Reagan: The Life (37 page)

But the administration declined to share evidence indicating that William Casey had been in Madrid at the time of the alleged meeting between Casey and the Iranian contacts. A memorandum for the record by White House associate counsel
Paul Beach recounted a conversation between Beach and
Edwin Williamson of the State Department. Williamson explained that the State Department was gathering relevant materials and deciding what to turn over to the investigators. “
In this regard,” Beach wrote, “Ed mentioned only a cable from the Madrid embassy indicating that Bill Casey was in town, for purposes unknown.”

The Beach memorandum, when released, surprised
Lee Hamilton, by then retired. Hamilton condemned the Bush White House for withholding the evidence. “
If the White House knew that Casey was there, they certainly should have shared it with us.” Hamilton stopped short of saying that the new evidence proved the October Surprise allegations, but he reiterated the importance of Casey’s whereabouts to the task force’s dismissal of the charges. “We found no evidence to confirm Casey’s trip to Madrid,” he told journalist
Robert Parry. “We couldn’t show that.” And one reason they couldn’t was that the Bush White House was withholding evidence. “The White House did not notify us that he did make the trip. Should they have passed that on to us? They should have because they knew we were interested in that.”

Other evidence continued to surface.
In 2013,
Ben Barnes, a former lieutenant governor of Texas, told the present author he had accompanied former Texas governor
John Connally on a trip to the Middle East in the
summer of 1980. Connally had made a run for the Republican nomination that year, but after a slow start he dropped out of the race, endorsing Reagan over Connally’s Texas rival George Bush. Barnes had handled fund-raising for the Connally campaign. Connally, who had served as Treasury secretary under
Richard Nixon and was clearly hoping for an important post in a Reagan administration, was then associated with the Houston-based law firm of
Vinson & Elkins, and the purpose of the trip was described for the firm’s records as “
personal business for private interests.” But public business was in prospect. Recommendations by Nixon preceded Connally to the Middle East. “
I am sure that you will find a talk with him most interesting in view of his enormous experience in government and the likelihood (I hope!) that he will play a major role in the Reagan administration,” Nixon wrote to one foreign interlocutor.

Early in the journey, Connally seems to have spoken by phone with Reagan. A memo to Connally by an aide bore the subject line “
Governor Reagan” and read, “Nancy Reagan called—they are at ranch. He wants to talk to you about being in on strategy meetings.” Connally would certainly have returned the call, but just what was said in the conversation is unknown.

Barnes volunteered to the author that the trip had a connection to the American hostages in Iran. Barnes said Connally passed word to the government officials he met with in
Israel and several Arab countries that the release of the hostages before the November election would “
not be helpful” to the Reagan campaign. When asked by the author whether this message had come from William Casey, Barnes said he wasn’t told and hadn’t inquired.

More than three decades after the fact, the October Surprise story remained puzzling. The evidence demonstrated conclusively that Casey and the campaign team were very worried that Carter would secure the release of the hostages ahead of the election. The evidence demonstrated with equal clarity that the campaign was preparing to make a release politically more difficult by intimating that Carter was opportunistically cutting a deal with the hostage holders. The evidence indicated that Casey was dropping hints, perhaps even making promises, that a Reagan administration would look favorably on those governments and individuals who had helped Reagan win election. And the evidence suggested (in the case of the missing passport and calendar pages) and demonstrated (in the case of the Bush White House memo) that interested parties had consciously covered up pertinent information.

What none of the evidence, with the possible exception of a Reagan-Connally phone call, indicated or even hinted was that Reagan himself had anything directly to do with the efforts made on his behalf. He flatly denied having been involved, calling the allegations “
absolute fiction.” By the time the story emerged, Reagan’s detached style of management had become famous—notorious, as it related to the Iran-contra affair. And Casey’s obsession with secrecy was just as well-known. Between Reagan’s detachment and Casey’s secrecy, Reagan’s denial was entirely believable.

All the same, Reagan was responsible for what was done by his campaign to get him elected. If his campaign took measures that offended ethics and even the law, any blame ultimately rested with him.

