Winning Conservative
THE PRESIDENCY OF JIMMY CARTER WAS A TIME OF ECONOMIC MISERY FOR the American people and of communist gains around the world. But they were golden days for conservatives. Following Watergate, Republicans had been told—and many believed—that their party was finished. But in the 1978 off-year elections, after just two years of Carter, the GOP gained three seats in the Senate and thirteen seats in the House of Representatives, almost all of them conservatives. America was not interested in abandoning its two-party system.
Because of Carter’s ineffectiveness, things got even better for conservatives in the next two years. By the end of 1979, the inflation rate stood at 13.3 percent—the highest since the Korean War and nearly double the 7.2 percent that Carter had inherited from Gerald Ford on his election in 1976. Confronted by mounting economic woes, Carter refused to blame himself or his administration’s maladroit decisions. Instead, he faulted the American people, who, he said, were deep in the throes of a spiritual “crisis of confidence.”1 They were also being slowly strangled by “stagflation”—double-digit inflation coupled with zero economic growth.
Things were no better abroad. The pro-West shah of Iran was ousted, Marxist regimes were established in Angola and Mozambique, and the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. Casting about for an explanation of communism’s global aggression, Andrew Young, Carter’s ambassador to the United Nations, went Orwellian, asserting that the thirty thousand Cuban troops in Angola brought “a certain stability and order” to the country.2
What better time for a conservative to run for president?
Ronald Reagan was eager to declare his candidacy in 1980, in contrast to his more cautious course in 1975. Then he had hesitated to challenge incumbent President Ford. A turning point for Reagan was Ford’s refusal in July 1975 to meet with famed Russian dissident and author Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In his syndicated column, Reagan ridiculed the reasons given: the president had to attend a party for his daughter; the Russian writer had not formally requested a meeting; it was not clear “what [the president] would gain by a meeting with Solzhenitsyn.” Reagan made it clear that a President Reagan would have been honored to sit down with the famed survivor and chronicler of the Gulag Archipelago.3
Formally announcing that he was a presidential candidate in November 1975, Reagan soon headed north to New Hampshire, site of the first primary. He was the early favorite with the enthusiastic backing of Governor Meldrim Thomson, publisher William Loeb of the Manchester Union-Leader, and other key conservatives in the state.
But the Ford people shrewdly zeroed in on a Reagan proposal to transfer some $90 billion worth of federal programs to the states, including education, public housing and community development, revenue sharing, and certain health and welfare programs. Ford operatives charged that state and local tax rates would have to be hiked to cover the cost of the transferred programs. At the same time, there were suggestions (echoing the anti-Goldwater, anticonservative rhetoric of 1964) that if he were elected president, Reagan would slash social security, veterans’ benefits, and other welfare programs.
Reagan was placed on the defensive and was kept there by an overly protective campaign staff headed by campaign manager John Sears, a Nixon pragmatist who constantly sought to mute Reagan’s conservatism. Fearful of further missteps, Sears pulled Reagan out of New Hampshire the weekend before the primary election, neglecting to tell the candidate that his once-comfortable lead had disappeared.
On primary day, a disappointed Reagan received 48 percent of the popular vote to Ford’s 49.4 percent and lost New Hampshire by a wafer-thin 1,587 votes. Reagan’s showing against a sitting president was undoubtedly impressive but could not erase the fact that he had been expected to win. Temporarily eclipsed by the New Hampshire defeat and the $90 billion flap was Reagan’s substantial record as governor of California—a major selling point of Reagan’s delegate hunters.
When he had taken office in Sacramento in 1967, Reagan discovered that California was spending a million dollars a day more than it was taking in. When he left office eight years later, he turned over to his successor a surplus of $554 million. Editorialized the San Francisco Examiner, “We exaggerate very little when we say that [Reagan] has saved the state from bankruptcy.”4
Most analysts agree that the most significant and far-reaching achievement of Reagan’s governorship was welfare reform. The California legislature, dominated by liberal Democrats beholden to the welfare bureaucracy, fiercely resisted the governor’s proposed changes. But Reagan asked the people of California, through a series of television and radio programs, to let their legislators know how they felt about reducing the number of people on welfare but increasing the support for those who truly needed help. One day, Assembly Speaker Robert Moretti appeared at Reagan’s office door and, holding up his hands, said, “Stop the cards and letters. I’m ready to negotiate a welfare reform act.”5
California’s balanced approach to welfare reform was so effective that even Governor Nelson Rockefeller adopted it for New York.
Following his narrow New Hampshire win, President Ford won succeeding primaries in Massachusetts, Vermont, Illinois (Reagan’s native state), and Florida, establishing himself as the undisputed front-runner. Contributions to the Reagan campaign dried up, and conservative spirits sagged across the country. Just about everyone was ready to give up, including Nancy Reagan, who was convinced that her husband would “embarrass” himself if he kept campaigning and losing.6
Reagan’s campaign chairman, Senator Paul Laxalt, left the gloomy Washington headquarters and flew to Raleigh, North Carolina, expecting to find the candidate as despondent as his strategists. Instead, Laxalt found a determined, combative Reagan with “his back up because of all the demands that he get out” and “campaigning better than I ever saw him campaign before.”7
Reagan abandoned John Sears’s “nice guy” strategy and, stung by Ford’s personal attacks on him as extremist and misinformed, went after the president hard. He focused on gut issues like the Panama Canal, détente, and deficit spending. With the guidance of Senator Jesse Helms and his astute campaign aide, Tom Ellis, Reagan campaigned twelve full days in North Carolina.
Conservative analyst M. Stanton Evans has described the March 23 primary in the Tarheel State as “the second most important primary in modern conservative politics,” the first being the epic Goldwater-Rockefeller California primary in 1964.8 If Reagan had failed in North Carolina, it would have been his sixth straight primary loss. In all likelihood, he would have been forced to withdraw from the race and head home to California and political obscurity.
Instead, Reagan won North Carolina by a solid 52 percent to 46 percent and took a majority of the delegates. He achieved a political resurrection largely of his own making and posed the most serious challenge to an incumbent Republican president since Theodore Roosevelt had taken on William Howard Taft sixty-four years earlier.
