Killing Reagan (28 page)

But today there are no cards. No notes. Just the president and the media throwing one-liners back and forth. The time for questions is limited to just five minutes. There is very little that can go wrong in such a short period of time—or so it seems.

As distasteful as it might be, Ronald Reagan knows he must talk to the media. This is an election year, and the Republican National Convention in Dallas is just three weeks away. After eight months pursuing a Rose Garden strategy, in which Nancy made sure that Reagan barely campaigned, talking to the media will be a nice little warm-up for the months of hard battle that lie ahead in his quest for reelection. The media have been exceptionally generous to him during his first term, leading editor Ben Bradlee of the
Washington Post
, the newspaper that brought down Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal, to state, “We've been kinder to President Reagan than any president I can remember since I've been at the
Post
.”

This comment is made all the more significant by the fact that not only has Bradlee been at the
Post
off and on since 1948, but he was also drinking buddies with President John F. Kennedy.

So Ronald Reagan is not worried about this impromptu news conference. The president is never more relaxed than when here at the ranch. Congress is not in session right now, and he and Nancy are taking advantage of the hiatus by spending two full weeks on this six-hundred-acre mountaintop property. Their ranch house is a one-hundred-year-old white Spanish adobe with faux-brick linoleum floors that Reagan laid himself. There is nothing lavish about this private retreat. It has the air of a summer camp bunkhouse, yet it restores Reagan's soul unlike any place else on earth. During his time in office, he will spend the equivalent of one full year on this mountaintop looking out over the Pacific.
1

Ronald Reagan works at the ranch, too, but guards his privacy very closely. He spends much of his time in the small living room, a private sanctuary to which not even his closest advisers are allowed regular access. Ever loyal, Reagan has filled the kitchen with GE appliances. The master bedroom is barely big enough to fit the two small twin frames pushed together to form one bed. The president is too tall for these mattresses, so a padded stool has been positioned at the end. He sleeps with his feet sticking out from under the covers, resting atop the stool.

Nevertheless, Ronald Reagan loves the place—Nancy, not so much. One popular legend is making the rounds among the press. Apparently, one day, while driving up the long, winding road from the main highway to the ranch, Nancy Reagan was whining nonstop about having to endure another vacation at the remote outpost. She would much rather be back in Los Angeles with her friends.

At first Reagan put up with his wife's complaining, preferring to keep the peace. But this time, he snapped. He ordered his Secret Service driver to stop the limo. Turning to Nancy, he thundered, “Get out of this car.”

Shocked, she did.

The president then commanded the driver to continue up the seven-mile road. In the rearview mirror, the Secret Service driver could see Nancy standing in the middle of nowhere, looking panicked. Finally, the president relented, ordering the driver to turn around to pick her up.

But on this afternoon, things are calm. Nancy's dominant protective streak is nowhere to be seen. The president is ready for the eight questions the press will be permitted this morning.

The first queries are softballs. Reagan fields them with ease.

Then ABC newsman Sam Donaldson strikes, posing a question about the Russians.

“Is there anything you can do to get them there?” Donaldson asks about a proposed nuclear arms meeting in Vienna, referring to the leaders of the Soviet Union.

“What?” Reagan asks, suddenly befuddled.

Donaldson smells blood.

He has been on the White House beat throughout the Reagan presidency and is no fan of the administration. He was an eyewitness to the assassination attempt, standing just five feet from John Hinckley when he pulled the trigger. Still, Donaldson feels little warmth for the president, and many members of the media share his disdain.

Donaldson doesn't even bother to speak to Reagan with a tone of civility. He is outwardly antagonistic, often shouting questions. He has publicly insulted Nancy Reagan by comparing her to a venomous snake, calling her a “smiling mamba.”

Sam Donaldson is now in full confrontational mode.

“Is there anything you can do to get them to Vienna?” he bellows again.

