JACK GERMOND AND JULES Witcover, the perceptive political duo for the Washington Star, paid a visit to the youthful governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton, for his assessment of how the campaign was shaping up. Though Carter was well ahead of Reagan in Arkansas, young Clinton, who was already a Jedi Master when it came to politics, distanced himself from the president and said that Reagan “comes across here as a guy who has a coherent vision.”73 Clinton was running for reelection and had his own headaches, including the thousands of Cuban criminals Carter had dumped on his state after Castro had dumped them on Carter.
NO ARMS NEGOTIATIONS INVOLVING heads of state were as deliberative as the talks setting the ground rules for the first and only debate between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. The campaigns spent two days fighting over the finest points of format and presentation. From the reporters who would serve on the panel, to camera angles, to tickets for the live debate, to who would walk on stage first, nothing was too petty to squabble over.
Jim Baker urged the same format as in 1976, but Bob Strauss wanted fewer reporters on the panel and time for the candidates to cross-examine each other. Baker shot down cross-examination by the contestants.74
Carter's team wanted the presidential seal on the front of his podium. “Yeah, right,” was Baker's reply. No seal.
The Reagan men wanted the podiums as close together as possible to accentuate the difference in height between the 6'1” Reagan and the 5'9” Carter. Nothing doing, said Strauss. They would be as far apart as possible without actually going off the stage.
Carter's men pressed for a two-hour debate. The thinking was that over a long confrontation the older Reagan might tire in front of millions of Americans. Baker suggested one hour. The two sides compromised on ninety minutes.75
There would be no opening statements, but there would be closing statements. A coin toss backstage would decide who got to choose who would take the first question and who would make his closing comments first.
Symbolically, Reagan would stand to the audience's right, Carter to the left.
Sandwiches were brought in to slake the hunger of the debate negotiators. At one point, reporters in the hallway heard Strauss through a partially opened door yell, “I don't think you've heard anything I've said since we came in here!”76
A Bush-Mondale debate was junked, as the Reaganites secretly wanted. Baker said with a straight face that Bush was one of only two surrogates on the road for Reagan and he was needed out there. Mondale's chief of staff, Dick Moe, stormed out halfway through the second day of the session when it became clear that Bush would not be allowed to debate.77
At one point, Strauss excused himself to call Jody Powell at the White House for a clarification. He joked to Baker, “You know, I'm pretty close to Carter. I can go in the bedroom with Carter and ask him anything in the world, but Jody can go into the bathroom.”78 Four years of fighting and drinking on the East Coast's “Cannery Row” had taken their toll on Powell, though he was still a young man of thirty-seven. He had permanent dark circles under his eyes and was a chain smoker. Burning the candle at both ends was beginning to wear him down. The tough town had also rubbed the wedded Georgian the wrong way, as when he awoke one morning to see in black and white in the Washington Post an unsourced allegation that he was engaged in an extramarital affair.79 By all other reports, Powell was a happily married man.
Baker, a.k.a. “The Waco Kid,” ran a successful bluff, audaciously suggesting that the debate should be held the night before the election, pitching it in the guise of good government. In between the two days of negotiations, Baker went on ABC's Good Morning America to float the notion.80 The Carterites countered instead with October 28 … which was exactly the date Baker and the Reaganites wanted in the first place. Holding a debate the night before the election would have left the Reagan campaign absolutely no time to fix things if Reagan, as some in his camp feared—and the Carter camp hoped—made a gaffe in the live, nationally televised debate. October 28 also appealed to the Reaganites because it allowed their candidate more than a week to get ready for the debate.
Carter, of course, was born ready. Yet he faced a problem. For weeks he had been daring Reagan to debate. His men had gone further, letting it be known that they were champing at the bit for a debate and that they were utterly convinced that the president would trounce Reagan in a one-on-one setting. Now the debate was a go, and they had managed to inflate expectations sky high.