Noting that thousands of Democrats and independents voted in the Texas Republican primary in May as well as the Indiana, Georgia, and Alabama GOP primaries, all of which Reagan won, some analysts suggested that these voters had jumped into the Republican battle because that was “where the action was.”9 It was a shallow explanation of a seismic shift occurring in American politics.
What was really happening was that the former Democrat Reagan was forging a new majority of Republicans, Democrats, and independents under the Republican banner. A special target was the Wallace Democrats to whom Reagan offered “something to vote for, not against.”10 Both Reagan and Carter were doing well, wrote conservative author Richard Whalen, because they were “perceived as unsullied by Watergate, untainted by Vietnam, and uncorrupted by a Washington system that isn’t working.”11
By the end of May, Reagan and Ford were in a virtual deadlock for the nomination. The climax came with the June 8 primaries in California, Ohio, and New Jersey. Reagan thought he was well ahead in his home state until “we let ourselves be scared by a Field Poll” that had him running behind Ford. Two days before the primary, and after extensive campaigning in California, “we realized the poll was as phony as a three-dollar bill.” Reagan immediately headed for Ohio, where he campaigned hard but only for one day. “I’m convinced,” he later said, “we could have won Ohio.”12
The conservative challenger received 40 percent of the popular vote in Ohio, a respectable showing given his circumscribed effort, but took only six of the ninety-seven delegates. Even an easy win in California could not erase the Reagan camp’s feeling that the advantage had shifted to the incumbent president.
Believing that something dramatic had to be done, Sears persuaded Reagan to announce his running mate before the convention. The politician chosen was Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania, a sometime conservative Republican who nevertheless had a 90 percent rating from the AFL-CIO. Schweiker assured Reagan and his aides that he could pry loose delegates from Pennsylvania and other Northeast states.
But the Schweiker gambit failed. The senator persuaded only one Pennsylvania delegate to switch to Reagan, while Clarke Reed, the conservative chairman of the Mississippi delegation, moved across the line to Ford. Equally ineffective was a roll call vote at the convention to force Ford to name his vice president in advance, which was rejected by a vote of 1,180 to 1,069, an indication of things to come. Not even an emotion-charged, hour-long demonstration for Reagan on nomination night changed the numbers.
The ballot was heartbreakingly close: Ford, 1,187, and Reagan, 1,070—one of the closest nomination votes in any national convention in this century. Conservatives speculated that Ford might well have been denied the nomination if Barry Goldwater had not formally endorsed him some six weeks before the convention. Goldwater’s backing was all the more crucial because it tended to negate the commitment of prominent conservatives like Senators Paul Laxalt and Strom Thurmond to Reagan.
Although Goldwater’s endorsement of Ford surprised grassroots conservatives, it had been anticipated by Washington insiders. Both Goldwater and Reagan were conservative in their beliefs, but they had little else in common. Goldwater was an individualist, a maverick, an antihero; Reagan was a communitarian, a team player, a Hollywood hero. Goldwater liked to use the Protestant “I,” Reagan the Catholic “we.” Goldwater hated what he called “phonies”; Reagan was not so judgmental. Goldwater was Arizona adamantine, Reagan was California mellow. The two men never connected personally.
Although Goldwater did not think that Reagan was ready to succeed him as the leader of American conservatism, most conservatives emphatically disagreed. Human Events editor Thomas Winter says that 1976 was the year “when Goldwater and the conservative movement parted.”13
Following his acceptance speech, Ford generously invited Reagan to the platform and invited him to say a few words. Reagan gave a rapt convention and tens of millions of viewers a taste of what they would have heard if he had been nominated. He delivered, without notes or a TelePrompTer, the rhetorical highlight of the 1976 convention. Reagan wondered how Americans one hundred years from now would look back at this time. Would they say, “Thank God for those people in 1976 who headed off that loss of freedom; who kept us now a hundred years later free; who kept our world from nuclear destruction?” That was this generation’s challenge, Reagan declared. “Whether [the Americans of 2076] have the freedom that we have known up until now will depend on what we do here.”14
The following day, in what was widely interpreted as his farewell to national politics, Reagan thanked his campaign advisers and workers, many of whom were weeping. “We lost,” he acknowledged, “but the cause—the cause goes on.” And then he added a couple of lines from an old Scottish ballad, “I’ll lay me down and bleed awhile; though I am wounded, I am not slain. I shall rise and fight again.”15
They were inspiring words and movingly delivered, liberals conceded, but they were obviously the final curtain speech of a defeated and aged candidate. After all, Ronald Reagan would be sixty-nine years old if he chose to run again in 1980, four years past retirement. The experts overlooked the import of Reagan’s other words that morning: “Nancy and I,” he emphasized, “we aren’t going to go back and sit in a rocking chair and say, ‘Well, that’s all for us.’”16
Dismayed by the Carter presidency and convinced that he could do in Washington, D.C., what he had done in Sacramento, Reagan prepared for another presidential run. In early March 1979, Senator Paul Laxalt announced the official formation of the Reagan for President Committee in Washington, D.C. In 1976, Laxalt had been a lonely Washington voice for Reagan—one of only two members of Congress to support the former California governor. This time, he was joined by a dozen senators and congressmen and over 365 prominent Republicans as founding members of the exploratory committee. Included were former Ford administration office-holders like Treasury Secretary William Simon and Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Caspar Weinberger.
