Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (119 page)

After Reagan went to Washington, I worked at the Republican National Committee at the behest of Nofziger for the 1982 cycle and later went to the National Conservative Political Action Committee, helping to manage a $14 million IE in support of Reagan's reelection. And during those eight years, it seemed as if I was always at the White House, pitching in on a variety of issues, attending speeches, seeing friends, drinking beer and smoking cigars on Frank Donatelli and Frank Lavin's balcony in the Old Executive Office Building on Friday afternoons.

Still, to write a work of history, a writer must present the facts and let readers draw their own conclusions. The facts I present show Reagan at his best and his worst. I tried to follow the maxim of Jeane Kirkpatrick, who in 1979 told Wayne Valis, “I want to be a good scholar; to unearth the truth, and follow the truth no matter where it leads; and to expose falsehood and lies. That is the definition of a good scholar.”

The story is favorable to Reagan because the facts are favorable to Reagan.

The facts are less favorable to Carter. He was, all objectively agree, an unsuccessful president. He came to the presidency with the best of intentions: human rights around the world, reorganizing government, cleaning up Washington, reducing the nuclear threat. But he was simply overwhelmed by the office—“lost in power,” as Bill Buckley succinctly told me. Still, I believe that Carter deserves more credit than history has given him in undermining the Soviets. He was the first president to call attention to the human-rights abuses behind the Iron Curtain, and he increased the funding for Radio Free Europe and secreted thousands of copies of
The Gulag Archipelago
behind enemy lines.

Some will argue that in addition to being a bad president, Carter was also a bad man. Others dispute that. My own opinion is that Carter was a good man who had bad days, as opposed to a bad man who had good days. On one particular bad day in 1979, when confronted with the petition of the deposed shah of Iran to enter the United States for cancer treatment, Carter replied, “Fuck the shah.”

Carter experienced his share of difficult days after he lost to Reagan. He suffered the humiliation of being the first incumbent Democrat ejected by the voters in almost a century and then, to make matters worse, of having the Iranians wait until minutes after he left office to release the hostages. Worn out after four years in Washington and a brutal campaign, he had planned to spend time alone in a Georgia cabin near a favored fishing stream. But when Carter arrived home in Plains, he discovered to his horror that his carefully constructed finances were a
shambles and that he was near bankruptcy. He had to set to work trying to paying the bills.

A
ND SO IT GOES
, as Billy Joel wrote in 1983.

Funny how things go. My father was a self-taught historian and a good writer, and loved politics. He died in 1977, but the farther in time I get away from him, the more it seems I am becoming like him. He was certainly more prescient than many in 1965, when he told my brother, my sister, and me after listening to a Reagan speech that the former actor should be president.

This book for me has been a frustrating but wonderful labor of love.

I wouldn't have had it any other way. The search for facts and telling the story combined research, reading, writing, meeting people—some of the things that make living enjoyable.

I plan on writing other books on Ronald Reagan, including one on the 1984 campaign, but I am also planning on writing other works on American political and cultural history. I discovered in my last book that recording history is the imperfect search for perfection. Records go missing, memories fade, people prevaricate, and reporters file mistaken stories.

But excepting God's love, there is no perfection in this life.

P
ROLOGUE
: A N
EW
B
EGINNING

1.
Norman C. Miller, “The Republican Revival,”
Wall Street Journal
, July 16, 1980, 24.

2.
Theodore H. White, “The Small-Town Boys Who Seek to Govern,”
Washington Star
, September 29, 1980, A3.

3.
“Beyond Packaging,”
Wall Street Journal
, July 16, 1980, 24.

4.
Jessica Savitch, in discussion with the author, October 1980.

5.
Tom Marganthau, Gloria Borger, and James Doyle, “Republican of the Future?”
Newsweek
, July 28, 1980, 33.

6.
Tom Wicker, “The Politics of Taxes,”
New York Times
, July 25, 1980, A25.

7.
“Campaign '80: A Spirited GOP Gears Up for Its Big Show,”
U. S. News & World Report
, July 14, 1980, 27.

8.
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum Historical Resources, “Inaugural Address of President John F. Kennedy,” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum,
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Speeches/JFK/003POF03Inaugura101201961.htm
.