But his wouldn’t have been the first campaign to stray, if stray it did. And in any event, the efforts to prevent an October surprise were almost certainly superfluous. The Iranians liked Jimmy Carter less in October 1980 than ever. Iraq had just invaded Iran, and Iranian leaders thought Carter was behind the invasion. They had no reason to give him the satisfaction of winning the hostages’ freedom, especially if it meant he might thereby win the American election. To the Iranian leaders, Carter was a known and detested quantity. Reagan was an unknown quantity, but he couldn’t be worse than Carter. Whether or not Reagan’s campaign had promised weapons in exchange for hostages, the Iranians determined to wait Carter out.

I
N THE ABSENCE
of an October surprise, November was predictable. Americans cast their ballots on November 4 and awarded Reagan an overwhelming victory. He beat Carter by more than eight million votes, winning 51 percent of the popular vote to Carter’s 41 percent (and Anderson’s 7 percent). Reagan carried forty-four states to Carter’s six and tallied 489 electoral votes to Carter’s 49.

Reagan watched the returns in the house he and Nancy had purchased in Pacific Palisades. Carter telephoned him there to concede the election. Reagan drove to the Century Plaza Hotel to address his supporters.
“You know,” he said, “Abe Lincoln, the day after his election to the presidency, gathered in his office the newsmen who had been covering his campaign, and he said to them, ‘Well, boys, your troubles are over now, but mine have just begun.’ ” Reagan said he thought he knew how Lincoln felt. “Lincoln may have been concerned in the troubled times in which he became president, but I don’t think he was afraid. He was ready to
confront the problems and the troubles of a still youthful country, determined to seize the historic opportunity to change things.” Reagan said he shared the feeling and the hope. “I am not frightened by what lies ahead, and I don’t believe the American people are frightened by what lies ahead. Together, we’re going to do what has to be done.”

J
AMES
B
AKER WAS
nothing if not flexible. Having led two campaigns to deny Reagan the Republican nomination, he had jumped to the winning side after the failure of the second and helped Reagan become president. And two days after Reagan beat Carter, Baker was tapped to run Reagan’s White House.

Baker’s appointment as chief of staff vexed some of those who had battled longer at Reagan’s side. Edwin Meese thought he should have the job. Meese had been with Reagan since the 1960s, serving variously as legal adviser to the governor, executive secretary, and chief of staff. Meese was smart, hardworking, and astute on policy, and he was a committed conservative. But he wasn’t much for organization. “
He’s got a briefcase that has never been emptied,”
Lyn Nofziger suggested decades later. “I suppose you go to the bottom of it, and you can find stuff back in 1967–8.” Nor was he as stern as a chief of staff often had to be. “It’s a good thing Ed was not born a woman because he can’t say no,” Nofziger continued. “I mean that in the nicest way. Ed will do anything in the world for you. He is one of the sweetest, nicest men in the whole damn world. But when you can’t say no, you take on more things than you can handle.” And he simply liked to do things himself. “He’s not a very good distributor of jobs and missions.”
Stuart Spencer agreed. Spencer was a pioneer of political consulting, one of the first professional campaign managers. No one besides Reagan was more responsible for Reagan’s victories. Spencer knew Meese well. “
There was absolutely nothing wrong with Ed Meese except he couldn’t organize a two-car funeral,” he said. “You went in his desk and the papers were here, there, down on the floor, across the room. One of the jobs of a chief of staff is to make the paper move in the White House
and go to the right corners and the right boxes. It’s a terrible job. We knew that Ed couldn’t do that.”

He might have gotten the job anyway. Reagan didn’t like to disappoint people, especially those who had worked their hearts out for him. And he felt more comfortable philosophically with Meese than with anyone else. “
If you were sitting in this room and you asked Ed about an issue,” Spencer later told an interviewer, “he could give you the precise answer that Ronald Reagan would give you. He totally understood Ronald Reagan ideologically, because they’re so much alike ideologically.”

