Reagan's Revolution (17 page)

The Republican Party held a national forum in Washington that month. Seven hundred were expected to attend, but almost three thousand showed up. Leading up to the event, some thought the meeting would resemble the “Last of the Mohicans.” Republicans were in scarce supply. But the party needed to do something—anything—to demonstrate it was still viable. “We needed a boost,” RNC Executive Director Mahe said with characteristic understatement. “The conference had very little focus on the Presidential [campaign] . . . we were trying to get enough money in the door to save the state parties.”
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Featured at the conference was speaker after speaker who emphasized the perceived need to “broaden the party.” President Ford himself emphasized his belief that the Republican Party needed to expand ideologically in order to be viable. These comments were widely interpreted as the President’s defense of Rockefeller. Ford also made it fairly clear at the forum that he had decided to seek the nomination in his own right in 1976.

Only Reagan, who was relegated to a Saturday morning speech in a smaller room, took issue with what the intelligentsia of the party was saying at the time. Predictably, he took a different tack than Ford by reiterating the speech he had given just a month earlier to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. Reagan challenged the assembled Republican Party regulars to stand for one thing to all people and not try to be all things to all people. Nonetheless, Reagan held back and said nothing about the impending campaign.

Hannaford later said, “He was also holding back because of timing. He always had a good sense of timing. He did not want to appear as a spoiler and said so publicly and privately. He really wanted to give Ford a chance and did not wish Ford any ill whatsoever.”
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No one can really be sure when Reagan made up his mind to run. But sometime in early 1975, he and Deaver were on a plane that commuted between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Whenever he flew, Reagan would sit in the first row so he could talk to people as they boarded the plane. On one occasion, a woman spotted him, embraced him and said, “Oh Governor, you’ve just got to run for President!” As they settled into their seats, Reagan turned to Deaver and said, “Well, I guess I’d better do it.”
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Nofziger and others were convinced that Reagan would make the effort. Nofziger “just knew” Reagan was going to jump in.
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The mere fact that Reagan had been traveling by plane for the past several years was partially a surrendering to the realities of modern campaigning and his strong sense of God’s providence. Reagan had not traveled by plane for nearly thirty years, after a particularly harrowing flight between Catalina and Los Angeles in 1937. In fact, his contract with General Electric that took him across the country through the 1950s specified that he only travel by train and not by plane. But he remained a “white knuckle” flyer for many years after he started flying again.
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As Reagan traversed the country, the Ford White House and its allies did little to revive Reagan’s sense of loyalty to the incumbent President. According to Lou Cannon, writing in his book,
Reagan,

Ford made it easy for Reagan to reach his decision. A traditionalist who accepted the conventional wisdom of Washington, Ford could not really believe that the staid and conservative Republican Party would tear itself to pieces by ousting an incumbent President. Nor, despite Rockefeller, did he believe that many Republicans would accept a portrait of Jerry Ford as a liberal President. Preoccupied with the problems of the Presidency and pulled in different directions by a White House staff divided between old Nixonites and old congressional aides, Ford did not pay consistent attention to the Reagan challenge or treat it seriously enough once he became aware of what was happening. When he acted at all, he did the wrong things. Reagan was especially insulted when Ford had his Chief of Staff, Donald H. Rumsfeld, offer him another Cabinet job, this time Secretary of Commerce. “They’re working their way down the scale,” a Reagan intimate said incredulously when he heard of this offer.
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Cannon also wrote, “Worse than this job offer was the muddle-headed approach devised by Ford’s former congressional cronies, notably Melvin R. Laird, who told reporters that Reagan would not actually enter the race once he had weighed his options.”
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Laird, like White House aide Bob Hartmann, was becoming known in Washington as a chronic Reagan basher, and these stories also made their way to California, where they only served to inflame Reagan followers. Staff apparently used Laird’s sharp tongue as a goad for the Governor. Wrote Robert Novak and Rowland Evans in
The Reagan Revolution
, “Laird viewed Reagan as a poseur, straight off the Hollywood sound stages. Consequently, he advised Ford soon after taking office to disregard Reagan. Learning of this, Jeff Bell wrote Reagan a memo on ‘Lairdisms’ in hopes of pushing the Governor toward a Presidential race.”
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While Ford usually spoke respectfully of his possible challenger in public, “Reagan was the subject of a lot of wisecracks around the White House in mid-1975.” Questions of respect aside, the flippant response to Reagan showed Ford and his advisers didn’t consider Reagan a serious threat. Hartmann further recounted,

