Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (18 page)

While George Bush was doing well overall, Connally was becoming more and more frustrated that he couldn't catch Reagan. He began to attack the Gipper more directly. Connally told audiences that Reagan had cost Gerald Ford the election in 1976 by challenging him in the primaries. He whined that while he was criticized for switching parties, Reagan skated on the issue. He went back thirty years and attacked Reagan for campaigning for Helen Gahagan Douglas against Richard Nixon for the U.S. Senate in California in 1950, but as far as some conservatives were concerned, this was a point in Reagan's favor.
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Connally absurdly charged that Reagan had broken his own “Eleventh Commandment,” which “Big John” interpreted to mean that one Republican did not criticize another. What Connally did not understand was that the Eleventh Commandment meant one Republican should not attack another Republican
personally
. On matters of policy, criticism and honest debate were welcomed and necessary. Indeed, it was the Ford campaign in 1976 that often attacked Reagan personally and not the other way around.

On one issue, however, Connally, had a point. He hit Reagan for ducking yet another debate, this time the upcoming
Des Moines Register and Tribune
free-for-all scheduled for January 5, 1980. The now galactically important Iowa caucuses would take place on January 21.
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Puerto Rico entered the fray first with a primary on February 17, followed by the ever-vital New Hampshire primary on February 26. Those thirty-five days between Iowa and New Hampshire would prove to be the most important time in Ronald Reagan's political life.

F
OUR YEARS EARLIER,
R
ONALD
Reagan had received 49 percent in an abbreviated Iowa GOP caucus and taken seventeen to Gerald Ford's nineteen Iowa delegate votes in Kansas City. The last reputable Iowa poll had been taken in August 1979 and that had Reagan at a stratospheric 48 percent, Howard Baker at 23 percent, and Bush dead last at 1 percent. All believed that Reagan would swamp the field here in 1980.
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Reagan, after all, was a local boy who made good. He had gotten his first big break after college as a sports announcer for WOC in Davenport, where he called
a college football game that featured Michigan's standout center, Gerald Ford. Dutch Reagan moved to Des Moines in 1933 and spent more than four years on the 50,000-watt WHO station, becoming a minor celebrity in the community.

Plenty of people in Iowa knew and remembered Dutch Reagan. Now they were angry with their old friend. He'd snubbed them. Reagan's on-the-ground problems in Iowa went hand in hand with the fact that he was ignoring the state. “It's awful hard to run a campaign in Iowa without the candidate here,” said the savvy Iowa GOP chairman, Steve Roberts.
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With only seven weeks to go before the caucuses, the Reagan for President Committee finally panicked and dispatched Peter McPherson and Kenny Klinge there to see what they could do to repair the situation.
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McPherson had worked for Ford in 1976 in Jim Baker's impressive delegate operation. Klinge had worked for the Reagan campaign in 1976 and was a tough, unflinching conservative infighter. Four years earlier in Kansas City, when Reagan was meeting with his tearful staff, Clarke Reed of Mississippi had walked into the room, uninvited, and tried to make amends for betraying Reagan at the last minute and helping to swing the nomination to Ford by flipping his delegation's votes over to the president. Everybody, including Reagan, swung a cold shoulder toward Reed. Except Klinge. He swung his fists at Reed but was restrained by other staffers. Reed barely escaped.
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Despite the late start, Reagan's executive director in Iowa, Robert Collins, told reporters, “I'm looking for a majority of the caucus vote and I think I can get that.”
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Not only did he inflate Reagan's chances, but he also lowballed Bush's expected level of support. Collins was not on Bush's payroll, but you couldn't prove that as far as everybody else in the Reagan campaign was concerned.