Reagan and his supporters knew that their first and most important task was to win New Hampshire. And to do that, the candidate would have to overcome the opinion held by some voters and many journalists that he was too old, too conservative, and too dumb to be president. With regard to the first point, conservatives readily admitted that if elected, Reagan would be, at sixty-nine, the oldest man ever to assume the presidency, but they reminded voters that the post-World War II world had been dominated by old lions like Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, Konrad Adenauer, and Dwight Eisenhower, all of whom were older than Reagan when in office. Asked about his age, Reagan characteristically replied with humor. “You know, I was in the Orient last year,” he told one audience. “They thought I was too young.”17
But nothing would be more convincing than cold, hard facts. And so in October 1979, the six-foot, two-inch Reagan underwent a complete physical examination, including a treadmill stress test, and received a glowing report. He weighed 185 pounds, almost the same as in his college football days. He exercised every day, even when on the road. And he did all the tough chores at Rancho del Cielo, the Reagan ranch located in the hills thirty miles from Santa Barbara. Almost single-handedly, he remodeled the simple two-bedroom Spanish-style home in which he and Nancy spent their weekends and vacations. He built a fence around their home out of old telephone poles and constructed a rock patio.
As for being too conservative, a Harris poll revealed that the majority of Americans liked Reagan’s right-of-center philosophy. More than half disagreed that he was “too conservative,” and nearly 60 percent felt that he “has a highly attractive personality and would inspire confidence as President.” A solid majority also agreed that Reagan “is right to want to get government out of business so that free enterprise can operate freely.”18
No one has ever reported his IQ, but Reagan was smart enough as governor of California to earn the praise of an establishment magazine like Newsweek, which pointed out that during his eight years he “balanced a deep-red budget, held down employment by the state, pared the welfare rolls, and in other ways demonstrated his competence to govern.” The Los Angeles Times agreed, stating that Reagan had left office as “an accomplished practitioner in the art of government, a proven administrator and a polished and potent force in conservative national politics.”19
Determined not to concede any part of the nation in his presidential quest, Reagan flew to New York City and there, on November 13, 1979, announced his candidacy. He delivered his remarks to a packed hotel ballroom and over a special network of television stations that reached an estimated 79 percent of the electorate. All three major networks—CBS, NBC, and ABC—had refused to sell him time for a half-hour program.
He pledged a 30 percent tax cut along the lines of the bill introduced by Congressman Jack Kemp of New York and Senator William Roth of Delaware; an orderly transfer of federal programs to the state and local levels along with the funds to pay for them (no $90 billion gaffe this time); a revitalized energy program based on increased production of oil, natural gas, and coal through deregulation; the development of a long-range diplomatic and military strategy to meet the challenge of the Soviet Union; and a North American economic accord among the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
He concluded with words familiar to old Reagan watchers but more appealing than ever before to a people wondering whether their best days were behind them:
A troubled and afflicted mankind looks to us, pleading for us to keep our rendezvous with destiny; that we will uphold the principles of self-reliance, self-discipline, morality and—above all—responsible liberty for every individual; that we will become that shining city on a hill.
I believe that you and I together can keep this rendezvous with destiny.20
Vying with Reagan for the Republican presidential nomination were six of the GOP’s brightest and best: Howard Baker of Tennessee, Senate Republican leader and former co-chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee; John Connally of Texas, treasury secretary under Nixon; Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, the 1976 vice presidential nominee; Congressman Phil Crane, chairman of the American Conservative Union; Congressman John Anderson of Illinois, the only liberal; and George Bush, former Texas congressman, U.S. envoy to China, and chairman of the Republican National Committee. Seldom has a major political party had a more impressive lineup of candidates for the nation’s highest office.
Reagan was the front-runner, routinely receiving 40 to 50 percent in Republican polls. Baker had been campaigning hard but still trailed far behind Reagan. Despite his undeniable speaking and fund-raising abilities, Connally was not catching on with Republicans, who viewed the one-time Democrat as something of a turncoat. Dole was poorly organized and often abrasive on the stump. Crane’s slim chances depended on Reagan’s faltering. Anderson was too liberal for about three-fourths of the party he wanted to lead. Bush had put together a good campaign organization but still nestled near the bottom of the challengers with about 3 percent; he had not won an election since 1968 when he was reelected to Congress from Houston.
The first test came on January 21, 1980, with the Iowa precinct caucuses. Reagan hardly campaigned in the state (forty-one hours in all), even declining to participate in a Des Moines debate two weeks before the caucus vote. He was following a “Rose Garden” strategy carefully plotted by campaign manager John Sears, seeking to protect Reagan from his opponents and himself. “It wouldn’t do any good to have him going to coffees and shaking hands like the others,” explained Sears haughtily. “People will get the idea he’s an ordinary man, like the rest of us.”21
But Iowa Republicans were not interested in having a monarch in the White House and, like most other voters, wanted to feel wanted. Thousands of them turned out for Bush, who spent thirty-one grueling days in Iowa. Bush narrowly defeated Reagan by 31.5 percent to 29.4 percent and immediately became the front-runner. Political analysts, recalling Reagan’s 1976 stumbles in New Hampshire and Florida, wondered whether Reagan, for all his star power, was capable of winning a presidential nomination.
Understanding that everything now depended on his capturing New Hampshire, Reagan doubled his schedule of speeches and barnstormed all over the state in a bus for almost three weeks. Gerald Carmen, the former chairman of the state Republican party, built a network of Reagan volunteers, including members of single-issue groups like right-to-life and antigun control, and directed it from a crowded, chaotic office in downtown Manchester. Columnist Mark Shields, contrasting Carmen’s working-class background with the tweedy liberal Republican past of Bush manager Susan McLane, argued that the race was “between Schlitz and sherry, between citizenship papers and collected papers, between night school and graduate school.”22
And once again, the state’s largest and most influential newspaper, the Manchester Union-Leader, was strongly backing Reagan with publisher William Loeb penning vitriolic front-page editorials that painted George Bush as a closet liberal and a willing tool of the eastern establishment.
Having learned from the voters’ rebuff in Iowa, Reagan agreed to debate not once but twice in New Hampshire. After the first debate among all the contenders, his polls told him that he had done well but was still only slightly ahead of Bush. The second debate was the turning point in New Hampshire and, indeed, in the entire primary season. It was a telling example of high-stakes politics, with one candidate conducting himself flawlessly and another committing one blunder after another.