9.
David Lucey, in discussion with the author.

10.
Robert Scheer, “Collapse of Reagan-Ford Deal Blamed on Kissinger,”
Los Angeles Times
, July 20, 1980, A22.

11.
Don Oberdorfer, “Kissinger Said to Have Courted Both Sides in '68,”
Washington Post
, June 2, 1983, A1; Terence Smith, “Kissinger Role in '68 Race Stirs Conflicting Views,”
New York Times
, June 13, 1983, B6.

12.
“Washington Whispers,”
U. S. News & World Report
, May 8, 1978, 16.

13.
Michael Barone, “Big Stick Politics,”
U. S. News & World Report
(Special Issue), July 17, 2002.

14.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum Audio Clips, “Rendezvous with Destiny,” Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum,
http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/audio.html
; Thomas V. DiBacco, “Nothing Conventional about Democrats' History,”
Washington Times
, August 13, 2000, C6.

15.
Robert G. Kaiser, “Smooth Operator,”
Washington Post
, February 22, 2004, T3.

16.
Victor Gold, in discussion with the author, April 16, 2007.

17.
Lou Cannon, “Man from Main Street, Middle America,”
Washington Post
, April 25, 1980, A1.

18.
Howell Raines, “From Film Star to Candidate: Ronald Wilson Reagan,”
New York Times
, July 17, 1980, A1.

19.
A Time for Choosing: The Speeches of Ronald Reagan, 1961–1982
(Chicago: Regnery Gateway, 1983) 57.

20.
James C. Roberts, ed.,
A City Upon A Hill: Speeches by Ronald Reagan Before the Conservative Political Action Conference, 1974–1988
(Washington, DC: The American Studies Center, 1989), 13–21.

21.
Cannon, “Man from Main Street.”

22.
“Living Over the Store,”
Newsweek
, February 16, 1981, 21.

23.
Arnold Koch, “The Lifeguard,”
Melrose Mirror
, December 3, 1999.

24.
A Time for Choosing
, 219.

25.
“‘The Time Is Now… to Recapture Our Destiny,’”
Washington Post
, July 18, 1980, A10.

26.
“Reagan's Announcement of Running Mate, and Comments by Bush,”
New York Times
, July 18, 1980, A12.

27.
“Text of Reagan's Speech Accepting the Republicans' Nomination,”
New York Times
, July 18, 1980, A8.

28.
Ibid.

29.
Ibid.

30.
Ibid.

31.
Jon Meacham, Andrew Murr, Eleanor Clift, Tamara Lipper, Karen Breslau, and Jennifer Ordonez, “American Dreamer,”
Newsweek
, June 14, 2004, 22.

32.
Koch, “The Lifeguard.”

C
HAPTER
1: E
XIT
, S
TAGE
R
IGHT

1.
Frank van der Linden,
The Real Reagan: What He Believes, What He Has Accomplished, What We Can Expect from Him
(New York: William Morrow, 1981), 143–44.

2.
Lyn Nofziger,
Nofziger
(Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 1992), 206.

3.
Lou Cannon, “Reagan: A Healing Hand on the GOP,”
Washington Post
, August 21, 1976, A1.

4.
Peter Hannaford,
The Reagans: A Political Portrait
(New York: Coward-McCann, 1983), 137.

5.
Nancy Reagan with William Novak,
My Turn: The Memoirs of Nancy Reagan
(New York: Random House, 1989), 201.

6.
Tom Mathews, Gerald C. Lubenow, and William J. Cook, “Into the Sunset,”
Newsweek
, August 30, 1976, 45.

7.
Reagan with Novak,
My Turn
, 197.

8.
Richard Cheney, in discussion with the author, June 9, 2004.

9.
Nofziger,
Nofziger
, 199.

10.
Ronald Reagan,
Reagan: A Life in Letters
, ed. Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson, and Martin Anderson (New York: Free Press, 2003), 219.

