An American Life

by Ronald Reagan

  Thousands of people, he said, had called in pledging support to Barry and the party. After that, Nancy and I both had a good night’s sleep.

  During the next few days, my speech was played and replayed at fund-raising events and on local television stations around the country and it ultimately raised eight million dollars for Goldwater and the party.

  Of course, I didn’t know it then, but that speech was one of the most important milestones in my life—another one of those unexpected turns in the road that led me onto a path I never expected to take.

  21

  THE 1964 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, as historians and journalists have amply recorded, was a disaster for our party. Not only was Goldwater swamped under a Lyndon Johnson landslide, the party came out of the election bitterly divided because of a vicious primary battle between Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller. A lot of liberal Republicans simply refused to support Goldwater against Johnson. The split was especially deep in California, where moderate and conservative factions of the party had already been feuding for years.

  After the election, I went back to doing what I’d been doing before it—speaking on national issues and doing my job on “Death Valley Days.” The following spring, Holmes Tuttle, a Los Angeles automobile dealer who had been one of the Republican contributors I’d met at the Coconut Grove dinner and who later bought the airtime for my speech for Goldwater, called me and asked if he and several friends might drop by our home in Pacific Palisades.

  After I heard what they said, I almost laughed them out of the house. I can’t remember my exact words, but I said, in effect: “You’re out of your mind.”

  Tuttle and the other members of his group said they wanted me to run for governor in 1966, when Pat Brown, the liberal Democrat who had beat Nixon for reelection in 1962, was expected to run for a third term.

  I’d never given a thought to running for office and I had no interest in it whatsoever. After doing as much research as I had on the operations of government, the last thing I wanted was to become a part of it. I just wanted to keep on making speeches about it.

  “I’m an actor, not a politician,” I said several times. “I’m in show business.”

  But they claimed the party was in such shambles following the 1964 election that its survival as a force in California was in doubt and, mentioning my speech for Goldwater, they said they thought I might be the only Republican around who had a chance of beating Brown and bringing the party back together.

  Nothing was said, incidentally, about whether I would make a good governor or not. They just said I was the only one who could bring the party together.

  I told them that running for governor was out of the question for me, but that I wanted to help the party and made a proposition: Find somebody you think would make a good governor and then I’ll campaign for him as hard as I can, the way I campaigned for Barry. “Pick your candidate and I guarantee you I’ll campaign for him, whoever it is,” I said.

  When they left, I hoped I’d put the idea to rest. But they kept coming back, and then the Federated Republican Women’s Club sent a delegation to the house urging me to run and I told them I wasn’t interested in political office, I was happy in show business.

  Nancy had no more interest in my running for governor than I did and she was just as flabbergasted by the idea as I was. We loved our life as it was and didn’t want it to change.

  We had our children, our friends in Hollywood, our home, our ranch, our privacy; we had a good income and all the opportunities I ever wanted to speak about the issues that concerned me.

  I was approaching an age when some of the men I knew were already starting to think about retirement. Although I didn’t have any thought of retirement, I had a good job and a good life and, at fifty-four, the last thing I wanted to do was start a new career.

  I told Nancy’s father, Loyal Davis, who had seen the seamy side of politics in Chicago, about the pressure I was coming under to run for governor and he said I would be crazy to run for office; he said there was no way a man could go into politics without sacrificing his honesty and honor, because no matter how well intentioned he was, a politician was inevitably forced by the realities of political life to compromise.

  I said I didn’t need any convincing, I wasn’t going to run.

  The pressure didn’t let up. I kept saying no and Holmes Tuttle and his group kept coming back and saying they wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  It soon got to the point where Nancy and I were beginning to have trouble sleeping at night; the constant emphasis that I was the only guy around who could beat Brown and heal the split in the party put a lot of weight on our shoulders. After a while we’d lie in bed and ask ourselves: If they’re right and things get worse for the party and we could have done something about it, will we ever be able to sleep at night again?

  I finally decided to make an offer to the people who wanted me to run for governor: “Even though I think you’re wrong about my being the only Republican who might be able to beat Brown, if you fellows will arrange it for me to go on the road and accept some of the speaking invitations I’m getting from groups around the state, then I’ll go out and speak to them and come back in six months, on the last day of 1965, and tell you whether you’re right or whether you should be looking for somebody else to run for governor.”

  I believed that if I continued speaking for six months I’d be able to identify someone whom the people thought would make a good governor, then I’d campaign for him.

  Well, my plan worked out that way, but not in the way I expected.

  Holmes Tuttle’s group hired a California political consulting company headed by Stuart Spencer and William Roberts to look over my speaking invitations and pick out ones they thought would get me around the state, but exclude Republican functions; the idea was to avoid partisan events and speak to ordinary Californians.

  Starting roughly July 1, 1965, I drove up and down the length and breadth of California for six months, commuting to luncheon and dinner meetings from San Diego at the southern border all the way to the coastal fishing villages near the Oregon border.