But Michael Deaver, who was closer to the Reagans personally than anyone else, and Spencer thought Meese would serve the president better in another position. For chief of staff they wanted someone sterner and better organized. They also wanted someone better versed in the ways of Washington. None of the longtime Reagan loyalists qualified; they were Californians through and through. Some of them saw this as their strength: they hadn’t been infected by the capital’s liberal culture. But Deaver and Spencer relied on Reagan’s own resistance to the noxious airs off the Potomac, and they urged the president-elect to choose Baker as chief of staff. Deaver broached the subject with Reagan, who expressed surprise that the question of who should be chief of staff even came up. “
I’ve always assumed Ed Meese would fill that,” Reagan said. Deaver nodded that he understood, before observing, “Ed may be more valuable in another role. As chief of staff, you need to think about someone who knows Washington, knows the way the town works. We’re about to embark on something, Governor, that we don’t know a lot about.” Reagan asked him if he had anyone in mind. “Yes,” Deaver responded, “Jim Baker.” Reagan repeated the name. “Jim Baker,” he said. “That’s an interesting thought.”

Spencer remembered things differently. According to him, he and Deaver agreed that Spencer should raise the matter of staff chief with Reagan and Nancy. “
Everyone assumed that Ed Meese was going to be chief of staff,” Spencer recalled. “I thought, ‘This can’t be. I’ll give it my shot.’ ” He went to speak to the Reagans. “I brought up Ed Meese. Before I said one word, both the Reagans said, ‘Oh no, not Ed.’ They understood. They wanted Ed around, and they wanted Ed to do something, but they understood this single organizational problem that he had.”

Baker himself credited the appointment to Nancy Reagan. “
She was the reason I was there,” Baker said. Nancy knew Meese’s strengths and liabilities; more important, she knew her husband’s. She had utter faith in Reagan’s ability to steer a true course philosophically, but she judged he
needed help avoiding the shoals of Washington. Baker was just the man for the job.

Whoever first raised the subject, Reagan agreed that Baker made the most sense. But the appointment didn’t sit well with the loyalists. Lyn Nofziger distrusted Baker from the start. “
The President is elected to do certain things,” Nofziger said later. “He has made certain promises, certain commitments. He has a certain philosophy of government. If you hire people who don’t believe that, and who at best are not going to work very hard for it and at worst are going to work against it, then you’re hurting. You’re hurting the guy you came to serve.” Baker was no conservative, as his preference for Ford and then Bush over Reagan had demonstrated. How could he serve a president committed to conservative change? Nofziger considered Baker an unreliable opportunist. “Jim Baker was there for Jim Baker,” Nofziger said. He added, “Jim is a very competent individual. I would never say that he’s dumb or anything else. But I just think he’s basically dishonest.”

Baker recognized the animus against him. But he considered it foolish and counterproductive to the new administration’s goals. And it didn’t bother him, because it wasn’t shared at the top. “
President Reagan understood what many of his followers did not: that it’s more important for the chief of staff to be competent and loyal than to be a so-called true believer,” he said, adding parenthetically, “I had more faith in his ideas than I was given credit for, and that faith grew stronger over the years.” Reagan had another insight, Baker said. “He also understood that one of the most important tasks of a White House chief of staff is to look at policy questions through a political prism. After watching me at work in 1976 and 1980, he apparently believed I could do this.”

B
AKER
’
S DEPUTY WAS
Deaver, chosen for his loyalty to Reagan and, no less important, to Nancy. “
Of all the advisers who have worked for my husband over the years, I was closest of all to Mike, who was my link to the West Wing,” Nancy wrote. “Ronnie and I go way back with Mike, who served as Ronnie’s deputy executive secretary during the Sacramento years. From the very start, the three of us hit it off. By the time he came into the White House, he really knew Ronnie and understood when to approach him, and how. Mike was never afraid to bring Ronnie the bad news, or to tell him when he thought he was wrong.”

Mostly Deaver thought Reagan was right, if not necessarily simple to
fathom. “
At times, Ronald Reagan has been very much a puzzle to me,” he wrote later. “I had never known anyone so unable to deal with close personal conflict. When problems arose related to the family, or with the personnel in his office, Nancy had to carry the load. Literally, it was through working with Nancy that I came to know her husband.” Deaver took charge of what he and others on the staff called the “Mommy watch.” He remarked, “I probably found the phrase more amusing than Nancy did. She might have been upset, if she thought it was true, this suggestion that anyone needed to be assigned the job of humoring her.”