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

by Shirley, Craig

These counterclaims led to squabbling within the Reagan administration. Casey, by then the CIA director, challenged Baker, Reagan's White House chief of staff, to take polygraphs. Baker fretted that Casey, from his OSS and CIA experience, would know how to “game the polygraph” tests and hang him out to dry.197 Casey confirmed Baker's fear when he told his friend Bill Safire, “I know how to handle those things.”198 For days, the two Reagan aides engaged in public finger pointing. Paul Corbin's name was lost amid this high-profile spat.

  At the height of the Albosta investigation, Baker received a call from Congressman Dick Cheney. Cheney told Baker that a member of his staff, Tim Wyngaard, confided that Corbin had privately acknowledged orchestrating the theft of the Carter briefing books and giving them to Casey.199 Corbin and Wyngaard, a former reporter, had known each other a long time, going back to Wisconsin politics. Wyngaard, the executive director of the House Republican Policy Committee, confirmed to Albosta committee investigators and to the New York Times that Corbin had claimed credit for lifting the briefing books.200

  Regardless, Corbin, the old master, once again had left no fingerprints—in this case, literally. Although the FBI found both Jim Baker's and David Gergen's fingerprints on the Carter briefing books, they found none of Corbin's, or of Casey's for that matter.201

  Corbin was too smart to make that dumb mistake. After all, how many Washington political operators had a downtown office with an unlisted phone number? Jim Baker despised Corbin but there was also grudging respect. He once told the old man, “I got to say this about you Kennedy guys. You really know how to keep your mouths shut.”202

  ON JUNE 5, 1981—THIRTEEN years to the day after RFK was shot in L.A.'s Ambassador Hotel—President Ronald Reagan awarded to the Kennedy family the Congressional Gold Medal commemorating the life of Robert Francis Kennedy. This was the very same medal that Jimmy Carter had refused to present, causing deep resentment among Kennedyites.

  Just before noon, the entire Kennedy clan, along with close friends and supporters of RFK, returned to the White House for the bittersweet and long-delayed Rose Garden ceremony.

  Camelot rematerialized for one brief shining moment.

  The day was magnificent. Blue skies, temperature in the mid-eighties, puffs of clouds, with a light offshore breeze and low humidity.203 Kennedy sailing weather.

  President Reagan greeted all in his customary gracious style. “President Reagan was very kind to our family,” remembered RFK's eldest daughter, Kathleen.204 Reagan told the small gathering, “Those of us who had our philosophical disagreements with him always appreciated his wit and his personal grace.”205 He then turned to Ethel Kennedy and said, “So Mrs. Kennedy, this medal has been waiting patiently to be presented.”206 Everybody knew to what and to whom Reagan was referring.

  Speaking for the family, Ted Kennedy was equally genial, drawing a connection between his own brother's shooting and Reagan's, offering thanks to God that Reagan had survived. He then thanked Reagan and reminisced about his beloved brother, including RFK's famous internationally television debate with Reagan in 1967. “My brother Bob said that Ronald Reagan was the toughest debater he ever faced—and obviously, he was right.”207 Everybody knew to what and to whom Kennedy was referring.

  But as gracious as Reagan was, and as much as the Reagans and the Kennedys were united in their aversion to Jimmy Carter, this lovely and overdue event did not just happen. Somebody had had to cut the deal and keep the pressure on Reagan chief of staff Jim Baker to make sure that the Kennedy family finally got the Congressional Gold Medal for their adored RFK. Someone who was irascible, unrelenting, who would call and push and agitate and irritate and cajole and threaten until he got what he wanted for his old friend Bob Kennedy.

  Standing in the background of the Rose Garden, quietly taking it all in, was a wizened, tough, hard-bitten old political operator, perhaps the greatest, most controversial, and most unethical of them all—Paul Corbin.

  29

  GENERAL QUARTERS

  “The way things are going now, we are going to lose.”

