Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (109 page)

After two years of electioneering by nearly a dozen men, after some thirty-five primaries and more than $255 million spent by all the contenders and pretenders, the national debate had come down to this one day, November 4. An estimated eighty-five million people would go to the polls, voting not only for their chief executive but also for 34 senators, 435 members of the House, and roughly 6,000 state legislative seats, not to mention local offices and various referenda.
¹³

Holding Election Day in early November was a holdover from America's agrarian past. Back in 1792 Congress had specified only that presidential electors be appointed “within thirty-four days preceding the first Wednesday in December, in every fourth year.” This was to give the members of the Electoral College time to meet and count their ballots and thus proclaim a new president-elect. It wasn't until 1845 that Congress had officially designated “Election Day” across the country as the “Tuesday next after the first Monday in the month of November.” Early November was the most convenient time because it fell after farmers had pulled in their harvest, meaning they could afford to take the time to travel to vote, but before the snows of winter had arrived, which would make travel from remote farms much more difficult. Election Day was set for a Tuesday because traveling to vote could take a day or more, and activity on a Sunday, the Lord's Day, was verboten for many Christians.
¹⁴

On the eve of the 1980 election some columnists and academics worried that with John Anderson on the ballot, neither Reagan nor Carter would get a majority of the popular vote or a majority of the Electoral College vote. Failing to get a majority of the popular vote was not, in fact, all that unusual: it had happened fourteen times up to that point, the most recent instance coming in 1968. It was far less common for no presidential candidate to receive a majority of the Electoral College vote: this had happened only twice before, in 1800 and 1824. In each case, per the system set up by the Founding Fathers, the House of Representatives handled the matter—messily, maybe, but handled it nonetheless. Similarly, only twice—in 1876 and 1888—had a presidential candidate secured the required votes in the Electoral College but failed to win the popular vote.

If such a case were to occur in 1980, the electoral map indicated that Carter
might be the one to benefit: the census was ten years old, and as a result traditionally Democratic-leaning states such as Pennsylvania and New York retained their Electoral College muscle even though they had lost thousands upon thousands of voters in the past decade.

It was a thin reed for Carterites to clutch.

W
HILE IN
C
HICAGO ON
the Sunday before the election, President Carter awakened at 4
A.M.
to a phone call from Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher informing him that the Iranian parliament had announced its terms for the release of the American hostages. Carter was exhausted from campaigning nonstop since the debate, but wearily, he put on the suit he'd worn earlier and left his suite on the twenty-ninth floor of the Hyatt Regency near O'Hare Airport and flew back to Washington, canceling that day of campaigning. Some reporters, rousted from their slumber, fumbled for their passports, assuming that the phone call meant they were off to Germany with the president to greet the returning hostages.
¹⁵

The U.S. government had made a last-minute offer to end the trade boycott of Iran and release frozen Iranian assets in the United States if the hostages were released. Now Carter met for several hours in the White House Cabinet Room with members of his administration to thrash out the latest proposal from the Iranians. Later in the day, he made a three-minute televised address to the country about the Iranian offer, describing it as a “positive basis.”
¹⁶

Still, the hostages were in Iran with no end of their humiliation in sight. As one reporter noted, “Carter's strategists have been hoping that the president would reap an 11th-hour benefit from the apparent prospect that the hostages will soon be freed.”
¹⁷
But any presumed political advantage from the release of the hostages had drained away by this point. According to news polls, Americans by a 4–1 margin opposed the release of the hostages if it meant renewing relations with the Iranians, and more than half the country now believed that Carter would “give up too much” in order to secure their freedom.
¹⁸

Many Americans couldn't decide whether they had been played as fools by Carter or if he'd been played for a fool by the ayatollah. The fact that Carter's televised remarks broke into the live broadcast of NFL football games probably did not help his cause.
¹⁹
Nor did the fact that Election Day would mark the first anniversary of the taking of the American hostages—something Carter noted bitterly years later, especially because all the networks trumpeted the anniversary.
²⁰

The Iranians were not looking forward to the American elections. They had contempt for Carter, regarding him as “weak,” according to Bruce Langdon, the American chief of mission in Iran, who was the top-ranking hostage. At the same
time, however, they hated and feared Reagan. Said Langdon, they were concerned about Reagan's “tough bombast … what that might mean in the long run.”
²¹

I
N THE LAST DAYS
of the campaign, Reagan was a study in both adrenaline and cool. On his plane, he kidded with photographers, even as one mistakenly referred to him as “President Reagan” while asking him to sign some photographs. Reagan replied, “You know, after you've canceled Social Security and started the war, what else is there for you to do?”
²²

As his 727 took off, Reagan stood in the passageway—temporarily substituting for Mrs. Reagan—to attempt to roll a small pumpkin down the aisle rather than the usual orange. When the plane's public address system played “On the Road Again” by Willie Nelson and a less well-known number called “Ronald Reagan for President,” the candidate was back up, clapping his hands and performing a “hoedown,” as one reporter observed. On another takeoff, Reagan attempted to roll the pumpkin down the aisle again, but this time a reporter had given him an incentive: there, in the middle of the aisle, was a rubber mask of Jimmy Carter. Reagan threw a ten-strike, hitting the mask squarely in the kisser.
²³

Reporters noted the difference between Reagan's LeaderShip '80 and Carter's Air Force One at campaign's end. The Reagan plane resembled a flying Delta House, with laughing, practical jokes, whistles blowing, booze freely flowing. Reagan easily mingled with the media and the staff. Reporters jokingly serenaded the Reagans with “Happy Trails.” Air Force One, by contrast, was a dirge, and Carter kept to himself in the front section of the plane. He was closely monitoring the latest news from Tehran, via Ed Muskie at the State Department.

