Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (47 page)

G
EORGE
B
USH HAD PULLED
out a victory in Connecticut, but as the race moved to Wisconsin he slipped into an awkward mode of campaigning. His campaign instituted an “issue of the day,” and Bush would talk only about that day's topic. When questioned about anything remotely related to campaign strategy, he refused to answer. Bush, offstage, was relaxed and could show a biting sense of humor with the media. Onstage, he too often tightened up.

He benefited, however, when Reagan's long-simmering “gaffe” issue finally boiled over onto the front page of the
Washington Post
, in a story written by Lou Cannon. In addition to stumbling over farm parity and several other issues, Reagan had fumbled answers about aid to New York City and the federal bailout of the Chrysler Corporation. “What emerges,” Cannon wrote, “is the seeming paradox of a candidate who can out-debate rivals in candidate forums and outmaneuver contentious reporters in press conferences, yet still kindle questions about his intellectual capacities.” The question Cannon posed was not whether Reagan was too conservative but “Does Ronald Reagan know what he's talking about?”
¹⁹

Reagan knew all about farm parity; he just didn't want to say he was against it. He later admitted that he opposed parity because it subsidized inefficient farmers
and kept them unfairly in the marketplace. But Reagan didn't want to turn potential voters away, especially conservative rural folks.

On other issues, though, Reagan had indeed fumbled. It was his campaign's fault and it was his fault: he wasn't prepared with the facts. The problem wasn't his command of issues; he had to read something only once and then he knew the issue cold. The “gaffe” problem was the result, rather, of his being too accessible to the media. On Reagan's chartered bus crisscrossing Wisconsin, reporters had pretty much unfettered access to the candidate, which inevitably led to “gotcha” questions.

Other chinks in the Reagan armor appeared. The
Wall Street Journal
, in an editorial, praised Reagan's apparent march to the nomination, but also expressed concern that he'd better learn more about his own campaign. After Reagan's appearance on ABC's news program
Issues and Answers
, some political reporters had been astonished that Reagan did not know the content of all his television ads. The
Journal
advised Reagan that he'd better bone up on the issues and read his briefing books—or else.
²⁰

Those briefing books, however, would not explain the philosophical debate inside the Reagan campaign over whether he should run in the general election as a populist reformer or a traditional Republican. Should he focus on government and government spending, or should he focus on massive tax cuts that would stimulate the economy while downplaying government spending cuts? Reagan tried to paper over the differences in his camp, but one thing was certain: he was foursquare for the Kemp-Roth tax cuts.

The disagreement over tax cuts versus cutting government was a serious theoretical debate inside the GOP. The tax-cut gang—Kemp, Art Laffer, Jude Wanniski, and Jeff Bell—were not interested in the small-government arguments. People on the other side, like Bill Simon, Marty Anderson, and Alan Greenspan, felt that big government was the cause of many problems in the country and it had to be scaled back. They also believed that for the first time since the New Deal, Reagan's arguments for curtailing the size and scope of government were popular with the American people. Some on Reagan's team were hypersensitive about his looking like the candidate of moneyed GOP and big-business interests, which would undermine his appeal to blue-collar Democrats. The working poor and middle class wanted tax cuts, while the upper crust of the GOP wanted government reined in and tax cuts for businesses.

Anderson, Reagan's policy wonk, was struggling to produce an overdue white paper that would reconcile the two positions. But Reagan was not focused on the parlor-room niceties of economic theory. His interest was in restarting
the American economy, which had slipped into its seventh official recession since the end of World War II. Inflation had risen sharply to 18 percent annually, even though Carter had hoped to hold it under 11 percent.
²¹
Interest rates, meanwhile, had rocketed to 19.75 percent.
²²

For Reagan, there was no debate to be had: in truth, he favored both cutting taxes and shrinking government. Endorsing both positions led to complaints from the media. How could he cut taxes, fund a military buildup, and still balance the federal budget? The Reagan campaign was desperate to find an answer. It feared stumbling into another political minefield over economics, as Reagan had in 1976 when he called for $90 billion in federal programs to be transferred back to the states without the apparent means of paying for them.
²³
But Reagan told his staff, “Tell me what has to be done to restore economic health to this society—and let me worry about the politics of it.”
²⁴

