Landslide (46 page)

As he spoke, he tilted his head down, strolling slowly but purposefully toward the other end of the room, as though this carefully coded racial imagery had just now popped into his head.

And the greatest reward of a campaign was the same as the greatest reward of the movie business: he got to be the star. Often, a powerful man who starts a second career in politics chafes when the professionals try to handle him. He is accustomed to being the boss in all areas of his life. Indeed, he has been the boss for such a long time that he has come to think of it as his natural state. But a candidate has so many places to go, so many performances to give, he must hand over large areas of his life to other people. He struggles with one of politics’ most basic truths: to win, you must surrender control—first to the handlers, then to events, and eventually to the voters.

For Reagan, this was nothing new. He didn’t expect to be the one deciding which donors to woo or which cities to speak in any more than he’d expected to write a script or set up a shot or handle negotiations for his next contract. A movie actor learns early on that he cannot take care of everything. Too much worry, too many sleepless nights, too many stressful details—it will all show up on his face, the face he needs to be perfect for the camera, and the world. He didn’t want or need control. He just needed to be the star. And in a campaign—where his name appeared on every piece of paper, where his photo could be seen on thousands of brochures and flyers—he was the biggest star around.

Reagan’s advisers quickly understood the parallel. Spencer found it easiest to explain the structure of a campaign to Reagan in show business analogies. “I would say, ‘
This is like a stage play in New York and then we’ll take it out of town. We’re going to go out of town to Visalia and to all these little burgs up in Northern California and try out your act. If you screw up, only a small number of people will see it, and if it’s good, we can keep it.’ ”

At times, indeed, Reagan’s campaign organization looked like a giant fan club for the movie star candidate and his beautiful wife, Nancy, who was his costar in every respect. In meetings with advisers she would mostly stay quiet on policy. “
She’d say something every now and then,” Spencer was to recall, “and he’d look at her and say, ‘Hey, Mommy, that’s my role.’ ” But Reagan’s advisers came to see that Nancy was no shrinking violet. Her instincts on matters of personnel and strategy, it turned out, were superior to her husband’s. “She thinks very well politically,” Spencer observed. “She thinks much more politically than he thinks.”

The campaign built a kind of cult around the Reagans. Campaign materials showed Ronnie and Nancy feeding their horses and posing for pictures with their children, Patti and Ron Jr. Nancy, a campaign brochure noted, was “
the daughter of one of the world’s great neurosurgeons” who “shared the stimulating association of the scientific world. As a pretty and popular debutante, she enjoyed the fun of campus life, attending exclusive Girls Latin School and graduating from Smith as a theater arts major.”

Young female supporters were encouraged to be “
Reagan Girls,” lithe young hostesses at campaign events. “Reagan Girls represent the young, wholesome, vivacious, natural, all-American girl,” a flyer for the position advised. Their uniforms—“selected by Mrs. Ronald Reagan” and available only in waist sizes under twenty-five inches—were to be kept immaculate at all times. “A clean and neat appearance is a must,” the Reagan Girls were warned. “Giving out of phone numbers and addresses, and making dates are not permitted during appearances.”

Just as he had in his movie career, Reagan allowed his campaign publicists to take liberties with the details of their star’s biography. The résumé that Reagan’s campaign distributed noted that he had been named Father of the Year for the motion picture industry by the National Fathers Day Committee in 1957. Meanwhile, a line in the “Personal History” section noted that he was “Married to Nancy Davis Mar. 4, 1952. Daughter, Patricia, and son, Ronald.” The two children from the Father of the Year’s first marriage were left unmentioned.

Most likely, this was not a clerical error. California Republicans had fresh memories of the Rockefeller-Goldwater drama, with its complicated marital subplots. Reagan’s advisers were loath to draw excessive attention to their candidate’s two marriages. And a complicated personal life only exacerbated the frivolous Hollywood idol problem. So Reagan’s campaign, with the implicit approval of Ronald and Nancy,
mostly expunged his first marriage and his first family from the record. It was a brutal excision, even by the standards of 1966. It was particularly hard on Reagan’s elder daughter, Maureen, who was an enthusiastic Republican and who longed to be close to her father’s campaign, and close to her father. Unwilling to blame him for her banishment, she fixed her fury on Spencer-Roberts. After a pitched battle, she was offered a chance to introduce her father to a conservative group of which she was a member. Her feeling of triumph ended when she was handed the introduction the campaign had prepared for her to deliver: “
Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy have two children, Patti and Ronnie.”

In the end, it was impossible to fight the actor problem. All of Reagan’s advantages as a candidate were completely tied up in the fact that he had been an actor. In time, Reagan’s campaign found that here, too, they could make a virtue of his defect. As 1966 dawned, it was clear that politicians were failing, in California and the country. Lyndon Johnson was thought to be among the greatest politicians of his generation, and look what
that
had gotten America. Maybe it was a
good
thing that Reagan had no experience in the
political realm. The problem with California politics, Reagan started to argue, was that it had been hijacked by career politicians like Pat Brown. As he traveled, he began to emphasize the distinction, describing himself as a “citizen-politician.” He was, he said, “
an ordinary citizen with a deep-seated belief that much of what troubles us has been brought about by politicians, and it’s high time more ordinary citizens brought the fresh air of common sense thinking to bear on these problems.”

