Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (77 page)

T
HE
R
EAGAN CAMPAIGN AND
the Carter team had the same essential strategy for November: to make the election about their opponent. Dick Wirthlin recognized this when he said that the Reaganites' task was to make the election a referendum on Carter's presidency, and that it would be “problematical” if they allowed Reagan to become the issue.
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To underscore Reagan's supposedly controversial economic agenda, the Carter campaign for a time referred to the “Reagan-Kemp-Roth” tax bill. Democrats confidently predicted that Reagan would be running away from the plan by the fall.

Going on the attack against Reagan, the Carter administration rolled out some big guns. Brzezinski broke conventions as a diplomat and negotiator by going right at Reagan on the war-and-peace issue, attempting to exploit the Republican's image of having an itchy trigger finger. Brzezinski attacked the GOP platform and Reagan's call for military superiority over the Kremlin, saying that containment combined with diplomacy would keep the Russian bear from prowling outside his territory.
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Secretary of State Muskie broke the tradition into a thousand pieces by saying that Reagan could kick off a new arms race; however, Soviet officials were at the same time, attempting to get a private meeting with Reagan's aides just “in case” he won.
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Carter then trotted out Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, who called Reagan “simplistic,” “unrealistic,” and “dangerous.”
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The Carter administration was going to use every resource at its command.

Although the Democrats were attempting to portray the Republican candidate as an extremist, Reagan showed no signs of moving to the middle now that he had secured the GOP nomination. During an extensive interview with
U.S. News & World Report
he detailed the government agencies he would cut or eliminate, including the Departments of Energy and Education, and he insisted on pushing
tax cuts and big increases in defense spending.
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He said he planned on delegating authority to people who understood his framework of governance, a point Lyn Nofziger reiterated when he harked back to California and said, “cabinet officers were Reagan's men in the departments; they were not the departments' men in the Reagan cabinet.”
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Reagan did show his pragmatic side in the interview, saying he'd learned in Sacramento that “if I found … that I could not get 100 percent of what I asked for, I took 80 percent.”
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J
OHN
A
NDERSON HAD FADED
somewhat into the background over the summer. Though he had managed to qualify for the ballot in all fifty states, money had slowed to his campaign and the media attention had tailed off. As a result, Anderson was stuck in the polls somewhere between 15 and 25 percent.
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Reagan's pick of Bush had assuaged some moderate Republicans and persuaded them to stick with the party rather than bolt for Anderson.

Anderson still hadn't selected a running mate. It appeared his best opportunity for choosing a vice-presidential partner would come after the Democrats held their convention in August, when—assuming Kennedy lost to Carter—some hard-core Kennedyites who couldn't stomach Carter might be willing to support the independent ticket.

Anderson and Kennedy got together on Capitol Hill for no reason other than to give the media something to cover. It was a pure photo op as the two met briefly with no agenda and then addressed the media and had nothing to say. It was dutifully covered by all the major media, including the networks. All the while Kennedy had a slightly dazed look on his face. The only “news” to come out of it was that Anderson “might reassess” his independent bid if Carter was not renominated.
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As renegade Democrats continued calling for an open convention, Kennedy worked the phones hard, leaning on wavering delegates. His argument was a difficult one to make. As the champion of “reform,” Kennedy had been on the side of letting the primaries rather than the political bosses select the delegates. Now he was arguing for a return to the legendary “smoke-filled rooms.”
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In politics, where you stood was often defined by where you sat.

Carter got support from an unusual quarter: Reagan. He wasn't being cynical about it, either. Reagan said, “When you free the delegates, you disenfranchise the voters who elected them.”
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It was the best argument in support of Carter's renomination.

R
EAGAN'S CAMPAIGN COURTED NEW
controversy when it finally released the nominee's tax returns for 1979, which showed his income at $515,878. Between
federal and state taxes, more than half—$262,936—went to government. Most of Reagan's income had come from his speeches, radio commentaries, and newspaper columns.
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To the media, the bigger news was that he had donated just a little over $4,000 of his six-figure income to charity—as compared with the $15,000 Carter had donated. Moreover, he had checked “No” on a voluntary one-dollar contribution to the “presidential election campaign fund”—a fund that had just given him, as the Republican nominee, $29.4 million to finance the balance of his campaign. The media also howled because Reagan took an operating loss of more than $9,000 on Rancho del Cielo even though it was only technically a working ranch, and because he had charged his daughter Maureen $481 interest on a loan he'd made to her.
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An old allegation surfaced against Reagan, one that Ford's campaign had investigated in 1975, over a real estate deal Reagan had made with Twentieth-Century Fox when he became governor. In the 1950s, Reagan had bought a tract of 290 acres adjacent on three sides to land owned by Fox Realty, a division of the film company. Reagan bought it for just $65,000 and sold it to Fox Realty in 1966 for more than $1.9
million
.
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The documents had been leaked to the Ford campaign by Reagan's Democratic enemies in California, and in 1980 they were leaked to the media. The truth of the matter was that real estate prices had gone through the roof in the Golden State for years and it wasn't unusual to realize such profits—or for movie studios to be sloppy with money.

Reagan suffered still another embarrassment when the Right to Life Party withdrew its endorsement. The national pro-life group called the choice of Bush “unacceptable” and took Reagan off its voter line. This move jeopardized Dick Wirthlin's strategy for taking New York in November. His ambitious plan was contingent on Reagan's running on the Republican, Conservative, and Right to Life lines to scoop every vote possible in the state, and on Anderson's getting the Liberal Party line to deny Carter those votes.
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With Reagan still not out on the stump, the media began to intensely scrutinize his big proposals: a massive tax cut, a giant increase in defense spending, and a balanced budget. Alan Greenspan was asked how these seemingly conflicting goals could be reconciled; he said, “There are any number of answers on how to resolve these goals,” although he didn't give any specific examples.
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It had been more than two weeks since the end of the convention and yet Reagan seemed stuck in neutral. Even the reliably pro-Reagan conservative weekly
Human Events
was taking the Gipper to task over the Ford mess, over his stalled campaign, over the poor treatment afforded Jack Kemp, and over the choice of Bush.

