PACIFIC PALISADES, CALIFORNIA
NOVEMBER 2, 1976
7:30 A.M.
Eleven weeks after former governor Reagan electrified America with his speech at the Republican National Convention, Election Day finally arrives. It is a cool Los Angeles morning, and Ronald and Nancy Reagan rise at seven thirty, taking their breakfast of fresh orange juice, toast, and decaffeinated coffee at the kitchen table.
As Ronald Reagan looks in the mirror to shave, he is pleased with himself. At age sixty-five, he is still an impressive physical specimen. His hair is thick. His teeth are white. Also, his body is toned from a daily regimen of calisthenics and from weekends chopping wood and clearing brush at the ranch. He will later joke that he should write an exercise book about his regimen entitled Pumping Firewood.
Nancy Reagan is also in good shape, though her physique comes more from diet than exercise. The Reagans are fastidious about watching how much they eat and drink, preferring a light breakfast and a lunch of soup so that they may indulge in favorite foods such as meat loaf or macaroni and cheese for dinner. The governor likes also to “hold a few calories back” at dinner so he can enjoy dessert.
After finishing their morning ablutions, the Reagans walk the half mile to the longtime residence of Robert and Sally Gulick. The former World War II navy pilot and his wife have allowed their house to be used as a polling place for more than two decades, and it is here that the Reagans will cast their ballots.
All across America, voters are deciding who will lead them. Either the incumbent president, Gerald R. Ford, or the Democratic candidate, James Earl “Jimmy” Carter, will be the next president of the United States. It is a choice between the man who pardoned the despised Richard Nixon but kept the nation from further chaos or a devoted Christian southern governor who some believe is far more secular than he pretends to be. Neither candidate inspires the nation. Watergate and the Vietnam War have made many Americans cynical. Today will see the lowest voter turnout since 1948.1
The Gulick home, on a tree-lined suburban street, is where many other local celebrities, such as bandleader Lawrence Welk and Los Angeles Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully, will cast ballots, but the Reagans are the reason the media stand waiting in the street. The former governor gives reporters a friendly hello and walks inside to vote.
Sally Gulick greets the Reagans warmly. The fifty-nine-year-old community doyenne is well known for three things: breeding German shepherds, her annual Army-Navy football game party, and having an avid interest in politics.
In anticipation of the Reagans’ arrival, Sally has put out a jar of jellybeans, in case the governor wants to indulge his sweet tooth with his favorite candy. And while a polling place is required to be impartial, Sally Gulick is not above placing a papier-mâché Republican elephant in plain sight.
However, on this day, Ronald Reagan is not a loyal Republican. He has been bitter since the convention, avoiding showing any overt support for Gerald Ford. Later this afternoon he will write a letter to a supporter in Idaho, stating that he has campaigned for Ford in twenty-five states and sent a million letters to back the president’s campaign.
But that will be disingenuous. Ronald Reagan did not take losing easily. He has refused to appear in public with Gerald Ford or even to be photographed with the president. Reagan’s many campaign speeches were pro-Republican, but focused only on politicians who’d endorsed him during the primaries. Worst of all, in the final days of the campaign, at a time when Ford desperately needed Reagan to make a last-minute swing through the South to secure conservative votes, the governor flat-out refused.
Now, as Reagan pushes the lever casting his vote, he once again refuses Ford.
Stunningly, Ronald Reagan declines to vote for the office of the presidency. He cannot bring himself to cast a ballot for Gerald R. Ford. Neither can Nancy, whose disdain for Betty Ford was clear throughout the Republican convention.2
“I’m at peace with the world,” Reagan tells the press as he and Nancy leave the polling place to begin their walk home.
“Will you run again in four years?” a reporter asks.
“I wouldn’t rule it out,” Reagan answers. “And I wouldn’t rule it in.”
* * *
Several hours earlier, and two thousand miles east, Gerald Ford is eating pancakes. He cast his ballot at the Wealthy Elementary School polling place at 7:33 a.m. Michigan time. His hometown of Grand Rapids has just installed new voting machines, and Ford had to be given a tutorial on how to use them. Surrounded by watercolor drawings and a sign saying, “Welcome Mr. and Mrs. Ford” that schoolchildren prepared for this day, Gerald Ford punched out his ballot.
