Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (152 page)

Rotterman, Marc. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. March 15, 2007.

Russo, Paul. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. September 8, 2006.

Ryan, Fred. Interview by Craig Shirley.

Schulz, Bill. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. January 23, 2007.

Schweiker, Richard. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. November 6, 2006.

Sears, John. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. July 26, 2006.

Sears, John. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. March 18, 2004.

Seigenthaler, John. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. March 25, 2008.

Seigenthaler, John. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. November 15, 2007.

Shankman, Frida. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. 2007.

Shelby, Rick. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. September 12, 2006.

Shrum, Robert. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. March 19, 2008.

Sinnott, Nancy. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. March 29, 2007.

Smick, David. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. October 18, 2006.

Smith, Rodney. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. September 7, 2006.

Spencer, Karen. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. December 20, 2006.

Spencer, Stuart. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. June 21, 2004.

Spencer, Stuart. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. September 28, 2006.

Spencer, Stuart. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. September 29, 2006.

Stockdale, James. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. February 15, 2007.

Stone, Ann. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. December 18, 2007.

Stone, Roger. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. April 10, 2006.

Sweat, Joseph. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. February 12, 2007.

Tapscott Canevaro, Cindy. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. November 3, 2006.

Tapscott, Mark. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. January 1, 2008.

Teague, Randal C. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. August 22, 2006.

Thomasson, Ray. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. February 12, 2007.

Timmons, Bill. Interview by Craig Shirley. March 10, 2008.

Timmons, Bill. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. September 6, 2006.

Totten, Don. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. January 4, 2008.

Tucker, Bill. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. September 11, 2006.

Tutwiler, Margaret. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. December 1, 2006.

Valis, Wayne. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. March 27, 2008.

Viguerie, Richard A. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. December 6, 2006.

Von Damm, Helene. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. May 17, 2006.

Walinsky, Adam. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. June 10, 2005.

Whitfield, Dennis. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. June 29, 2006.

Wirthlin, Dick. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. November 8, 2006.

Wren, Carter. Interview by Craig Shirley. Tape recording. October 23, 2006.

P
eople live and people die.

In the three-plus years since I began work on
Rendezvous with Destiny
, many of the players in this compelling drama have passed on, including a number of friends. Bill Buckley, Jack Kemp, Jude Wanniski, Lyn Nofziger, Mary Dent Crisp, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Bob Teeter, Jesse Helms, Guy Vander Jagt, Jennifer Dunn, Jerry Falwell, Hamilton Jordan, Michael A. W. Evans, Bob Novak, Hugh Sidey, Dennis Warren, Mike Deaver, Paul Weyrich, Ted Kennedy, Jody Powell, Caspar Weinberger, and others who played roles in the 1980 campaign have, in the words of Ronald Reagan, “gone home,” as we all must someday. Still, I was able to interview some of these individuals among the hundred-plus people I spoke with, and thus to preserve their recollections. To all, I am beholden.

I am also deeply indebted to Ken Cribb and ISI Books for their faith and confidence in this project. Ken is not only a dear friend but also one of the most influential men in the American conservative movement today. Conversations with him remind one of the phrase “the pleasure of his company.”

Also to Jed Donahue, editor in chief of ISI Books. Though a young man, he nearly had a heart attack when I turned in a 1,700-page draft. But as George Will, Fred Barnes, and Michael Barone can attest, and as I now know, Jed is one of the best, most patient, and most understanding editors in America. And to Doug Mills, Spencer Masloff, Jennifer Connolly, Chris Michalski, Christian Tappe, Jeremy Beer, Doug Schneider, and all the other fine people at ISI and ISI Books, thank you.

Special thanks go to Mrs. Ronald Reagan, Joanne Drake, and Fred Ryan of the Reagan Library for their support and assistance in the writing and research of
Rendezvous
with Destiny
. Files long sealed at the Reagan Library were made exclusively available to me because of the kindness of Mrs. Reagan, Joanne, and Fred, and with the special assistance of Reagan Library senior archivist Jennifer Mandel. Their help is a debt I can never repay. More half a million documents were made available for review, and we selected five hundred of the most useful for this project.

