Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (101 page)

Jimmy Carter was on the verge of one of the biggest comebacks in American political history. He had proven himself to be one of the toughest (and, some thought, meanest) political operators around. Like his predecessors Truman and Nixon, he was obsessed with politics, down to the minutiae of polling and cross-tabs and precinct voting histories. Truman and Nixon had few interests outside of politics, and Carter, just a bit more. Truman liked to drink and play cards. Nixon used to be a very good poker player, before he quit. Carter, a severe Baptist, did not play cards, but he did enjoy political gambling. Now, on a winning streak, he was ready to put all of his chips into the middle for the biggest pot in the world: the presidency of the United States.

M
RS.
R
EAGAN, WHO NORMALLY
did not get into the public hurly-burly of campaigning, had finally had enough. In a campaign commercial, she went right after Jimmy Carter, saying, “I deeply, deeply resent Mr. Carter's attempt to paint my husband as someone he is not.” She also called Carter “vicious.”
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If Reagan could be irresistible on some matters, Nancy could be downright immovable, especially when it came to people she believed were hurting “Ronnie's” career. As of October 1980, it had become apparent that she'd had a much bigger—if subtle—role in the dismissal of John Sears, Jim Lake, and Charlie Black on the day of the New Hampshire primary months earlier. Michele Davis, an attractive blonde aide, was told almost as soon as she went on the Reagan plane that as far as Mrs. Reagan was concerned, good looks were no substitute for good works.
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Now, as the maelstrom of the closing days of the campaign swirled around them, Nancy proved once again to be Reagan's port in the storm. If possible, the
tumult of the final days drew the Reagans closer together. They turned to each other even more for comfort. She really was his best friend and confidante. For his part, he had to be something very special for Nancy Reagan. After all, years before, as an aspiring actress, she had once dated Clark Gable.

T
HE
R
EAGAN CAMPAIGN WAS
desperate to reverse Carter's momentum. Dick Wirthlin, Reagan's placid pollster, disputed the new poll by the
New York Times
, but the media—who love a horse race—weren't listening.
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Several of the bigger newspapers concluded in-depth studies of the nine “big ticket” states with the bulk of the Electoral College votes, and they all came to the conclusion that the race was too close to call.

Wirthlin, though, was right: hidden in the polling data were a couple pieces of good news for Reagan. First, 18 percent of Democrats were prepared to cross over and vote for Reagan.
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Second, Jewish voters were holding back on Carter; in 1976 the Georgian had received 64 percent of their vote, but in the new polling he could not top 40 percent. Though Jewish Americans constituted less than 3 percent of the vote, they were a hugely influential voting bloc, especially in New York and Florida, two states that had gone for Carter in 1976 but that Reagan was fighting hard for in 1980.
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Reagan was picking up support from figures across the political spectrum. Filling his plane were GOP establishmentarians including Senator Howard Baker, former ambassador to Great Britain Anne Armstrong, and two former secretaries of state, William Rogers and Henry Kissinger.

Reagan welcomed the endorsement of former Minnesota senator Gene McCarthy, whose surprisingly strong showing as an antiwar Democrat in the 1968 New Hampshire primary had prompted President Lyndon Johnson not to seek reelection. The former garden-variety liberal had evolved into a libertarian, especially on free-speech matters. On such issues he and Reagan were in complete agreement. Besides, McCarthy loathed Carter and had little use for his old Senate colleague Walter Mondale.
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McCarthy once dismissed Mondale as having “the soul of a vice president.”
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In endorsing Reagan, McCarthy said he hadn't been enthusiastic about a presidential candidate since Adlai Stevenson. When an incredulous reported asked, “Including yourself?” without missing a beat McCarthy replied, “Probably least enthusiastic about myself!” The reporters laughed uproariously.
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In Mississippi, Reagan received endorsements from two men who had been on opposites sides of the civil rights issue. One was Democrat John Bell Williams, the former segregationist governor of Mississippi. Williams told a crowd that
Carter was “a man who put aside [Thomas] Jefferson and picked up Karl Marx.” The other was Charles Evers, the well-known black leader in Mississippi whose brother, civil-rights leader Medgar Evers, had been killed by a sniper in 1963.
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Reagan's tough but able southern field director, Kenny Klinge, was handling the balancing act in the South of reaching out to blacks without antagonizing whites.

Reagan also picked up the endorsement of Republican Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, the first African-American to be popularly elected to the U.S. Senate. The former senator said that the Gipper's election would “herald a bright day … for many minorities who believe that this man is very sensitive to their problems.”
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Not surprisingly, Reagan did not win the endorsement of the
New York Times
. The Gray Lady hadn't endorsed a Republican since the war hero Eisenhower in 1952. Still, the paper's selection of Carter was reluctant at best. The paper praised Reagan's compassion, saying that he was “clear, self-confident, optimistic.” But the
Times
argued that Reagan was guilty of “appealing simplicity,” that “his political values are idyllic.” “Too often,” the paper concluded, “Ronald Reagan's clarity and robustness sound more like bluster, bravado and refusal to recognize that America is no longer, if it ever was, king of the world.”
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The
Times
's halfhearted endorsement of Carter only reflected the fact the paper was ideologically closer to the president than to the Californian.