Now Ford sits in Granny’s Kitchen Restaurant and indulges in his Election Day superstition. Granny’s was where he ate blueberry pancakes the day he was first elected to Congress in 1948, and he keeps coming back.
Gerald Ford is nervous. That is understandable. His fate and future are now out of his hands. In just twenty-four hours, he will know whether he has been reelected or booted from office.
Gerald Ford is a man who has been through intense situations before and knows how to remain cool under pressure. While he was serving aboard the light aircraft carrier USS Monterey during World War II, the ship was struck by Typhoon Cobra near the Philippines. The storm was so severe that it sank several destroyers, killing nearly eight hundred U.S. sailors. On the morning of December 18, the pitching Monterey was buffeted by screaming winds and seventy-foot waves. Young lieutenant Gerald Ford ventured out onto the exposed flight deck in an attempt to climb a ladder to the ship’s wheelhouse in order to secure his duty station. Suddenly, a wave taller than the Monterey itself broke over the side of the ship, knocking Ford from the ladder and sending him sliding toward the Pacific Ocean. Ford was powerless to stop his inevitable plummet into the churning sea. At the very last minute, the former University of Michigan football star reached out and grabbed hold of a small metal catwalk. Hanging on for dear life, he pulled himself to safety and worked his way up into the wheelhouse.
Heroic yet humble, Ford speaks infrequently about that terrifying moment. Few of his closest friends even know it occurred.
Now, thirty-two years and a political lifetime after Typhoon Cobra, Gerald and Betty Ford sit in a small corner booth sipping coffee and awaiting their food. A player piano in the corner puts forth “One Sweet Kiss.” An antique sign hangs from the wall advertising “Genuine Ford Parts Used Here.” Outside, a crowd of well-wishers peers through the windows, watching the president eat his breakfast.
Soon the Fords will board Air Force One to fly to Washington. There, Ford hopes to take a nap before having dinner with sports broadcaster Joe Garagiola and his wife.
The First Lady has already made peace with this election. In private statements to the press, she pretends to be fine with the outcome, whatever it might be. “Either the president wins,” she says, “or if he loses we get to see more of him.”
But Betty Ford is hiding her apprehension. Polls show her husband trailing Carter by a slim margin over the last few weeks. Betty, a realistic woman, understands there is a good chance that she and her husband will soon be evicted from the White House.
* * *
As President and Mrs. Ford fly back to Washington, Nancy Reagan is already planning for the next presidential election. Her husband spends the morning of Election Day in his office, composing handwritten letters to supporters. Then the two of them drive into Hollywood, where she listens as Reagan records a whopping twenty radio commentaries.3 In the waning moments of the Republican National Convention, Ronald Reagan made it clear that 1976 would not be his last bid for the presidency. “Nancy and I,” he told his campaign staff, “we aren’t going to sit back in our rocking chairs and say that’s all for us.”
Nancy Reagan cried publicly as he spoke on that day, refusing to stand at her husband’s side when he said good-bye to his campaign staff because she was so emotional. She turned away from the crowd so no photographer could capture the tears in her eyes. Losing the nomination was hard on her husband but perhaps just as difficult for Nancy. Now she spends many nights alone here in Pacific Palisades as Reagan travels the country to give speeches. When not campaigning, her husband is usually ensconced in his study. Nancy knows Ron’s focus is on building his political base. So she is forced to do everything else, taking charge of the family because her husband is too busy. Nancy deals with the drama of her liberal daughter Patti’s turbulent life, including her drug use and frequent changes of boyfriend.
Nancy is also concerned that her son, Ron Reagan Jr., is heading in the wrong direction. He wears his hair too long and is developing a passion for ballet dancing. This does not amuse his father, who prides himself on being rugged. Finally, Nancy Reagan watches as the children from Reagan’s first marriage, to Jane Wyman, Maureen and Michael, grow more distant by the day, largely because they don’t like her.
