Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (66 page)

True Believers were never completely enamored of Richard Nixon and would have been even less so had they known that he'd maneuvered behind the scenes to cut the legs out from under Taft in Chicago. They went along in 1960, although a number of conservatives quietly voted for Kennedy because he came off as far more anti-Communist, especially when it came to Castro's Cuba and the supposed “missile gap” with the Soviets. (The old soldier Eisenhower was annoyed with Kennedy, knowing that in reality there was no missile gap.)

Barry Goldwater was the Right's real first love. When conservatives temporarily seized control of the party at the Cow Palace in San Francisco in 1964, they ironically joined in with Eisenhower as he attacked the media; the conservative delegates turned and shook their fists and shrieked at the press section in the hall.

In 1968 Nixon convinced much of the conservative movement, including the exuberantly polysyllabic Bill Buckley, that he'd learned his lesson, that he was one of them and would govern as a conservative. Within a matter of weeks of his inaugural, Nixon was careening off on a binge of liberal policies that eventually included wage and price controls, détente, and overtures to Communist China. Conservatives grumbled and, in 1972, fielded a sacrificial lamb, Congressman John Ashbrook, in the primaries. Nixon waxed the conservative.

Nineteen seventy-six was a magnificent, memorable, messy, and thrilling roller coaster ride for the conservatives. Gerald Ford had never been one of theirs, going back to his days in the House of Representatives. When conservatives met in Washington, certain members of Congress had to be present to make the meeting meaningful—Goldwater, Senator Everett Dirksen, Ashbrook, others—but no one ever thought that Ford's presence was necessary. So when he became president in August 1974, the conservatives had nothing invested in Ford, because he had nothing invested in them. They were free to criticize his administration, which they did with relish. That led to the extraordinary insurgent campaign of Ronald Reagan in 1976.

The campaign, Citizens for Reagan, was a splendidly haphazard and rollicking movable feast, one day brilliant, another day bungling, but with few exceptions, the staffers were devoted to one another and venerated their man Reagan. Friendships developed that lasted a lifetime among the overworked and underpaid campaign crew. So on the last night of the 1976 convention in Kansas City, when Reagan gave his memorable, bittersweet, touching, and heartrending comments, upstaging Ford, there wasn't a dry eye among his followers. “I felt torn apart, just tragic,” said Cynthia Bunnell, a 1980 Reagan delegate from California, about the 1976 convention.
¹⁰

But the losing quest had left a legacy upon which to build a movement and rebuild a party. Conservatives flocked to Reagan's banner in 1980. One young woman, Michele Davis, was offered other jobs in other campaigns for far more money, but she decided, “I want to follow this guy. He's got that special something that makes me feel like we've actually got a chance. Let's go!”
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Now this hardy and growing band of conservatives felt utterly and completely vindicated. After Goldwater's loss in 1964, the mantra among conservatives was: twenty-seven million people could not all be wrong. Sixteen years later, these conservatives stood atop the GOP. “The ideas that were frighteningly radical when Barry Goldwater espoused them in 1964 are what is called moderate conservatism today,” wrote Jack Germond. “The notion that the government can be an effective agent for citizens has been challenged across the ideological spectrum.”
¹²

The conservatives had taken over the Republican Party in a bloodless coup, and the country was becoming more conservative as government was failing at almost every level. Sometimes it was hard to believe. Sometimes they had to pinch themselves. It seemed as if they'd always been in the minority, as if they had always been derided. They had heard all the shopworn jokes about meeting in phone booths, or been reminded of the smug proclamations of Lionel Trilling, a sanctimonious liberal who years earlier had sniffed in his book
The Liberal Imagination
that conservatism was irrelevant, just a rash of “irritable mental gestures.”
¹³
Trilling died in 1975, coincidentally as liberalism's decline and conservatism's ascendancy were accelerating.