There was a personal chemistry between Ford and Reagan that complicated everything. . . . Why would he never butter up Reagan, even a little bit? I had sat in on a number of their meetings over the years—while Ford was Minority Leader, Vice President and President. In these encounters both men were usually uptight, unnatural, pathetically polite and acutely on guard. Betty Ford and Nancy Reagan hit it off even worse.
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To pull off a win, Reagan needed allies in Washington. Republicans, by temperament and upbringing, were told to “wait your turn.” Only twice in the twentieth-century had a Republican challenger attempted to defeat an incumbent President for the party nomination, and both had failed. Congressman John Ashbrook had attempted a “Hail Mary” insurgent conservative campaign against Nixon three years earlier, but it came to naught. The other exception was in 1912 when Theodore Roosevelt, dismayed with the direction of William Howard Taft’s Presidency, emerged from retirement to unsuccessfully challenge the incumbent for the Republican nomination before running on the Progressive ticket in the general election.

In May 1975, Reagan turned to his old friend, Nevada Senator Paul Laxalt. Laxalt had served as Nevada Governor from 1967 to 1971, while Reagan held office in Sacramento. As he was mixing drinks for himself and Laxalt at his suite in the Madison Hotel in Washington, Reagan circumspectly suggested to his fellow Westerner to “keep your powder dry,” as he had not yet decided to run. But if Reagan did choose to run, he would want his old friend along for the ride. Laxalt—supported by John Sears, Lyn Nofziger, and Deaver, all of whom were also present at the meeting—strongly encouraged Reagan to make the run.

Sears was also talking to potential vendors. Bruce Eberle, who had been competing with Richard Viguerie for the direct mail contract, fortuitously bumped into Sears one Saturday at Washington National Airport. As they talked, Sears simply told Eberle that he had been awarded the contract. But Sears’s haphazard management style was already becoming a problem with individuals inside and outside the campaign. Sears hired the campaign’s General Counsel Loren Smith in much the same fashion.
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Though Reagan hadn’t decided yet, he was intrigued. One Sunday he met with Sears at his office in Washington for four hours. Sears also was learning to appreciate Reagan’s strengths. “Nixon was such a squirrel and here was a guy who didn’t seem to be a squirrel and wasn’t as messed up as the last guy. And, he had a lot of self-confidence. He was smart.”
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Sears also told Reagan and his team at the meeting that “the primaries made it possible to run. This opened it up for people who didn’t have control of the party apparatus. Power can neither be created nor destroyed. And the party didn’t have the power anymore. So, if the party didn’t have the power . . . someone’s got to have it, and it was the press who got it.”
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As Reagan was moving closer to his decision in the spring of 1975, Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania had circulated a letter supporting Ford and seeking signatures from his Republican colleagues. Laxalt conspicuously refused to sign the letter, signaling his desire to see a debate over the party’s direction and future.

In June, Sears and Jim Lake met with Senator Laxalt in his office on Capitol Hill, informing him that they were going forward with a Reagan committee. Laxalt was enthusiastic as they reviewed the list of potential individuals who might be suitable to chair the effort. According to Lake, at the outset of the meeting Laxalt had indicated a preference to stay out of the fray. But after they reviewed the candidates and found all of them wanting for one reason or another, Sears came to one elected official he had deliberately overlooked—“the Senator from Nevada.” Laxalt came aboard the campaign shortly thereafter.