About the only bright sign came when Fidel Castro of Cuba said, “The fate of humanity would be at stake if Ronald Reagan won the presidential election.”
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There was no truth to the rumor that Ed Meese sent a bouquet of flowers to the Communist dictator to thank him for attacking Reagan.

J
IMMY
C
ARTER SUFFERED AN
embarrassment of his own, over the simmering problem of his brother Billy's six-figure contract with the renegade terrorist nation of Libya. Probes had been announced by Congress as well as by the Justice Department. The president finally as much as said that he had, in fact, been in contact with his brother on the matter—something he had previously denied. Because Muslims put a “great importance on family ties,” Carter said, he felt that asking his brother to bring a Libyan diplomat to the White House for a quiet meeting might help spring the hostages in Iran.
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The whole exercise was asinine.

Carter was attempting to follow the advice of George Bernard Shaw, who said, “If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”
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The mess was particularly devastating for a politician who had come into office sanctimoniously proclaiming, “I will never tell a lie.”
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Carter's greatest asset, his supposedly unassailable integrity, was besmirched.

Carter at least could take some solace from the fact that the Soviets had blown their chance for the public-relations bonanza they had hoped for with the Moscow Olympics. Dozens of other countries had joined the American boycott, and the Summer Games ended quietly in early August.

R
EAGAN FINALLY HIT THE
road to fulfill his commitment to speak in Neshoba County, Mississippi. Wirthlin and other aides had wanted him to skip the trip there because it was a tinderbox of racial hatred. Three civil-rights organizers had been murdered there in 1964 and the Ku Klux Klan still operated in the area. Yet the media gave Reagan's Mississippi trip short shrift—for the time being, anyway. Unfortunately, this would not be the last Reagan heard about Neshoba.

After Neshoba, the Republican nominee moved on to New York City to speak to the National Urban League (even though the Urban League appearance had originally been scheduled first). He met with the organization's president, Vernon Jordan, who was in a hospital recovering from a gunshot wound.
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The two immediately hit it off and found they had many friends in common. Surprisingly, Reagan was received nearly as well when he gave his speech before the Urban League. Refusing to pander, he rejected public housing and called for “urban homesteading” where residents could buy their dwellings from the government for a nominal fee.
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He opposed affirmative action and told the audience so, even though several
black leaders had urged him to change his stance. He opposed set-aside programs, the minimum wage, and federal intervention in local schools. The solution to the plight of the black family, he said, was not to argue over a “shrinking economic pie” but to produce “a bigger pie so that everyone will have a chance to be better off.”
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Reagan pointed to his record of black advancement while governor of California: over eight years, the percentage of African-Americans hired in the state government increased 23 percent.
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He asked the attendees not to look at him as a “caricatured conservative.”
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Reagan received his biggest round of applause when he said, “We must adopt the goal of making black Americans more economically independent, through means of black enterprise and lasting, meaningful jobs in the private sector. We must assure that four years from now public sector jobs can't be dangled like carrots; that welfare can't be used as a lever to pry loose urban votes; that black Americans have captured more of their destiny.”
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He was interrupted fifteen times with applause and was cheered “politely at the end,” according to the
Washington Star
.
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A black columnist, Earl Caldwell with the
New York Daily News
, was “stunned” at the warm reception Reagan received.
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While in New York City, Reagan also visited the burned-out slums of the South Bronx, which Carter had famously toured in 1977, vowing to improve the lot of its poor. Nothing had been done in three years since, and the Reagan campaign saw the opportunity to capitalize on the issue. Aides envisioned a photo op with Reagan standing before the decay of boarded-up buildings and offering hope to the out-of-work and desperate people.

It did not quite work out that way.

On a sweltering day, around a hundred African-Americans, whites, and Hispanics greeted Reagan with boos and catcalls. He said, “This is an example of how the federal government can fail,” but he was drowned out by the crowd, which chanted, “1–2–3–Boo-oo-ooo!” Reagan tried again, his frustration and anger rising, shouting, “You will listen to me!” The catcalls grew even louder. “Down with Reagan!” they chanted. A Chicano woman kept badgering him, asking repeatedly, “What are you going to do for us?”

Reagan tried to reason with the hecklers, asking them to look at his record of job growth in California. They shouted back, “We don't need them in California, we need them here!” He got even madder and shouted, “Stop talking and listen!” Some in the crowd tried to listen but the rest were not buying it, chanting, “Go home! Go home! Go home!”

Finally, Reagan exploded, “I can't do a damn thing for you unless I am elected!”
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Defeated, he retreated to his twelve-car motorcade and the safety of his air-conditioned limo, where Mrs. Reagan had wisely stayed. But asked whether he planned any more urban tours, Reagan surprisingly said yes. Despite his rough treatment in the South Bronx, he wasn't shutting the door to the dispossessed. In 1968, when asked why he and Richard Nixon weren't campaigning in urban America, Spiro Agnew declared with characteristic artlessness, “If you've seen one city slum, you've seen them all.” Reagan was far less harsh. He truly felt bad about the plight of the poor, perhaps because the memories of his own deprivations during the Depression were deeply etched in his psyche. “There we were, driving away, and you think of them back there in all that ugliness and they have no place to go,” he recalled with genuine compassion. “All that is before them is to sit and look at what we just saw.”
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