REAGAN PRESSED ON. HE went to Illinois, yet again, accompanied by Nancy and two hundred reporters and staffers who filled seven buses. In Springfield he laid a wreath at Lincoln's tomb and then, in the fashion of the state, rubbed the nose on the statue of Abe for good luck. The night before, he'd gone back to Eureka for a boisterous homecoming rally in the Reagan Gymnasium. The last time he'd been there, his alma mater was unmoved. This time, however, they welcomed the football team's old right guard. He attended the homecoming football game the next day against Concordia. At the rally, Reagan's old coach, Ralph McKinzie, eighty-six, presented the Gipper with a jersey that read “Reagan 80” on the back. Ominously, Concordia clobbered Eureka, 33–13.81
BOTH REAGAN AND CARTER were playing it safe until their showdown at the Mistake by the Lake. Heading into their one and only debate, Carter had made it pretty well known what he thought of Reagan, which was not much. “Word went around that Carter expected to swamp Reagan,” recalled Reagan speechwriter Peter Hannaford.82
The Gipper, on the other hand, had been more circumspect. Only years later would it become clear what Reagan really thought of the thirty-ninth president. When asked in an interview whether Reagan was intimidated by being on the same stage as Carter, Stu Spencer replied that, no, Reagan wasn't intimidated because he didn't see Carter so much as the president of the United States and Leader of the Free World.
Reagan simply saw Carter as a “little shit.”83
34
ON DECK
“Since we can't do anything about the hostages anyway, we might as well go on doing what we can do.”
James Addison Baker III had not taken his grandfather's advice to stay out of politics. He might have listened to the old man had he not lost his young wife, Mary, to cancer in 1970. A widower at the age of thirty-nine, Baker was alone, trying to raise four sons. He was shattered, tried alcohol for solace, but was fortunate to find out that, unlike other men in his family, he had no stomach for booze. The former U.S. Marine did, however, have more than enough intestinal fortitude for the political game. The tall and cool Texan may have missed his calling by a hundred years, though. Unflappable, Baker would have been the best poker player west of the Pecos had he lived in those times.
In addition to building the family law practice in Houston, he turned to politics, at the suggestion of his tennis partner, George H. W. Bush, as an outlet for the pain and emptiness in his life. Baker soon made the Harris County GOP into a potent operation. His appetite whetted, he eventually went to Washington to work in the Commerce Department during the Ford administration. But he wanted more, and fate lent Baker a hand.
In 1976 a heavy-drinking crony of Gerald Ford's, Jack Stiles from Michigan, died in an accident one night, wrapping his car around a tree. Stiles was slated to be Ford's delegate hunter but the job fell to Baker, who—probably more than any other man—kept Ronald Reagan from winning the 1976 nomination with his yeoman's efforts. Baker orchestrated the campaign to woo some 150 uncommitted delegates while also keeping wavering delegates in the Ford camp by holding their hands and listening to their gripes and demands. Only a man with the patience of Job—someone like Jim Baker—could have handled the job so well.
In gratitude, Ford promoted Baker to run the fall campaign. Though the president did not win reelection, Baker got high marks from many for bringing Ford from thirty points down in the polls to losing by less than two. There was some grumbling because Baker had left $1 million in the Ford coffers unspent when it could have helped in close states. Baker later said
that because of the Ford committee's accounting glitches, he hadn't known that money was still available.1 After 1976, Baker liked to joke that he was the only Republican in recent memory to have run an incumbent's campaign and not run afoul of the law, unlike Ike's Sherman Adams and Nixon's John Mitchell.
After Ford's loss, Baker headed back to Texas and ran for attorney general in 1978, losing. His campaign manager was Frank Donatelli. Years later, Baker, by then a national power broker, liked to josh people, “I owe everything I have become to Frank Donatelli, because if he had been a decent campaign manager, I would have been stuck down in Austin!”2 Baker was only ribbing Donatelli, who in fact had done a good job under difficult circumstances.
