The pollsters were working the phones, checking key precincts in early states, trying to determine a trend, if any. Dick Wirthlin was detecting unusual strength for Reagan among Catholic and blue-collar voters in the Northeast.
Bill Casey and others were also working the phones, calling their CIA and military contacts around the world, trying to find out about any unusual troop movements or unexplained activity by American military planes. Casey, even on Election Day, was worried that Carter might pull the hostages out of a hat.
ABOUT TWO HOURS AFTER the old cranks of Dixville Notch voted, Jody Powell took a phone call on Air Force One as the big plane was on approach to the Seattle airport. It was from the White House. On the other end of the line were Hamilton Jordan and Pat Caddell. The connection was bad, but Powell could hear well enough to know the news was bad. “We need to talk to the president,” his friend Jordan said. “The bottom has fallen out. It's all over.”42
As soon as the plane landed, Powell called back on a land line and pressed for more information. Caddell told him that on Saturday his polling had had the race statistically tied, with Carter at 41 and Reagan at 40 percent. On Sunday night, his polling had had Reagan going up by 5 percent over Carter. And by Monday night, Reagan had opened up 7 to 10 percent lead over the president.43
The young press secretary, grasping at straws, asked whether the poll was an aberration. Caddell told him that a trend had begun over the weekend and was only accelerating. A landslide was coming their way and there was nothing they could do to get out of its path. Dejectedly, Powell hung up. He then watched as the president spoke to a hangar full of enthusiastic Democrats. Though Carter's voice was nearly gone, he gave a good performance, even as he choked up a bit. Powell remorsefully thought that it was the best rally of the year.44
He decided not to tell the president yet; he would wait until they were alone on the Boeing 707 and headed back to Georgia. Problem was, he couldn't get Carter alone. Around 11:30 P.M. pacific time, as the plane took off, Powell went to the galley, fixed himself a stiff drink, and waited.45 Carter had come out of his two-room private compartment to chew the fat with the staff in their section of the plane and have a rare double martini. The president was “joshing around … that sort of thing,” Powell recalled. “I thought, ‘This is such a nice one that I cannot break into this and take him back up there and tell him he's got a call, because I know what he is going to hear.’”46
Carter decided to invite reporters into his private quarters for a chat. Finally, as the plane was halfway across the country and the reporters had been dismissed, Powell went to the forward section of the plane and told Carter about his phone call with Jordan and Caddell. It was now almost 4 A.M.
“What did they find?” Carter asked.
“They said it looks bad,” Powell told him. “It's probably all over.”47
Carter was first shocked and then disheartened. “So finally,” Powell remembered, “one of the stewards came … and said, ‘Mr. Caddell and Mr. Jordan are on the phone and they said they need to talk to the president.’” Caddell's latest numbers showed an utter and complete collapse for the Georgian, across the board, with nearly all groups and in nearly all regions. He was losing whites overwhelmingly, he was losing the Catholic vote, and Reagan was extremely competitive with union voters. Carter was being wiped out in the suburbs and in the rural areas. Reagan was scoring impressively with Hispanics and Jewish voters. Carter's beloved South had also apparently found a new hero in Reagan. Carter was running far behind in every category from four years earlier, even among the evangelicals he'd carried so handsomely in 1976.
“Are you sure about this?” Carter asked.
“Yes. There is just no way.”
With little else to say, both men apologized to the president. Carter hung up. Powell, weeping, said, “I'm really sorry, Mr. President.… We could have done a better job.”48 Carter called Rosalynn at their home in Plains and told her, “We are going to lose.”
The president, alone in the darkened Air Force One, gently wept.49
SOMETIME LATER, POWELL ASSEMBLED White House staffers and told them what he'd told the president. In the dim plane racing over the slumbering countryside, they learned that the election was “hopeless.”
All cried but promised Powell that they would not tell anybody else. Understandably, Powell described the rest of his day as “miserable.” He did tell his wife, Nan, and daughter, Emily, that the president was going to lose. His twelve-year old daughter burst into tears. “No! That cannot be! That cannot be!”
