Killing Reagan (9 page)

So Reagan remains a Democrat—at least for now. He has no idea that Nixon actually considers him “shallow” and of “limited mental capacity.” But even if he did know that, it might not matter. Ronald Reagan simply wants to see John F. Kennedy and his liberal dogma defeated.

Reagan continues his letter: “I know there must be some short-sighted people within the Republican Party who will advise that the Republicans should try to ‘out-liberal' him. In my opinion this would be fatal … I don't pose as an infallible pundit, but I have a strong feeling that the 20 million nonvoters in this country just might be conservatives.”

But Nixon is not planning to take Reagan's advice. In one week's time, he will fly to New York and meet with Republican governor Nelson Rockefeller. After a dinner of lamb chops in Rocky's Fifth Avenue apartment, the two men will stay up all night drafting a more liberal Republican platform. The “Treaty of Fifth Avenue,” as it will be dubbed, is designed to appeal to independent and Democratic voters.

Reagan concludes the letter, scalding John F. Kennedy: “Under the tousled boyish haircut is still old Karl Marx—first launched a century ago. There is nothing new in the idea of a government being Big Brother to us all. Hitler called his ‘State Socialism.'”
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Signing the letter “Ronnie Reagan,” the actor fervently hopes his offer to campaign for Richard Nixon will be accepted. Though Nixon will lose the 1960 presidential election by less than one percentage point of all votes polled, Reagan will speak on his behalf whenever asked.

*   *   *

“Have you registered as a Republican yet?” shouts a voice from the audience. The year is 1962. As Ronald Reagan predicted, Richard Nixon's attempt to “out-liberal” John Kennedy is among the factors that cost him the presidency. Now Reagan is once again campaigning for Nixon, this time as the former vice president runs for governor of California.

Reagan stands before a small crowd of Republican supporters. The fund-raising event is being held in a house just down the street from his Pacific Palisades home. Reagan knows many of those in attendance but does not recognize this voice speaking to him in the middle of the living room.

“Have you registered as a Republican yet?” she asks a second time.

“Well, no. I haven't yet. But I intend to.”

The truth is Ronald Reagan no longer has any reason to remain a Democrat. His conservative affiliations have become so notorious that General Electric recently fired him as a spokesman, under pressure from some powerful liberal concerns. So, once again, Ronald Reagan is an unemployed actor searching for his next paycheck. He has absolutely, positively nothing to lose by switching political parties.

“I'm a registrar,” the woman says, standing up and walking toward Reagan with a slip of paper in her hand.

She hands the paper to Reagan. It is a registration form. The woman has already filled in all the blanks, meaning that with a simple swipe of his pen, Ronald Reagan will officially become a Republican.

The registrar hands Reagan a pen.

He signs the form without a moment's hesitation.

As the room erupts in applause, Reagan smiles. There will come a time when few will even remember his thirty years as a Democrat. “I did not leave the Democratic Party,” he will tell people, borrowing a line from Richard Nixon. “The Democratic Party left me.”

Now, in the first moments of his new life as a Republican, Ronald Reagan gets back to the task at hand.

“Now, where was I?” he asks, before continuing the speech he has been perfecting for the last eight years.

*   *   *

A bitter Richard Nixon strides purposefully onto the stage at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles. The date is November 7, 1962. Despite Ronald Reagan's campaign efforts, Nixon has just lost the election for governor of California, an election he assumed he would win easily.
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The governorship was meant to be a job that would keep Nixon in the public eye until 1968. He believed that John F. Kennedy would be president for two terms, so he would wait until then to tender another presidential bid.

Now an exhausted and angry Richard Nixon faces the harsh reality that he is finished. It will be a political near impossibility to recover from this loss.

But before he goes, Nixon has a few words he would like to say.

His face lined with tension, Nixon forces a smile as he looks at the reporters assembled before him. There is no podium, just a cluster of microphones. He is nervous about the speech he is about to give but is attempting to appear jovial. The forty-nine-year-old Nixon considers the media to be his personal enemy and believes that after years of frustrated silence, the time has come to tell them off.

Nixon digs his right hand deep into the pocket of his suit pants. An elaborate chandelier hovers to one side of the room. Reporters sit at a long table in front of him, poised with pencil and paper to write down his words. To his right, television cameras and newspaper photographers prepare to capture this moment of defeat.

“For sixteen years,” Nixon begins, “you've had an opportunity to attack me, and I think I've given as good as I've taken.”

A hush fills the small ballroom. Nixon has just crossed a line. It is one thing to confront a journalist about his coverage in private, but to do so in public is taboo. And thanks to all those television cameras, this verbal assault is now being filmed for posterity. Pencils scribble frantically as the reporters eagerly await Nixon's next words.