Bush had signed up dozens of current and former state GOP officials, including former governor Bob Blue. The current governor, Bob Ray, though officially uncommitted, was thought to be clandestinely supporting Bush. Bush had also recruited some local GOP leaders, including Mary Louise Smith, former chair of the RNC.
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In December, Sears commissioned a poll in Iowa by the media-shy Arthur Finkelstein, and the results showed Reagan smashing all comers. The best course of action, Sears determined, was to take no action. He kept Reagan out of the line of fire in Iowa—or anywhere else, for that matter.
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Connally forged ahead, announcing with great fanfare that he was bypassing the matching funds the FEC offered presidential candidates if they complied with a mind-numbing set of rules. In 1980, those who abided by the convoluted system could raise and spend and accept in the form of matching funds only about $16.8
million in the primary season.
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Connally's decision was motivated in part by the fact that he had been unable to implement his big-picture strategy of speaking to the American people directly in order to catch up to the name identification of Carter, Kennedy, and especially Reagan. “Big John” had wanted to buy national television time, but the networks had stuck to their plan of not selling anyone time before the arbitrary start date of January 1, 1980.

T
ED
K
ENNEDY WAS ATTRACTING
a land rush of media attention, and at any time on his plane there would be seventy or so reporters having a high time. “On the plane itself it is like the kids taking the bus to summer camp, laughs, much badinage between the press and a Kennedy staff that includes speechwriters, press agents and baggage smashers,” wrote Jack Germond mirthfully.
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Kennedy's personal wealth became known: it was around $20 million, and the entire Kennedy family estate was around $400 million. He was, by far, the richest candidate in the race.
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Yet Carter had halted the bloodletting of his campaign, while Kennedy was being bled white by a carping media and a newly skeptical public. A new national poll showed that Carter had moved into the lead over the prince of Massachusetts, 48–40 percent, among Democratic primary voters. It was the first time in two years that Carter had led Kennedy among Democrats.
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It was an amazing 38 percent net change in the polls in just a little over one month.

This reversal occurred despite, or in part because of, the fact that Carter had abruptly announced that he would forestall any campaigning while he dealt with the hostage situation in Tehran. Carter was clearly being helped by the ongoing hostage crisis, though he had actually done very little since the Americans had been taken hostage. His aides recognized that by not campaigning formally, Carter was saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign travel while staying above the fray of the media and the early contests.

Carter canceled a debate in Des Moines with Ted Kennedy and Jerry Brown, but in early December, he was forced to confront Kennedy at a Washington benefit for an academic chair at Boston College in the name of Tip O'Neill. Carter and Kennedy sat only a few feet from each other, but still managed never to make eye contact, and the room was thick with intrigue.
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Carter's point man, the wily Bob Strauss, could teach a fox a thing or two. He managed to convince the media that Carter was an underdog in Iowa because he would be doing no campaigning there while Kennedy was going hell-bent for leather. Further, he said, Carter could sustain a loss there and still go on. His sidekick Tim Kraft agreed and said, “Kennedy has done better than I thought he was going to do in getting organized in Iowa.”
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The media bought the Strauss ploy.

J
OHN
C
ONNALLY WAS BECOMING
more and more frustrated over heavyweight contender Reagan. Reagan was still playing the rope-a-dope strategy devised by Muhammad Ali, when the ex-champ let champion George Foreman punch himself into exhaustion in Zaire in 1974. The madder Foreman became, the more Ali lay against the ropes, waiting for Foreman to exhaust himself. Ali regained the title in the eighth round, when he dropped Foreman like third-period French class.

Big John told reporters that Reagan should “come out of the closet” and debate, a slur on Reagan's manhood. He whined that Reagan had had years to run for president but the networks wouldn't allow Connally to buy broadcast time to try to match Reagan's advantage.
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Connally also said that Reagan's comments on Iran and the shah had been “more inflammatory” than Kennedy's. Reagan had proposed that America do the moral and courageous thing and grant the dying shah political asylum at a time when the Iranians were demanding his return.
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While everyone—including Connally—was focused on knuckling under to the ayatollah and fretting about the hostages, Reagan was set on a display of strength and courage that would send a message to Iran and the rest of the world not to mess with America. “It's about time,” he said, “that we stopped worrying about what people think about us and say we're going to be respected again.… Isn't it time that never again will a dictator invade an American embassy and take our people hostage?”
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Reporters clamored for a Reagan response to Connally's newest broadside. They asked whether Connally was trying to “buy” the election. Reagan deadpanned, “Why, you know, we never use expressions like that under the 11th commandment.”
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Reagan could be a pretty good counterpuncher when he needed to be.

