Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (26 page)

Carmen was unrelenting. He told reporters in early February, “The one-on-one suggestion came from us and not the Bush campaign. We will meet George
Bush as soon as the details can be worked out and the times can be handled.”
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The
Nashua Telegraph
was already busily arranging for the showdown between Governor Reagan and Ambassador Bush. The idea was for a ninety-minute debate, with forty-five minutes for questioning by reporters and forty-five minutes for questioning by a live audience.
⁴²

Reagan swung hard at Bush. When someone asked about Bush's foreign-policy experience, Reagan replied, rapid-fire, “George Bush's experience in foreign policy was one brief term as ambassador to the U.N., special representative to mainland China and director of the CIA—which I don't think is exactly an education in foreign policy—in good foreign policy.”
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The voters began to learn more about the Reaganites' disenchantment with John Sears, who had long enjoyed favorable media coverage. Carmen, William Loeb, Senator Humphrey, and Paul Laxalt all went public against the beleaguered manager. In a
Manchester Union-Leader
editorial, Loeb acidly penned that Reagan had been “Searscumsized,” and urged Reagan to fire the campaign manager: “The road to political victory is not the one being paved by Sears.”
⁴⁴
Laxalt said that Reagan was being “constrained, inhibited, packaged.”
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Humphrey was measured but firm, noting that Reagan had unaggressively stumped in Iowa and had paid dearly for turning all decisions over to Sears.

To make matters worse for Reagan, he had to contend once more with Gerald Ford. The former president made it known that he preferred Baker or Bush over Reagan, who Ford said was too conservative to win the presidency. Ford even made noises—yet again—about getting into the race. Reagan dared Ford, saying said he should “pack his long johns and come out on the campaign trail.”
⁴⁶

Bush was having his own problems, but of a different sort. Reagan was starting to get specific on the stump, and all of Bush's high command, from Jim Baker on down, knew that Bush had to do the same, in order to move from “George Who?” to “George What?” “The era of George Bush and the handshaking, cheerful politician is ended,” Dave Keene told the
New York Times
. “The focus now … should be on George Bush and what he says.”
⁴⁷
Trouble was, somebody forgot to tell Bush.

Bush was being ridiculously cautious. A reporter innocently asked Bush, who often enjoyed a vodka martini at the end of the day, whether he favored a ban on the Russian vodka Stolichnaya. Bush acted as if “he had been thrown the world's hottest potato” as he wondered if it was bottled in the United States and how many people were employed.
⁴⁸
When a journalist asked him whether he was a conservative, Bush gave a long and disjointed nonanswer when a simple “yes” would have served him better.

Bush also seemed a bit dazed on the hustings. His seemingly strong pronouncements of the past year melted away into mushy moderate Republicanism. Perhaps from exhaustion, perhaps from the scrutiny, a “goofy side” came out.
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He kept telling everybody, “I'm up for the '80s.” Indeed, it was his campaign slogan for a time and was as vapid as “Big Mo.”
⁵⁰
“Up for the '80s” sounded to some like a slogan for a new soda.

But Bush resisted the pressure of liberal Republicans to wage a “crusade against Ronald Reagan and the Right.” He refused not because he had any great love for Reagan but because he was not sure it would work.
⁵¹

It didn't help Bush that his press secretary, Pete Teeley, deprived the candidate of important opportunities to receive briefings from policy staffers. The turf-conscious Teeley insisted that he, not any policy advisers, sit next to Bush on the campaign plane. Even when a key adviser, Stef Halper, was summoned from Washington to brief the candidate, Teeley wouldn't let him sit next to Bush. Tee-ley and Halper ended up in an obscenity-laced argument on a tarmac, which made its way into a
Washington Post
story. Teeley “was a pain in the ass,” Halper bluntly said years later.
⁵²
Halper was not alone in this opinion.