The man who has spent his life speaking on cue, the entertainer who likes to tell a good joke, the politician who has dazzled millions with his rhetoric, has no answer.

Ronald Reagan is lost.

As journalists and television cameras record the moment, the president seems incapable of rendering an answer to Sam Donaldson.

Finally, Nancy Reagan leans over and whispers into her husband's ear: “We're doing everything we can.”

“We're doing everything we can,” the president says to Sam Donaldson.
2

*   *   *

With Nancy carefully controlling his every appearance
,
Ronald Reagan hits the campaign trail for real in September. The nation is riveted by his “Morning in America” commercials, which paint a patriotic picture of a country rising from the shambles Reagan inherited from Jimmy Carter. The president now enjoys a nineteen-point lead in the polls over Democratic challenger Walter Mondale, the fifty-six-year-old Minnesota native who served as Carter's vice president. At this point, Americans seem comfortable with Ronald Reagan as president. Many admire him—as a man and a patriot. They like his rock-solid belief in traditional values, and some voters see him as a father figure, putting their complete trust in his perceived paternal benevolence.

Yet there is also some unease. Relations between the United States and the Soviet Union are still very tense, and Reagan has exacerbated the situation by publicly calling the Soviet Union an “Evil Empire.” Many Americans long for reassurance that their president will avoid nuclear war. They also crave relief from high unemployment and a skyrocketing national deficit that gives their dollar less buying power. Just as important, voters want to believe that their seventy-three-year-old leader is still vibrant.

But that reassurance does not come on September 19, when Reagan visits Hammonton, New Jersey. He wears a dark gray suit and crimson necktie. The small town, famous for its blueberries, has turned out in force to see the president. Thirty thousand people fill the town square. A large American flag looms over his left shoulder, accompanied by a sign reading, “America: Prouder, Stronger & Better.”

Reagan's unlikely speech for today is based on the recent writings of two very prominent conservative voices. The first voice is that of columnist George Will, who behaves decades older than his forty-three years.

Surprisingly, Will has become a Bruce Springsteen fan. Wearing a bow tie, ears packed in cotton, he watched an entire four-hour show at the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland, as a guest of Springsteen's drummer. Will comes away inspired by the artist's connection to Reagan. In the Boss, as Springsteen is known, Will sees a powerful believer in the American dream.

“An evening with Springsteen,” Will writes admiringly in the
Washington Post
on September 13, “is vivid proof that the work ethic is alive and well.”

Another guest at that concert is political correspondent Bernard Goldberg of CBS News, who reports that Springsteen's shows “are like old-time revivals with the same old-time message: If they work long enough and hard enough, like Springsteen himself, they can also make it to the promised land.”

It is hard to imagine other 1980s pop icons with whom the aging president could identify. The toe-tapping boogie-woogie of his Hollywood days has been replaced by music that makes listeners swing their hips and shake their heads. Young voters listen to musical sensation Michael Jackson, not Frank Sinatra. They like movies such as
Ghostbusters
and
Footloose
instead of Reagan's beloved Westerns, which hardly get made anymore. So it is only natural that Reagan's campaign staff attempts to make their boss look culturally relevant by cashing in on Springsteen's popularity during this visit to the singer's home state. At George Will's urging, deputy White House chief of staff Michael Deaver has invited Springsteen himself to the campaign event. But the rocker, while having an open date between performances in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, declines.

Ronald Reagan invokes Springsteen's name anyway, his speechwriters mistakenly believing that the song “Born in the U.S.A.” is a patriotic anthem. In reality, the opposite is true. “America's future rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts,” Reagan says to the crowd. “It rests in the message of hope in the words of songs so many young Americans admire: New Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen. And helping you make those dreams come true is what this job of mine is all about.”

