Rawhide Down (8 page)

*   *   *

A
T
9:15
A.M.
, President Reagan picked up the phone to speak with Helmut Schmidt in Bonn. Richard Allen and other White House officials sat in chairs near the president’s desk. The call started on a sentimental note, with Schmidt thanking Reagan for sending a condolence letter after the death of the chancellor’s father. Schmidt then said he hoped to deepen the ties between the two countries and that he was eager to meet with Reagan during an upcoming visit to the United States.

When Schmidt began talking about how they might better handle Leonid Brezhnev, the bellicose Soviet premier, the subject quickly turned to Poland. For months, laborers in the Solidarity movement had been agitating for more freedom in the wake of draconian economic policies and widespread food shortages; two weeks earlier, more than two dozen union activists had been beaten by police, leaving three seriously injured. Mass strikes, which could speed the country’s economic decline, were planned for the next day. The work stoppages would almost certainly push the Polish government to declare martial law, which in turn would probably spark violent protests. If that were to happen, the Soviet Union, which was already leading military exercises in and around Poland, might choose to intervene. In confidential memoranda, the CIA was reporting that Soviet officials had lost faith in the ability of the Polish government to contain the crisis. For weeks, intelligence assessments had painted an increasingly bleak picture, and now the CIA believed that Poland was at a “possible turning point.”

Schmidt warned Reagan that there was nothing his country could do militarily if Warsaw retaliated against the strikers or if the Soviets invaded Poland. He could apply economic pressure, though Poland was already billions of dollars in debt to West Germany. Reagan faced the same difficulty. He was not going to wage war against the Soviet Union over Poland, not least because direct conflict could easily lead to a nuclear confrontation. After fifteen minutes of discussion, the two leaders agreed to issue statements threatening to cut off financial aid to Poland if military force was used to quell the labor strife. Finishing the call, Reagan thanked Schmidt for his time.

The president spent the next hour receiving a briefing on national security and discussing a range of related matters, such as the flow of weapons to communist guerrillas in Central America and the sale of advanced military aircraft to Saudi Arabia. Then it was time for Reagan to move to the Cabinet Room for a fifteen-minute meeting with nearly three dozen Hispanic supporters to thank them for their help in the 1980 campaign. This mix of responsibilities was typical of Reagan’s tenure as president: he often spent nearly as much time on ceremonial functions and meet-and-greets as on affairs of state.

This event, like every other in his day, was outlined in the script Reagan had reviewed earlier that morning:

M
EETING:
With Hispanic Supporters

L
OCATION:
Cabinet Room

T
IME:
10:30
AM
–10:45
AM

B
ACKGROUND:
This is an opportunity to thank and encourage those who have been strongly supportive in the past.

10:30
AM
You enter Cabinet Room where your guests will have just completed their briefing. The press pool will enter for photos.

10:33
AM
You will offer brief remarks.

10:40
AM
The White House photographer will take photos of you with each participant.

10:45
AM
You thank your guests and take your leave.

Reagan arrived in the Cabinet Room ten minutes late and took his customary seat in the middle of the large wooden table. The back of his chair, which was two inches taller than those used by his cabinet secretaries, had a bronze label that read “THE PRESIDENT, January 20, 1981.” In front of Reagan and the Hispanic supporters were white coffee cups in saucers. Reagan thanked the men and women for their “sizable and good showing” in the November election and said, “I know you have been told about what we are doing here in regard to getting more Hispanics in our government.” Then, eyeing the journalists who had been ushered in to observe and take photographs, he continued: “But I also know that at the moment it might be better to confine ourselves to small talk here, before we get down to any real problems or issues.”

Reagan smiled and turned to the clutch of journalists. “I haven’t had a chance to congratulate you all—so many of you were members of the cast of the Gridiron up there that are covering us here. Have you ever thought about show business?”

The Gridiron Club dinner, an annual gala roast of official Washington, had taken place the previous Saturday evening. Journalists wore silly costumes, put on skits, and sang satirical songs, poking fun at figures such as Reagan, his wife, cabinet secretaries, and a number of politicians from both parties. At one point, the real Ginger Rogers took the stage and danced with a
Washington Post
columnist. At 11:30 p.m., after all the skits and songs were finished, Reagan took the dais and brought the house down with his self-deprecating wit and a few zingers aimed at his political adversaries.

Reagan was masterly at such events, but then he had been performing in front of audiences for years, and not just as an actor. During a long stint as a spokesman for General Electric, he had delivered hundreds of speeches at GE plants and offices across the country; over the years, he spoke to tens of thousands of the company’s employees, from factory workers to executives, and the experience had taught him how to connect with many kinds of audiences.

The previous Friday, for example, he had hosted a White House luncheon for the National Baseball Hall of Fame in the State Dining Room, where he mingled and joked with the players and then gave a rousing speech that drew on his experiences as a radio announcer in the 1930s. Reagan told the ballplayers a favorite story about how, when he worked for a Des Moines radio station, he relied on telegraph feeds from the Cubs’ ballpark to broadcast a play-by-play of the games. His job, which required a quick mind and a vivid imagination, was to transform short, cryptic messages into cinematic descriptions of fans catching foul balls and players turning snappy double plays. One afternoon, the wire went silent in the middle of an at bat. Dead air is a radio broadcaster’s worst enemy, but Reagan didn’t panic. He had the batter foul off pitch after pitch until the telegraph started working again.