Reagan's tax-cutting commercials had been pulled after New Hampshire until the internal debate was settled. But his young regional field director, Frank Donatelli, insisted that the spots be aired in Wisconsin, believing that Democrats there would like the message, especially the link to John Kennedy's tax cuts.
²⁵
The affable Donatelli had grown up in Pittsburgh, one of four boys, the son of Italian-Americans. Donatelli had worked for Reagan in 1976, had been courted by Bush and Phil Crane, but had chosen to stay with the Gipper for the 1980 effort. Mustachioed, he was also by reputation one of the nicest guys and one of the worst dressers in Washington, favoring god-awful polyester leisure suits. Like the rest of the field staff, he drove thousands of miles, was paid little, but always had a pocketful of dimes for pay phones to call his various coordinators across the Rust Belt.
²⁶

Besides targeting these new “Reagan Democrats,” the Gipper's campaign also saw an opportunity with younger voters. Younger voters had for years tended to be more receptive to the happy-go-lucky Democrats than the staid and boring GOP. But inflation, unemployment, and high interest rates had led many demoralized young Americans to believe that the Democratic Party no longer was concerned about them and that the future was gone. They wanted the same chance at the American dream that their parents and grandparents had had. Eighteen-year old college student Walter Hermann told the
Wall Street Journal
, “The Democrats haven't done a good job with the economy, especially not Carter.”
²⁷

Reagan spoke in dozens of high school gymnasiums in the Badger State and the kids responded heartily. Though they were for the most part too young to vote, the imagery was great for the local television stations. Except in one, where a student sharply questioned Reagan and he replied, “I'd like to suggest some outside reading for you.”
²⁸

A
T THE END OF
March, Olympic hero Jesse Owens died at the age of sixty-six of lung cancer. Some Americans had urged the boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, in protest of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Instead, the Americans sent a full complement of athletes, and Owens, a black man, beat the Nazis at their own games, winning four gold medals and doing so with grace. He later wryly noted that Hitler had not snubbed him at the Sports Palace in Berlin, but FDR did by never even sending a telegram of congratulations.
²⁹

The 1980 Olympics to be held in Moscow were no less controversial. Carter's boycott had faltered, and many American allies now were planning on sending delegations. Originally, Reagan had supported the boycott, but as time went on, he changed his mind and suggested that the athletes themselves vote on whether to go. Carter said he would enforce the boycott by not allowing visas to be issued to any of the Americans. He was dealing harshly with the athletes and this did not set well with their fellow countrymen, including Reagan, who said, “I find myself worrying about the young people who've worked so hard.”
³⁰

President Carter fired a salvo at Reagan in a long interview with the
Washington Post
. While praising Reagan's skills as an orator, Carter dismissed his opponent's intellectual firepower, saying that Reagan could only “recite answers to the question concerning current events almost by rote” and that the Republican took “relatively simplistic approaches to issues.”
³¹

Walter Mondale also went after Reagan on the campaign trail, one time going too far with his humor. In a gag, he told a crowd of encountering an angry (mythical) Republican who was complaining about things in America and said, “You know, this would never happen if Ronald Reagan were alive.” Later asked about the joke, Reagan said he thought it was “unkind,”
³²
and the vice president got a call from an intermediary telling him that Nancy Reagan found the joke “very offensive.” Years later Mondale recalled, “I said, ‘Tell Nancy that it was a mistake and she'll never hear that joke again.’” Sure enough, Mondale, a gentleman, never told the joke after that.
³³

Mondale made a mistake in not recognizing what Reagan himself understood—that “the greatest humor is humor you use against yourself,” as the Gipper told the
Los Angeles Times
in the early spring of 1980. Reagan demonstrated that self-deprecating humor repeatedly. Republican audiences loved it. “A few years ago—before anybody was trying to make anything of my age—I told the story of how I'd already lived ten years beyond my life expectancy when I was born, which was a source of irritation to a number of people.”
³⁴
Stumping in Kansas, Reagan bumped his head getting into a bus and, mindful of Gerald Ford's many pratfalls, said, “I know I can be president now.”
³⁵