Laxalt’s decision to publicly support Reagan was important for the campaign because he was a conservative. But more importantly, he was a respected sitting U.S. Senator. He also may have been the most personally popular man in the Senate and the media paid him his due respect. It was just the credibility the nascent Reagan effort needed to prove itself to the skeptical Washington press corps.

The following month, Laxalt stepped before a bank of microphones in the basement of a Washington hotel on July 15, 1975, to announce the formation of Citizens for Reagan, an exploratory committee. His announcement was not a moment too soon for the conservatives who were chomping at the bit to take on Gerald Ford. But it certainly was not the birthday gift Ford would have asked for the previous day, when he turned sixty-two years old. The Chief Executive did, however, receive a clean bill of health from his White House physician.

The choice of the word “citizen” was significant. Reagan never viewed himself as “just another politician.” Robert Nakamura wrote in
Political Science
Quarterly
, “‘Citizen’ was selected because he wanted to convey that his beliefs were like those of the ordinary, levelheaded citizens arrived at by reflection rather than political calculation.”
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Reagan had still not formally announced his candidacy. But the Washington political establishment and the Republican Party, used to the seismic earthquakes of the prior three years, were shaken again at the announcement of Citizens for Reagan. Jim Baker, who would later become Ford’s very effective Chief of Delegate Operations said, “It was surprising because we didn’t do that in our party. At the Presidential level, you can’t find another example.” Despite the tradition and history of the GOP, Reagan allowed the formation of Citizens for Reagan to go forward.
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Laxalt read from a prepared text which said, in part,

The purpose of this committee is to build an organization and raise the money necessary to conduct a viable and effective campaign once Governor Reagan decides to become an active candidate.

The decision to take this step has not been an easy one. Mr. Ford came to the Presidency under circumstances unique in American history, amidst problems of confidence, international unrest and domestic instability which are unparalleled. All of us, Democrats and Republicans alike, must give him our support lest others in the world receive the impression that America is too weak or immobile to act.

Yet Mr. Ford’s efforts to cope with these problems on a day-to-day basis provide little relief for the vast majority of Americans who yearn for a leader who can communicate a realistic perspective on America’s future. . . . We have had far too many instances in our political history where the voters have been left with a choice of deciding between the “lesser of two evils.” This country cannot ultimately survive if Presidential elections continue to be decided on the same basis.

The next President must enter office armed with a positive compact between himself and the American people, such that Congress will realize that there is no longer any merit in political expediency. We believe that Governor Reagan is a man who stands tall among American politicians in his demonstrated ability to do those things which he promises.

Accompanying Laxalt at the press conference announcing Citizens for Reagan were Sears, former Kentucky Governor Louie Nunn, an ancient conservative Congressman from Iowa named H. R. Gross, and a small band of other supporters. Sears would serve as Reagan’s de facto Campaign Manager.

In the question and answer period of the press conference, Laxalt continued to emphasize Reagan’s record of governance rather than his ideology, saying, “It’s not that we think President Ford is doing a bad job. It’s that we think Ronald Reagan can do a better job.” Conspicuously absent was any ideological criticism of Ford or of Henry Kissinger’s foreign policy. Neither did the committee trumpet Reagan’s conservatism. Laxalt’s temperament partially explains the low-key style of his statement, but it was also a testament to the powers of persuasion that Sears possessed. David Keene said, “John could talk anyone into doing anything. He was good at that.”
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Sears and his supporters would argue that Reagan needed to emphasize his experience at governing, rather than highlighting him as a conservative standard-bearer. They reasoned that while voters knew Reagan was a conservative, they were unfamiliar with his success in two terms as Governor of California. Nonetheless, after years of loyal support, many conservatives grumbled that his long-awaited Presidential campaign was starting on the wrong foot. For example, supporters of North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, like Tom Ellis, found Sears’s “résumé strategy” maddening and countered by complaining that if Reagan was going to successfully challenge Ford in the primaries, he needed to make the ideological arguments against Ford that would attract voters.
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Sears defended his strategy later, explaining, “Voters saw Reagan in 1975 as a Republican version of George Wallace and we had to do something about this.”
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