“I will leave you gentlemen now. And, uh … You will now write it. You will interpret it. That's your right. But as I leave you, I want you to know—just think how much you're going to be missing. You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”

Fifty-nine seconds. That's all it takes. Nixon does not field questions. He is whisked from the room and walks quickly out of the hotel, stopping only to shake the hand of a front-desk clerk before stepping into the front seat of a waiting car.

He is thrilled to have gotten the last word.

Yet fate will allow him many more press conferences. And if Richard Nixon thinks the media have gotten the best of him in the past, that is nothing compared to what they will do to him in the future.

*   *   *

Two years later, television cameras again capture a historic moment. The night is October 27, 1964. Ronald Reagan is eagerly anticipating watching himself on television. The occasion is a speech he taped one week earlier in support of Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater.
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At first, Goldwater's people wanted Reagan to deliver the speech live. But Reagan is by now a canny politician, and although he would have liked the spontaneous applause and laughter that he knew each line would engender, he didn't want to take any chances on making a mistake—thus the live scenario was scrapped.

“Nancy and I went to the home of some friends to watch the broadcast,” he will later write of the night that changed his life. Reagan's presentation for Goldwater was so successful that scribes simply dubbed Reagan's words “The Speech.”

Reagan realizes his career is now in public life. After a seven-year break between films, he has made one last motion picture. He played a villain in
The Killers
, a movie that sank without a trace at the box office.
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Even though the speech is a sensation, Barry Goldwater's advisers did not want Reagan's talk to air. With the election just one week away, they were terrified that the conservative themes he was espousing would drive some voters into the Democratic camp.

As the Reagans sit side by side before the television set in the den of their friends' home, the black-and-white screen flickers, showing him standing behind a podium draped with patriotic bunting. The edited presentation then cuts to the back of the room, allowing the nation to see the audience awaiting his words. Some hold placards. Others wear cowboy hats. All are dressed informally and are meant to look like a homey cross-section of the American public.

This works perfectly with Reagan's homespun delivery, the gentle, parental voice that he perfected at those GE factories, after-dinner speeches, and countless other conservative venues across the country. “Unlike most television programs, the performer hasn't been provided with a script,” he assures the audience as he begins. “As a matter of fact, I have been permitted to choose my own words and discuss my own ideas regarding the choice that we face in the next few weeks.”

Reagan in
The Killers
, his last movie role

Then Reagan begins a twenty-seven-minute soliloquy on the virtues of the America in which he truly believes. The Republican presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater, is hardly mentioned. Reagan delivers a dazzling speech full of allusions to the American dream, fiscal conservatism, and small government. He speaks of freedom and the Founding Fathers as if they were brand-new concepts that Americans need to embrace immediately. He talks about poverty, farmers, the Vietnam War, Cuban immigrants, and American veterans. There is no hesitation in Reagan's voice, no fumbling with the words of his self-written script, for this is the summation of what he has believed for years.

“You and I have a rendezvous with destiny,” he concludes, his voice at its most earnest and inspirational. “We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.”

*   *   *

Ronald and Nancy Reagan drive home in their Lincoln Continental after watching the filmed speech. The fifty-three-year-old Reagan is nervous, unsure if his talk has been a success. Others who watched the speech with them insist that Reagan did his job well, but he is still uncertain.

The October night is partly cloudy, with temperatures in the low seventies. The Reagans park their car, then walk inside the house and go to bed, still not knowing if the speech has been a success or a flop.

It is midnight when the bedside phone rings. The Goldwater campaign is on the other end. Reagan's speech has been such a smash that people from all across the country have called in, pledging support and money for the candidate. “A Time for Choosing,” as the speech will come to be known, will be described by reporters as “the most successful national political debut since William Jennings Bryan electrified the 1896 Democratic convention with the ‘Cross of Gold' speech.”
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Nancy Reagan and Ronald Reagan after winning the Republican nomination for governor of California in 1966

“That speech was one of the most important milestones of my life,” Reagan will later remember. Until that day, he had been skeptical of any suggestion that he run for political office. Now that is about to change. “A Time for Choosing” will turn out to be, in his words, “another one of those unexpected turns that led me onto a path I never expected to take.”

 

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R
OTUNDA

S
TATE
C
APITOL
B
UILDING

S
ACRAMENTO
, C
ALIFORNIA

J
ANUARY
2, 1967

12:11
A
.
M
.

Despite making fifty-three films, Ronald Reagan has never known a moment of drama quite like the one he is experiencing right now. Dressed in a black suit with a thin dark tie, he stands, head held high and feet planted twelve inches apart, like a conquering hero from the Western movies he loves so much. His left hand rests on a Bible. A hulking bald man stands in front of him. A glance to his left shows Nancy Reagan prim and straight at his elbow, beaming after plastic surgery to repair her drooping eyelids. Thirty-two television cameras light Reagan's face. “America the Beautiful” echoes in his head, thanks to a choir from the University of Southern California, who serenaded him at the stroke of midnight.