Reagan agreed to a one-on-one debate with Bush in Nashua, sponsored by the local newspaper, the Nashua Telegraph. But two days before the debate, the Federal Election Commission ruled that the paper’s sponsorship constituted an illegal campaign contribution because it benefited only Reagan and Bush. Reagan suggested that he and Bush split the $3,500 cost of the debate. Bush refused because his campaign was close to its spending limit (Bush Mistake #1), so Reagan sent a check for the whole cost.
When the other candidates began complaining that they had been excluded, Reagan (at Sears’s suggestion) invited them to participate. Anderson, Baker, Dole, and Crane showed up in Nashua (John Connally was campaigning in South Carolina) and joined Reagan in a classroom across the hall from the Nashua High School gym. Bush arrived separately with his campaign manager, James A. Baker, and other aides and was invited to join the others. He declined. (Bush Mistake #2.) Reagan was disturbed at Bush’s rude treatment of fellow Republicans.
Bush strode into the gym and seated himself in one of the two chairs on the stage. Reagan then marched onto the stage with the four other candidates, his mouth set in a thin straight line. It was High Noon in Nashua on a Saturday night. While Reagan sat in the other reserved chair at the front of the platform, Anderson, Baker, Dole, and Crane lined up behind him like so many wooden Indians but all dressed in dark blue suits. People in the audience began shouting, “Get them chairs, get them chairs!”23
Bush sat stiffly with his back to the four standing men, and refused to acknowledge them. (Bush Mistake #3.) It was, as Frank van der Linden wrote, “an incredible scene,” created by Bush’s boneheadedness: Four prominent Republicans vying for the presidency were treated as interlopers and expected to remain silent.
When Reagan began trying to explain the situation, Jon Breen, the debate moderator and Telegraph editor, shouted, “Will the sound man please turn Mr. Reagan’s mike off?” The audience burst into loud boos. A red-faced Reagan seized his microphone and shouted in raw anger, “I’m paying for this microphone, Mr. Green!”24
Although Reagan got the moderator’s name wrong, his passionate outburst won the cheers of the audience. It was featured in every New Hampshire newspaper and television and radio report for the next forty-eight hours. Meanwhile, Bush sat shaken and silent but at last said confusedly, “I was invited here by the editors of the Nashua newspaper. I am their guest. I will play by the rules, and I’m glad to be here.”25 (Bush Mistake #4.) The explanation of why George Bush, a genuine hero of World War II, could be called a “wimp” by the media and political opponents begins with his feeble performance at the Nashua debate.
Not appreciating the measure of his miscalculation, Bush flew home to Houston that weekend and was pictured jogging in his shirtsleeves in the Texas sun while Reagan slogged through the snow all weekend and right up to primary day. No one was now saying that the former California governor was too old to run for president. And the two debates convinced a majority of New Hampshire Republicans that Reagan had, in the words of his pollster Richard Wirthlin, the “mental agility” to compete with any of his opponents and to be president.26 In what had once been regarded as a close contest, Reagan buried Bush by more than two to one, collecting as many votes as his six rivals combined.
The political momentum had now shifted. By the end of March, Baker, Connally, and Dole had withdrawn from the nomination race, followed in April by Crane and Anderson. But Anderson, who had not won any of the nine Republican primaries he entered, declared himself an “independent” and announced that a committee would study whether he could get his name on enough state ballots to win and whether sufficient money could be raised for a national campaign.27
Reagan beat Bush in Texas, his home state; in New York, the capital of the Eastern liberal establishment; in Michigan, the center of organized labor; and in Oregon, the most liberal of the Western states. Finally, on May 26, Bush acknowledged the inevitable and conceded the 1980 Republican presidential nomination to Ronald Reagan. Bush’s decision not to continue was realistic and politic; he was soon widely mentioned as a possible running mate for Reagan.
The principal on-site architects of the 1980 Republican platform were Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina and Congressman Jack Kemp of New York. They were an odd conservative couple, but each represented a powerful section of the Republican party. Helms was a traditional conservative, a former Jeffersonian Democrat, who liked his government like his steak—lean and rare. Kemp was an economic conservative, an enthusiastic follower of F. A. Hayek and Milton Friedman, who never met a tax he didn’t want to cut. Together they produced a conservative platform that called for a 30 percent tax cut in accord with the Kemp-Roth plan; the systematic reduction of federal rules and regulations over business and industry; the decentralization of social welfare and public assistance programs; free enterprise zones in the inner cities to attract capital, entrepreneurs, and jobs (an idea first advanced by the Heritage Foundation’s Stuart Butler and adopted by Kemp); a constitutional amendment banning abortion on demand; the support of equal rights for women but not the the Equal Rights Amendment; the building of new weapons systems to help the United States achieve military superiority over the Soviet Union; strong support for Israel and the Republic of China on Taiwan; and a North American economic accord among the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
At the same time, Reagan went out of his way to reassure special interest groups that he was aware of their goals and aspirations. He told a group of woman delegates that he would fight discrimination based on sex and would promote equality of opportunity if he were elected president. He pledged to black delegates that he would deliver American blacks from the “bondage” of welfare and sponsor measures to build up the black community economically. Reagan was determined that no one would pin an “extremist” label on him as they had done to his conservative colleague and mentor, Barry Goldwater.
Accordingly, when Henry Kissinger, arch-architect of détente, addressed the convention, he was greeted with polite applause, in contrast to the angry booing that had inundated Nelson Rockefeller at the 1964 GOP convention. And when Benjamin Hooks of the NAACP met privately with black delegates, convention organizers quickly altered the schedule to allow him to speak to the convention. His call for a “laundry list of social spending programs” was politely received and quietly ignored.28
The Detroit convention now experienced one of those intense outbursts of irrationality that, like sudden summer storms, sometimes sweep across mass political meetings. The catalyst was an unexpectedly dynamic speech on Monday night, July 15, by former President Ford, who declared, “This country means too much for me to comfortably park on the park bench. So, when this convention fields the team for Governor Reagan, count me in.”29
Maybe, the delegates began saying to themselves and then to each other, we ought to field a Reagan-Ford team. Top Republicans—conservative, moderate, and liberal—tried to make it happen. Reagan and several of his advisers (like Paul Laxalt and William Casey) already favored the former president as a running mate. Richard Wirthlin’s polls showed that Ford measurably strengthened the ticket.