  I’d give a speech, then get in my car and drive to the next one, meeting the members of organizations like the Rotary Club, Chamber of Commerce, and United Way.

  The speeches had pretty much the same flavor that my speeches had had since the later years on the General Electric plant tours; after the speeches, I’d hear a lot of the same things from members of the audience that I’d heard for years on the GE tours: People were tired of wasteful government programs and welfare chiselers; and they were angry about the constant spiral of taxes and government regulations, arrogant bureaucrats, and public officials who thought all of mankind’s problems could be solved by throwing the taxpayers’ dollars at them.

  Their comments didn’t surprise me. By then, I’d come to expect it when I went out to the grass roots of America. But I was surprised by something else: No matter where I went, in San Jose or Modesto, Los Angeles or Newport Beach, after I’d give a speech, people would be waiting and they’d come up to me and say, “Why don’t you run for governor?”

  I’d laugh and give my standard response: “I’m an actor, not a politician,” then ask them to suggest someone who was really qualified to be governor. But all I heard were voices of more people chiming in to urge me to run against Brown.

  Of course, I wondered at first if this wasn’t a setup and if the fellows who were pushing me to run for governor hadn’t planted these people in the audience. But pretty soon I realized it was happening too often in too many places to be a setup; these were people with no special interest in politics.

  After about three months of this, I returned home one night and said to Nancy, “This isn’t working out the way I thought it would. You know, these guys may be right. All these people are telling me after my speeches that I ought to run for governor; this may end up putting us in an awful spot.”

  Then I’d go out back on the road and give
another speech and hear the same things again and I’d come home and Nancy and I would talk about it again. Before long, we were having trouble getting to sleep again; we’d lay in bed and say, “Will we ever be able to live with ourselves if we turn our backs on this and Pat Brown wins a third term?”

  When the six months were almost over, I asked her: “How do you say no to all these people?”

  If I decided to run, we agreed our life we knew and loved would change dramatically, perhaps forever. But I told Nancy: “I don’t think we can run away from it.” She agreed.

  I called the people who were pressing me to run against Brown and said, “Okay, I’ll do it,” and on a television broadcast January 4, 1966, I announced my intention to seek the Republican nomination for governor.

  22

  WHEN PAT BROWN COMMISSIONED a television commercial in which he told a group of small children, “I’m running against an actor, and you know who killed Abe Lincoln, don’t you?,” I knew he knew he was in trouble.

  I won the chance to run against Brown after a Republican primary campaign that was very bitter at times, largely because of the lingering split between conservatives and moderates in the state party.

  My principal opponent in the primary was George Christopher, a former mayor of San Francisco who tried simultaneously to portray me as a right-wing extremist and attack me because I’d admitted having been in Communist front groups—without mentioning that I’d resigned and declared war on them as soon as I’d realized what they were.

  I was a novice in politics and at times I showed it. At a convention of black Republicans, I made my talk, sat down, and was followed by Christopher, who got up and implied during his speech that I was a racial bigot.

  I fumed about it for a moment or two, stood up, and said (some people there say I shouted) to Christopher that he was wrong, that I’d never been a bigot and I deeply resented his attack on my integrity. Then I walked off the stage and drove home, leaving a startled audience behind me.

  During almost thirty years in Hollywood, I had become accustomed to taking potshots from critics. But I’d grown up in a home where no sin was more grievous than racial bigotry, and I wasn’t going to take it from Christopher.

  After I got home, two members of my campaign team found me there and convinced me to return to the meeting. I cooled down and was back at the auditorium before the meeting had ended; I got back on the platform and tried to explain how I had been raised and why I took such offense at Christopher’s remarks. I think they understood why I had exploded in response to the attack on my integrity. But it was the last time I stalked off a stage during a political debate. That day, I suppose, was all part of my political education.

  The personal attacks against me during the primary finally became so heavy that the state Republican chairman, Gaylord Parkinson, postulated what he called the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican. It’s a rule I followed during that campaign and have ever since.

  After beating Christopher in the primary, I had to deal with Brown, whose campaign against me, simply put, asked a question: What is an actor doing seeking an important job like the governorship of California?

  As the campaign got under way, Brown seemed confident he’d win his third term in a breeze. He had previously beaten not only Dick Nixon, a former vice-president of the United States, but U.S. Senator William F. Knowland, an Oakland publisher who was another Republican powerhouse in California, and I suspect he thought it would be even easier to knock off this newcomer to politics from Hollywood.

  I intended to focus my campaign on issues, but couldn’t ignore Brown’s attacks that I was unqualified for the job because I was an actor inexperienced as an elected politician. I decided to turn this around and present myself as what I was: an ordinary citizen who wanted to start unraveling the mess politicians were making of our government.