  Ronald Reagan emerged from seclusion atop the Santa Ynez Mountains, 2,400 feet above sea level. During the week of the Democratic convention, Reagan had been happily alone with Nancy at Rancho del Cielo, only once taking time to meet with a group of supporters. The supporters, whom the Reagans had met in Mississippi at the Neshoba County Fair several weeks earlier, had been invited to the ranch—a rare treat—to present a horse-drawn wagon built by Amish artisans. Several reporters were on hand, and the presentation was cut short when they violated the ground rules of the event by asking Reagan about politics.1

  Reagan's celebrity neighbors in Santa Barbara, such as Sylvester Stallone and John Travolta, worried that if Reagan won, their quiet town might be overrun with reporters and tourists, but in truth they had little to fear. Reagan's ranch was nearly thirty miles outside of town, and nobody in his right mind would drive the seven-mile-long road up through the mountains to 333 Refugio Road—a harrowing trip along sheer cliffs without guardrails—unless he really had to. The road was closed frequently due to floods, and only a few months earlier, a pregnant woman, had to be carried out on horseback.2 Reagan loved the seclusion.

  Now, however, he had to come down from the mountain. The Democrats had their official nominee at last, and this election was shaping up as the most polarizing of the twentieth century. Several days earlier, Reagan had issued a statement saying that although Ted Kennedy's speech had been the indisputable highlight of the Democratic convention, it had changed nothing: “The issue is still the Carter record.”3

  A casual examination of the two parties' platforms made the contrast between the Republicans and the Democrats clear. The GOP platform fretted about government interference, while the Democratic platform embraced it by saying that jobs were the “government's most important product.”4 The Republicans stressed a strong national defense as a means of dealing with the Soviets, while the Democrats stressed arms control and diplomatic relations. From education to welfare to tax cuts to preferential treatment for minorities and women, the parties and their nominees agreed on virtually nothing.

  The Democratic Party's organizing principle had evolved over time into the concept of “justice.” The new organizing principle of the GOP—as espoused by Reagan—was “freedom.” Of course, one man's idea of justice can often conflict with another person's belief in freedom.

  As the years went by, it would become more and more difficult for the two parties to find common ground.

  FRESH OFF HIS LACKLUSTER acceptance speech, Jimmy Carter received some good news in late August: support for John Anderson was slacking and more of the Democratic core base was coming home, including Jewish voters. A prominent Jewish attorney, Justin Feldman, recalled that in 1948, “Jews all said they were going to vote for Henry Wallace until they walked into the [voting] booth.”5 Feldman's point was that although Democrats may have been unenthused about Harry Truman at the time, they still returned to the New Deal coalition and voted for him, rather than voting for the third-party candidate, Wallace—and a substantial turnout for the left-wing Wallace might have thrown the election to Republican Tom Dewey. Likewise, labor was coming home for Carter, despite its highly public grousing about the incumbent. As a bonus, the national television audience for Carter's convention topped 115 million viewers over the four days, beating the Republican convention in Detroit by a healthy 15 million Americans.6

  The Carter campaign's goal was to use the Rose Garden to its maximum advantage. The president would campaign only two days a week until two weeks before the election, when he would go on the road right up to Election Day, November 4. Meanwhile, Walter Mondale and surrogates would take it to Reagan.7 Even Mondale's wife, Joan, would be deployed. A pleasant and soft-spoken lady, Mrs. Mondale was an “amateur potter” and the plan was to use her in the “arts and crafts” community.8

  Carter's plan for reelection was reasonable—on paper, anyway. He would hold on to wha
t he'd won in 1976: the South, big Democratic states like New York and Pennsylvania, and Mondale's home state of Minnesota. The only western state he needed was Hawaii. Those states put him at 279 electoral votes, nine more than needed. A cushion was sought from Oregon, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Washington.9 Carter was also making a serious play for Reagan's California, which, given its huge Democratic registration advantage, made sense. That left Reagan only the rest of the West and such reliably Republican states as New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont.

