AT FIFTY, DAVID GARTH was too old be called “the enfant terrible of politics,” but he was surely one of the most accomplished, and most feared, of political players—feared as much by those on his side of the political wars as his opponent’s. Over the last decade, he had become one of the most successful, and best paid, of the political consultants whose radio and television spots had come to dominate American politics. And in many significant ways, he was unlike his competitors. His graduate degree was not in media or public relations but in mass psychology. He had spent a chunk of his youth in bed with rheumatic fever, listening to news reports and the speeches of politicians. He had gotten his first foothold in the TV production business with a ruse, telling a local New York TV station he had the broadcast rights to high school football games while simultaneously telling the high schools he had a contract with a local TV station.
And in his approach to media, Garth was an outlier. He believed deeply that you cannot sell candidates like soap, that political communication was radically different from the selling of a product whose attributes could be more or less invented.
“Candidates speak,” he’d say. “They think. They take positions, make decisions.”
And above all, Garth preached, “If there’s an elephant in the fucking room, tell the fucking people you see the fucking elephant.”
So when New York Mayor John Lindsay ran for reelection in 1969 with a trouble-plagued first term to explain, Garth was one of those who insisted the aristocratic, “too good-looking to be good” mayor look at the camera and admit to making a mistake or two (it took a lot of takes to get Lindsay to deliver that line). When Tom Bradley tried to become the first Los Angeles black mayor in 1973 after a losing campaign four years earlier, Garth shot Bradley talking about why he lost, acknowledging that “maybe some of you thought I’d favor one group over another.” Jesus, a black guy talking about racial voting! And then pointing out there weren’t enough blacks in the city to get him elected!
The Bradley ad was a classic demonstration of one of Garth’s key concepts: political judo, where a presumed weakness of a candidate is turned into a strength. When Congressman Ed Koch, a balding, singularly unprepossessing figure, ran for mayor in 1977, this was Garth’s slogan: “After Eight Years of Charisma, and Four Years of the Clubhouse—Why Not Try Competence?” Garth was also famous—or notorious—for stuffing his ads with information, lots of facts and figures, on the assumption that a viewer would likely see an ad many times and would take new information from it each time. His slogans were impossibly long: “This Year, Before They Tell You What They Want to Do—Make Them Show You What They’ve Done.” Or “Isn’t It About Time We Had a Mayor Who Wanted to Be Mayor? Vote for Tom Bradley—He’ll Work As Hard for His Paycheck As You Do for Yours.” And more often than not, “Fight” would show up in the slogan—an unsurprising preference for a campaign consultant who combined the single-mindedness of Vince Lombardi with the subtlety of a pile driver.
And now here he was, in Gary Hart’s hotel suite, brought by one of the Senator’s most trusted friends, staring balefully around the room, as Beatty explained to Hart that he thought it would be a good idea to have a brief chat, just a few minutes, with just the Senator, Warren, and Garth. And when the other aides reluctantly fled out, Beatty explained to Hart that he’d known Garth for years, that he had a thought or two to share.
“When Warren called me to tell me he was worried about tonight,” Garth began, “I had a tape put together of every Reagan debate my guys could find—the one with Bobby in ’67, right through to the primaries. He’s never lost one, never. And you know why? Because everybody makes the same fucking mistake every fucking time. They try to scare the voters; they try to paint him as a nut case from Whackoville. They try to show his numbers don’t add up. Let me ask you: When some reporter proved there weren’t twenty-three thousand people at GM filling out government forms like Reagan had said, only five thousand—you know what people thought: ‘That’s five thousand too many!’
“And one other thing,” Garth said. “He’s always the most comfortable guy in the room. Everyone else looks like the camera’s going to attack them . . . he couldn’t be happier to be there. Ask him a toughie? He smiles, he nods, he explains it all away. You know what Reagan knows that nobody in politics seems to understand? The number one rule: ‘In politics, Bugs Bunny always beats Daffy Duck.’”
Hart started at Garth as if he had arrived from another planet.