And so on Tuesday afternoon, following numerous meetings with party leaders, Reagan met with the former president. “I would like you to serve on the ticket with me,” he said to the man whom he had nearly defeated for the nomination four years earlier, “to run against and hopefully defeat Carter. I know it’s a difficult decision for you. Likely, it will involve some sacrifices. I think a lot’s at stake as far as our country is concerned. Would you give it some consideration?”30
The language provides revealing insights into Reagan’s negotiating style: direct but not confrontational, simple and yet subtle, deferential but not fawning. He was as persuasive as he could be, feeling strongly that Ford was important to his winning the presidency.
Ford raised three questions: whether a former president could fit comfortably into the vice presidency; whether the staffs of the two men could work together effectively; and whether such a ticket would run afoul of the Twelfth Amendment, which says that if the candidates for president and vice president come from the same state, the electors from that state may not vote for both. (Ford was then living most of the year in California.) Reagan advised Ford of his lawyers’ opinion that Ford could move his legal residence to Vail, Colorado, where he had a vacation home, or even back to Michigan, where he had been born. Ford agreed to consider Reagan’s offer but stressed that he did not think it would work. Think it over, replied his persistent suitor, refusing to take an answer just then.31
Aides to both men met in almost continuous session trying to arrive at an acceptable arrangement. The Reagan side presented a two-page memorandum, prepared by Meese, that outlined Ford’s responsibilities, including daily supervisory authority but not veto power over the National Security Council, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Council of Economic Advisers—the president’s most important advisory groups. In effect, the vice president would become a deputy president, drawing extensively on Ford’s experience in national security, the appropriations process, and Congress.
Ford called the proposal a “reasonable effort” but still expressed doubt. Alan Greenspan, an economic adviser to both men, recalled thinking that they were trying to resolve in just twenty-four hours some of the most difficult organizational problems of the U.S. government.32
While the two sides were trying to rewrite the Constitution and balance political forces and egos, Reagan met with a New Right delegation that subjected him to an hour of emotional protests against the selection of Ford, George Bush, or Howard Baker. Reagan-Ford was not a dream but a nightmare to these conservatives. Howard Phillips warned that Reagan risked losing the South to Carter if he allowed “media and other liberal power brokers” to influence his choice of a running mate. Senator Gordon Humphrey of New Hampshire recalled that he had helped Reagan win his first primary and pleaded with him not to let “the Ford-Bush Republican hierarchy” dictate the other half of his ticket.33
Phyllis Schlafly, who had been fighting the liberal establishment’s dominance of the GOP since 1952, cautioned Reagan against disillusioning the “pro-family” voters who held deep convictions against the ERA, abortion, and the drafting of women. Nellie Gray, the founder and leader of the annual March for Life in Washington, argued that the anti-abortion movement was a powerful political force that should not be ignored, to which Reagan quickly agreed.34
Reverend Jerry Falwell warned that the 72,000 Protestant pastors in the Moral Majority would “surely lose some of their enthusiasm” for Reagan if he disappointed them with his vice presidential choice.35
Reagan listened patiently and sympathetically to every one of the conservatives’ warnings. He revealed that Baker was no longer on the vice presidential list but that Bush was acceptable to such stalwart conservatives as Strom Thurmond and John Tower. Why couldn’t the New Right accept him too? He did not mention the intense negotiations with Ford, which were still confidential.
The visitors left “downhearted,” convinced that their appeal had failed. But Reagan had met with them and had given them an opportunity to voice their opinion. By including them in the selection process, he had demonstrated his respect for the New Right and its prominent place in the majority coalition he was trying to forge.
Ford and Reagan met briefly at 5:15 P.M.,at Ford’s request. The former president mentioned Henry Kissinger and Alan Greenspan as the kind of people he would like to see in the cabinet. Reagan responded, “Jerry, I know all of Kissinger’s strong points, and there’s no question that he should play a role … but not as secretary of state. I couldn’t accept that.”36 It was a revelation for Ford. For all his smiling affability, Reagan could be as unyielding as stone.
The turning point came, as happens so often in our age of media politics, over national television. In a CBS interview with Walter Cronkite two hours later, Ford revealed to millions of viewers and the delegates to the Republican convention that he was seriously considering the vice presidency. After some probing, Cronkite asked a direct question: “It’s got to be something like a co-presidency?” Although it was not his word, Ford did not reject it, simply replying, “That’s something Governor Reagan really ought to consider.”37
Watching in his hotel, Reagan was dismayed. He had scrupulously kept the discussions behind closed doors, and yet there was Ford discussing them live with Cronkite and then with Barbara Walters on ABC. And “co-presidency”? No one had suggested that there ought to be two presidents in the White House. Ford and his wife, Betty, also raised the political temperature by mentioning their strong support of the equal rights amendment, which was opposed by the 1980 GOP platform and by Ronald Reagan.
As aides continued to wrestle with language, Reagan realized that a decision had to be made that night, or he would appear to be weak and indecisive. He called Ford, who responded, “My gut instinct is that I shouldn’t do it,” but refused to give a flat no. Suddenly, at 10:30 P.M., in the middle of the voting for the Republican presidential nomination, Ford turned to his wife and said, “I’m going down to tell him that I’m not going to do it.” In Reagan’s suite, the once and future presidents talked for only ten minutes, but with no tension or bitterness, about the collapse of the “dream ticket.”38
Eager to assert his command of the convention and to prevent the television networks from rumor-mongering throughout the night and into the morning, Reagan telephoned a surprised George Bush, who thought along with most of the rest of America that Reagan-Ford was a done deal. “I plan to go over to the convention,” revealed Reagan, “and tell them you are my first choice for the nomination.” An elated Bush responded, “I can campaign enthusiastically for your election and the platform.”39
A few minutes later, from the podium of Joe Louis Arena, Reagan revealed to a hushed convention that former President Ford felt he could be “of more value” campaigning for the ticket than being on it. He was therefore recommending the nomination of George Bush. The delegates, who earlier had overwhelmingly picked Reagan as their presidential nominee, roared their approval.
