,” as the Gipper told the Los Angeles Times in the early spring of 1980. Reagan demonstrated that self-deprecating humor repeatedly. Republican audiences loved it. “A few years ago—before anybody was trying to make anything of my age—I told the story of how I'd already lived ten years beyond my life expectancy when I was born, which was a source of irritation to a number of people.”34 Stumping in Kansas, Reagan bumped his head getting into a bus and, mindful of Gerald Ford's many pratfalls, said, “I know I can be president now.”35

  Jimmy Carter was notoriously unfunny, as was John Anderson. They were just too self-conscious. Jerry Brown may have been most incapable of seeing a good joke, even when it was literally under his nose. In New Hampshire, his campaign had provided chocolate-chip cookies and bean soup to a group of supporters. Brown got up to talk to them about fiscal discipline. Then he said there was no “free lunch” to a group that was enjoying that very thing. His supporters tittered, but Brown spluttered that somebody had to pay for it.36

  Of course, a poor sense of humor may have been the least of Brown's problems. What was left of his long-shot campaign would collapse in Wisconsin. A statewide television broadcast, directed by Francis Ford Coppola of Godfather fame, was so weird and poorly produced—with bizarre lighting effects—that Brown was written off for good by most seasoned operatives. Coppola somehow projected an image of the Wisconsin statehouse onto Brown's forehead, prompting someone to say, “How can you vote for a candidate who shows you he has a hole in his head?”37

  THE MONDAY BEFORE THE April 1 primaries, Reagan jetted off to Louisiana, where he was the featured speaker at a jambalaya fundraising dinner. In the question-and-answer period, someone, after nervously addressing Reagan as “Mr. President,” asked about Gerald Ford going on the ticket with him. A chorus of boos descended upon the poor person. Responding, Reagan said he doubted that anyone who had once been president would be interested in going backwards one step. Reagan also told the crowd he would phase out the Departments of Energy and Education.38

  On primary day, Reagan won both Wisconsin and Kansas. He took Kansas's closed primary handily, winning 63 percent of the vote to Anderson's 18 and Bush's 13.39 Reagan had been helped by an unrestrained and unequivocal endorsement from native son Bob Dole, who said the weekend before the primary, “We're supposed to be a great nation. Well, I say it's about time to start to act like one! And Ronald Reagan can make that happen!”40

  Reagan's victory in the hotly contested Wisconsin primary was much tighter. In fact, without the help of conservative Democrats, he would have lost. More than half of the votes cast in the GOP primary were by Democrats and independents, according to exit polls conducted by CBS and the New York Times.41 Reagan ran strongly in the Democratic strongholds of Racine and Kenosha, along with the South Side of Milwaukee.42

  Reagan took 40 percent to Bush's respectable 31 percent and Anderson's 28 percent.43 But he did much better in delegates, because of Wisconsin's odd proportional delegate selection process, which awarded the slots by congressional district, with bonus delegates for winning the statewide contest. Reagan took home twenty-five delegates to only three for Bush.44

  Bush had spent $500,000 in the state to Reagan's $200,000. Adding insult to injury, Reagan had campaigned in the state for only three days and had spent most of it making open appeals to Democrats and independents.

  But Anderson had been the most damaged by the results in Wisconsin. He'd counted on the college kids and they had let him down, just as they often did their parents. Still, Anderson managed to claim six delegates, despite winning less of the popular vote than Bush did.

  The day before the Wisconsin and Kansas primaries, Pat Caddell, the president's pollster, had Carter ahead in his polling in the Badger State, but he said, “I am not all that confident that those numbers will hold.”45 Ted Kennedy was surging after his surprise wins in New York and Connecticut, and Carter was showing more and more weakness. Though Carter's approval ratings had shot up after the Americans were taken hostage in Iran, it had now been five months and the president had taken little action to free them. Worse, Carter, trying to appear hawkish, had been badly embarrassed when the Iranians released to the media a private letter from the president to the Ayatollah Khomeini seeking to relax the tension between the two countries. The Carter White House vehemently denied that such a letter had been sent.46

  The morning of the Wisconsin primary, with politicos thinking that Kennedy had an outside chance to win, President Carter engaged in what many later thought was an underhanded act. If nothing else, it was certainly cynical. Just forty minutes before the polls opened, Carter went on national television to announce a breakthrough—or as he said, a “positive development”—in the hostage negotiations.47 In fact, there was no breakthrough—as the Iranians announced later in the day—but enough Wisconsin Democrats fell for the ploy that Carter won the state, 56–30 percent.48 Carter also pummeled Kennedy in Kansas.49

  No one knew whether Carter had been deceitful about the hostage situation, though many in Washington were becoming more cynical by the day. But the ploy worked. According to media polling, late-deciding Democrats broke heavily for Carter over Kennedy in Wisconsin.50 Caddell blithely told reporters later that his man had been helped in Kansas and Wisconsin by the announcement.