Chants of “U.S.A.” sweep through the crowd, along with a number of incredulous gasps. Reagan's policies have been savaged on Springsteen's latest album,
Born in the U.S.A
. Many of its songs vividly depict the loss of homes and jobs for the working poor. The title track, jingoistic in name only, attacks Reagan's economic policies through the eyes of a down-on-his-luck Vietnam vet. At a time when Ronald Reagan wants to appear as if he is in touch, his staff has succeeded in making him look completely clueless by misinterpreting Springsteen's lyrics.

Later, the singer himself responds directly: “You see the Reagan reelection ads on TV—you know: ‘It's Morning in America,'” Springsteen tells
Rolling Stone
magazine. “And you say, well, it's not morning in Pittsburgh. It's not morning above 125th Street in New York. It's midnight, and, like, there's, a bad moon risin'.”
3

Ronald Reagan's aides will later claim that his favorite Bruce Springsteen song is “Born to Run,” but it is hard for even the most ardent Reagan supporter to imagine this might be true.

“If you believe that,” Johnny Carson tells America during his
Tonight Show
monologue one evening, “I've got some tickets to the Mondale-Ferraro inaugural ball I'd like to sell you.”
4

*   *   *

Three weeks later, Ronald Reagan is confused when about to deliver his closing remarks in the first presidential debate with Walter Mondale. The location is the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts, in Louisville, and television journalist Barbara Walters is the moderator. Walters has a history with the Reagans. In 1981 she paid a visit to the Reagan ranch for an interview, gripping her seat in Reagan's four-wheel-drive jeep as he fearlessly drove it up and down the rugged dirt trails. But the fifty-five-year-old Walters is in her element now, pressing the president to begin his closing remarks. However, Reagan believes he is entitled to one more rebuttal to Walter Mondale's statements. Walters is having none of it and firmly tells the president to wrap it up.

The night has been a catastrophe for Reagan. Walter Mondale was the aggressor throughout the debate, commanding a quick grasp of domestic policy facts and appearing to be more physically robust than Reagan, despite being two inches shorter.

“I wanted to show presidential stature,” Mondale will later remember. “I wanted to show mastery of the issues. I wanted to show that progressive dimension again, I wanted to show I was more alert than the president, without being negative. And I wanted the debate to build around that, that theme.”

Mondale senses a mental weakness in Reagan, afterward telling an aide, “That guy is gone.” Despite that, Mondale has refrained from attacking the president in a way that would make Reagan look foolish.

As Ronald Reagan begins his closing remarks, his rambling, disjointed speech does what Walter Mondale refuses to do. At a time when voters want reassurance of his vitality, the president looks visibly adrift on this very public national stage.

Looking into the camera, Reagan begins his soliloquy. “Four years ago, in similar circumstances to this, I asked you, the American people, a question. I asked, ‘Are you better off than you were four years before?'”

Already, Reagan has lost his place. His eyes do not focus on the front row of the audience, as they should. Instead, they roll slowly from side to side as he struggles to recite the closing remarks that his speechwriters have prepared so carefully for this very moment.

Reagan continues: “The answer to that obviously was no, and as the result, I was elected to this office and promised a new beginning. Now, maybe I'm expected to ask that same question again.”

To the discomfort of some, Reagan stutters. He appears a far cry from the man who improvised a brilliant speech within minutes of being called to the podium at the 1976 Republican National Convention.

He continues: “I'm not going to, because I think that all of you, or not everyone—those people that are in those pockets of poverty and haven't caught up, they couldn't answer the way I would want them to—but I think that most of the people in this country would say, yes, they are better off than they were four years ago.

“The question, I think,” says Reagan, again stammering, “should be enlarged. Is America better off than it was four years ago? And I believe the answer to that has to also be yes.''

There is little authority in Reagan's closing remarks. Walter Mondale beams.

“He seemed to lose his place,” Lesley Stahl of CBS News will report. “He'd lose his thoughts. There were a couple of places where the words he was searching for wouldn't come to mind … [H]is closing statement didn't come together.”

“I flopped,” Reagan says to campaign adviser Stu Spencer immediately upon leaving the stage.