Because more money-strapped candidates could now qualify for federal matching funds, the primary season got longer and longer. Also, more primaries abandoned the traditional winner-take-all system in which the candidate who carried the state’s primary received all the party’s delegates. That meant that a presidential candidate running second or third in a state primary could still take home a proportionate share of delegates.
The result was that a lot of politicians began throwing their hats into the ring, a process that continues to this day. And with so many relatively obscure candidates, Americans relied on television to make sense of them all. The first star of the new age of elections was James Earl Carter, a former peanut farmer and one-term governor of Georgia, who liked to be called “Jimmy.” Jimmy Carter was a highly unusual dark-horse candidate. He hailed from the Deep South (no American president had been elected from the South since before the Civil War), was a born-again Christian, and made speeches that were so boring that Senator Eugene McCarthy once called him “an oratorical mortician.”
Yet along with his brilliant chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, Carter understood that early victories in the extended primary process received a disproportionate share of press attention. Therefore, Carter went all-out to win the obscure Iowa caucus—and the next day, the New York Times anointed him Democratic front-runner, a position he was to keep. His running mate was Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale.
THE CAMPAIGN Jimmy Carter ran on the theme that he was an outsider coming to clean up Washington. Most of his speeches began, “Hi, my name is Jimmy Carter, and I’m running for president.” Yet the poor country boy did encounter a few problems. For one thing, he had done a Playboy magazine interview, which appeared during the campaign, in which he said: “I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust; I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.” This did not go over well with his born-again following. Carter didn’t help himself with fellow Democrats either when, in the same interview, he stated that Lyndon Johnson was as guilty as Richard Nixon of “lying, cheating, and distorting the truth.” The fact that both these statements were honest doesn’t take away from their political foolishness.
Fortunately, Carter was running against Gerald Ford. The candidates held a series of debates—the first presidential debates since 1960 and the first time an incumbent president had ever debated an opponent. Ford’s men were careful to keep his klutziness in check, even to the extent of demanding an especially deep well on the podium to hold his glass of water lest he knock it over. But they couldn’t control his tongue. America was amazed to hear him say that Eastern European states were not under Soviet domination.
Ford meant to say that his administration refused to accept such a situation as the status quo, but good intentions do not show up under the harsh glare of television lights.
THE WINNER: JIMMY CARTER Not only did Jimmy Carter become president, winning 40,830,763 votes to 39,147,793, a margin of just over 2 percent, but Democrats swept back into power in both the House and the Senate. On January 20, 1977, Carter got rid of his limousine and walked to his inauguration, making a statement that the country had to tighten its belt. Once again, he was delivering an honest message—but it wasn’t one voters really wanted to hear.
RONALD REAGAN
VS.
JIMMY CARTER
“Stop Me Before I Kill Again.”
—Sign on California redwood tree after Ronald Reagan claimed that trees caused more pollution than cars
Ah, the Carter years. Remember the “killer rabbit” Jimmy had to beat off with a paddle while fishing? Remember the Mr. Rogers’s cardigan sweaters he wore? Remember the double-digit inflation? Remember that weekend in July 1979 when 75 percent of New York gas stations had to close?
Heading into the election year of 1980, Carter was not having a good time. True, he had brokered the Panama Canal Treaty and the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt. But then students in Iran took Americans hostage, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and Mount St. Helens erupted.
In addition, Carter was about to run against the “Gipper,” Ronald Reagan, former Hollywood actor, former governor of California, and future nonstick Teflon Man. With fifty-one primaries and caucuses, it was a long and extremely nasty campaign, with the mother of all October Surprises at its conclusion.
THE CANDIDATES
REPUBLICAN: RONALD REAGAN Remember the disgruntled Adlai Stevenson campaign advisor who warned in 1952 that soon “presidential campaigns would have professional actors as candidates”?
Well, the future had arrived. Ronald “Ronnie” Reagan—handsome, smiling, star of such movie classics as Girls on Probation, Knute Rockne—All American, and, of course, the beloved Bedtime for Bonzo—was sixty-nine years old as the 1980 campaign began. He had very nearly beaten Gerald Ford during the 1976 primaries and now ran a well-oiled campaign with a large dollop of secrecy. William Casey, future CIA director, was his campaign manager, and George H. W. Bush, former CIA head, was his vice-presidential candidate.
DEMOCRAT: JIMMY CARTER At age fifty-five, Carter had been worn down by the burdens of a tough presidency and his own miscues. He seemed incapable of grasping that Americans didn’t want to hear about a “crisis in confidence,” nor did they want anything to do with the severe austerity measures Carter felt were necessary to revive the economy. One image of the Carter White House that resonated with a lot of voters came from the time that Carter, wearing a headband, tried to run a 10K road race near Camp David to encourage physical fitness, and nearly collapsed. To put it bluntly, Jimmy was sort of a drag.