  “Sure,” I said, “the man who has the job has more experience than anyone else . . . that’s why I’m running.”

  Pat Brown brought Senator Edward Kennedy to California to help him campaign, and he began a speaking trip around the state declaring, “Reagan has never held any political office before and here he is seeking the top spot in the government of California.”

  He abandoned that theme after my next speech, when I said, “I understand there’s a senator from Massachusetts who’s come to California and he’s concerned that I’ve never held office prior to seeking this job. Well, you know, come to think of it, the senator from Massachusetts never held any job before he became a senator.”

  Still, I realized that if I didn’t handle it right, the “he’s only an actor” theme could hurt me. I knew a lot of people had misconceptions about actors: If you’re an actor, the only thing you can do is act. . . . Yes, you’ve played a lot of parts on the screen, but it’s only make-believe and that’s all you can do: pretend. . . . Those who can, do; those who can’t, act.

  Being an actor who was running for political office wasn’t all drawbacks: Many people develop an affection and feelings of friendship for someone they enjoy on the screen, and that could be an advantage for me.

  Nevertheless, I knew I had to prove I had more to offer than a familiar face.

  One of Brown’s favorite ploys was to say, “Reagan is only an actor who memorizes speeches written by other people, just like he memorized the lines that were fed to him by his screenwriters in the movies. Sure, he makes a good speech, but who’s writing his speeches?”

  Well, I was writing my speeches. But I couldn’t get up and say to an audience, “Hey, I write my own speeches.”

  We called a meeting and Stu Spencer and Bill Roberts, who were managing the campaign, said that Brown was making so much headway with this that we had to defuse it or else lose the election.

  “I’ve got a suggestion,” I said. “From now on, why don’t I just say a few words to whatever group I’m with, no matter how big it is, and then just open it up to questions and answers? People might think somebody had written my opening remarks for me, but they’ll know it would be impossible for somebody to feed me answers to questions I didn’t know about in advance.”

  The political professionals in our group blanched when I said that.

  They were used to hiding candidates, not turning them loose. I think the idea of a candidate being on his own scared them. Do you really want to do that? they asked.

  “I think I have to do it,” I said.

  Well, it worked like a charm. From then on, whether the campaign audience was three or three thousand, I’d make a few remarks, then take questions. I hadn’t planned it that way, but this turned out to be a wonderful way to learn about the issues that were on people’s minds.

  At the time, the public universities in California were going up in smoke; rioting students were literally setting fire to them.

  Californians were rightfully proud of and dedicated to their great system of higher education—especially the nine campuses of the University of California—and they were upset by what was going on.

  After I started the new question-and-answer style of campaigning, I’d make a few introductory remarks and ask for questions and no matter where I was, before I could finish, there’d be people waving their hands and asking: “What are you going to do about these things going on on the college campuses?”

  I had to come up with some answers.

  I said I thought the students had no business being at the university if they weren’t willing to abide by the rules; if they refused to obey them, they should go somewhere else.

  Whenever I said that, the audience cheered. Californians just didn’t like students tearing apart the university system of which they were so proud.

  Once I got on the campaign trail, I discovered, a little to my surprise, that I enjoyed campaigning. And I was out to win.

  I guess I’d been a competitive fellow since my childhood in Dixon and a political campaign was a competitive game of another sort, except the stakes wer
e higher.

  The question of how to deal with rebellious students became one of the central issues of the campaign, but it was just one of many problems troubling California in 1966. Californians paid the highest per capita taxes in the nation; the state’s crime rate was the highest in the nation; it had the nation’s most wasteful welfare program; it was threatened by increasing problems of air and water pollution. For more than a century, California had been a land of boundless opportunity attracting an ever-growing stream of immigrants from around the country and around the world. Its climate and easygoing lifestyle were part of the reason for its popularity, but perhaps more than other states, California symbolized opportunity: It was a place where people could make a new start—and with hard work, they could make it.

  While newcomers were still flocking to California, the rate of migration to the state had begun to slow for the first time since the Gold Rush, largely because the pace at which it produced new jobs had begun to decline for the first time since the Depression. More and more businessmen were complaining of overregulation, high taxes, and an “adversarial” attitude toward them by state officials; they were giving up on California, electing to build new plants outside the state, or deciding to pack up and leave the state altogether.

  Pat Brown was one of those liberals who thought all the world’s problems could be solved by throwing taxpayers’ money at them, and in a way, he made the campaign easier for me.

  While ducking the real issues that were worrying Californians, he stuck to his one-note campaign of attacks on me as “that Hollywood actor in makeup.”

  Well, I hadn’t worn makeup since I made Love Is on the Air in 1937, and one of the biggest laughs I got during the campaign was after the two of us were invited to appear on “Meet the Press.” When I arrived for the broadcast, Brown (as well as all the reporters on the panel) was wearing makeup; I was the only one in the room with a bare face.