Still, Reagan's campaign remained disorganized. With so many of his old friends now gone from the plane, he was surrounded by strangers or junior staffers who did not have the stature necessary to tell him when he was botching things, such as by ducking the Des Moines debate. Gerald Ford took a swipe at Reagan for not debating, saying that “those who do not participate will be the losers.”
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O
N ONLY HIS THIRD
campaign swing since announcing his candidacy in early November, Reagan declared on December 14 that he would bypass the new Puerto Rico primary. The primary itself was not a big deal, but Reagan had proposed statehood for Puerto Rico in his November announcement and the Republicans there tended to be very conservative, so it should have been a chance for an early win. Reagan was forced to bow out now because his campaign had never gotten organized and didn't have the money to spend. His campaign was continuing to unravel. Reagan told befuddled reporters, “Well … the scheduling of my
appearances … are up to the people in the field who have much more knowledge of the political situation than I do. It's my campaign, but there is no way I can be as familiar as they are with where are the spots that I'm needed most in my own behalf or where they can do without me.”
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If Reagan's campaign was in trouble, Phil Crane's campaign was running on fumes. Crane had gone through new embarrassments involving his wife, Arlene. It seems the family dog bit a six-year-old boy and when the game warden showed up to take the dog away, she objected and was arrested.
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Crane's campaign office in northern Virginia resembled a ghost town. His pollster, Arthur Finkelstein, had left months earlier and was now aboard the Reagan campaign, although his talents were not being exploited. Finkelstein had been a key figure in 1976, when he helped orchestrate Reagan's campaign-saving comeback in North Carolina and then his utter crushing of Ford in the Texas primary, winning all one hundred delegates at stake.

Reagan had had a pollster since 1966, Dick Wirthlin, and no pollster wants another around to question his methodology, tactics, or strategy. Rumors circulated that Finkelstein had been brought aboard by Sears just to keep him from working for any other candidate. Indeed, George Bush had made a run at Finkelstein but nothing had come of it. It was hard to imagine the scruffy Jewish kid from Brooklyn and the proper preppy from Connecticut sitting down together. The only thing they would have had in common was an obsession with baseball.

As for Connally, he finally acceded to his manager Eddie Mahe's pleas to get into Iowa and start meeting real voters. Since day one, Mahe had been undercut by Connally's yes men in Texas. To save money, twenty-five people were let go from Connally's campaign staff in Arlington, Virginia, nine days before Christmas. The money would be devoted to a last-minute retail effort in Iowa, in a desperate attempt to catch up to the others. Connally's finance director was a little-known banker from Phoenix, Charles H. Keating Jr., but he was promoted to head of the Arlington office. Mahe kept his title but was forced to go on the road both with and without Connally to see what he could do to patch together the very operation Connally had resisted for a year. Mahe was right, but Connally's pride would not allow him to admit he'd been wrong, so he undercut his manager's authority each day.
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Connally's campaign had flaws too numerous to mention. Most obvious was his certainty that Kennedy would be nominated by the Democrats; second worst had been his belief that all he had to do was give speeches on national television or before large audiences.
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At some point, candidates must meet real people, if only to gain a better understanding that America does not look like the inside of a Houston country club.

Connally's strategy changed from day to day. The fifty-state strategy had been dumped. The late-starting retail effort in Iowa and New Hampshire was a joke. Everywhere Connally went in these two states, it was as if he found signs that read, “Bush was here first.” Or “Reagan was here first.” Or “Baker was here first.” There was no room in the GOP inn for Big John except for possibly in South Carolina.