None of the blame for the family’s troubles seems to fall on Ronald Reagan. It is Nancy who accepts the criticism. She knows that her controlling ways have alienated not just the children but also some of her husband’s campaign staff.
But she could not care less.
To Nancy Reagan, a troublesome employee is just one more person who has to go. Nancy has terminated numerous staffers. The deed is almost always done by Michael Deaver, a longtime Reagan aide who has become very close to Mrs. Reagan.
Nancy is now fifty-five and still looks as if she is in the prime of her life. She is so devoted to her husband that Betty Ford tells Time magazine, “When Nancy met Ronnie, that was it as far as her own life was concerned.”
But Nancy Reagan’s single-mindedness toward her husband has paid off: Ronald Reagan has become a powerful man. Their income is assured, thanks to Reagan’s radio contract and numerous paid speeches around the country. Nancy will never have to work again.
So it is that Ronald and Nancy Reagan end Election Day 1976 by themselves in their home on San Onofre Drive. Since Ron Jr. has left home to begin his studies at Yale, the Reagans are empty nesters. On most nights, they watch an old movie and unwind before going to bed at eleven. But with all three major television networks showing nothing but election returns, the Reagans cannot help but watch.
To them, neither presidential candidate offers the country the necessary ideology and passion. If only Reagan had defeated Ford in the primaries, this would have been their Election Day, and perhaps their night of triumph. Instead, they sit alone in the house, looking out over the lights of Los Angeles and wondering, “What if…?”
But tomorrow is a new day.
As always, Ronald Reagan will spend a few hours in his study, writing his letters and speeches, laying the ideological groundwork to expand his conservative constituency.
But the story is different for Nancy Reagan. She has nothing at all to do. Shopping and socializing with her wealthy friends gets dull after a while.
So Nancy Reagan looks ahead to the day that her husband, Ronald Wilson Reagan, becomes the president of the United States in 1980.
She will see to it.
* * *
At 3:18 a.m. in Washington, DC, an exhausted Gerald Ford finally goes to bed. He has been watching the election returns for hours, and there is still no clear winner. Thirty-six invited guests have spent the last three hours in the White House watching with Ford. The family’s gathering is private, as compared with the giddy scene on ABC, where broadcasters Howard K. Smith and Barbara Walters talk over images of a festive Jimmy Carter party, presided over by his aging mother, Lillian. The matriarch speaks as if she senses victory.
Still, Ford thinks he will win. Too tired to stay awake any longer, he plans to fall asleep and then arise to the news that he has been reelected. He steps out into the hallway with Chief of Staff Dick Cheney, issues a few minor orders, and then walks to his bedroom. The president slips between the sheets, Betty Ford at his side. Good news or bad, in the morning it will all be over.
The fact that the election is this close is testament to Gerald Ford’s tenacity. Back in the summer of 1976, as Ronald Reagan divided the Republican Party with his campaign attacks on Ford, Jimmy Carter held a thirty-three-point lead in the polls. America wanted to believe that the smiling small-town peanut farmer would heal the country’s maladies.
But Carter almost self-destructed. Against the advice of his counselors, he gave an interview to Playboy magazine, hoping to attract voters who might have been put off by his conservative Christian religious views. In that interview, he admitted, “I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.”4
National headlines ensued, with Carter coming across as somewhat lurid.
The interview was a huge mistake. In attempting to be completely honest, the governor actually lost the support of some women voters and evangelical Christians who thought his admission unseemly.
The gap between Carter and Ford closed even further when the president won the first televised debate in late September. Looking physically robust and in command of the facts, Ford made it clear which candidate was the president and which was not.
Now, as Gerald Ford turns out the light at 3:20 in the morning, he does so with the knowledge that he is on the verge of accomplishing something no other presidential candidate has ever done: closing a twenty-point gap in the polls in just eleven weeks’ time.
The White House master bedroom goes dark.
Gerald Ford sleeps for five hours.
In the morning, he opens his eyes, hoping for good news.
He doesn’t get it.5