MUNICIPAL AUDITORIUM
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI
OCTOBER 21, 1984
7:00 P.M.
The man who was nearly murdered three years ago is out for blood.
Ronald Reagan bounds onto the stage and takes his spot at the lectern, where he stands confident and poised. Despite it being evening, a time of day at which he often fades, the president looks crisp and attentive. As the contest gets under way, Walter Mondale stands on the opposite side of the stage, watching as Reagan fields a series of questions. The president does not like Mondale, thinking him a liar who has unfairly attacked his credibility. For Reagan, this second and last debate is personal. His answers now come easily. There is no sign of the stuttering or stammering from the first debate.
There is one question, however, that everyone in the audience knows is coming. Finally, after twenty minutes of debate, Henry Trewhitt of the Baltimore Sun gets to the heart of the matter: Is Ronald Reagan too old to be president?
Reagan stands ready to answer.
* * *
After the first debate, Nancy Reagan was livid—eager to apply blame on anyone but her Ronnie. “What have you done to my husband?” she screamed at Deputy Chief of Staff Michael Deaver. They were standing in the Presidential Suite at the Hyatt Regency in Louisville. “Whatever it was, don’t do it again.”
The problem, Nancy quickly decided, is that the president is being bullied in the pre-debate prep sessions. His advisers, notably budget director David Stockman, often interrupt Reagan when he makes a mistake. It is well known in the White House that the troika of Ed Meese, James Baker, and Michael Deaver have a method of slowing down Oval Office meetings if the president does not understand a complex issue. Without insulting him, they diplomatically reframe the discussion until Reagan comprehends.
But there is no time for niceties while preparing for a presidential debate. Stockman is only doing his job, feeding the president facts so that he can easily rebut anything Walter Mondale might throw at him.
On October 17, during the initial debate prep for the final confrontation with Mondale, a newcomer observes the scene. From 2:06 to 4:36 in the afternoon, Reagan stands at a mock lectern in the Old Executive Office Building, fielding questions and arguing with Stockman, who stands at an opposite lectern playing the part of Walter Mondale. At one point, the normally polite Reagan barks “Shut up” at Stockman, filling the room with an embarrassing silence.
Tensions are high.
Clearly, something must change.
Afterward, Reagan returns to the White House, where he meets with the new observer. Roger Ailes is a stocky man with long sideburns. He is part of the so-called Tuesday Team, which has prepared the successful “Morning in America” commercials for Reagan. Ailes also worked for the Nixon administration and is known for his ability to stop chaos cold.
Michael Deaver makes the introduction. “Roger’s here to help you with the debates.”
“What kind of help do I need?” Reagan responds. Though it is almost evening, Reagan shows no sign of fatigue, other than a slight hand and head tremor.
“You sort of wandered off the highway in the last debate. I’m gonna try and help you focus a little bit,” Ailes answers.
“That’s a pretty good idea,” the president replies.
Roger Ailes agreed with Nancy Reagan that the president’s debate problem had nothing to do with age or mental health. Instead, Reagan had been poorly prepared.
“You’re giving him too many facts, too much bullshit that he can’t use, you’re interrupting him,” Ailes tells Deaver. “Remember, he’s a guy who’s used to working with one director, who kind of lays out what the purpose of the thing is, and then he does it. Right now, you got five or six or eight guys interrupting him, all trying to prove they’re smarter than he is.”
So it is that Reagan’s debate preparation is altered. Now it is just Ailes and Reagan, one on one. The president endures long bouts of “pepper sessions,” in which he has to answer question after question without reaching for obscure facts or numbers. Instead, he simply speaks from the heart.
Now, with just four days left to the second debate, the strategy seems to be working. The president is upbeat and optimistic. He works hard, rarely seeming to tire.
“When guys brief people for debates,” Ailes will later remember, “they want them to memorize what they say ’cause they’re the expert.… I shifted him back to staying in territory he knew and not trying to memorize a bunch of crap that nobody would remember.”
Ailes’s strategy has revitalized Reagan. “I can sum up the day in one sentence,” he writes in his diary on Saturday, October 20, the night before facing Mondale. “I’ve been working my tail off to master the four minute closing statement I want to make in the debate tomorrow night.”
On the same evening, the president and Ailes have a last-minute discussion about the debate.
“What are you gonna say if they ask you if you’re too old for this job?” Ailes asks Reagan. The two men are standing in a White House hallway, walking to the elevator that will take Reagan back up to the second-floor residence.
Michael Deaver, Nancy Reagan, and all of the president’s advisers have forbidden any talk about the age issue. But Reagan and Ailes are sure the question will be asked tomorrow night.
Reagan stops in his tracks. He blinks and looks hard at Ailes. “I have some ideas,” the president begins.
Reagan tells Ailes what he intends to say. The words are rough and need a rhythm if they are to be effective, but Ailes likes the tone. Once upon a time, Ronald Reagan would have written the line for himself. Even now, he still makes elaborate changes in the margins of the scripts his speechwriters give him. But with his mind filled with debate minutiae, Ailes offers to write the entire response for Reagan.
“Whatever they bring up about age,” he tells the president, “you go to this answer. You have to hit it specifically. Deliver it the way Bob Hope would. Don’t move on the laugh line. If you want to get a drink of water or something and just stare at him, fine. But here’s the line.”
“I got it, coach,” Reagan responds after hearing Ailes’s retort.
* * *
As the final debate edges closer to a conclusion, the inevitable age question finally arrives.
Ronald Reagan is ready.
“Mr. President,” the balding, bespectacled Henry Trewhitt says, “I want to raise an issue that I think has been lurking out there for two or three weeks and cast it specifically in national security terms. You already are the oldest president in history. And some of your staff say you were tired after your most recent encounter with Mr. Mondale.”
Reagan is smiling.
Trewhitt continues: “I recall that President Kennedy had to go for days on end with very little sleep during the Cuban missile crisis. Is there any doubt in your mind that you would be able to function in such circumstances?”
The president waits a beat, surveying the room. He appears to be fully in command of the situation.
“I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign,” Reagan says casually, allowing the moment to build, taking great care not to rush the punch line. “I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”
The crowd erupts in laughter. Even Walter Mondale is laughing. Reagan looks down modestly. He knows that even though there are still forty-five minutes in the debate, he has already won.
* * *
Two weeks later, on November 6, in a historic landslide, Ronald Reagan is reelected president of the United States.1
The next morning, Reagan celebrates the best way he knows how: with a four-day vacation at the ranch, Nancy in tow.