Ronald Reagan came in to campaign for Baker and Baker received a generous contribution from the National Conservative Political Action Committee, but to no avail. Immediately after losing, Baker was approached by his old friend Bush about pitching in on his longshot presidential quest. (In the process he managed to irk his old boss Ford, who even at the Republican convention in 1980 was still miffed that Baker and Bush had not kept their powder dry until he made his decision whether or not to run.)3 Though Bush failed to wrest the nomination from Reagan, his shocking win in Iowa, his other primary wins, and the fact that his campaign lasted well beyond what it should have, were chalked up to Baker's skills and Bush's tenacity.
Baker had come to the Reagan operation almost by accident. At the convention he was certain that Reagan was going to take Ford as his running mate. Headed to the airport on his way out of Detroit, Baker bumped into Stu Spencer, who urged him to delay his plans and stick around. Spencer advised the campaign to grab Baker, though he was 0-for-2 at the national level.4
The first entreaty Baker received from the Reagan campaign came from Lyn Nofziger, a man with whom he would later become bitter enemies. Baker demurred, but when he was approached a second time, this time with Bill Casey offering an elevated title, he jumped at the chance. Conservatives around Reagan grumbled about the moderate Baker, whom they saw as an interloper. Nonetheless, he brought with him the reputation of a man who got things done. Most importantly, Nancy Reagan liked him. That was that.
Bill Casey handed Baker the entire debate portfolio. He would be responsible for negotiating the arrangements and preparing the candidate. With just over a week to go before the Carter-Reagan debate, the campaign set aside a full three days out of Reagan's schedule for Baker and his team to get the Gipper ready.
Casey also handed Baker a large envelope and told him he might find something interesting in it. He did not tell Baker where he'd gotten it.5 Baker opened the package and inside were three large bound books. He flipped through the pages and then sent them along to David Gergen, who had come over from the Bush operation as well, handling research. The bound tomes were briefing books that had been compiled for Jimmy Carter's own debate prep.6
Around this time, the shadowy and unsavory Paul Corbin would show up occasionally at the Republican nominee's headquarters in Virginia. Sometimes Corbin would sign in to see Baker, other times to see Casey. Several of the meetings lasted well over an hour.7
CARTER'S CAMPAIGN WAS GOING for broke. Every staff member brought in by Carter was given a second job of delivering his reelection. Many members of the administration received the very same talking points that went to Carter himself, and they were tasked with campaigning for the president across the country—working the press more than the public.8 Cabinet officials alone reportedly spent one hundred days crisscrossing America. Only Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti, mired in the Billy Carter scandal, was not campaigning.
Government officials spread out across the heartland, awarding federal contracts high and low—three million dollars for retraining displaced workers in Toledo; money for industrial parks and urban projects, most in battleground states. All of the money was handed out with the cautionary note that if Reagan were elected, the goodies would run out. President Carter himself directed the release of $238 million in previously frozen highway-building funds for Texas—where polls had the presidential race dead even—even though the state had yet to comply with the minority-hiring strings that came along with the federal money.9 Walter Mondale got in on the fun in New Jersey when he announced a $6 million aid package to build a water pipeline for the state.10 Carter also halted the purchase of military equipment by Saudi Arabia, which Israel had opposed. The Washington Star described it as a “policy change.” Indeed, earlier Carter had personally overruled his own national security adviser and defense secretary to allow the sale of refueling equipment for F-15 jets to the Saudis.11
The Republican opposition called the Carterites' politicization of the bureaucracy “unprecedented,” and others leveled charges of misuse of federal funds.12 Carter's people simply shrugged their shoulders at such charges, knowing that after the election any corruption accusations would be swept under the rug, regardless of who won.
The business of Washington had ground to a halt. Congress was in recess, campaigning for reelection, the cabinet was on the road for Carter, and the mice of the bureaucracy were playing—coming in later, taking long lunches, and leaving early. The halls of Congress were hushed, empty of members, staff, and lobbyists. Barstools and lunch tables went begging. Washington hostesses stopped holding parties until the matter was settled in November. No sense in insulting the eventual winners by casting canapés before swinish losers.