Powell ruefully remembered all the insults piled on the Carter gang by the Washington establishment. “They were all cheerleaders for Camelot.” He also remembered the false story in the Washington Post accusing him of having an affair. His family saw the awful story and Powell furiously demanded a retraction, which the paper published. He said the Style Section of the Post was “totally out of control” in those days and that his wife never forgave the paper.50
THE MORNING OF THE election, George Bush met with his campaign team in Houston and spoke to them affectionately about the trail, the travails, and now, a possible triumph. Earlier, a thick fog had enveloped Houston as he and Mrs. Bush went to their polling place. Later that day, friends, campaign workers, and reporters milled about the Bush home in Houston. The Bushes were born blood donors, always kind to strangers, even those they did not depend on. Their door, it seemed, was always open to friends. In the evening, the entire Bush clan gathered in a hotel suite. George and Barbara Bush sat on the floor watching the returns on three television sets as their four sons joyously roughhoused with one another. Bush several times had to gently admonish them, “Respectful, respectful.”51 A photographer was attempting—vainly—to get the Bush boys to knock off the horseplay and stand still for the historic photograph.
Vice President Mondale voted that morning in the Afton, Minnesota, town hall, accompanied by his wife, Joan, and their children.52 Mondale, of all the candidates, may have pulled the toughest duty. It was up to him, the old New Dealer, to convince wavering Democrats, distrustful of Carter, to come back to the fold. He loved campaigning but had been on a whirlwind tour for months and was exhausted. And he knew. Carter had called him earlier to tell him they were going to be wiped out.53
Carter spent the afternoon in the Oval Office and the family residence of the White House. He knew the end was coming but believed it was not a reflection on him. He blamed Walter Cronkite for trumpeting Election Day as the anniversary of the hostage taking and for heightening the American people's frustration.54 He blamed the personal problems of his staff, including Bert Lance and Hamilton Jordan. He blamed the increases in the cost of oil from the Arab countries, the fight over the Panama Canal treaties, and the appointment of “so many minority members” to federal posts.55 Only later, in a moment of private candor, did he say, “I lost it myself.”56
After Carter spoke to the staff on the South Lawn, the bad news raced through the White House complex. By late afternoon, almost everybody knew the election was going to go badly. Carter went for a jog alone in the rain, lost in thought. He asked Powell to arrange a meeting in the Oval Office at half past five with Jordan, Robert Strauss, Stuart Eizenstat, and Jack Watson, who had replaced Jordan as chief of staff. The depressing discussion was about what he should say to the Democrats gathered at the Sheraton Washington Hotel and when he should call Governor Reagan. All agreed that he should not concede until the polls had closed on the West Coast.57
Carter called a cabinet meeting for 7 P.M. He did not attend, but he sent Jordan and Watson to tell the members of his cabinet that he was going to lose. No one was to criticize or attack Reagan. Just a few hours earlier, Carter had called Reagan a “right-wing Republican.”58
As darkness enveloped Washington, Carter was biding his time in the twenty-five-room private residence at the White House, his family somberly gathered around watching television. Understatedly, Caddell said, “No one was feeling very good
.”59
REAGAN, AFTER VOTING, GOT a quick haircut at Drucker's Barber Shop in Beverly Hills. The trim set him back $7.50. While there, he also got a $1 shoeshine and a $7 manicure. Later, over a lunch of tuna salad, iced tea, and iced milk, Ed Meese and Mike Deaver joined Reagan to discuss the transition of power in the government. The Gipper, superstitiously, knocked on wood and was hesitant to talk about such matters unless and until he actually won.60 Ken Khachigian had drafted a victory speech, but the ultra-cautious Reagan refused to look at it.61
Reagan was operating under the assumption that the election would be a close one. Wirthlin had advised him that their last national sampling had Reagan ahead by six points, but Reagan knew it was now all about turnout.62 Wirthlin called Reagan just after noon to tell him about the early numbers. Reagan responded by crossing his fingers and knocking on wood at the same time. He and Nancy tried to busy themselves by taking and placing phone calls.