THE CAMPAIGN
As the campaign began, America’s “Misery Index” (a measurement created by a Chicago economist combining inflation plus unemployment) was at an all-time high of 22 percent (in late 2006, it was under 9). Misery is tough on an incumbent, but it leaves a challenger plenty of opportunities. The theme of Ronald Reagan’s campaign was “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” Since the Misery Index was 13 percent in 1976, the answer had to be a miserable no.
Carter’s strategy was to be presidential, yet to strike hard at Reagan. A memo written by Carter’s media advisor listed how this was to be done:
CARTER REAGAN
Safe/sound Untested
Young Old
Vigorous Old
Smart Dumb
Well, Reagan did come across as old and a little foolish. He claimed that the “finest oil geologists” had told him that the United States had more oil than Saudi Arabia. He stated that the eruption of Mount St. Helens released more sulfur dioxide into the air “than has been released in the last ten years of automobile driving.” He also loved ethnic jokes. After the New Hampshire primary, reporters overheard him telling one that began: “How do you tell who the Polish fellow is at a cockfight? He’s the one with the duck.” When reports of this were published, Reagan claimed that he had merely been providing an example of the kind of jokes candidates shouldn’t tell. And the Teflon man actually got away with it.
Carter just couldn’t win. When he attacked Reagan for having supposedly used code phrases like “states’ rights” to imply a racist agenda and for being divisive (under President Reagan, Carter claimed, “Americans might be separated, black from white, Jew from Christian, North from South”), people thought he sounded mean. Reagan, it seemed, just inspired friendly feelings in a lot of people. They didn’t want to see him assailed.
The main issue of the election, however, was that Iranian students had captured fifty-three American hostages on November 4, 1979. The country was horrified. A bunch of foreign kids were thumbing their noses at America, and Carter seemed powerless to stop them. His approval ratings during the 1980 campaign sank lower than those of Richard Nixon’s during Watergate—one Harris Poll put him at 22 percent.
It didn’t help any that a third-party candidate, long-time Illinois Representative John Anderson, was pulling surprisingly well with his moderate National Unity Party. Anderson seemed to man
y a viable alternative to both Carter and Reagan, but he ultimately did more damage to Carter. Even the new fundamentalists, who were a growing power in the conservative wing of the Republican Party, attacked the born-again president—for being too liberal.
Well, Carter had his debate with Ronald Reagan on October 28 to look forward to, right? Wrong. It was bad enough that a Republican spy stole Carter’s secret debate briefing book and provided it to Reagan before the event. But then Reagan proceeded to dominate the debate in his affable, grinning manner, saying, “There you go again, Mr. President,” whenever Carter said something Reagan found foolish. Carter didn’t help his case by citing his thirteen-year-old daughter Amy as a source on matters of crucial global importance: “I had a discussion with my daughter Amy the other day, before I came here, to ask her what the most important issue was. She said she thought nuclear weaponry.”
In the end, the sole hope for a Carter victory was the release of the hostages by Iran, and the Carter administration fought valiantly to achieve it. The Reagan camp, in the meantime, kept warning the public that Carter might try to pull off a grandstanding October Surprise, but the event never materialized (for reasons that will soon be made clear).
THE WINNER: RONALD REAGAN
Reagan cleaned Carter’s clock, 43,904,53 to 35,483,838, and won the electoral votes of all but five states and the District of Columbia. John Anderson took about 5,700,000 votes, a respectable seven-percent showing for a candidate without major funding or the backing of a huge political organization. The victory was so bad that Carter conceded on national television at 9:50 P.M., Eastern Time—only 6:50 P.M. in the Pacific Time Zone, where the polls were still very much open, which infuriated West Coast Democrats running for local office. Carter became the first incumbent Democratic president since Grover Cleveland to fail to retain his office (and even Grover got his back after a second try). Reagan was now president, and the era of “supply side” economics, Irangate, and the “Evil Empire” of the Soviet Union was about to begin.
Oh, yes, and the Iran hostages were released—moments after Reagan’s swearing in as the fortieth president.
PREVENTING AN OCTOBER SURPRISE In his controversial book October Surprise: American Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan, former Carter National Security Council staffer Gary Sick documents in copious detail how William Casey, Reagan campaign manager and later CIA director, stalled the release of the Iranian hostages so that the Carter administration would lose the election.
The Republicans had heard that the Iranians were seeking to negotiate with the Carter administration, which had thrown an economic cordon around Iran, freezing Iranian assets in U.S. banks and asking the international community to respect an arms embargo. Casey knew that the release of the hostages to Jimmy Carter would spell disaster for the Reagan campaign, and he moved swiftly to avert it. According to Sick, Casey used his and George Bush’s old intelligence community ties to establish a “back channel” of communications to Iran. Casey met with Iranian cleric Mehdi Karroubi in Madrid in August 1980 and offered military assistance—something Iran desperately needed since Iraq was threatening to invade—if the hostages were not released until after Ronald Reagan was elected. The Ayatollah Khomeini approved the deal.