  President Carter had rolled back Kennedy's counteroffensive.

  JOHN ANDERSON'S BID FOR the GOP nomination was fading and he, like Bush, was fulminating. Anderson lost any shred of gentility toward Reagan in Wisconsin. Frustrated, he lashed out, saying that Reagan “should go back to 'death Valley Days' and simply imbibe some of those 20-mule team bromides.”51

  Bush's frustrations over his string of ill fortune sometimes came out nastily in public. Campaigning in New Orleans in anticipation of Louisiana's fast-approaching April 5 primary, Bush told a group that during the New England primaries, all the candidates had tried to show off their wares, telling citizens how deep their roots were in the region. “And Ronald Reagan told them he had dated Priscilla Alden,” Bush said.52 Alden had come over on the Mayflower in 1620, as every schoolchild knew.

  It was one thing for Reagan to joke about his own age, but quite another for Bush to do so. The remark was noted and filed at Reagan Central.

  Heavy rains had fallen across Louisiana, and though there wa
s some flooding, the pumps that kept New Orleans dry were working. The Saturday primary in Louisiana was closed—no crossovers—but that didn't stop Reagan from washing over Bush, 74–19 percent.53 Bush had set a modest goal of 30 percent for himself in Louisiana but failed to even achieve that. Reagan won twenty-nine of Louisiana's delegates, while two would go to Detroit uncommitted.54

  After Louisiana, Reagan stood at 372 delegates to only 72 for Bush and 57 for Anderson.55 Though Reagan was still more than 600 delegates short of a first-ballot nomination—a Republican needed 998 delegate votes—his juggernaut was rolling and most Republicans were falling in line behind him.

  Carter swept past Kennedy in Louisiana, 56–22 percent,56 but Kennedy's state coordinator, Judge Edmund Reggie, goofily called Teddy's performance “phenomenal.”57 Carter was ahead of Kennedy in delegates, 848–445. A Democrat needed 1,666 for the nomination.58

  After the breakneck pace of the past two months, the campaigns now had a nearly three-week respite between primaries. The big Pennsylvania primary wouldn't come until April 22. Staff could go back home for a day or two to do laundry, pay overdue bills, check in at the office, and plan the next foray. Reagan took the time to beef up his press operation with the addition of Jim Brady to travel on the plane. Brady had been press secretary to John Connally and prior to William Roth, the easygoing senator from Delaware who was cosponsor with Jack Kemp on the big tax-cut bill (and who happened to sport the worst toupee in Washington).59 Brady was affable and fun-loving and, like any good flack, enjoyed cocktails with reporters.

  Reporters, too, needed this break in the campaign season. They'd been on the road constantly for months now, eating too much, boozing too much, sleeping too little, and not checking in with their spouses and kids enough. The three week breather would also give them a chance to reflect on what the coming fall election might look like.

  While reporters and politicos looked ahead to a Carter-Reagan showdown, Reagan refused to claim that the Republican contest was over. It was only “halftime,” he said.60 He remembered four years earlier, when he'd furiously come back in the second half against Ford and almost won. He was not going to do anything to jeopardize the outcome by taunting Bush now.

  After all, Reagan had slipped at the end in Wisconsin. That gave Bush an opening, especially now that he had almost three weeks to focus on Pennsylvania's primary. On paper it looked good for Bush. First, Anderson had not qualified enough petitions, so he would not be on the ballot. Second, it was a closed primary. Third, Bush was the last man standing between Reagan and the nomination, which tightened the sphincter muscles of moderates; Bush put the heavy woo on them to come out once and for all for his nomination. At the top on this list was the moderate governor of Pennsylvania, the affable Richard Thornburgh.

  But the terrain after Pennsylvania would be rocky for Bush. Many battles lay ahead in the twelve western “Reagan country” primaries. Reagan had taken 80 percent of these delegates four years earlier against Ford.61 Moreover, the countryside of rural America was dotted with 1,300 Christian radio stations and forty independent Christian television stations, and most were already in Reagan's amen corner.62

  Bush had one slim hope—namely, “that the frontrunner will make a major blunder and that their man will be the only one left to profit from the fallout,” as Al Hunt wrote in the April 2 Wall Street Journal.63

  LIKE REAGAN, JIMMY CARTER didn't have the luxury of overlooking his party's primaries. He had yet to dispose of Kennedy. True, the momentum Kennedy had gained in New York and Connecticut had dissipated in his losses in Kansas and Wisconsin, but the Massachusetts senator vowed over and over that he would stay in all the way to the convention in August. The fact that a sitting president was still slugging it out for the nomination of his own party so late in the game was a glaring sign of weakness.