Carter knew he was going to lose and Reagan believed he might win, but neither man was prepared for the political earthquake that was rumbling its way across the country, precinct by precinct, county by county, and state by state.
THE THREE MAJOR TV networks—ABC, CBS, and NBC—went live with their news at 6:30 P.M. eastern time and then swung right into their open-ended election coverage beginning at 7 P.M. In a sign of things to come, two small cable stations were also broadcasting election-related content that evening. Ted Turner's CNN was offering its first coverage of a presidential campaign. Meanwhile, a tiny cable station called the Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network, which had a miniscule budget of $100,000 for the night, planned to broadcast old speeches by the candidates and raw footage from campaign events, interspersed with call-in shows. The concept was the brainchild of a formerly obscure staffer in the Ford White House, Brian Lamb. The phrase “low-key” was invented for Lamb, the president of C-SPAN, who rarely showed any emotion whatsoever. Lamb had assembled a network of 850 cable systems that reached six million houses.63
But it was definitely the major networks that ruled the roost. And they promised “wall-to-wall” Election Night coverage. For the hypercompetitive political junkies at the networks' news divisions, this was their Super Bowl. As the New York Times observed, “To television news officials, the contest between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan almost pales beside the fierce competition among the three major commercial networks over which will name the national and statewide winners.”64 Nobody wanted to screw up, as CBS had in 1976, prematurely calling Ohio for Ford, only to have to withdraw the call and award it later to Carter. But this was war, as far as they were concerned, and the intense pressure to be first would lead to more wrong calls on this night that would have to be reversed.
The networks' election coverage was lavishly produced. Each network had full-fledged political units including political directors, pollsters, consultants, and aides skilled in analyzing key precincts in the states, especially those thought to be close. The “nets” had computers, calculators, runners, makeup artists, phone lines everywhere, cute little jingles, state-of-the-art graphics, and cars with drivers at the ready to fetch a guest at a moment's notice. Correspondents had been dispatched to all the important locations. These included the hotel in Washington where the Republicans were gathering, the Hilton; the Reagan hotel in Los Angeles, the Century Plaza; the Democrats' hotel in Washington, the Sheraton; the White House; the Reagans' home in Pacific Palisades; even John Anderson's command station (Anderson's inevitable concession speech being an unlucky draw for network reporters). The networks also had reporters stationed with several key Senate candidates around the country. A handful of longtime liberal senators had been under assault from independent conservative and Christian organizations, and all wanted to see if they would be able to withstand the withering challenge from the Right.
The anchors were in New York and Washington. For ABC, Frank Reynolds and Ted Koppel were in the pilot and co-pilot seats. ABC had a small army of other commentators, including Max Robinson, Barbara Walters, Peter Jennings, and Robert MacNeil, along with columnists George Will and Tom Wicker and correspondents Catherine Mackin, Lynn Sherr, Steve Bell, and Brit Hume. Barry Serafin was with the Reagan entourage in LA and the irrepressible Sam Donaldson was with Carter at the White House.
Venerable Walter Cronkite was manning the desk for CBS along with his designated replacement, Dan Rather, whom Cronkite treated like an errand boy. This would be “Uncle Walter's” last election. It was also his sixty-fourth birthday. Correspondent Bill Plante was with Reagan and Phil Jones with Carter, while Lesley Stahl was on hand as well. For commentary CBS had Bill Moyers, who had worked for Lyndon Johnson, and Jeff Greenfield, who had worked for Bobby Kennedy, along with conservative columnist James J. Kilpatrick, whose famous “Point-Counterpoint” exchange on 60 Minutes with liberal Shana Alexander had been uproariously parodied on Saturday Night Live.