The contributions of Buckley and
National Review
could not be underestimated in the growth of conservatism. From the 1950s right up to the impending nomination of Reagan, Buckley, his message, and his magazine had been a beacon of brilliant light slicing through a fog of ignorance and incoherency. Buckley was every conservative's hero. He made conservatives feel intelligent, and beat back the dyspeptic prattling of liberals such as Trilling. Every man admired his breezy style, his writings, his wit, his urbane and laid-back manner, and his many interests.
Women admired him as well and he was in many ways the movement's first sex symbol. Buckley certainly made it “cool” to be a conservative. He was a true Renaissance man, a swashbuckler who sailed the Atlantic. He admonished his young son, Chris, that “industry is the enemy of melancholy.”

This new movement also contained a healthy dose of elements of the Christian Right. “The white, right, born-again faithful, once safe in the fold of Jimmy Carter, or abstaining from the deviltry of politics altogether, are flocking to the Republican mother church this year where they feel they have a friend in Ronald Reagan,” the
Washington Post
rightly noted.
¹⁴
Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority had taken over or exerted considerable influence in a number of state Republican parties. Reaganites now held sway over nearly every element of the GOP.

The remaining moderates and liberals in the Republican Party were reduced to sitting around the Salamandre Bar in Detroit, literally crying into their beer. Their drinking establishment, one reporter wrote, “is dimly lit, which puts it in marked contrast to the moderate Republican national committeeman who, at 1:15
A.M.
, is well lit.”
¹⁵
The tables had turned for the moderates in the party, and they were decidedly unhappy.

Someone else who was miffed over being left behind was Reagan's former campaign manager, John Sears. He wrote a scathing piece for the
Washington Post
essentially dismissing Reagan as a lightweight who was a creation of his staff. The candidate “simply looks to someone to tell him what to do,” Sears claimed.
¹⁶

T
HE FIRST DAY OF
the convention began only two minutes behind schedule. Bill Brock used an oversized gavel to bang the hall to attention. After the call to order, Pat Boone led the delegates in the Pledge of Allegiance. (The next night, Tuesday, a U.S. Marine veteran of the Vietnam War named James Webb would lead the delegates in the Pledge.) Glen Campbell and Tanya Tucker sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Brock got down to party business—the roll of states, the election of temporary convention officers, and the adoption of rules.
¹⁷

Later in the morning, Senator Richard Lugar spoke. Delegates were still arriving, checking into their hotels and meandering over to Joe Louis Arena for the pro forma session. Being handed such a lousy speaking slot, well out of the glare of prime-time coverage, was a sure sign that Lugar was off the list of potential running mates. Bob Dole was on the floor and quipped to a reporter, “Poor Lugar. [He's] up there speaking and really wondering if his phone is ringing right now.”
¹⁸

Two others cited as VP possibilities, Don Rumsfeld and Bill Simon, scored prime-time speeches that night. But like Lugar, both had dropped down considerably on the veep list kept by the “Great Mentioner”—a.k.a. the national media.

The entertainment the Republicans rolled out was better than the Lawrence Welk fare of previous conventions, although they could have used a George Jones or Johnny Cash in Detroit. It featured Donnie and Marie Osmond, Vikki Carr, Dorothy Hamill, Richard Petty, Ginger Rogers, Jimmy Stewart, Michael Landon, Wayne Newton, and several others.
¹⁹
The television critic at the
New York Times
couldn't resist a shot: “There is no need to switch channels in search of an old movie.”
²⁰

On Monday afternoon, “Commitment '80” was announced: a massive door-knocking operation that would involve as many as half a million grassroots Republicans in the fall. The goal was to take maximum advantage of the thousands upon thousands of the Gipper's fans. The plan was enormously ambitious, with videotape pitches from Reagan and his running mate as well as from Brock, simultaneous meetings in three hundred locations coordinated by satellite downlinks, phone conference call-ins, and direct mail. It was back to the future for the GOP, which for too long had eschewed the shoe-leather politics that was so vital in campaigns. Brock had appointed a drawling and effective Virginian, Dennis Whitfield, to supervise the massive affair.
²¹

Two independent groups held press conferences in Detroit that day to announce specific plans for independent expenditure campaigns in support of Reagan in the fall election. Terry Dolan, head of the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC), previewed ten commercials for the media, some praising Reagan but most blasting Carter. Dolan, as always, made grandiose announcements and then left the details to underlings.
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The fundraising for the NCPAC's campaign fell on the shoulders of a young conservative, L. Brent Bozell III.
²³

Bozell, a chain smoker with a thatch of red hair and matching red beard, was the son of one of the seminal writers and thinkers in the early days of the conservative movement. The elder Bozell had ghostwritten
The Conscience of a Conservative
for Barry Goldwater. Young Brent's mother was the sister of Bill and Jim Buckley, which meant he grew up reading not
Spiderman
and
Batman
but
National Review
and the
Pink Sheet on the Left
, and being bounced on the knee of some of the most important political leaders of the Right, including “Uncle Bill.”

Despite that pedigree, young Bozell was modest and down-to-earth, never lording his kinship over others. He was also a hell-raiser who would have been more comfortable organizing a party at Delta House than hanging with some of the more stuffy elements of the conservative movement. He was one of ten children and their mother, Patricia, did not so much raise them as simply take attendance. She was herself one of best writers and editors in politics.
²⁴

That the conservative movement was already deep into a second generation of activists and leaders was a testament to its durability and staying power. Conservatives weren't going anywhere.

G
OVERNOR
R
EAGAN AND
N
ANCY
arrived at the Detroit Plaza Hotel at 3:30 on Monday afternoon. The pair looked great. Deeply suntanned, Reagan was wearing blue pants and a creamy colored tropical sports jacket, while Mrs. Reagan was positively radiant in a Chanel suit. They were greeted by banners that read “Viva Reagan” and “Enough of Carter,”
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as a throng of enthusiastic supporters standing on balconies and stairways cheered, “Rea-gan! Rea-gan!” He quipped, “Are you sure there's a room left for me?”
²⁶
The crowd roared in the affirmative. He then told the crowd that he'd had a dream in which “Carter came to me and asked why I wanted his job. I told him I didn't want his job. I want to be president!”
²⁷

Reagan was having fun, but he turned serious when he told the Republicans, “All of us know why we're here—the need for a crusade in this country today … a crusade to make America great again.”
²⁸

A day at a convention would not be complete without trouble and squawking interest groups, and this day was no exception. Reagan's men had to beat back an attempt by “bitter-ender” conservatives to get Henry Kissinger thrown off the program for the next night. On cue, four thousand protesters organized by the National Organization for Women (NOW) took to the streets for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), and the national media were there to dutifully record the event. Reagan also had to meet with black Republicans and female Republicans to hold their hands—with women over the ERA and with blacks over the lack of high-profile African-Americans on the campaign staff.
²⁹
He was philosophical about the flare-ups, though. “There are always brush fires in politics,” he muttered.
³⁰

That evening, Reagan attended a small reception and offered the group his definitions of liberalism and conservatism: “A conservative is a fellow that if he sees someone drowning, will throw him a rope that's too short and tell him that it would be good for his character to swim for it. A liberal will throw him a rope that's long enough, but when he gets hold of it he'll drop his end and go away to look for someone else to help.”
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Reagan's four children were meeting up in Detroit. As with all conventions on both sides of the aisles, the national media devoted long personal stories to the candidate, and his wife and children. Charitably, Reagan's children in 1980 were “finding themselves,” to use a popular phrase of the era. The two older children, Michael and Maureen, were in their thirties, both already divorced and both college
dropouts. Michael was officially in boat sales and periodically raced speedboats. Maureen had tried a career in acting but it hadn't come to much, but both were enthusiastically helping their father. They were the products of Reagan's first marriage to actress Jane Wyman, though Michael had been adopted. After the divorce, both stayed close to their mother and tried to stay close to their father, but he was in the process of a second marriage, to Nancy, and now had two more children, Patti and Ron—whom his father called “Skipper,” which young Ron hated. Michael and Maureen were far more interested in their father's politics and political career than the younger two, whose politics skewed left.