In making the “citizen-politician” case, they were helped by an unlikely source: Reagan’s ongoing Hollywood career. In the first year of his campaign, 1965, when he had still not officially entered the race, he continued to appear as both host of and a player on
Death Valley Days
. After officially announcing his candidacy in early 1966, he could no longer appear as host in California, but he continued to appear as an actor in pretaped episodes of the program.

The show turned out to be a political plus. Sure, there were awkward moments, like the ads he was contractually obliged to cut for Boraxo, the show’s sponsor. “
Here’s Boraxo waterless hand cleaner,” chirped a tan Reagan, wearing a grandfatherly peach cardigan in one of the commercials. “New Boraxo waterless hand cleaner removes the toughest dirt or stains!” But the actual programming on
Death Valley Days
usually fit the Reagan campaign message perfectly. The program featured weekly teleplays, stories of daring and heroism from the real-life history of the Old West. Often, the heroes were a classic Western type—the decent, soft-spoken man who reluctantly answers the call of duty to stand up for justice in the rough frontier. As a consequence, the characters Reagan played on television seemed to speak roughly the same words as the character he was playing in the campaign.

In one episode he played the nineteenth-century senator George Vest. “I’m a citizen first,” Vest explains early in the episode. “And a candidate after that.”

Here, cut to an ad from Reagan’s campaign, showing the candidate in a crowded banquet hall, addressing the crowd:

In another episode, he played the naval hero David Farragut.
As the teleplay begins, Reagan’s Farragut, commanding a U.S. Navy ship in San Francisco Bay, has grown disillusioned with the captain’s life. “I’ve made a decision,” Farragut informs his wife. “I’m going to buy as much land in California as we can afford. And when Commodore Mervine gets back from Panama, I’m going to hand in my resignation, effective immediately.”

“David,” replies his worried wife, “the Navy is your heart and soul. To start all over again way out here in the West!”

Farragut is not deterred. “Everyone in the West is starting new.”

Another flash, from Reagan’s telecast announcing his candidacy for governor:

Even as he dreams of retirement, Farragut receives word that San Francisco has been overrun by an unruly vigilante mob that is threatening to destroy civil government in California. He reluctantly puts aside his plans to retire to the land. Coming ashore, he discovers that the city fathers have grown corrupt and weak and are unable and unwilling to maintain order while the mob takes free rein.

Another flash: Candidate Reagan at the San Francisco Cow Palace in 1966, preaching about a favorite campaign issue, the student
unrest at the University of California, Berkeley, and the incompetent administration of the university:

With no one else willing to do what is necessary, it falls to Farragut to subdue the bad guys. And he does it, confidently, by threatening force. The unruly crowd disperses. “
That’s the way you lose a mob,” he explains to their ringleader. “One man comes to his senses. Then two. Then a dozen. Then a hundred.”

Reagan couldn’t have put it better himself. And that, in the end, was why Reagan’s “actor problem” was really no problem at all. Show business had taught him how to relate to the voters as a politician. And it had taught the voters how to see him as a politician, too.

At first the press missed it. In March 1966, it seemed that Reagan might have torpedoed his campaign when he appeared with his primary opponent, George Christopher, before the National Negro Republican Assembly. Highlighting Reagan’s opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Christopher tried to paint Reagan as a Goldwater clone. Goldwater’s position on the bill, Christopher said, “
did more harm than anything to the Republican Party … Unless we cast out this image, we’re going to suffer defeat.”

At that Reagan shot up. “I resent the implication that there is any bigotry in my nature,” he insisted. “Don’t anyone ever imply I lack integrity!”

He was yelling. He continued:

“I will not stand silent and let anyone imply that—in this or any other group!”

He was walking out the door.

There it was. The unity candidate, the mainstream Republican who had promised to build bridges and work with anyone and everyone in his party, had dutifully gone to meet with a bunch of black Republicans—and had stormed out of the room. He knew right away that he’d made a disastrous, amateurish mistake. Political reporters wondered if he’d killed his chances. In the
Los Angeles Times
, a cartoon recalled the title of Reagan’s memoir when it depicted Reagan with his head cut off with the caption: “I’m looking for the rest of me.” Pat Brown, watching, was convinced that Christopher would be the tougher opponent in the general election, and most likely the opponent he’d face.

He was wrong. In June 1966, Reagan defeated Christopher in the primary by a far larger than expected margin of 700,000 votes. In the end, the voters just didn’t buy the idea that Ronald Reagan was a hothead extremist. They
knew
Ronald Reagan, and that wasn’t the Reagan they knew. “
We did some studies through the ad agency, Hixson and Jorgenson,” Spencer later said. “He had an approval rating with women in 1965 of 93 percent.… That was purely based on the roles he played in the movies, the nice guy versus the bad guy. He never played the bad guy.”

The conventions of show business were all working in Reagan’s favor. His surprising margin of victory had given him juice. This would be a surprise twist. Adding to the effect, Brown had been through a nasty, divisive Democratic primary against Sam Yorty, the conservative Democratic mayor of Los Angeles. Brown had squeaked by with only 52 percent of the vote.

Suddenly, there was a great national story coming out of California. A Universal Newsreel summed it up: