Reagan: The Life (30 page)

Reagan recalled for his listeners the
domino theory of the 1950s, which asserted that the fall of any country to communism would risk the fate of an entire region. And he reminded them how the domino theory had followed from the failure of appeasement before World War II. “Those who ridicule the domino theory believed it when Hitler was picking off small nations in Europe thirty-seven years ago,” he said. “They just don’t believe it applies when the enemy is communist and the countries losing their freedom are Asian.” But it
did
apply, he said, as much as ever. “The term domino theory very simply describes what happens to our allies if we back down and let one ally be taken over by the communists because we don’t want to be bothered. The enemy decides it’s safe to go after others—that we represent no threat to his aggression. But even worse, our allies, no longer able to trust us, start making deals.”

The deal making had already begun in Asia, Reagan said.
Thailand was turning its back on the United States and negotiating with China. The
Philippines were seeking accommodation.
Japan had commenced
discussions with Hanoi. Nor was the damage confined to one region or continent. “The dominoes are worldwide.”
Turkey was drawing away from NATO. Greece snubbed visits by the American Sixth Fleet.
Portugal was tilting dangerously left. “Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger returns empty-handed from the Middle East. A few months ago the power and reliability of the United States had brought the
Israeli-
Arab conflict closer to peace than at any time in fifty years. Now there is talk of war by summer. The press described Kissinger’s eyes as wet with tears of frustration. Our one-time power and reliability are no longer believable because of our failure to stand by an ally in far-off Indochina.”

The failure in Indochina was symptomatic of a larger misreading of the world, Reagan thought. He remained a loyal enough Republican not to attack the policies of Republican administrations directly, but he began to question the philosophical underpinnings of
détente. Nixon’s opening to Moscow had permitted a grain sale that sent millions of tons of American wheat and corn to Russia at below-market prices. Critics called it the
“Great Grain Robbery,” but their ranks didn’t include the midwestern farmers who were delighted at the boost the sale gave to prices for the rest of their crops. Gerald Ford extended the deal in 1975, following a new shortfall in the Soviet harvest.

The extension prompted Reagan to express doubts about détente. “
The Russians want to buy American wheat and American farmers want to sell their wheat,” he told his radio audience. The transaction sounded reasonable on its face. “If we believe in a free market, shouldn’t our farmers be allowed to sell their produce anywhere in the world for the best price they can get?” But there were other considerations, starting with the nature of the country doing the buying. “If we believe the Soviet Union is hostile to the free world—and we must or we wouldn’t be maintaining a nuclear defense and continuing in NATO—then are we not adding to our own danger by helping the troubled Soviet economy?” Beyond this was the moral issue. “Are we not helping a Godless tyranny maintain its hold on millions of helpless people? Wouldn’t those helpless victims have a better chance of becoming free if their slave masters’ regime collapsed economically? One thing is certain, the threat of hunger to the Russian people is due to the Soviet obsession with military power.”

It was also due to the fundamental wrongheadedness of socialist economics. “Nothing proves the failure of Marxism more than the Soviet Union’s inability to produce weapons for its military ambitions and at the same time provide for their people’s everyday needs,” Reagan said. Amer
ica required but 2 percent of its workforce to feed the American people and much of the world besides. “A full one-third of Russia’s workers are in agriculture and still they’d starve without our wheat. And the failure is not Russian; it is communist, for every other country that has collectivized its agriculture has gone downhill in farm production.”

Whether because he was sincerely ambivalent or because he didn’t want to come down too hard on a Republican administration, Reagan judged the grain question a close call. “The wheat deal is beneficial to us economically. Right now in our time of economic dislocation and imbalance of trade
maybe
it benefits us enough to outweigh the strategic factor. In other words it strengthens us more than we’d be benefitted by weakening them.” But the morality of the sale still troubled him. “The moral question in the long run won’t go away. The Soviet Union is an aggressor and a threat to world peace. It can remain so only by denying its people freedom and the basic commodities that make life worth living, which we take for granted.” Morality in the long run aligned with strategy. “The Russians have told us over and over again their goal is to impose their incompetent and ridiculous system on the world. We invest in armaments to hold them off, but what do we envision as the eventual outcome? Either that they will see the fallacy of their way and give up their goal, or their system will collapse—or (and we don’t let ourselves think of this) we’ll have to use our weapons one day.”