“What the hell does that—?”
But Warren Beatty was chuckling.
“You need to broaden your movie watching, Gary,” he said. “Daffy’s always going berserk, jumping up and down, fuming, yelling. Bugs is . . . well, a bit like Cary Grant. His eyes are lidded, he’s got that sly, small smile, like he always knows what’s up, like nothing can ruffle him.”
“Here’s the thing,” said Garth. “When you whipped out those Bobby Kennedy quotes in that debate with ‘Splash,’ you threw him completely off his stride.”
“‘Splash’?”
“That’s Dave’s nickname for Teddy,” Beatty said. “Look,” he added quickly, seeing Hart’s grimace. “Everyone who waves Reagan off as an actor misses the point; but there is something about acting that’s deep in his gut: He knows his lines, he’s comfortable with them, he’ll reach back for them the same way a comic reaches back for the killer joke, to get into his comfort zone. You take that comfort zone away from him, you win. You don’t, you lose.”
“So,” Hart said, “the fate of America hangs on whether you can turn me into a talking rabbit? I guess I missed that part of the Federalist Papers.”
RONALD REAGAN NEVER KNEW what hit him.
He was the picture of confidence when he walked onto the stage at Music Hall a few minutes before 9:30, clad in his traditional blue suit, red-patterned tie, and white handkerchief folded into his breast pocket. He looked across the stage . . . and Gary Hart wasn’t there. Both candidates had been cued by stage managers to walk onstage at exactly the same time, but Hart had taken what Garth called “a standing eight count” before walking onstage to greet Reagan with an extended right hand—and then proffered a picture frame with his left.
“I thought we agreed on no props,” Reagan said.
“I just thought you’d like a copy of one of the earlier versions of your defense policies,” Hart said—and handed Reagan a framed newspaper ad for Secret Service of the Air, a 1938 film starring Reagan as Lieutenant “Bass” Bancroft. Reagan had the presence of mind to smile broadly, but the subtext of Hart’s gesture was clear: I’m comfortable, I’m at ease out here in front of the bright lights.
That subtext became overt when Hart, who had won the coin toss, chose to go first with his opening statement:
“Let me first extend my deep thanks to Governor Reagan, for his magnanimous refusal to use the ‘age’ issue in this campaign, now that we’ve firmly established just what my age is.”
And then Hart delivered an opening statement sharply different from the traditional “I run for President because . . .” recitations.
“In fact, one of the significant differences between the Governor and myself is that I believe the way out of our current troubles is to reach back to our founding principles to shape the new ideas we need. Mr. Reagan is fond of saying that ‘we have it in our power to begin the world over again.’ I happen to think the Founding Fathers who won our independence and wrote your Constitution had it right—that the way to really build that ‘city on the hill’ Governor Reagan speaks of is to understand what those principles are, and how we have strayed from them.
“It was unchecked executive power from a Democratic President that led us into Vietnam; that led a Republican President to the Watergate, and then to claim ‘if a President does it, that means it’s legal.’ You can almost hear Jefferson and Madison and Hamilton rolling in their graves. And, Governor, I’m frankly puzzled about why excess power doesn’t seem to bother you at all when it’s found in t
he boardrooms of our corporate giants that put unsafe automobiles on the street, or spew cancer-causing waste into the air and water . . . or when an unelected Federal Reserve Board drives interest rates so high it makes it impossible for our elected representatives to shape a plan for economic recovery. Theodore Roosevelt, a great Republican, understood that. Franklin Roosevelt, a great Democrat, understood that. I don’t understand why you can’t see or hear what they did.
“Oh—and as Columbo used to say . . . ‘just one more thing.’ Over the next ninety minutes, tens of millions of Americans will have the chance to judge for themselves which of us has the record, and the ideas, to lead this country. It seems to me that both of us should have enough confidence in our ideas and our record to withstand the tough questions—not just from this distinguished panel, but from each other. Now, I know the rules of this debate don’t specifically permit that—but there’s nothing to prevent each of us from posing a “rhetorical question” which we can choose to answer—or not. So in that spirit, Governor: In 1965, you were part of a nationwide campaign by the American Medical Association to stop Medicare. You called it, and I quote, ‘socialized medicine.’ Do you still believe that, and if not, why did you change your mind?”