  The Carterites were quite organized, even if they walked close to the ethical line. Government employees were practically ordered to raise money for the reelection campaign. They were told what amounts they had to raise, and deadlines were set for dozens of government workers. A memo went out from Tim Finchem saying, “Each team will include 10 or more political appointees and/or government employees each of whom will be asked to solicit and collect a minimum of $5,000 from non-government employees.” The organizing meetings took place in Hamilton Jordan's campaign office. Mid-level government employees did not say no to the president of the United States.10

  But the Carter campaign was not a seamless operation. There were internal disputes over tactics, strategy, and turf. If the Carterites were good at anything, it was writing memos. Memo after memo went out laying out various opinions and positions. Pat Caddell alone was a threat to American forestry, notorious for excruciatingly long memos. Carter's team heard complaints from some state leaders centering on the president's adman, Gerald Rafshoon.11 They were barking up the wrong tree in going after Rafshoon, who was close to Carter and a member in good standing of the Georgia Mafia.

  Rafshoon began testing several anti-Reagan themes under the headings “He's not acting” and “Empty Oval Office.” Carter's researchers were hard at work poring over every utterance Reagan ever made, going back to his days in Hollywood. They went through thousands of columns, radio commentaries, and speeches, trying to find ammunition to use against Reagan. Rafshoon was also exploring pro-Carter themes, but he and the rest of the Carter campaign team believed there was so much “low-hanging fruit” to use against Reagan that going negative was the way to go.12

  The emerging strategy would be “a broad-scale offensive designed to force Reagan out of the meticulously packaged, cue-card campaign he would like to run,” wrote Lisa Myers of the Washington Star. The goal of the Carter campaign, said Myers, was to convince voters of the “'danger' of electing an aging actor whose concepts of diplomacy allegedly are lifted from his old scripts in shoot-emup westerns.”13

  The Carterites' opinion of Reagan was so low that they thought Carter would mop the floor with him in a one-on-one debate. “The Carter operatives have always been convinced that the president would obliterate Reagan in a debate format,” wrote columnists Jack Germond and Jules Witcover.14 Tim Smith, chief counsel to the campaign, wrote in a memo, “We are for more debates, not fewer; beginning earlier, rather than later.”15

  What Carter's advisers meant was that they wanted as many debates as possible with Reagan only. The League of Women Voters had set a threshold of 15 percent in the polls for John Anderson to be included in presidential debates, but Carter objected to setting the bar that low.16 Carter butted heads with the league,17 but Reagan, who just wanted to debate somebody, anybody, stayed out of the dustup. The White House's heavy-handedness toward Anderson benefited Reagan. Anderson abhorred Reagan's ideology but had nothing against him personally at this point, as he did Carter. This resentment was a big factor in who Anderson eventually selected for his running mate.

  THE GOP NOMINEE HEADED for Chicago to accept the endorsement of the Veterans of Foreign Wars—the first time the organization had ever backed a presidential candidate. In his speech, Reagan lambasted Carter, accusing him of allowing America's defense posture to weaken. Reagan pledged a program of “peace through strength” and said that as president, while building up the nation's armaments, he would continue negotiations with the Soviets. To illustrate his philosophy, he told the five thousand veterans, “The great American humorist Will Rogers some years ago had an answer for those who believed that strength invited war. He said, ‘I've never seen anyone insult Jack Dempsey.’”18

  Reagan spoke of the American efforts to stave off the fall of South Vietnam as a “noble cause,” saying, “It is time we recognized that ours was, in truth, a noble cause. A small country, newly free from colonial rule, sought our help in establishing self-rule and the means of self-defense against a totalitarian neighbor bent on conquest.” Reagan brought the crowd to its feet when he thundered, “Let us tell those who fought in that war that we will never again ask young men to fight and possibly die in a war our government is afraid to let them win.” Of Carter's treatment of veterans, he used words such as “regrettable and insensitive,” “unconscionable,” and “betrayal.”19

  The national media received Reagan's VFW remarks poorly. Like his trip to the Neshoba County Fair in Mississippi, his calling the Vietnam War a “noble cause” would come back to haunt the Californian.

  Before that media frenzy erupted, Reagan had to confront another problem: by late August, his once-commanding lead was gone.