11.
Peter Hannaford, in discussion with the author, March 24, 2006.

12.
Mike Deaver, in discussion with the author, October 18, 2006.

13.
Ibid.; John Carmody, TV Column,
Washington Post
, July 21, 1983, D8.

14.
Lou Cannon,
Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power
(New York: PublicAffairs, 2003), 433.

15.
Peter Hannaford, in discussion with the author, June 30, 2009.

16.
John Sears, in discussion with the author, March 18, 2004.

17.
United Press International, “Reagan to Appear on TV Tomorrow to Assist GOP,”
New York Times
, September 18, 1976, 10.

18.
Christopher Lydon, “Reagan Ads for G.O.P. Set for Television,
New York Times
, October 11, 1976, 18.

19.
Hannaford,
The Reagans
, 137.

20.
Associated Press, “Reagan Bars Aiding Ford in 3 Key States,”
New York Times
, October 28, 1976, 47.

21.
Christopher Lydon, “Reagan Is Too Busy to Aid Ford in 5 States,”
New York Times
, September 20, 1976, 22.

22.
Lou Cannon, in discussion with the author, December 5, 2006.

23.
Ibid.

24.
Michael Reagan, in discussion with the author, July 2, 2004.

25.
Lydon, “Reagan Is Too Busy.”

26.
National Review
, October 15, 1976, 1098.

27.
Jimmy Carter, in discussion with the author, July 11, 2006.

28.
United Press International, “Reagan Will Not Bar Another Try in 1980,”
New York Times
, November 3, 1976, 17.

29.
Reagan,
Reagan: A Life in Letters
, 224.

30.
United Press International, “Goldwater Bars G.O.P. Fund Role,”
New York Times
, January 6, 1977, 18.

31.
Warren Weaver Jr., “Top Republicans Unable to Agree on Filing Two Major Party Posts,”
New York Times
, January 7, 1977, 10;Warren Weaver Jr., “Brock Takes Lead for G.O.P. Chairman,”
New York Times
, January 14, 1977, 8.

32.
Lou Cannon, “Disunity, Nixon Debacle Plague, GOP,”
Washington Post
, August 15, 1976, A1.

33.
Jack Bass, “Southern Republicans: Their Plight Is Getting Worse,”
Washington Post
, July 12, 1977, A4.

34.
Ronald Reagan, “Ronald Reagan Speaks Out,”
Citizens for the Republic Newsletter
, February 1, 1977.

35.
Cindy Tapscott Canevaro, in discussion with the author, November 3, 2006.

36.
James Stockdale, in discussion with the author, February 15, 2007.

37.
Fred Ryan, in discussion with the author.

38.
Walter R. Mears, Associated Press, June 13, 1977.

39.
Ronald Reagan,
Reagan, In His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan That Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America
, ed. Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson, and Martin Anderson (New York: Free Press, 2001), xvi.

40.
Hedrick Smith, “Carter So Far: Mix of Symbol and Substance,”
New York Times
, March 6, 1977, 144; Jimmy Carter,
Keeping Faith
, 27.

41.
Douglas E. Kneeland, “Carter's Style as President Has Drawn Mixed Reviews,”
New York Times
, February 13, 1977, 26.

42.
Jimmy Carter,
Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President
(New York: Bantam Books, 1982), 27.

43.
Dennis Franey, “GOP's Old Pros Take Stock of Jimmy Carter,”
Wall Street Journal
, June 27, 1977, 10.

44.
A Time for Choosing: The Speeches of Ronald Reagan, 1961–1982
(Chicago: Regnery Gateway, 1983) 183.

45.
Ibid., 184.

46.
Ibid., 185.

47.
Ibid., 189.

48.
Ibid., 200–201.

49.
Ibid., 185.

50.
Lou Cannon, “Reagan Criticizes Carter for Proposing Defense Budget Cuts,”
Washington Post
, February 6, 1977, 20.

51.
David Broder, in discussion with the author.

52.
Howard Phillips, in discussion with the author.

53.
Lou Cannon, “Tapping the Little Guy,”
Washington Post
, March 6, 1977, A1.

54.
Ronald Reagan,
Reagan's Path to Victory: The Shaping of Ronald Reagan's Vision: Selected Writings
, ed. Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson, and Martin Anderson (New York: Free Press, 2004), 132.