On Sunday, Reagan made his way to Cincinnati with Gerald Ford, George Bush, and Bob Hope in tow. Hope made a joke about Reagan appointing acerbic comedian Don Rickles as America's ambassador to Iran and fifteen thousand people laughed uproariously.
²⁴

Although the running mates had grown to like and respect each other, all was not sweetness and light between their respective camps. The Bushies privately complained that Reagan had run a “bumbling campaign”; one unnamed Bush adviser told
Time
that “if Bush had been the nominee, he would have been leading in the polls by 20 points.”
²⁵

Monday was a whirlwind of campaign activity, as Reagan moved from Peoria, Illinois, to Oregon before going to San Diego. At the last stop Reagan noted to a big, friendly crowd outside a shopping mall that he'd finished his 1966 campaign for governor in San Diego as well. A solitary heckler would not be quiet, yelling repeatedly. Reagan finally said, “Aww, shut up!” The crowd went wild. The dutiful
son said that his mother had told him he should never use that word but he figured one time wouldn't do any permanent damage.
²⁶

Reagan's plane then headed home to Los Angeles, but because of fog, Leader-Ship '80 was forced to land at Burbank instead. On the plane, he rolled the orange one more time down the aisle, and reporters good-naturedly chanted, “Drop the bomb!” Reagan was in high spirits as he told the airborne crowd, “I've just decided that the whole thing has been so much fun, to hell with the election, we're going to keep on campaigning.”
²⁷

C
ARTER MADE A MAD
dash to Ohio, Illinois, Oregon, and Washington State before flying home to Georgia late Monday evening so that he and the first lady could vote Tuesday morning. In Seattle, Carter implored Democrats to “come home.” Plaintively and repeatedly, he said, “I need you, I need you.” His voice was croaky, after one more long day of exhorting wavering Democrats not to “waste your vote.”
²⁸

On the plane back, he had little time to rest, as he was getting updates from officials about the hostages as well as the state of his campaign. Neither situation was going well for Carter.

J
OHN
A
NDERSON, LANCE STILL
firmly in his grip and a windmill in his vision, ended his campaign in Minnesota, naturally on a college campus.
²⁹
Toward the end, he had discovered the simple joys of being out and about with his fellow Americans. He knew he wasn't going to win, his supporters knew it, but it did not matter. Anderson—now “Stardust” to his Secret Service contingent—wanted to speak his mind and make his point, and he got that chance.
³⁰
The interior of his plane was a menagerie of oddball banners, bumper stickers, and posters. His staff had taken up the habit of blowing duck and moose calls as the plane took off. Reporters organized a “kazoo band,” and when Anderson walked down the aisle of the plane, they mirthfully played “Hail to the Chief.” Aides tried to steal a large potted plant from the Milwaukee airport to decorate their plane, but were foiled by local officials.
³¹
No one outside of politics would ever understand how joyously puerile a losing campaign at the end could be.

T
HE
R
EAGAN CAMPAIGN USED
the night before the election to broadcast across the nation a half-hour speech by the candidate. Reagan had taped it earlier in a Virginia studio. It was one of his best speeches, though it never got the recognition it deserved.

Reagan, looking into a camera, gave his testament to America, describing it as mankind's “last best hope.” Carter was mentioned just twice, and only in passing.
The Republican spoke of the impending election and of his hopes for the safe and imminent return of the fifty-two imprisoned Americans.

Reagan turned to two of his favorite subjects: the future and young Americans. “A child born this year will begin his or her adult life in what will be the twenty-first century. What kind of country, what kind of legacy will we leave to these young men and women who will live out America's third century as a nation?”

He reviewed the stakes, describing Americans' unhappiness about the “worsening economic problems, about the constant crisis atmosphere in our foreign policy, about our diminishing prestige around the globe, about the weakness in our economy and national security that jeopardizes world peace, about our lack of strong, straight-forward leadership.” Reagan addressed the threat of the national government to the citizenry: “And many Americans today, just as they did two hundred years ago, feel burdened, stifled and sometimes even oppressed by government that has grown too large, too bureaucratic, too wasteful, too unresponsive, too uncaring about people and their problems. Americans, who have always known that excessive bureaucracy is the enemy of excellence and compassion, want a change in public life—a change that makes government work
for
people.”

Reagan then moved to hope. “I believe we can embark on a new age of reform in this country and an era of national renewal. An era that will reorder the relationship between citizen and government, … that will revitalize the values of family, work, and neighborhood and that will restore our private and independent social institutions.” He didn't stop there—no sail-trimming for the old Jeffersonian. Reagan championed the “individual” over the “state” and said that private “institutions, not government, are the real sources of our economic and social progress as a people.” Reagan stated once again his desire to cut taxes and curb the growth of government, calling it and the accompanying “waste and fraud” a “national scandal.” He referred to America as a “federation of sovereign states.”

Reagan spoke of his view of the presidency as a “bully pulpit” and not a managerial concern. “No person who understands the American presidency can possibly hope to make every decision or tend to every detail in the national government.” Reagan did not mention that Carter kept the schedule for the White House tennis courts, but everybody knew what he was referring to.

The GOP nominee cited some of the reforms he would seek if elected: reining in the bureaucracy, saving Social Security, going after corruption in government and organized crime, including the horrendous drug traffic.

Reagan came to the meaning of the election of 1980. “That's why I want to talk with you—not about campaign issues, but about America, about us, you and
me. Not so long ago, we emerged from a world war. Turning homeward at last, we built a grand prosperity and hoped—from our own success and plenty—to help others less fortunate. Our peace was a tense and bitter one, but in those days the center seemed to hold. Then came the hard years: riots and assassinations, domestic strife over the Vietnam War and in the last four years, drift and disaster in Washington. It all seems a long way from a time when politics was a national passion and sometimes even fun.…