Reagan’s avid pursuit of Ford is illustrative of his pragmatism, inventiveness, and quick reflexes. To implement his conservative ideas, he had to get elected, and if Jerry Ford would help him achieve that end, he was willing to run with someone he once critized for allowing America to become “dangerously weak.” And it did not bother him that picking a former president as his running mate was an unprecedented action; he was not bound to the past, only respectful of it. When the proposed merger collapsed, he acted quickly to line up a replacement almost as acceptable to all parts of the Republican party, particularly the eastern wing.
Reagan’s acceptance address sought to bind together all the elements of the GOP, while also reaching out to independents and disillusioned Democrats. It articulated the traditional sources of American thought from the Mayflower Compact to the founding fathers to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and ended with a quotation from Franklin D. Roosevelt attacking excessive government spending, followed by a silent moment of prayer for the American hostages in Iran. Its central theme was summed up in five words—family, work, neighborhood, peace, freedom—that would serve as guide-posts for his administration.
Behind Reagan’s nomination and ready to help him as he began his presidential campaign were dozens of conservative organizations involving thousands of people and spending millions of dollars annually—a counter-establishment only dreamed of by the most optimistic conservatives a decade before.
Among them was the Washington-based American Conservative Union, sponsor of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). In 1979, ACU’s annual budget was nearly $3 million, up from $350,000 just five years before. Much of the organization’s growth had come about through its leadership in the fight against ratification of the Panama Canal treaties. ACU affiliates included the Conservative Victory Fund, one of the first conservative political action committees, and the ACU Education and Research Institute, which, under M. Stanton Evans, would create the National Journalism Center. The center trained about sixty young journalists a year.
The National Taxpayers Union (NTU), founded by tax specialist James Dale Davidson, helped create a receptive climate for Reagan’s fiscal policies. By the late 1970s, NTU had 220 affiliated chapters across the country. Its main objective was to convene a constitutional convention for an amendment requiring the federal government to balance the budget. By 1979, thirty states had passed resolutions calling for such a balanced budget convention—three short of the required thirty-three.
With a membership of 300,000 and an annual budget of about $5 million in 1980, the National Tax Limitation Committee, started by former Reagan aide Lewis B. Uhler, worked in both the nation’s capital and state capitals to limit taxes and spending. The committee’s strategy, Uhler explained, was to keep building up the grassroots pressure on the federal government, “where we all recognized the big culprit was located.”40 In November 1979, NTLC won an impressive victory when California voters approved Proposition 4, drafted by Uhler, which put a tight lid on state spending. The first state to adopt a constitutional spending limit in 1978 was Tennessee. By 1980, almost one hundred members of Congress were cosponsors of NTLC’s constitutional amendment, which limited federal spending to a declining share of the gross national product.
For years, anyone who wanted free legal aid had to talk to the American Civil Liberties Union or some part of Ralph Nader’s citizen rights complex. In the 1970s, conservative public interest law firms sprang up, led by the Pacific Legal Foundation, with offices in Washington, D.C., Sacramento, and Seattle. PLF was founded by Ronald A. Zumbrun, an architect of Reagan’s welfare reform program in California, and Roy Green, a former president of the Sacramento Chamber of Commerce. With an annual budget of $2 million, the foundation scored several impressive victories, such as getting California’s nuclear moratorium declared unconstitutional. Director Raymond Momboisse frequently asked, “Who is more unrepresented than the silent, hard-working taxpayer? The little man who foots the bills of the great social experiments of the bloated bureaucracy—we represent him.”41
Other conservative public interest firms included the Washington Legal Foundation, headed by twenty-nine-year-old Daniel Popeo, often described as the “Ralph Nader of the Right.” By the late 1970s, Popeo had brought cases against President Jimmy Carter, the Democratic National Committee, the General Services Administration, and the Federal Mine Safety Commission. WLF represented Senator Barry Goldwater in his historic case against Carter’s canceling, without Senate approval, the mutual defense treaty between the United States and the Republic of China on Taiwan. Goldwater went all the way to the Supreme Court before losing on a technicality.
Think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato Institute helped to place conservative ideas at the center of the public policy debate. AEI, in 1979, was by far the largest and most influential, with an annual budget of $7 million, just behind the $8 million level of the liberal Brookings Institution. Among the prominent public officials and scholars whom AEI recruited in the 1970s were former president Gerald Ford, former solicitor general Robert Bork, former treasury secretary William Simon, former Federal Reserve Board chairman Arthur Burns, and such thinkers and academics as Irving Kristol, Herbert Stein, and Jeane Kirkpatrick.
Conservative efforts on Capitol Hill were significantly strengthened by two in-house groups: the Republican Study Committee, organized in 1973 by veteran Congressman Ed Derwinski of Illinois, and the Senate Steering Committee, brought to life in 1974 through the determined efforts of Republican senators Carl Curtis of Nebraska and James McClure of Idaho. With a membership approaching ninety House members by 1980, the Republican Study Committee helped produce conservative victories on campaign reform, OSHA, land use, and East-West trade.
Throughout the late 1970s, the fourteen members of the Senate Steering Committee met regularly over lunch each Wednesday to discuss conservative strategy, politics, and legislation. Among the issues the group tackled were the Panama Canal treaties, SALT, labor law “reform,” Rhodesia, campaign financing, and balancing the federal budget. Margo Carlisle, the committee’s executive director and one of the most quietly effective conservatives on the Hill, explained, “We work hard and we work with the staffs of the other senators.” Conservative activist Paul Weyrich commented that comparing conservative effectiveness in the Senate before and after the steering committee was “like comparing night and day. Without their orchestration, we’d have lost constantly.”42
By 1980, after three decades of unending trial and frequent error, conservatives had learned several critical lessons they would soon put to effective use:
Although all the national polls placed Reagan far ahead of Carter right after the Republican convention, the president got a bump from his own convention in August, and the two men were about even by Labor Day.