New Hampshire Republicans would eventually learn that Bush was plainly and simply more moderate on almost everything than Reagan, with the possible exception of homosexuality. Reagan took a distinctly libertarian approach, and while Bush was tolerant, he also said the behavior was not “normal.”
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Neither Reagan nor Bush—nor any candidate, for that matter—attended a forum held by homosexuals in New Hampshire. Only a few candidates, including President Carter, sent representatives to the forum. As a sign of the times, organizers asked photographers not to take pictures of those in one section, as they were closeted gays and feared “reprisals.”
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Bush continued to highlight his jogging for the benefit of television cameras. Each morning, in the frosty winter of New Hampshire, he was seen pounding the pavement. Yet he was still saying little. The media were growing antsy, in no small part because Teeley had not anticipated their increased demands on the front-runner. Phones were often not available for reporters to call in their stories, and the media were loaded onto an ancient prop plane, a Fairchild, which seated only twenty and lumbered along at just a bit over 200 miles per hour … if there was a good tailwind and the reporters got out and pushed.

Many in the media and Republican circles were taking a closer look at Bush, and they weren't sure about what they were seeing. The résumé was good; he was a war hero, and clearly a good husband and family man, but what did Bush really stand for? New Hampshire's GOP voters wanted to know.

O
N
F
EBRUARY 2, AS
most attention was focusing on New Hampshire, ABC News revealed that the FBI had run a major sting operation, code-named “Abscam,” in which agents posing as Arab businessmen dangled suitcases full of cash under the noses of congressmen and senators. The undercover agents invited government officials to a rented house in Washington where they offered the politicians money in exchange for their doing favors for a supposed Arab sheikh (who in fact had been made up). A secret camera captured virtually all of the targeted politicians—mostly Democrats—diving for the moolah without a moment's hesitation. Taking a bribe seemed the most natural thing in the world to them, even though it was of course against the law. One member of Congress and his aide got into a fight over the cash even before they left the room. In another case, a congressman was seen greedily stuffing the cash into the pockets of his suit.
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The only targeted politician who did not take the money was Senator Larry Pressler, Republican of South Dakota. Congressman John Murtha, Democrat of Pennsylvania, slipped the noose when he pulled back at the last instant and didn't take the proffered bribe, but he invited the would-be briber to stay in touch and suggested they could do business in the future.
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In the “Washington is a small town” category, the house that the FBI rented for its sting operation was owned by Lee Lescaze, a reporter for the
Washington Post
—though Lescaze didn't know who his tenants were until the story broke in his own paper.
⁵⁷

This would not be the last time that Abscam came up in the 1980 elections.

V
OTERS WERE ONCE AGAIN
scratching their heads over President Carter. First, the White House leaked that Carter prayed daily for the Ayatollah Khomeini.
⁵⁸
Most Americans would have preferred that he bomb the ayatollah back into the Stone Age. Carter also let it be known that his administration would push for women to register for a military draft, though they would be in noncombat operations.

Reagan had always opposed a peacetime draft for America, and he definitely opposed the drafting of women into the military. “I wouldn't want to belong to a society that would put its women in trenches with men,” he said in criticizing President Carter's plan.
⁵⁹
Reagan instead stated his support for an increased military reserve and for greater benefits for American fighting men, many of whom were living hand to mouth, many on food stamps.

Favoring or perhaps following Reagan, the American people were demonstrating a significant rise in resolve. By large majorities—67 percent and 64 percent, respectively—they favored sending American troops to Europe to repel a Soviet invasion there and to the Middle East if the Kremlin sent forces into
those countries. Moreover, 73 percent wanted a draft, 86 percent favored a grain embargo of the Soviets, and 66 percent supported boycotting the Moscow Summer Olympics.
⁶⁰
Reagan had a novel idea on the Summer Olympics. Rather than subjecting them to political shenanigans by the host countries, his commonsense idea was, we should simply hold them every four years in Greece, where they had begun centuries before.

As Reagan tried to gain traction in New Hampshire with his more forceful campaigning, he encountered problems over the issues of taxes and federalism—the same matters over which he'd stumbled in New Hampshire four years earlier. New Hampshire famously had no state income tax and no state sales tax, and the
Concord Monitor
reported that Reagan in an exchange with a voter had called for the imposition of state income or sales taxes. It seemed Reagan had touched the third rail in the Granite State.