  And with every step he took, the president seemed only to weaken himself further. During a sit-down interview with Meg Greenfield of the Washington Post, Carter denied that three months earlier he'd said he was surprised, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, to discover the USSR's “ultimate goals.”64 In fact, he had naïvely said on ABC that the Afghanistan invasion “made a more dramatic change in my opinion of what the Soviets' ultimate goals are than anything they've done in the previous time that I've been in office.”65 Those remarks to ABC were an astounding statement from the leader of the Free World; it was even more astounding that he would then try to deny what had been recorded on videotape and broadcast nationwide.

  Carter's gambit of trying to “look presidential” in the face of international crisis had about run its course. Even the normally supportive Washington Post put its foot down over the hostage situation in Iran. Under a scorching editorial titled simply “Iran: Enough,” the paper ripped Carter and an administration “that shrinks from asserting what even its enemies recognize as a legitimate interest in protecting its diplomats from a mob.… The United States has made concessions of the sort one might expect from a nation that had lost a war.” The paper demanded a more forceful posture, à la Reagan. Reports were seeping out that the hostages were terribly demoralized and that some had attempted suicide, while others had been beaten, starved, and tortured.66 Iranian diplomats functioned quite freely in and around their embassy in Washington, and the administration still hadn't decided whether to expel some of them. The daily crowds of anti-American protesters in Iran made crude signs for the Western media to record: “U.S. can not do anything.”67

  The Carter administration had fallen back to infighting and sniping at reporters for writing that the president was looking ineffectual against the ayatollah. Hawks in the administration complained about Carter's planned budget cuts in military spending, and spenders complained that Carter was being too chintzy. Jody Powell was harsh with reporters in the daily press briefing.

  David Broder, dean of the Washington press corps, wrote a devastating column on the Carter White House. In caustic terms he did not often use, Broder catalogued, point by point, each time the White House had used its privileged position of power to create some sort of artificial positive news surrounding the hostages in order to help Carter win renomination. All incumbents use the powers of their office to help themselves politically, yet unmistakably clear in Broder's column was the motif that Carter was playing with people's hopes and the hostages' lives, cynically, in order to further his own political ambitions.68

  After Broder's much-discussed piece, Carter would never again enjoy the benefit of the doubt from the national media, as he had since 1976.

  Carter had pulled the “positive development” stunt one too many times for the American people. His approval numbers on the hostage crisis had fallen from 77 percent in December 1979 to 49 percent in March 1980. Caddell conceded that they'd used the issue to its maximum benefit and now it was working against Carter.69 Carter soothed himself by meeting in the Rose Garden with a support group, Intellectuals for Carter. The size of the group and the admission requirements were not disclosed.70

  DURING THIS BRIEF DOWNTIME in the campaign, John Anderson's supporters began to quietly organize for a third-party bid, which now appeared to be his only option.

  Anderson had good reason to consider the third-party route. A Gallup poll in early April showed that in a hypothetical three-way race, Anderson would take a very respectable 21 percent of the vote, with Carter winning 39 percent and Reagan 34 percent. What was curious about the survey was that despite the rampant fear in the Carter camp that Anderson was a threat on the left, Anderson was actually drawing equally from Reagan and Carter voters.71

  But the third-party route was fraught with inequity. The FEC had been created in part by Republicans and Democrats to protect the two parties and punish third parties that threatened them. Anderson would not qualify for the same federal funding—$29 million—that both parties' nominees would receive. At the same time he would have to abide by the $1,000-per-individual limitation.72 The FEC hadn't even decided whether Anderson could g
o back and hit up again the people who had given to him in the primaries. The injustice was indefensible and perhaps unconstitutional, but Washington long ago had specialized in “political parties first, principles and ethics last.”

  Just to get on the ballot in some of the states might cost Anderson $500,000, and each state had its own requirements. For instance, North Carolina mandated an astonishing 165,000 signatures to get on the ballot.73 And there was not enough practical time to form a legitimate third party that could raise money to pay for ballot access and then undertake all the work to overcome the significant obstacles.

  For these and other reasons, third parties had achieved little in American presidential politics. The most successful third-party candidate ever was Teddy Roosevelt, running on the Bull Moose ticket in 1912. Roosevelt carried six states, got 27 percent of the vote, and still lost. In 1968, George Wallace got less than 15 percent and carried but five states. It would take … well, it would take the ego of a man like John Anderson to throw all to the wind and forge ahead with a third-party presidential bid.

  THE BREATHER ALSO ALLOWED time for the national media to focus on Nancy Reagan's influence over her husband and his campaign. Some had thought she was the reason Reagan had moved to conservatism beginning in the late 1940s, but that was nonsense, as Reagan had begun his journey while still married to Jane Wyman.