From the first day of campaigning, President Carter brought out the usual anticonservative arsenal of charges, portraying Reagan as a right-wing extremist opposed to peace, arms control, and working people—a man who would divide the country. Carter appealed to traditional Democratic groups like blacks and organized labor and played on doubts about Reagan’s expertise in the vital area of war and peace.
The president played the race card early and often, accusing Reagan of injecting hatred and racism into the campaign by using “code words like ‘states’ rights.’” Appearing at Martin Luther King, Jr.’s church in Atlanta, Carter grinned and shook the hand of Congressman Parren Mitchell of Maryland, who had just said of Reagan, “I’m going to talk about a man … who seeks the presidency of the United States with the endorsement of the Ku Klux Klan.”43 It did not matter to Mitchell, or to Carter apparently, that Reagan had immediately repudiated the Klan’s endorsement.
But Carter’s tactics sparked immediate and widespread condemnation. Liberal columnists Jack Germond and Jules Witcover wrote that the president had brought the campaign “down to a new level” and such accusations had no “pertinence” in the politics of 1980. In an editorial entitled “Running Mean,” the Washington Post said, “Jimmy Carter … seems to have few limits beyond which he will not go in the abuse of opponents and reconstruction of history.” Reagan called Carter’s attack “shameful, because whether we’re on the opposite side or not, we ought to be trying to pull the country together.”44
The president insisted stubbornly at a news conference that he did not “indulge in attacking personally the integrity of my opponents” and complained that “the press appeared to be obsessed with the race issue.” But the Carter-Mondale Re-Election Committee showed its true colors by launching a national advertising campaign in black newspapers that claimed that Republicans were out to beat Carter because he had appointed thirty-seven blacks to judgeships and had cracked down on job discrimination.45
Refusing to be thrown off-course, Reagan went on courting the blue-collar, ethnic Catholic vote, concentrated on Carter’s sorry economic record, and endeavored to reassure the voters that he could handle the weighty duties of the presidency. The strategy was based on the Black Book, a remarkable 176-page document written by Richard Wirthlin, Reagan’s longtime pollster and president of Decision Making Information. The Black Book listed four target groups: southern white Protestants, blue-collar workers in industrial states, urban ethnics, and rural voters, especially in upstate New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
When the president refused to participate in a three-way debate with Reagan and John Anderson, Reagan readily agreed to appear with his independent opponent. The 55 million Americans who watched the Reagan-Anderson debate on Sunday evening, September 21, were treated to an impressive political demonstration. The answers pointed up the sharp differences between the two men, with Reagan urging smaller government and less spending and Anderson proposing billion-dollar government solutions for the problems of energy and the inner city. Reagan repeated his call for a 10 percent tax cut for each of the next three years, noting with satisfaction that his proposal “has been called inflationary by my opponent, by the man who isn’t here tonight.”46
An immediate ABC-Lou Harris Poll reported that viewers believed that Anderson had “outplayed” Reagan by 36 percent to 30 percent, with 17 percent calling it a tie. But according to a New York Times/CBS poll, Reagan was the true beneficiary because an increased number of people believed that Reagan understood the complicated problems facing a president, had a clear position on the issues, offered a clear vision of where he wanted to lead the country, and would exercise good judgment under pressure. The debate dispelled the concerns of many voters that Reagan was incompetent or reckless. The poll also reported that Reagan now led Carter by five points.47
Reagan was now campaigning smoothly, presenting specialized messages to key constituencies in the communities he visited. In Miami, he denounced Fidel Castro and promised that America would remain a refuge for those fleeing tyranny. In Springfield, Missouri, he criticized Carter for hesitating to declare the state a disaster area following a severe drought. In Tyler, Texas, he charged that Carter was afraid to debate energy policy with him. And in Grand Junction, Colorado, he declared that westerners knew how to manage their water resources better than the federal bureaucracy did. The content of his speeches was traditional Republican—cut taxes, limit government—but his style was traditional Democratic, with constant references to family, neighborhood, work, and peace.
With three weeks left in the campaign, Reagan held a narrow lead of five points in the popular vote and a comfortable margin in the electoral vote. Republicans were organized and united as they had not been for years, and there was sufficient money for a final advertising blitz. The candidate was ready for intensive final campaigning in key states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio.
The Reagan organization was concerned about one issue over which it had no control: the American hostages in Iran. Washington was alive with rumors about their imminent release. If they were freed at the eleventh hour, how would the public react? Would the American people be caught up in the euphoria of the moment and reelect Carter? Or would they dismiss the release as October politics and vote their pocketbooks? Reagan and his advisers concluded that they could not afford to sit on a safe but slim lead and played their last card: they agreed to a debate with Jimmy Carter one on one. A national debate would enable Reagan to reassure the public, personally and directly, where he stood on war and peace. The announcement of a debate would “freeze” the campaign where it then stood, with Reagan ahead. And Reagan and his people were confident that he would best Carter.
After all, Reagan had won every debate in his political career, starting with former San Francisco mayor George Christopher and Governor Pat Brown of California in 1966 and right up to George Bush and John Anderson in 1980. Undoubtedly Carter would have more facts and figures at his command, but television had been Reagan’s medium for almost thirty years, and he had just the message for the 100 million Americans who would be watching: “Are you better off than you were four years ago? If not, vote Republican.”
Indeed, the news was bad almost everywhere for Carter and his administration. Inflation stood at 12.7 percent. Interest rates were beginning a rapid rise that would see them double within six months. National Review’s Richard Brookhiser wrote that “interest rates were kissing President Carter’s popularity levels.”48 Unemployment was spreading across the Northeast. The crime rate was accelerating to the point where New York City reported two thousand murders in a single year. Abroad, Western Europe wondered whether the United States had the will to lead the free world; West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt was openly contemptuous of Carter. Iran, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Angola: the list of crisis spots stretched around the globe.