I had less luck with the George Bush Presidential Library. The former president's 1980 papers are not accessible even to the archivists there. According to my researcher, Andi Hedberg Maloni, they require a “deed of gift” from Bush himself, since the files are considered private. This he has refused to grant. The commonly held view among Bush's former staff and other knowledgeable individuals is that these files contain memos and notations critical of his 1980 opponents, including Reagan. We were, however, able to review the 68,000 papers contained in the Robert M. Teeter Papers stored at the Bush Library. Thanks go to Doug Campbell for his help there.

Thanks also to President Jimmy Carter for agreeing to an interview. Although nearly thirty years had passed, it was evident that the president still had strong feelings about the election of 1980. Carter's presidential library has not yet processed the 1980 campaign documents, but I was allowed to review other files in which campaign documents resided, including the personal papers of many Carter White House aides and 1980 campaign aides. I am grateful to Mary Ann McSweeney, archives specialist at the Carter Library.

I am also grateful to Richard Cheney, Walter Mondale, James A. Baker III, John Sears, Brit Hume, Tom Brokaw, David Broder, John Anderson, Pat Boone, Newt Gingrich, Art Laffer, Bruce Langdon, Pat Lucey, Bill Brock, Michael Barone, Dick Schweiker, Lou Cannon, Sam Donaldson, Larry Kudlow, Lisa Myers, Dick Wirthlin, Stu Spencer, Richard Viguerie, Jody Powell, Pat Caddell, Jerry Rafshoon, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Ed Meese, Adam Walinsky, and so many others for taking time out of their busy schedules to sit down and speak with me.

Vice President Mondale was an utter joy to talk to, garrulous and full of pep. He told me of going out to California before running against Reagan in 1984 to meet with Jesse “Big Daddy” Unruh, Democratic speaker of the state house. Unruh was an unreconstructed liberal and thus he and Reagan battled mightily over the years. Mondale asked Unruh how he could beat Reagan. The blunt reply was: “You can't.” Big Daddy expanded, “You won't know what hit you.… This guy's got some kind of magic. He has some kind of touch with the public that [is] phenomenal.” Then he warned the Minnesotan, “I figure that you're going to find out about it.”

Mondale himself was not immune to Reagan's charms, telling me, “I opposed him as hard as I could, but I still liked the guy.”

Only four people I sought out I was not able to interview. David Stockman was
at the time under indictment; Ted Kennedy was under a physician's care; Karl Rove would not give a reason. The fourth, rocker Alice Cooper, a Reagan supporter in 1980, had a unique reason for begging off. In an e-mail to Hayley McConnell, a research assistant on this book, an aide to Cooper wrote, “I am not sure [Cooper] remembers much about 1980 as he was drunk the entire time. Well, most of the time from 1969 through 1982 actually.”

I also had a sneaking suspicion that Kennedy may not have wanted to address the issue of whether he really wanted Carter to win in November 1980. Jody Powell told me he always “felt … that Kennedy did not want Carter to win that election.” It may be, too, that Kennedy did not want to relive that painful campaign, having been ahead of everybody by miles, only to lose ignominiously to Carter. It was evident in my interview with President Carter that he bears no good wishes for Ted Kennedy; I would have liked to ask Kennedy whether they had spoken since 1980.

Extraordinary special thanks go to my principle research aide, Borko Komnenovic, for his years, months, weeks, days, and hours of extraordinary work. Borko is an émigré from the former Communist Yugoslavia, where he grew up under the mailed fist of dictator Marshal Tito's regime. “Growing up … Ronald Reagan to me was the face of America,” Borko wrote. “One of the first passages I read in my entire life was a short article about Ronald Reagan. It was about how Reagan spent his holy days at his Santa Barbara ranch.” One of Borko's neighbors, who had once been imprisoned by Tito, told the young man, “There is no joke with this Reagan. He is the one who is going to finally destroy this evil.”