It was not the substance of what Hart said that seemed to throw Reagan off his stride; it was the wholly unexpected framework of it. In the rehearsals back in Virginia, David Stockman had channeled Gary Hart brilliantly, but it was the Gary Hart whose platform style was earnest, intense, focused, the Gary Hart who still found it difficult to remember to smile. And here was Hart speaking the very words—“begin the world over again,” “a city on a hill”—that had been the pillars of Ronald Reagan’s oratory for years. And why was Hart asking him a question? Didn’t the rules specifically forbid that? He knew what he was going to do if Hart challenged him on Medicare; it had happened during a rehearsal, and Reagan had snapped at Stockman, “Damn it, there you go again!” Everyone had laughed, and Reagan had said, “I think I’ll use that.” But this question was ... out of sequence, a hit from the blind side.
And Reagan’s opening statement showed that he’d been knocked a bit off his game. The lines were there—the rejection of the pessimism among “Washington voices who tell us that our best days are behind us,” the assertion that “we don’t have inflation because the people have been living too well—we have inflation because the government has been living too well”; the pledge “to turn Americans loose to do the great things you have always done.”
But Reagan seemed compelled by Hart’s unorthodox opening to retake the language he had claimed as his own for so long, saying, “Yes, we do have it in our power to begin the world over again, but not by following Senator Hart and the Congressional Democrats off the cliff, by spending billions we do not have, and fueling the inflation that has robbed millions of their savings. Now,” he added, furrowing his brow and setting his jaw in that familiar expression of indignation, “with regard to Medicare, Senator Hart knows full well that I have always supported health care for our senior citizens. I was speaking on behalf of a different—”
“Governor,” said moderator Howard K. Smith, “I’m sorry but time’s up.”
Inside the Reagan holding room just offstage, Reagan advertising chief Peter Dailey shook his head. Reagan never let himself be cut off by the clock; he’d learned the art of pacing back in his days rebroadcasting Chicago Cubs games on WHO in Des Moines. That bastard Hart is gaming him.
And it didn’t stop when panelist Marvin Stone asked the first question, on who could better keep the peace. Reagan went right after Hart and the Congressional Democrats for “tempting aggression” by blocking increases in the defense budget, cutting sixty ships out of the Navy, blocking the B-1, delaying the cruise missile, the Minuteman missiles, the Tridents. “It was John Kennedy who said of our adversaries: ‘We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.’ That is still the way to ensure that our adversaries will not be tempted into a nuclear war which cannot be won, and must never be fought.”
“Senator Hart?” moderator Smith said. And Hart looked over at Reagan—and he smiled.
“Let’s just note for the record that Governor Reagan never got to explain if he still thinks Medicare is ‘socialized medicine’ . . . or maybe thinks he was saved by the bell. But as Joe Louis said, Governor: ‘You can run, but you can’t hide.’ There’ll be plenty of time for Mr. Reagan to explain—if he cares to do so.
“But the question is about war and peace—the most solemn responsibility any President can bear. I’ve spent the last four years on the Senate Armed Services Committee. I’ve listened to literally hundreds of experts—active duty and retired military officers, defense and intelligence analysts, many of whom we heard in top secret testimony behind closed doors. Their testimony, taken together, is one reason why I joined with colleagues from both sides of the aisle to form the Military Reform Caucus. It comes down to one simple idea: If we spend tens of billions of dollars on weapons that may well not work in actual combat, we end up risking the safety, the lives, of our soldiers and sailors and airmen; and we literally will spend ourselves weak, finding ourselves without the funds to buy the weaponry that will work in the conflicts we are likely to face.