On Tuesday evening, October 28, one week before election day, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter stood behind specially constructed rostrums on the stage of Cleveland’s Music Hall for their first and only debate of the 1980 presidential campaign. Their audience was an estimated 105 million Americans. Both men wore dark suits and muted ties. The similarities ended there.
Carter was grim-lipped and stood rigid, rarely looking at his opponent. He was “pinched, acidulous, aggressive,” in the words of ABC journalist Jeff Greenfield. He immediately went on the attack and stayed there for ninety minutes. He debated by the numbers: seven mentions of his being a Democratic president, seven mentions of lonely, life-and-death decisions, ten mentions of the Oval Office, and no fewer than fourteen mentions of his running against a challenger whose ideas and positions were “dangerous,” “disturbing,” and “radical.”49
Reagan was calm, cool, ever presidential. He occasionally gestured with his hands and tilted his body to make a point. He smiled. He seemed to be enjoying himself. He spent much of his time patiently explaining where Carter had misquoted or misrepresented him, much like a professor pointing out the errors of an overzealous student.
The climax of the debate—and the effective end of the campaign—came when Carter tried to link Reagan with the idea of making social security voluntary and argued that Reagan had opposed Medicare. That familiar crooked grin appeared on Reagan’s face, and with a rueful shake of his head, he looked at Carter and said, “There you go again.”50 The Carter campaign of fear collapsed in an instant.
Reagan sealed Carter’s defeat and his victory with his closing remarks when he looked straight into the camera and quietly asked the viewer:
Are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? … Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel our security is as safe, that we’re as strong as we were four years ago?51
After briefly defending his record as governor of California, Reagan ended by promising a crusade “to take government off the back of the great people of this country and turn you loose again to do those things that I know you can do so well, because you … made this country great.”52
An Associated Press poll found that 46 percent of those who watched the debate thought Reagan did the better job, with 34 percent saying Carter did. And a CBS survey revealed Reagan the winner over Carter by 44 percent to 36 percent. Significantly, the same survey also showed that undecided voters were moving toward Reagan by a two-to-one margin.53
It seemed that it was all over but the voting. Then on Sunday, November 2, forty-eight hours before election day, the Iranian parliament announced its terms for freeing the fifty-two American hostages. Carter dramatically interrupted his campaigning to fly home to Washington to confer with his top security advisers. He went on national television Sunday afternoon to say that the conditions “appear to offer a positive basis” for an acceptable agreement. But he refused to predict when the hostages might come home and pledged that “my decisions on this crucial matter will not be affected by the calendar.”54
But the October surprise on which the Carter campaign had been heavily depending turned out to be a November insult. Iran made impossible demands that would require extended negotiations. There would be no triumphal return of the hostages before the voters went to the polls.
Although most of the national polls said it would be a close election, Reagan won by an electoral landslide and more than 8 million popular votes. The conservative Republican carried forty-four states with a total of 489 electoral votes. His 43.9 million votes were the second largest total on record, behind only Richard Nixon’s 47.2 million in 1972—a victory across the board and across the country.
Just as important, Reagan’s political coattails were long and wide, helping the GOP to pick up twelve seats in the Senate, giving it majority control for the first time in a quarter of a century. Without exception, the Democrats who were defeated—George McGovern, Frank Church, Birch Bayh, John Culver, Gaylord Nelson—were liberals. Not since 1955 had there been a Republican president and a Republican Senate at the same time. In the House, Republicans registered a gain of thirty-three seats, almost all of them conservatives.
Pundits and politicians agreed that the results constituted an overwhelming rejection of Carter’s leadership and policies and a broad mandate for Reagan to change the direction of American politics. Former presidential candidate George McGovern said flatly that the voters had “abandoned American liberalism.” In an editorial titled “Tidal Wave,” the Washington Post acknowledged that 1980 was not an ordinary election: “Nothing of that size and force and sweep could have been created over a weekend or even a week or two by the assorted mullahs and miseries of our times.” Pollster Louis Harris concluded that Reagan had won “his stunning victory” because the conservatives, particularly the Moral Majority, “gave him such massive support.”55
And Reagan won because he dominated the five key elements of every political campaign: organization, money, candidates, issues, and the media. Organizationally, the Republican party was united behind the Reagan-Bush ticket. Even Gerald Ford campaigned widely and effectively for his former rival. The Democrats, still divided after a bitter primary struggle between Carter and Senator Edward Kennedy, were unable to mount a similar organizational effort.
Under federal law, both candidates were restricted to spending the $29.4 million provided by the federal treasury. But Reagan was helped by his national party, which spent $7.5 million on a national television campaign with the theme “Vote Republican for a Change.” And there were the independent campaign committees, which spent more than $6 million on pro-Reagan and anti-Carter television and radio advertising. Carter had no such financial help from the Democratic party or independent committees.
As to issues, there were two major ones in 1980: Carter’s record and Reagan’s ability to govern. Once the focus shifted from the latter to the former, as it did following the presidential debate, Carter was doomed.
As to personal appeal, Carter was one of the poorest public speakers to occupy the White House in the twentieth century. Although he tried to present himself as humble and open-minded, he came off as what he was: arrogant, condescending, and self-righteous. And he was matched against one of the most effective and likable communicators in modern politics. Carter’s challenging Reagan to a national televised debate was like Leslie Howard’s daring Clark Gable to step into the ring.
As to the news media, most journalists, particularly members of the Washington press corps, did not like Carter, who had shown as much disdain for them as he had for the rest of official Washington. Carter thought he did not need them, and he rarely went out of his way to court them, as had John Kennedy. By contrast, many journalists were taken by Reagan’s personal warmth and charm even though they disagreed, often sharply, with his policies. ABC’s Sam Donaldson recalled that when he and other veteran political reporters got together, they talked most about Ronald Reagan.56
In the final analysis, Ronald Reagan won because he was a man with an idea whose time had come. The idea was that government had grown too big and should be reduced, and America’s military had grown too weak and ought to be strengthened. The American people liked the sound of that and elected him president. At last, as Human Events put it, conservatives were in a position to govern. “If we fail, we have only ourselves to blame.”57