Over at NBC, John Chancellor was holding down the fort, aided by David Brinkley and Tom Brokaw. It was an open secret that Chancellor and Brinkley detested each other. Brinkley was under doctor's orders not to push it too hard, as he had just gone through gallbladder surgery.65 The greatest of all the presidential campaign biographers, Teddy White, was on hand to lend his substantial presence for NBC. Jessica Savitch was covering the congressional race, and Heidi Schulman and Chris Wallace were in Los Angeles with the Reagan campaign.
None of the networks had any political consultants in the wings to pontificate. All three used their own correspondents or print journalists and elected officials.
The networks' political directors—the bookish Hal Bruno at ABC, the quietly charming Marty Plissner at CBS, and NBC's Gordon Manning, who kept a lower profile—had been relentlessly preparing for this one big night. They had been running the numbers for days now, looking at all possible election scenarios. They also had the private phone numbers for all the high-ranking officials of the Reagan and Carter campaigns. Throughout the day they had been gathering tidbits, rumors, and anecdotes from around the country. ABC had interviewed voters in three hundred key precincts. CBS, together with the New York Times, interviewed 15,000 voters that day. NBC conducted an astounding 28,500 exit interviews with voters.66
For sheer glitz and exceptional content, ABC led the way. This was the era of the legendary Roone Arledge, whose creative stewardship had turned ABC into a broadcasting juggernaut. The network's round, two-tiered set looked like the bridge of the starship Enterprise, filled with analysts; giant, brightly lit maps; television and computer monitors; and colorful graphics. NBC was not far behind in the department, featuring a massive, twenty-four-by-fourteen-foot Plexiglas map that was being operated by a squad of electricians in charge of 7,324 tiny lightbulbs.67
All three networks employed colored maps, taking advantage of the fact that by 1980 most Americans had color television sets. States on the ABC board that might go for Reagan would be lit in a bright red while those that might go for Carter would be lit a bright blue. For NBC and CBS, it was just the opposite: Reagan states would be blue; Carter states, red. But Democrats complained about being so closely identified with red, the color of Communism. Within a few years, all three networks would make the GOP the “Red State” party.
The elaborate studios were hives of activity. For every person in front of the lens, there were hundreds working in support of him or her, behind the camera. Tables groaned under the weight of shrimp, sandwiches, fruit, and other delectables for staff and guests. Wine and beer was even available, though it was discouraged for those going on camera. Despite the amenities, the atmosphere wasn't entirely comfortable. To counter all the equipment and the klieg lights, the studios had been super-cooled. Woe to those who sat still too long; their feet got cold.
The huge armies covering the election were gearing up for a long night.
It wasn't to be.
THE END CAME QUICKLY, but not mercifully, for Jimmy Carter. At 6:30 P.M. eastern time, ABC's Frank Reynolds announced that Reagan had
already carried the state of Indiana and that a thirty-three-year-old GOP congressman, J. Danforth Quayle, had defeated three-term incumbent Democratic senator Birch Bayh. The polls were still open in parts of Indiana. Over at NBC, John Chancellor came on at 7 P.M. and predicted, “Ronald Reagan will win a very substantial victory tonight—that's our projection.”68
At the top of the hour, Reynolds called Ohio for Reagan. The ABC newsman hadn't even had a chance to tell viewers that Reagan had also taken Virginia and Kentucky. Carter had won West Virginia and, as expected, Georgia and the District of Columbia. The polls were still open in some of these states. Florida fell quickly for Reagan—the first breach of Carter's “Solid South.” At seven minutes after seven, Reynolds called New Hampshire for Reagan.
Barbara Walters, widely known to have a nuclear-powered Rolodex, came on at 7:12 P.M. to report on a startling phone conversation she'd just had with Caddell. “He did say that last night he told President Carter he was going to lose.” She said she had pressed Caddell, asking if there was any chance, and he replied, “Look up at the board and you can see it spelled out.”69
Oklahoma and its eight electoral votes quickly fell into the Reagan column, and minutes later Tennessee went for the Gipper, as did New Jersey. States were falling as if autumn leaves. Maine, North Carolina, and Wisconsin went for Reagan too, adding to his electoral vote total.
Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America Page 81