Jimmy Carter was notoriously unfunny, as was John Anderson. They were just too self-conscious. Jerry Brown may have been most incapable of seeing a good joke, even when it was literally under his nose. In New Hampshire, his campaign had provided chocolate-chip cookies and bean soup to a group of supporters. Brown got up to talk to them about fiscal discipline. Then he said there was no “free lunch” to a group that was enjoying that very thing. His supporters tittered, but Brown spluttered that somebody had to pay for it.
³⁶

Of course, a poor sense of humor may have been the least of Brown's problems. What was left of his long-shot campaign would collapse in Wisconsin. A statewide television broadcast, directed by Francis Ford Coppola of
Godfather
fame, was so weird and poorly produced—with bizarre lighting effects—that Brown was written off for good by most seasoned operatives. Coppola somehow projected an image of the Wisconsin statehouse onto Brown's forehead, prompting someone to say, “How can you vote for a candidate who shows you he has a hole in his head?”
³⁷

T
HE
M
ONDAY BEFORE THE
April 1 primaries, Reagan jetted off to Louisiana, where he was the featured speaker at a jambalaya fundraising dinner. In the question-and-answer period, someone, after nervously addressing Reagan as “Mr. President,” asked about Gerald Ford going on the ticket with him. A chorus of boos descended upon the poor person. Responding, Reagan said he doubted that anyone who had once been president would be interested in going backwards one step. Reagan also told the crowd he would phase out the Departments of Energy and Education.
³⁸

On primary day, Reagan won both Wisconsin and Kansas. He took Kansas's closed primary handily, winning 63 percent of the vote to Anderson's 18 and Bush's 13.
³⁹
Reagan had been helped by an unrestrained and unequivocal endorsement from native son Bob Dole, who said the weekend before the primary, “We're supposed to be a great nation. Well, I say it's about time to start to act like one! And Ronald Reagan can make that happen!”
⁴⁰

Reagan's victory in the hotly contested Wisconsin primary was much tighter. In fact, without the help of conservative Democrats, he would have lost. More than half of the votes cast in the GOP primary were by Democrats and independents, according to exit polls conducted by CBS and the New York Times.
⁴¹
Reagan ran strongly in the Democratic strongholds of Racine and Kenosha, along with the South Side of Milwaukee.
⁴²

Reagan took 40 percent to Bush's respectable 31 percent and Anderson's 28 percent.
⁴³
But he did much better in delegates, because of Wisconsin's odd proportional
delegate selection process, which awarded the slots by congressional district, with bonus delegates for winning the statewide contest. Reagan took home twenty-five delegates to only three for Bush.
⁴⁴

Bush had spent $500,000 in the state to Reagan's $200,000. Adding insult to injury, Reagan had campaigned in the state for only three days and had spent most of it making open appeals to Democrats and independents.

But Anderson had been the most damaged by the results in Wisconsin. He'd counted on the college kids and they had let him down, just as they often did their parents. Still, Anderson managed to claim six delegates, despite winning less of the popular vote than Bush did.

The day before the Wisconsin and Kansas primaries, Pat Caddell, the president's pollster, had Carter ahead in his polling in the Badger State, but he said, “I am not all that confident that those numbers will hold.”
⁴⁵
Ted Kennedy was surging after his surprise wins in New York and Connecticut, and Carter was showing more and more weakness. Though Carter's approval ratings had shot up after the Americans were taken hostage in Iran, it had now been five months and the president had taken little action to free them. Worse, Carter, trying to appear hawkish, had been badly embarrassed when the Iranians released to the media a private letter from the president to the Ayatollah Khomeini seeking to relax the tension between the two countries. The Carter White House vehemently denied that such a letter had been sent.
⁴⁶