Borko concluded, “Reagan's philosophy, accentuated by his always forceful articulation, awoke the inner American in my heart. I wholeheartedly believe that I speak for countless millions who lived beneath the dark cloud of Communism when I say that those longing for freedom had no better friend than Ronald Reagan. There is no doubt in my mind that if Reagan had been born Serbian Orthodox, he would not be referred by many merely as President Reagan, but as Saint Reagan.”

Special thanks are also owed to Sean Kennedy for all of his fine work, especially his diligence in the chapter on Paul Corbin; Andi Hedberg Maloni for her adroit research work at the Reagan, Bush, Ford, and Carter presidential libraries, the Hoover Institution, and the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics; Erica Hare for tracking down local newspapers from the 1980 campaign; and Seaton Motley, Stephen Saunders, Maggie Lyons, Kyra-Verena Sendt, and Andreja Komnenovic for their tireless work. And to Bob Clark of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library; Jean Bischoff, Bob Clark, and Bill Lacy of the Dole Institute; Carol Leadenham and Kiz Konzak of the Hoover Institution; Marv Krinsky and David Roepke of the John M. Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs; the University of Oklahoma Department of
Political Communications; and the Media Research Center. Also, thanks to Gary Johnson of the Library of Congress, Debbie Lopez of the FBI's Freedom of Information Act division, David M. Hardy of the FBI, Doris M. Lama and Lori Twardzik of the Department of the Navy, and Margaret Grafeld of the State Department for their assistance in tracking down government documents on Paul Corbin. And to Charles Brock and Paul Nielsen of The DesignWorks Group, who did such a masterful job for the dust jacket of this book, as well as to Cheryl Hendrick, formerly of The Design-Works Group, for my previous book.

Of course, none of this would have been possible without the friendship, kind assistance, and patience of my business partner and friend, Diana Banister, to whom I am deeply indebted. And to the staff at Shirley & Banister Public Affairs, including Kevin McVicker, Meghan Snyder, Amy Haas, Dan Wilson, Hayley McConnell, Katelyn Gimbel, and others, for their support and patience over the past three years.

Before turning the manuscript over to Jed Donahue's warm though necessarily ruthless edits, I first carefully chose three men—all professional editors—to help me along the way. Again, as with so many others, I am in their debt.

Peter Hannaford helped immensely in the factual accounting of this story. He wrote so many of Reagan's speeches, op-eds, radio commentaries, and the like and simply knew the man's mind as well as anyone. He was at Reagan's side constantly during the tumultuous years from 1976 through 1980. And of course he knew all of the other key players involved for many years.

Quin Hillyer, a conservative columnist of long standing for the
American Spectator
, the
Washington Examiner
, and the
Washington Times
, argued with me, cajoled me, pushed me, always in search of the same goal: a book that would stand the test of time.

John Persinos is not a commonly known writer, but he can turn a phrase as well as anyone. And because John's politics are decidedly liberal, I deliberately sought him out in an effort to drain any overt bias out of this book. I simply wanted to report the facts, whether they favored Reagan or not, and John came through like a champ.

Thanks to the following for allowing me to review their private papers covering the election of 1980. Among them are Ken Khachigian, Allan Ryskind, Tim Roper, Dr. Richard Wirthlin, J. Kenneth Klinge, Ron Robinson, Gary Maloney, Rich Bond, N. Richard Greenfield, Bruce Eberle, Richard Viguerie, Robert Novak, Michele Davis, Colin Clark, and Paul Russo. And thanks to my friend David Doll for undertaking research on James Baker at Princeton University.

Sadly, the documents for Citizens for the Republic, the National Conservative Political Action Committee, the Fund for a Conservative Majority, and the Congressional Club were destroyed after the demise of each. Thanks, however, to Brigham Young University, where the papers of the American Conservative Union are stored.