Reagan’s dilemma prompted him to float a solution that hadn’t occurred to many others in this context and that sounded odd coming from a conservative, because it entailed a major government intrusion into the private market. “Maybe there is an answer,” he concluded. “We simply do what’s morally right. Stop doing business with them. Let their system collapse. But in the meantime buy our farmers’ wheat ourselves and have it on hand to feed the Russian people when they finally become free.”

R
EAGAN
’
S VIEW OF
détente was that of an outsider. He wasn’t privy to the confidential discussions of foreign policy that took place within the Ford administration. In another area of policy, however, the curtain parted a little.
Watergate inspired the media to dig deeper into the affairs of government, and what they found included evidence that the Central Intelligence Agency had exceeded the terms of its charter. Reports indicated that the CIA, which was supposed to confine its activities to foreign countries, had engaged in domestic operations, including the tapping of telephones, the opening of mail, and the infiltration of dissident political
groups.
Gerald Ford felt obliged to respond to the reports; he did so by appointing a commission to investigate them and other matters relating to the CIA. Vice President
Nelson Rockefeller headed the commission, and various individuals of standing and distinction formed the membership. Reagan, newly released from the California governorship, took a seat on the
Rockefeller Commission.

But he did so only intermittently. He informed Rockefeller at the outset that existing commitments would prevent his attending all the meetings, and he found little in the meetings to make him want to break those commitments. (He ultimately attended fewer than half of the twenty-six meetings.) The commission’s makeup revealed the Ford administration’s lack of interest in a searching analysis of CIA activities during the Cold War. The members included no outspoken critics of the CIA; most, like Reagan, sympathized with the difficulties confronting American intelligence officers in identifying and combating threats to American national security. The commission concentrated on domestic activities by the CIA, which, while forbidden by the CIA’s charter, often fell within the realm of what Reagan and the others considered reasonable precautions.

Ford got what he wanted from the Rockefeller Commission. Its report, which Reagan signed, chided the CIA for “
some activities that should be criticized and not be permitted to happen again,” and it recommended closer oversight of the agency’s operations. But it stopped far short of the kind of overhaul CIA critics were demanding.

The critics were happier with another committee, organized by congressional Democrats and headed by Senator
Frank Church of Idaho. The
Church Committee dug deep and uncovered much that Reagan, among other conservatives, thought should have stayed secret. The committee documented the CIA’s role in the overthrow of the
Iranian government in 1953 and the
Guatemalan government in 1954, in the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, and in the attempted assassination of various foreign leaders in the early 1960s.

Reagan was more upset with the Church Committee than with the CIA. “
In any bureaucracy of about 16,000 people,” he told his radio listeners, “there are going to be individuals who make mistakes and do things they shouldn’t do.” But the intelligence agency as a whole had honorably and effectively defended America against mortal threats. And it must be allowed to continue to do so. “We are being spied upon beyond anything that the American people can possibly conceive, not internally, not by our own people, but by potential enemies.”

C
ONSERVATIVES IN MODERN
America face a chronic problem in running for office. Often believing government to be the enemy, they have to explain to themselves and others why they want to join that enemy. Some seem to agonize; others exhibit only mild compunction. But eventually most arrive at the lesser-evil theory: that if they don’t run and get elected, liberals will, to the further detriment of the national interest.

Gerald Ford wasn’t a liberal, but Reagan decided he wasn’t conservative enough to remain in the White House. That’s what he told himself, at any rate. And had he been younger, that might have been the whole truth. But Reagan was already very old by American political practice. Only
William Henry Harrison had been older at election than Reagan would be in November 1976, and Harrison died a month after inauguration. Reagan assumed he couldn’t wait until Ford stepped aside; if he would achieve the presidency, it was 1976 or never.

So he ran. It was a desperate move rather than a smart one. The odds were against him, and the hazards were large. Presidents, even unelected presidents like Ford, have power. They command the attention of the national media without having to strain or pay for the coverage. They can make appointments that please allies and constituents. They can arrange appropriations that secure the loyalty of influential members of their party. As a result they typically control the machinery of the party, which writes rules for primaries and conventions. They can rely on the patriotic reflex of most Americans when the national interest is threatened and, if adept, can convert that reflex into political support.