Carter held an Oval Office press conference in which he said that Reagan “did not understand.” Reagan, on the trail in Kentucky that day, threw some hot rhetoric back in Carter's face. Standing on the flatbed of a blue truck provided by the Teamsters, Reagan said it was true, he didn't understand—he didn't understand why America was losing the Cold War, why people went without jobs, why inflation was raging out of control, or “why fifty-two Americans have been held hostage for almost a year now!”13 A man yelled out in response, “Because Carter's incompetent!”14 Reagan was on fire and the crowd went wild.
Reagan now grabbed the hostage issue by the throat and told audiences the long captivity was “a humiliation and disgrace” to the country.15 He walloped Carter, saying, “I believe that this administration's foreign policy helped create the entire situation that made their kidnap possible.”16
By now the bad blood between the candidates was palpable. There was no doubt that Carter would return fire in this war of words. The president charged Reagan with breaking a campaign pledge not to make a “political football” out of the hostages. Carter also implied that Reagan was endangering the lives of the hostages.17
Reagan, angry from the months of attacks from the Carter campaign—the racist charges, the slurs on his intelligence—shot right back. “I don't think I've broken that pledge,” Reagan acidly told reporters in Kansas City. “I would think that breaking such a pledge might be if I waited until 7:15 on Election Day and then brought the subject up, as he did in the Wisconsin primary.”18 Carter's cheap bit of political theater from back in the spring—going on national television to announce a breakthrough in the negotiations when apparently there was nothing of the sort, at a time when Ted Kennedy was closing the gap—was coming back to haunt him.
Carter continued his counterattack on the hostage issue. In Texas he chided Reagan for having a “secret plan” to secure the release of the hostages. The president drew a comparison to Richard Nixon's statements in 1968 that he had such a plan to end the Vietnam War. “Republicans have a habit of spreading a lot of horse manure around right before an election,” Carter railed, “and lately, it's getting pretty deep all over this country.” The partisan crowd in Waco ate it up, though Reagan had never suggested that he had a “secret plan,” only “some ideas” (not specified) on how to win their release.19
Carter's campaign was convinced that Reagan had made a major mistake in bringing up the hostages, that it was a sign of weakness and that Reagan's faltering campaign was getting desperate. In the end, the president's men felt, the issue would favo
r Carter and not Reagan. Or so they hoped.
But Reagan was getting political cover from John Anderson. The independent candidate weighed in on the hostage issue, saying that the president had failed to see it coming.20 The stakes had gotten personal for Anderson, too. Even as his political hopes dwindled, he made sure to blast his political enemy, Carter.
The campaign was now downright ugly. Carter, in Florida, told an audience, “When you're sitting across the negotiating table with President Brezhnev … you can't rely on three-by-five cards, and you can't read a TelePrompTer.” Carter implied that unlike Reagan, he was able to “think on his feet.”21 In Texas, the Republican governor, William Clements, called Carter a “goddamned liar,” and former senator Ralph Yarborough retorted that Clements was a “guttersnipe.” Democrats said Clements's outburst was just more evidence that Reagan was slipping in the Lone Star State. Mondale, in the state, said Reagan was “an enemy of Mexican-Americans and blacks.”22
A television station in New Orleans received a death threat aimed at Carter. The threat was on the Secret Service agents' minds when some lights loudly went out during the president's rally in the Big Easy.23 They moved quickly, but it turned out to be only a blown fuse.
Reagan also received his fair share of death threats, which the Secret Service and the FBI had to track down and monitor. One threat came from the “American Indian Party,” which asked Senator S. I. Hayakawa to help “even to the point of killing” Reagan.24 Another warned Reagan not to go to Oregon: “If Reagan comes here he may get his head blowen [sic] off.”25
Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America Page 73