“But there’s something about your approach to the military, Governor, that you didn’t share with us—and I thought it would be helpful to use some of my time to do so. Back in April in . . . Grand Island, Nebraska, I’m pretty sure . . . you charged that the GI Bill did not cover educational benefits for Vietnam veterans. Now, to your credit, you admitted you’d gotten that wrong—maybe we’ll revisit some of your other remarkably inaccurate misstatements later—but then you explained why you’d made that mistake. You said a couple of four-star generals had misinformed you and, you said, ‘Having only gotten to two bars myself, when four-stars told me something, I figured it was right,’
“Governor, you cannot be serious! The reason why the Constitution makes the President the Commander in Chief is to ask the tough questions—even of the top military officers. If ex-lieutenant John Kennedy in the Cuban Missile Crisis had listened to the commanders who argued for a military strike—who did not know that there were tactical nuclear weapons in Cuba—we might not be here today. If Kennedy and Johnson had asked harder questions about Vietnam, we might have saved fifty-five thousand American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. A President who is too weak to ask the hard questions, too weak to demand a dollar’s worth of defense, is a President who is going to leave our country weaker, not stronger.”
(It was no accident that Hart repeatedly used the word “weak.” A onetime Reagan confidant who had turned sharply against the candidate had told David Garth earlier that “the two things that really anger Reagan is an attack on his manhood and his intelligence.” Now Hart was doing both with the same word.)
It was, however, in the final moments of the debate that Hart delivered his most memorable words, the words that, in retrospect, summed up the burden that Reagan was carrying. The inspiration came not from Garth, or Warren Beatty, but from an old acquaintance of McGovern campaign days, who had kept the typewritten draft of a speech that McGovern had autographed for her, and who had passed a paragraph of the speech on to Hart.
And now, in his closing statement, after Reagan had once again invoked the city on the hill and the world begun over again, Hart borrowed the words of the men he had once worked for:
“You have a choice to make a few weeks from now. And I’d like to suggest a couple of questions you might ask yourself when you go to vote.
“How many of you can really say that your life has improved in the last twelve years? How many of you can say that your city streets are safer, your tax burdens fairer, your grocery bills lower, or your sense of security and well-being stronger? Is our position in the world stronger, are we more respected? Have we moved even one step away from the shad
ow of nuclear war? Do you really want four more years of leadership from the party that has held power for the last twelve? That’s the decision you will make on Election Day. We are the first nation on earth to entrust this decision to the people; and whatever your decision, I have to believe that if the Founders could know that two hundred years after their work, a salesman’s son from Illinois and a salesman’s son from Kansas would be competing for the highest office in the land, they would know their faith had been justified.”
It was, one of Reagan’s aides said much later, “exactly the kind of closing statement Reagan would have made, had he been running against a Democrat. He was the candidate of ‘change’ from the moment he stepped onto the public stage, and the truth is, he was still a candidate of change. But with Ford in the White House, and Gary Hart so different from the traditional Democrats, we could never fully capture that high ground.”
In a normal political year, Reagan would have had another chance before a national audience. Four years earlier, Ford and Carter had met in three debates, and there had been a Vice Presidential debate as well. Here again, the shadow of that earlier race altered the terrain of the 1980 contest. Because Ford was so unpopular, the normal clout of an incumbent President over his party’s choice of successor had shrunk to near invisibility, and with it, the strength of the moderate-liberal wing of the Republican Party. With Reagan’s victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, and his glide path to the nomination, the hyper-cautious, risk-averse strategy of campaign chief John Sears was never seriously challenged, despite the conviction of Reagan’s longtime allies that it was at odds with the fundamental political character of their man. And because John Sears profoundly doubted Reagan’s intellectual skills and endurance, his continued control of the campaign ensured that the candidate would be wrapped in protective political padding. Reagan had refused debates in Iowa and New Hampshire, had engaged his rivals only when his nomination was a foregone conclusion, thus depriving him of a political “spring training” debate season. In his negotiations with the Hart team, Sears had raised so many conditions and objections—about location, length, format—that in the end, the two camps could agree on only one debate.
Then Everything Changed Page 47