For Reagan to defeat Ford would require him to overcome these
incumbent advantages. For Reagan merely to
challenge
Ford risked splitting the party. Rarely had a sitting president faced a challenge from within his party, and in nearly every case that party had lost the presidency. If Reagan challenged Ford, and if the Republicans lost, Reagan would be blamed.

But he went ahead nonetheless. He tacitly approved the formation of an exploratory committee in the summer of 1975.
Paul Laxalt, a Republican senator from Nevada who shared Reagan’s brand of western conservatism as well as his relaxed personal style, headed the group.
John Sears, who had helped elect
Nixon in 1968 and now wanted to do the same for Reagan, provided ideas and energy. Reagan himself stood off. Until he formally announced his candidacy, he could keep his radio show, his newspaper column, and his paid speaking engagements. Once he became a formal candidate, those revenue streams would stop.

The exploratory committee discovered intense interest in a Reagan candidacy. Conservatives in the Republican Party had distrusted Nixon, and many delighted in his downfall.
Watergate accomplished something the conservatives had been vainly attempting for more than a decade: to discredit moderation in the party. Conservatives remained a minority among Republicans, and until Nixon self-destructed, they seemed to be losing ground rather than gaining it. Watergate came as a gift, something they couldn’t have foreseen, and they itched to take advantage.

Reagan was their man. His rhetoric remained as conservative as ever, and now that he was out of office, he could put aside the pragmatism that awkwardly undercut his words. He stumped California and the country during the early autumn of 1975 recycling the speech that had launched his political career in 1964. It was as satisfyingly unspecific as ever, and it allowed him to blame America’s ills on the federal government without detailing which parts of government he would shrink or eliminate.

Yet he still refused to commit formally to the race.
Michael Deaver wondered what sign he was looking for, until it appeared. “
We were on a plane,” Deaver said of a November 1975 commuter flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Reagan’s ambition by now had long since defeated his aerophobia. Deaver continued: “Everybody had the same class on there. The only thing they would do for us is that the security people would put us on in the first two seats as you got on the plane. So we’d get on first. Reagan would sit by the window. I’d sit on the aisle. Then, 126 people would get on, and everybody would either say hello or stop and say something to him. There had been hundreds of thousands of people who
had said practically the same words. But this one woman stopped and said to him, ‘You have to run.’ ”

For some reason this woman’s words hit home. The rest of the passengers boarded, the crew did its preflight check, and the plane began taxiing down the runway. Reagan turned to Deaver. “You know, she’s right,” he said.

Deaver wasn’t sure which passenger Reagan was referring to. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

“That woman who said I have to run. I have to run.”

Deaver agreed, but he didn’t know why Reagan suddenly did. “You do?” he said.

“Yes, I just don’t think Jerry can do it,” Reagan said. “And if I don’t do it, I’m going to be the player who’s always been on the bench who never got into the game.”

On November 20 he got into the game. At the
National Press Club in Washington he declared that he was challenging Ford for the Republican nomination in 1976. “
Our nation’s capital has become the seat of a buddy system that functions for its own benefits, increasingly insensitive to the needs of the American worker who supports it with his taxes,” he said. “Today it is difficult to find leaders who are independent of the forces that have brought us our problems: the Congress, the bureaucracy, the lobbyists, big business, and big labor.” The inclusion of big business in Reagan’s rogues’ gallery raised eyebrows among those who remembered him as a longtime front man for one of America’s biggest businesses,
General Electric. He would soon abandon this aspect of his critique, finding in government ample targets for indignation. He called for swift and stringent cuts in federal spending. “We have no choice,” he said. “This government must get back as quickly as possible to a
balanced budget.” Responding to questions whether his unmoderated embrace of conservatism risked a repeat of the Republicans’ debacle with Goldwater in 1964, he asserted that Goldwater had simply been ahead of his time. “The only thing wrong in 1964 was that the voters of this country were still in something of a
New Deal syndrome. They still believed that federal help was free and that federal programs did solve problems. Now the change has come, and the people no longer have to be convinced that the federal government is too big, too costly and hasn’t really solved any problems.”