The Republicans were careful to monitor the situation since they were afraid the Iranians would double-cross them and deal with the Carter administration. Subsequent meetings between Iranian representatives, Casey, and other members of Reagan’s campaign team took place in October, and the pot was sweetened: more guns and the unfreezing of Iranian cash in the United States, but only if the hostage release was delayed until after Reagan’s swearing in on January 20, 1981, so that Carter would get absolutely no credit. In the meantime, a network of retired military officers who were friends of Casey monitored U.S. air force bases for any sign of unusual activity, which might indicate a Carter deal with some other faction in Iran.
On January 20, the hostages were loaded aboard a plane but forced to wait on the tarmac of Tehran Airport until the very moment of Reagan’s swearing in. Then the plane took off for Wiesbaden, Germany. Days later, the Reagan administration began sending military supplies to Iran.
Interestingly enough, Ronald Reagan, when asked in 1991 whether he had any knowledge of these types of secret dealings, said, “I did some things actually the other way, to try to be of help in getting those hostages … out of there.” The questioner asked him, “Does that mean contact with the Iranian government?” to which Reagan replied, “Not by me. No. [But] I can’t go into details. Some of those things are still classified.”
DEBATEGATE: THE STOLEN BRIEFING BOOK Discussing Carter’s 1980 loss, former Carter speechwriter Hendrik Hertzberg pointed out that the debate had been a chief deciding factor, for Reagan came across as a pretty nice guy, not a conservative ideologue: “When people realized they could get rid of Carter and still not destroy the world, they went ahead and did it.”
It’s an indisputable fact that Carter’s top-secret predebate briefing book was stolen and given to Reagan’s people before their October 28 debate so that the Gipper would have all the right ripostes to Carter’s sallies. But the question remains: Whodunnit?
As recently as 2005, in an interview on National Public Radio, Carter blamed conservative writer George Will. In a scathing reply in his Washington Post column, Will, who did help Reagan prepare for the debate, said that there was a copy of the briefing book in the room while he and others were working with Reagan, but Will claims that he did not steal it or use it in his coaching.
Whether or not Will was responsible, there was certainly at least one spy in Carter’s midst. A Congressional investigation in 1983 confirmed that Reagan campaign manager William Casey was receiving “classified reports on closely held Carter administration intelligence on the Carter campaign and the Democratic president’s efforts to liberate the hostages.” And Reagan never denied that the briefing book was stolen. He later said, “It probably wasn’t too much different than the press rushing into print with the Pentagon Papers.”
In hindsight, a lot of people wondered how a supposedly impartial journalist like Will could coach Reagan for his debate and then go on Nightline the same evening without mentioning his behind-the-scenes participation, praising Reagan’s “thoroughbred performance.” Although he defended himself at the time, Will now admits his role as Reagan coach was “inappropriate.”
NANCY REAGAN, ATTACK DOG: JUST SAY GRRRRR! Prior to 1980, presidential candidates used their wives to enhance their image as stable and well-rounded family men. But in 1980, for the first time in campaign history, a presidential candidate’s wife appeared in an attack ad. This televised message from Nancy Reagan aired twice in the last few weeks of the campaign:“[I am upset that President Carter] is trying to portray my husband as a warmonger or a man who would throw the elderly out on the street and cut off their Social Security, when in fact, he never said anything of the kind, at any time, and the elderly people have enough to worry about now. They are scared to death of how they are going to live without this thrown on top of them. That’s a cruel thing to do; it is cruel to the people; it is cruel to my husband. I deeply resent it, as a wife and a mother and a woman.”
To this day, Jimmy Carter swears that someone stole his debate briefing book. But who?
RONALD REAGAN
VS. WALTER MONDALE
Welcome to “Morning in America,” as the glowing 1984 Reagan campaign spot described the state of the nation. “In a town not too far from where you live, a young family has just moved into a new home. The factory down the river is working again.… Life is better. America is back.”
Well, yes and no. In 1984, there were more jobs and the interest rates were down, but the deficit was skyrocketing, tax cuts benefited only the very rich, and religious fundamentalists, intolerant of anyone who didn’t share their beliefs, were in the ascendancy. Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority gave the benediction at the Republican National Conventio
n, calling Ronald Reagan and his vice president, George H.W. Bush, “God’s instruments for rebuilding America.”
Challenging God’s instruments were Jimmy Carter’s vice president Walter Mondale and the first female candidate for vice president, New York Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro.
THE CAMPAIGN The 1984 campaign is one of the most boring on record and reminds many historians of 1956, when another Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, was running in a time of prosperity. Even Mondale called the pace of the campaign “glacial.” Reagan, who had been nearly assassinated in 1981, was loved by most of America, even though there was some speculation that his age (at seventy-three, he was the oldest American president in history) might make him unfit for another full term.
In truth, he often seemed a bit forgetful. At a 1981 meeting of city mayors at the White House, Reagan greeted his Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Samuel Pierce, as “Mr. Mayor.” He completely forgot the name of his national security advisor, Bud McFarlane. And he was prone to misstatements such as: “Now we’re trying to get unemployment to go up. I think we are going to succeed.”
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