The Gipper even managed to get the backing of another union. This endorsement would, in retrospect, seem ironic: it came from the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO).
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A
T 901
S
OUTH HIGHLAND
Street in Arlington, Virginia, the headquarters of the Reagan-Bush campaign, Bill Casey was utterly convinced—as were many staffers—that Carter was doing his utmost to get the hostages released before the election. Casey had recruited hundreds of retired military and CIA agents to monitor the news and global rumors about the hostages and any development in Iran. Every morning at 6 o'clock he convened a meeting with Wirthlin and the campaign's research director, Reserve Admiral Robert Garrick, to review the day's news on the hostages.
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Asked by a reporter what the Reagan campaign would do if the hostages were released before the election, an aide replied somberly, “Punt. If he [Carter] gets the bodies out, that's the ballgame.” Yet not all Reaganites were so fearful of an October Surprise. Some simply recognized that the matter was out of their hands and not worth obsessing over. One aide said, “Since we can't do anything about the hostages anyway, we might as well go on doing what we can do.”
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Others
within the Reagan camp were less resigned. They believed that there was a downside for the Carter campaign in all the talk about the hostages' release. Rumors had been flying for weeks that a deal was imminent—the latest buzz held that the hostages would be repatriated the day of the debate—so expectations had been raised yet again. If the fifty-two Americans did not come home soon, Carter would have to face an even more demoralized electorate.

The Reagan campaign had done a good job raising the issue, playing on people's cynicism about Carter's perceived manipulation of the crisis. Casey sent Reagan a memo arguing that release of the hostages at this point would be seen as a “political trick … and the American people would wonder why Carter hadn't done it sooner.”
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In any case, Washington was awash in hostage and political rumors.

B
OTH THE
D
EMOCRATS AND
the Republicans were targeting toss-up states. Since Texas was still a dead heat, Ted Kennedy went to San Antonio to fire up enthusiastic Hispanic voters—an important bloc for Carter, since they now represented nearly 15 percent of the electorate in Texas. To rally the crowd, Kennedy invoked the memory of his long-dead brother. “The thousand days are like an evening gone, but they are not forgotten.” Teddy made his wistful remarks at John F. Kennedy High School.
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Reagan was campaigning through the South at the same time, pushing on to Florida after stumping in Mississippi. Even with the hostages going on one year in Tehran, the economy was his bread-and-butter issue. Making his case against Carter in Florida, he charged that inflation had destroyed the fixed earnings of retirees.
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The latest economic news reinforced Reagan's message. As if in anticipation of Carter's reelection, the stock market, which had been staging a comeback since the GOP convention, pulled back sharply, falling more than 15 points to close at 939.
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Then, on the last Friday of October, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the final inflation report before the election. Inflation for September, the last month measured, was one full percent, making the annualized rate 12.7 percent.
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This marked the third year in a row of double-digit inflation. Everything was up again: food, gasoline, clothing. Reagan ripped Carter over the new inflation report, and Carter weakly replied to a town-hall audience in New Jersey that the bad inflation report was just one more reason why Reagan's huge tax cuts were to be avoided. Implementing Reagan's tax cuts would be “just like pouring gasoline on a fire,” the president said, reminding his audience that George Bush had once called them “voodoo economics.”
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Reagan shot back that by reminding voters that back in 1976, when the “misery index” (the combination of unemployment and inflation) stood at 12, Carter had said that Gerald Ford was unqualified to be elected. The misery index in October of 1980 was over 20. “By his own words, he has no right to seek reelection,” Reagan declared.
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Carter headed to his home court, the White House, where he addressed two hundred black ministers, calling on them to help with a big turnout. The Reverend Joseph Lowery, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, endorsed Carter and said “the forces of insensitivity to human suffering, of racism, of militarism, of violence, of negativism are gravitating in and toward” Reagan.
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The networks later broadcast the successful event.

Frustrated, Reagan said, “I think it is apparent that his whole campaign effort has been one of personal attacks, trying to make the issue of this campaign me, rather than his record of failure.”
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S
INCE
A
NDERSON WAS EXCLUDED
from the debate to be broadcast live on all three networks, Ted Turner, who took a backseat to no one when it came to promotion, announced that Anderson would participate—in a fashion. The independent would appear on Turner's tiny cable system, CNN, to answer the same questions posed to Reagan and Carter, complete with rebuttal, all through the magic of taping and splicing.
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In a converted garage at Wexford, Jim Baker assembled his team of debate briefers and mock questioners, which included columnists George Will and Pat Buchanan and foreign-policy adviser Jeane Kirkpatrick. Playing the role of Carter, because he'd done such a good job mimicking Anderson, was a young congressman from Michigan, David Stockman.
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Stockman, just thirty-three years old, was considered a wunderkind, a real up-and-comer in GOP politics. All foresaw a bright future for the young man.

J
UST FOUR DAYS BEFORE
the debate, Reagan took to the airwaves in a nationally televised address on ABC. Unlike the peace-through-strength speech of a week earlier, these remarks contained nothing even slightly apologetic or explanatory. Reagan focused on the terrible conditions of the economy. He opened by quoting Thomas Wolfe, who once wrote about the “mighty music” of America; that music, Reagan said, had been replaced by the silence of the Carter malaise. “In many places the mighty music has been all but silenced. Where once there was the great, confident roar of American progress and growth and optimism, there is now the eerie, ghostly silence of economic stagnation, unemployment, inflation,
and despair.” The “silence” of the shuttered factory, the “silence” of the neighborhood, the “silence” of the desolate farm now cast a pall over the nation.
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Reagan recounted a story in which a young woman asked Carter how it was that government could not fix inflation and unemployment. The president replied, “You know, people tend to dwell on temporary inconveniences and the transient problems that our nation faces.” Reagan was aghast at Carter's insensitivity. He reviewed the evidence: Housing starts were down 30 percent in four years, and a thirty-year mortgage on a $47,000 house had gone from $306 per month to $556 per month—an 81 percent rise in just four years. The ruin of Carter's economy was “on a scale so vast in dimensions, so broad, with effects so devastating, that it is virtually without parallel in American history.”
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