  Gallup's new national poll had it 39 percent for Reagan and 38 percent for President Carter, with John Anderson at 14 percent. And when the survey only pitted Carter against Reagan, Carter was comfortably ahead, 46 percent to Reagan's 40 percent.20

  The Harris poll had it better for the Gipper, with Reagan at 42 percent, Carter at 36, and Anderson at 17. In the NBC–Associated Press poll, Reagan was also ahead, 39 percent to Carter's 32 percent and Anderson's 13 percent.21 But regardless of which poll you picked, one thing was clear: Carter was surging. The Gipper's confident team had thought the president might get a smaller-than-usual bump from his convention because of the lingering fight with Ted Kennedy. Now it was evident that Carter was actually extending his post-convention bounce. Reagan was in trouble, despite the spin of his campaign aides.

  The Republican candidate pushed on to Boston to address the annual convention of the American Legion. The four thousand attendees rabidly received him, but once again the media complained that the speech was short on substance. He did, however, blast Carter on the deterioration of the military, the absence of replacement parts for equipment, and the low military morale while voicing support for the GI Bill of Rights.22

  NOW THAT THE DEMOCRATIC convention was over and Ted Kennedy was finally out of the race officially, John Anderson had more options for running mates. Among the names bandied about were Hugh Carey, the governor of New York, and Kevin White, the mayor of Boston.23 Anderson had also talked with Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, who in 1972 had mounted the first serious attempt by an African-American to win a presidential nomination.24

  But Paul Corbin was secretly engineering a deal with Pat Lucey, who had resigned as Carter's ambassador to Mexico in the fall of 1979 to join the Kennedy campaign. Discussions had been going on for more than a month, and Anderson and Lucey now met in seclusion. Anderson needed a running mate who was respected by the media and the political establishment, and the former Wisconsin governor filled the bill. Lucey was also a New Deal liberal and would appeal to voters on the Left.

  Lucey told everybody he was leaving the decision to his wife, Jean, who, like her husband, adored the Kennedy family and despised Carter. It was easy to see where this was going. Jean Lucey told reporters, “Anderson is certainly the best of the lot.”25

  THE REAGAN TEAM ANNOUNCED that the official kickoff of its fall campaign would be at Liberty State Park in New Jersey on Labor Day. The candidate would give a major speech with the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island as a backdrop.26 Reagan would then return to Detroit. Democrats often kicked off their campaigns there, but this time the Republican candidate was competing for the workingman's vote.27 George Bush was to begin with a rally at the airport in Portland, Maine, and then stump in New Jersey.28

  Carter announced that the launch of his fall campaign wo
uld be at a picnic in Tuscumbia, Alabama.29 Four years earlier, Carter had begun in Warm Springs, Georgia, where FDR had often vacationed.

  REAGAN'S “NOBLE CAUSE” COMMENT was beginning to generate manufactured indignation among the elites. In 1980 the Vietnam War was a taboo subject, at least any defense of it. The dominant culture subscribed to the argument that America had lost Southeast Asia because America was corrupt, the Pentagon was evil and incompetent, and there was moral equivalency between the North Vietnamese and the South Vietnamese—the killing fields of the puppet Cambodian regime set up by Hanoi notwithstanding. Reagan would not keep quiet, though. He said the North Vietnamese could not beat America in the field, so they beat America in its living rooms, with a propaganda campaign designed to weaken American resolve.

  The phrase “noble cause” pushed buttons. Whether to use it at all had been hotly debated inside the Reagan campaign. It had been taken out of the original draft, but Reagan put it back in.30 It came out of the second draft. Reagan put it back in. It came out a third time. Reagan put it back in.

  Liberal columnists such as Mary McGrory of the Washington Star denounced Reagan for making the remark. Even Rowly Evans and Bob Novak pronounced the comment “inexplicable.”31 A disloyal member of Reagan's campaign told Evans and Novak that he was “appalled” by the “noble cause” statement. Another aide, clearly more loyal, told the columnists that Reagan had a need “to tell it like he feels.”32 A split was developing in the campaign between men like Richard Allen and Ed Meese, who had been with Reagan for years and were more conservative, and more moderate latecomers like David Gergen. The hardliners had won out over the toughness of Reagan's speeches, even as the moderates attempted to reduce on-the-fly press conferences and to take Reagan out of the loop on his own speeches.