But Carmen immediately disputed the newspaper's account. Again without any help from the national HQ, the belligerent Carmen attacked the “liberal media” and issued statements jumping all over the story as it had appeared in the
Concord Monitor
. He was not going to let the issue become a millstone around Reagan's neck the way it had in 1976. William Loeb joined the effort, editorializing under the headline “Dirty, Dirty, Dirty!” that the charge against Reagan was a “14-Carat unadulterated pure lie.”
⁶¹

In fact, the
Concord Monitor
was essentially correct about what Reagan said. The candidate had told a New Hampshire voter about a hypothetical “broadbased” tax. The paper had a tape of the conversation. Carmen said he had a different tape of the conversation and promised to give the newspaper a copy of his transcription of the exchange as soon as he found the tape, which, he claimed, had been “misplaced.”
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Loeb, Carmen, and Reagan eventually pounded the story into the ground and moved on, but once again, precious time had been lost playing defense.

H
OLLYWOOD'S BIG AND LITTLE
celebrities hit the road for their favorite candidates. Cheryl Ladd of
Charlie's Angels
fame stumped for Carter, and Lauren Bacall campaigned for Kennedy. Reagan had an advantage here, since many old celebrities were old friends, including Ray Bolger, Pat Boone, Jimmy Stewart, Gloria Swanson, Jimmy Cagney, and Loretta Young.
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Michael Landon was one of the younger Reagan supporters, as was rock star Alice Cooper.

Muhammad Ali supported Carter but Reagan counterpunched with Joe Louis. Others from Hollywood days who did not like either Reagan or his politics signed on with Kennedy, such as Gene Kelly, Warren Beatty, Bette Davis, and
Angie Dickinson. Carter, because of his southern roots, could count on country-and-western singers like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and Tom T. Hall. Howard Baker of Tennessee had his share of these folks, including Johnny Russell, who had crooned “Rednecks, White Socks, and Blue Ribbon Beer.”
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Reagan had Marty Robbins, Mel Tillis, and the great Merle Haggard. Jerry Brown had Linda Ronstadt, but his campaign was no good, no good, baby, no good.
⁶⁵
Reagan's celebrity coordinator was the very young and very smooth Morgan Mason, the son of actor James Mason. Landon and Boone had already cut television spots for the Gipper. Boone had been a Reagan delegate four years earlier in Kansas City.
⁶⁶

Celebrities were becoming more and more involved in politics, especially their favorite causes. Robert Redford, on the day of the new Congress in January 1979, had visited his senator, Orrin Hatch, to talk about environmentalism. “Who may I ask is calling?” the nervous young receptionist said to one of the most famous men in the world and Redford deadpanned, “Paul Newman.”

The celebs were also very high-maintenance. A young animated aide to Senator Humphrey, Eileen Doherty, was detailed to the New York office of the Reagan campaign to handle a very old and very demanding Gloria Swanson, who wanted Doherty to escort her to all events for Reagan. Swanson treated everybody like dirt, including Doherty for a time, but she later warmed up, regaling the young woman with sordid tales about her torrid affair with Joseph P. Kennedy.
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Reagan's celluloid career was years behind him … or so he thought. In Traverse City, Michigan, a tiny television station aired
Hellcats of the Navy
, a Reagan film memorable only because it was the first and only movie he and Nancy appeared in together. But the film did gain the attention of the Baker campaign, which filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission, charging that its airing violated “equal-time” provisions. The station, WGTU, agreed to give Baker an equal amount of time … in late March.
⁶⁸

On the road in New Hampshire, voters saw Reagan up close and they mostly liked what they both saw and heard. Fourteen-year-old Mary Ricci said, “I think he's kind of old for the job of president, but when you see him he looks like he can still do it.” Another attendee, Peggy Weldon, gave voice to the other end of the age spectrum. “He looks great, doesn't he?” she said. She thought sixty-nine was a good age to be president: “You don't know anything about life 'til you hit fifty anyway.”
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