“The nostalgia is bubbling within me,” Reagan told the ballplayers, “and I may have to be dragged out of here because of all of the stories that are coming up in my mind.” He went on to say that because he was as superstitious as any player, he had refused to mention on air that the Chicago Cubs had to win the last twenty-one games of the 1935 season to capture the pennant. “So there I was,” he said, “a broadcaster, and never mentioned once in the 21 games, and I was getting as up-tight as they were, and never mentioned the fact that they were at 16, they were at 17, and that they hadn’t lost a game because I was afraid I’d jinx them.

“But, anyway,” Reagan added, “they did it, and it’s still in the record books.”

It was a great story, and it was mostly true. The Cubs did win twenty-one games in a row that year, but they lost their final two games of the season and still finished four games ahead of the St. Louis Cardinals. When telling stories, Reagan often blended truth and fiction. He was especially fond of happy endings typical of classic Hollywood movies—and no good old-fashioned baseball motion picture would end with a streaking club losing its last two games of the season.

Three days after the Hall of Fame lunch, sitting at the cabinet table with the Hispanic leaders, Reagan spent a minute or two joking with the reporters in the room and praising their performances at the Gridiron dinner. The journalists laughed and were then quickly shooed away.

Ten minutes later, his ceremonial duties finished, Reagan headed back to the Oval Office to prepare for the day’s big speech.

*   *   *

T
HAT SAME MORNING
, Vice President George H. W. Bush was comfortably settled in Air Force Two and flying toward Texas, where he was to deliver a pair of speeches urging passage of the president’s economic policies. Politicking for his boss on a one-day trip to his home state was a typical task for a vice president, but it was still somewhat surprising that George Bush was the vice president making this trip. Only a year earlier, Bush and Reagan had been locked in a fierce and sometimes bitter fight for the Republican nomination.

As became clear during the primary campaign, the two men could not have been more different. Bush, fifty-six, was a child of privilege: the son of a U.S. senator, he had attended an exclusive prep school and graduated from Yale University. He wore Brooks Brothers suits, button-down shirts, and a watch with a preppy striped band. He kept in shape by jogging, not by riding horses or cutting wood. Unlike Reagan, Bush had seen combat in World War II. As a navy pilot, he flew fifty-eight missions and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. After the war, he entered the oil business in Texas, made a lot of money, and then entered public service. He’d held a number of high-profile government posts over the years: congressman from the Houston area; ambassador to the United Nations; U.S. envoy to China; director of the CIA. And in 1980, with the help of his good friend Jim Baker, now the White House chief of staff, Bush had almost succeeded in snatching the nomination from Reagan, who had begun the race as the clear front-runner.

Reagan’s campaign had started sluggishly. Bush weakened him, touting his own experience and “stamina”—a not-so-veiled jab at Reagan’s age—and later attacking the former California governor’s fiscal policies as “voodoo economics.” After losing the Iowa caucuses to Bush, Reagan assailed the Texan for being too liberal, criticizing his opponent’s positions on abortion, gun rights, and taxes. By the time Bush finally conceded, both candidates held dim views of each other, which made it all the more surprising when Reagan, somewhat reluctantly, tapped Bush to be his running mate. During the run-up to the election, however, they campaigned well together, and over the past several months they seemed to have become a team. Bush had come to genuinely respect Reagan, and the president often relied on Bush’s expertise in foreign affairs and national security matters. They shared a weekly lunch, and Bush had an office in the West Wing just down the hall from the Oval Office.

The vice president often attended Reagan’s morning national security briefings, but not on this day. Early that morning, CIA officials had delivered the briefing at Bush’s official residence at the Naval Observatory, a half mile north of the White House. By 8:30, Bush and two aides were in a limousine heading toward the observatory’s helipad; from there, they would fly to Andrews Air Force Base.

One of the aides in the limo was Chase Untermeyer, the vice president’s soft-spoken and loyal thirty-five-year-old executive assistant. Untermeyer, who had worked as a volunteer on Bush’s first campaign for Congress in 1966, admired the way his boss was handling his new job, one that had famously been described as “not worth a bucket of warm piss.” A year ago, there had been a real possibility that Bush would become the fortieth president, yet now he had taken to this less powerful job with obvious relish, and thus far he had been working well with both the president and his aides.

As the marine helicopter lifted off from the observatory, passed over the British embassy, and skimmed below gray clouds, Bush regaled Untermeyer and others on his staff with stories about dancing with Ginger Rogers at a charity benefit the previous evening. As they boarded Air Force Two, they chatted with a couple of congressmen from Texas who were joining them for the trip. After takeoff, Untermeyer and two other aides joined Bush in his small stateroom, where they ate a continental breakfast, discussed how to fend off questions from reporters about Reagan’s proposed spending cuts, and reviewed their itinerary.

The vice president’s first stop in Texas was purely ceremonial: he would unveil a plaque at the old Hotel Texas in Fort Worth, where President Kennedy had spent his last night alive. Then, after a quick motorcade ride to the city’s convention center, he would deliver a speech to a convention of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. Following the speech, Bush would fly to Austin, where he was due to address the Texas state legislature. More of a partisan pep talk than a substantive speech about the new administration’s policies, Bush’s prepared remarks called for him to describe the president as “a leader with the courage of his and our convictions—a leader who thinks not of the next election but of the next generation.” Aiming for a personal touch, Bush would tell the lawmakers: “I’ve watched him at work these first months in office. Time and again, I’ve seen him bring issues back to those fundamental principles which we Texans, and Americans everywhere, hold dear.” After the twenty-five-minute speech, the vice president’s motorcade would return to the Austin airport, from where Bush and his staff would fly back to Washington. The vice president would be home at 8:55 p.m.