Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (92 page)

Muskie wore a yellow pin to signify support for the captives. Yellow ribbons had adorned America's trees, buildings, and cars for the past year. The ribbon campaign was taken from a Tony Orlando song about a released convict. Some Americans didn't like the implication, the color long being associated with cowardice. Americans no longer wanted to be cowards on the world stage.

The GOP was eager to highlight party unity, and in mid-September Reagan and Bush joined Republican members of Congress and 150 aspirants to House and Senate seats for a major rally on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Reagan spoke, proposing a “solemn covenant with the American people.” Reagan and the GOP congressional
leadership announced five goals, among them tax cuts, budget cuts, and increased defense spending. All the attendees signed a document pledging their fealty. Congressman Guy Vander Jagt jibed that the Democrats were “running away from their nominee” while “we are proud of our nominee.”
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The event concluded with Reagan and Bush clasping hands over their heads as the harmonically challenged Republicans sang “God Bless America” whether the audience wanted them to or not.
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The rally almost did not come off. A freshman congressman from Georgia, Newt Gingrich, had fought with some in the campaign to make the event substantive rather than just a big photo-op. He'd been working with Bill Brock on the ceremony but threatened to have it canceled unless Team Reagan supported at least the semblance of a framework for Republican governance. “Young man, I assumed you wanted my attention,” Bill Casey condescended to Gingrich in a phone call. “This is going to be horseshit,” Gingrich shot back. He pushed the five-point plan, arguing that it “is just a perfect example of … where is Reagan.” After a short discussion, the Reagan campaign endorsed the Gingrich model.
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Though Gingrich was only a freshman, he spoke frankly about the GOP's problems: “We have a party here that's not very used to winning. It's not even used to fighting very well.”
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A
CCORDING TO A
G
ALLUP
poll, Carter was getting the lion's share of the evangelical vote, 52 percent to only 31 percent for Reagan.
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A Los Angeles Times poll, however, showed it much closer, 40 percent for Reagan and 39 percent for Carter.
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The Religious Right was assiduously organizing for Reagan. Carter's relationship with the evangelical community had soured badly since his 1976 election eve broadcast with Reverend Pat Robertson.
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He received no help from his controversial secretary of Health and Human Services, Patricia Harris, who compared the “Christian Right” in America with the “mullahs” running Iran. She said she was scared that America might one day have its own “ayatollah,” but that instead of “a beard … he will have a television program.”
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The Reagan campaign hired from the Moral Majority a man named Robert Billings to act as a liaison. Reagan was also making inroads with the Catholic community. There were those, though, who worried about the explosive mixture of God and state. A Reagan staffer, a self-described conservative, told
U.S. News & World Report
, “This marriage of religion and politics is the most dangerous thing, the creepiest thing I've ever seen.”
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C
ARTER ACHIEVED THE DESIRED
result from his weeks of pounding Reagan. A New York Times–CBS poll showed Carter moving again ahead of Reagan. This
survey put the race at 38 percent for Carter, 35 percent for Reagan, and 14 percent for Anderson. According to the poll, Carter was winning the South and East handily, he and Reagan were tied in the Midwest, and in the West, Reagan's lead was down to 5 percentage points. Carter led for the first time in the seven largest electoral states, 39–34 percent. He led among African-Americans, 77 percent to 6 percent, and was almost splitting the white vote, 38 for Reagan and 34 for Carter. The president was even getting a healthy percentage of the conservative vote, 31 percent to Reagan's 46 percent. Conversely, Carter was getting 48 percent of the liberal vote and Reagan only 23 percent. Carter was also winning every age category; only among voters under thirty was Reagan competitive with his Democratic opponent. Since the previous Times poll, in August, Carter had gained in every category, every region.
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When word leaked out that the Republicans would not release details of a poll taken by Bush's former numbers man, Bob Teeter, the gossip fed media suspicions that Reagan was faltering. Carter's men were growing in confidence daily, believing that only Anderson stood between them and a big win in November. Their internal polling had shown movement away from Reagan toward “undecided” or to Anderson, so they needed to wheedle these voters to keep moving to Carter.

Carter kept taunting Reagan. In Texas he said, “You probably noticed that the campaign staff of my Republican opponent have put him under wraps.”
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In Georgia he tried out a new campaign theme: charging Reagan with being a racist.

President Carter went to Atlanta to speak at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, home of Dr. Martin Luther King Sr. “You've seen in this campaign,” Carter said, “the stirrings of hate and the rebirth of code words like ‘states rights’ in a speech in Mississippi, in a campaign reference to the Ku Klux Klan relating to the South. This is a message that creates a cloud on the political horizon. Hatred has no place in this country.”
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Carter's newest barb at Reagan started the race debate anew. It also galled his opponent.

Reagan was slow to anger, and for the most part he had kept his temper in check during the campaign. But when he did get mad, watch out. Lyn Nofziger said there was the real Reagan fury and the bogus Reagan anger. When Reagan tossed his eyeglasses on a table, that was just for effect, such as when someone interrupted him while he was working on a speech. When he broke a pencil or threw something across the room, you knew that was the real anger.
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Once, in 1973, he threw his keys into Mike Deaver's chest, furious over Spiro Agnew's resignation.
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Reagan got especially angry when he was called a racist.

The mistake many of Reagan's foes made was in going too far in attacking
him. When Reagan got angry, he became more focused and he improved as a campaigner. In 1966 Governor Pat Brown ran a mean-spirited ad that made Reagan furious, and the Gipper went out and mowed over Brown, winning by nearly a million votes. In 1976, as his campaign was faltering in the late stages, Reagan got angry after Ford's campaign ran an appalling commercial implying that Reagan was a warmonger; the ad spurred Reagan to push through to the convention, despite all odds. And during the 1980 primaries, Reagan had gotten angry at George Bush over the attacks on his tax-cut plan and the hints that he was too old.

Now many felt Jimmy Carter had gone overboard. A headline in the
Washington Post
screamed, “President Says Reagan Has Injected Hatred and Racism into Campaign.”
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Every other newspaper in America picked up the president's charge.

Carter had ignored a warning from Pat Brown. In a letter to the president that was released for publication, Brown advised, “First and above all, don't underestimate Mr. Reagan personally. He's not a clown or a buffoon.… He is a very astute—even superb politician. Second, you've got to take his views seriously.”
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Disgusted over Carter's comments, Reagan held his first impromptu press conference in weeks. Taking a break from campaigning in 106-degree heat among the Mexican-American community in Texas, Reagan went right at Carter's remaining strength—his perceived decency. “It's harmful and it's shameful because whether we're on the opposite sides or not, we ought to be trying to pull the country together, not tear it apart,” he said, with just the right touch of moral indignation.
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Reagan then fired at Carter: “I just don't know how much further he'll go to try and divert attention from the fact that he could say all these things to a nationwide audience … if he just wanted to debate.”
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Bush jumped in and sharply attacked Carter for “ugly little insinuations” against Reagan, calling them a “new low.”
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Gerald Ford also came to Reagan's defense with a contemptuous condemnation of Carter: “Mr. Carter does not just owe Governor Reagan and the Republican Party an apology.… Mr. Carter owes the American people an apology. His intemperate … misleading statements demean the office of the presidency itself.”
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Ford's well of good will was deeper than Carter's and the former president's comments especially stung.

Jody Powell was sent out to deny that Carter had called Reagan a racist. Notably, many prominent Democrats did not defend the president. Lieutenant Governor Mario Cuomo of New York said of Carter's charges against Reagan, “It's not nice. It's not sporting.”
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The Georgians knew Carter had a self-inflicted wound that badly needed tending. Gerald Rafshoon fretted privately to Hamilton Jordan, “It's that old Carter hyperbole. He just can't help himself sometimes.”
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On September 17 Carter held a press conference to try to quell the growing controversy. The president had held only seven press conferences in all of 1980, “hardly a record of openness and accountability,” Reagan acidly stated.
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Now Carter leveraged the live network television coverage to give an opening statement that was a five-minute recitation of his administration's accomplishments. When he turned to his comments about Reagan, he refused to apologize and denied that he had called Reagan a “racist in any degree.” He then attacked Reagan yet again for bringing up “code words.”
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But Carter was nailed by an unexpected source: Lisa Myers of the
Washington Star
, whose writings some Reaganites thought too harsh on their man and too easy on Carter. Myers pointed out to President Carter that “it was your own cabinet secretary, Patricia Harris, who first interjected the KKK into the presidential race.”
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Following Myers's lead, other reporters bore in and asked Carter whether he was being too “mean” in attempting to “savage” Reagan.
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Carter's White House aides glared at the nervous but determined young “Brenda Upstart.” She did not back down and pressed Carter even harder about bringing race into the election. It was an important turning point, sparked by Myers.

Carter spluttered, “I am not blaming Governor Reagan. That's exactly the point. The press seems to be obsessed with this issue.”
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The
Los Angeles Times
reported that Carter was “shaken” by the exchange.
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The event did not go at all as Carter's aides had planned.

The gentlemen and gentle ladies of the press may have been more left-of-center than Reagan, but they had a refined sense of fair play, and after four years of covering Carter, some had had it with the Georgian's sanctimonious behavior. While Carter now wanted the whole incident to go away, Myers noted that the White House had made “no similar complaints … when the media was hammering away at Reagan during the initial days … after the Republican incorrectly stated that Carter launched his re-election drive in the Alabama city which gave birth to the Klan. Then, Carter and his lieutenants labored to keep the issue alive.”
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Reagan filed an “equal-time” request with all three networks to respond to Carter's statements, but they turned him down, saying the president's press conference was a legitimate news event. Nonetheless, CBS went on record as stating that it had been badly used by Carter.
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Then the Carter campaign really got down and dirty. It ran ads in black-owned newspapers charging that Reagan wanted to defeat Carter because of the
president's record on appointing African-Americans. The ad read, “Jimmy Carter named 37 black judges, cracked down on job bias, and created 1 million jobs. That's why the Republicans are out to beat him.”
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But Carter had overplayed his hand. He had done precisely what he did not want to do: he made Reagan a victim.

Republicans screamed bloody murder, and many in the press, still steaming over being used in the White House press conference, thought Carter had gone too far again. The Carter campaign withdrew the ads. Gerald Rafshoon released a statement that sheepishly read, “We will not run this ad again. We believe that the facts support the statements in the ad. However, because of the publicity about the ad, we feel that it's lost its effectiveness, and we won't run it again.”
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The Carterites knew what they were doing. Pat Caddell years later made clear that there was a purpose to the ongoing hammering of their opponent: “It was part of the risk strategy, anything to drive up that variable that [Reagan]'s too risky to be president.”
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They didn't mind taking on water, as long as they could drown Reagan in the process.

The
Washington Post
editorialized that Carter was “running mean” and said he had a “miserable record of personally savaging political opponents.”
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The
Washington Star
referred to Carter's campaign against Reagan as a “squalid exercise.”
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Jack Germond and Jules Witcover, normally critical of Reagan, upbraided Carter over his tactics. They noted that Carter had used the same devices in the 1976 primaries and that no one, in Reagan's years in politics, had ever seriously suggested he was a racist.
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Even the reliably liberal columnist James “Scotty” Reston said that Carter's supporters were “deeply disappointed by the mean and cunning antics of his campaign.” Reston concluded that Carter “is extremely confident, angry and vindictive, and thinks that concentrating on the weaknesses of his opponents is the way to win.”
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