Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (34 page)

The three didn't know it, but Reagan had just that day received a letter from Paul Laxalt relaying conservatives' renewed complaints against Sears.

They sat down in the third-floor suite, the air thick with tension. Reagan was not smiling. He was holding a sheet of paper. Also present was the mysterious Casey, who said little. Reagan started by saying, “Well, fellas, I've been thinking about a change.”
⁸⁶
With that he handed the paper to Sears. It was a press release written by Hannaford announcing the “resignations” of the three. Hannaford had been so intent on secrecy that he kept his notes and the drafts of the release locked in his briefcase.
⁸⁷

Sears read it and then said softly, “I'm not surprised,” but in fact he was. He handed it to Black. Instead of reading it, Black put the press release face down on the coffee table and said, “Wait a minute—before I read this, I quit.”
⁸⁸
The in-house coup was over in a matter of minutes. Lake and Black were devastated but they felt they owed Sears their loyalty. As they left the Reagans' suite, Charlie kissed Mrs. Reagan.
⁸⁹
So did Lake, who also muttered bitterly, “Governor, Ed Meese manipulates you, he manipulates you.”
⁹⁰

As Sears departed, Nancy Reagan asked, “Can we be friends?” He replied ominously, “That depends on you. If we have to defend ourselves then we will defend ourselves.”
⁹¹

T
HOSE INVOLVED IN THE
plot to oust Sears had done the impossible in politics: they'd kept a secret. Reagan had agonized for a month over the problems, only talking with a trusted few.

Sears was truly stunned at his firing. He had thought he would be asked to stay as the campaign's chief strategist, with Casey taking over the day-to-day operations. But he had said only a few days earlier about the prospect of Casey's taking over, “You're talking about someone coming in as a co-equal, that's just not going to happen.”
⁹²
In fact, it had been reported that Sears had already threatened to quit if Casey joined the campaign.

Reagan, supposedly the passive instrument of John Sears, had concocted much of the scheme to fire his manager after talking with his son Mike several days earlier.
⁹³
Reagan had been aware of how the media saw him and Sears and he didn't like it one bit. He wrote one supporter, “I've read all the eastern press … that Sears is pulling the strings and I'm the puppet.”
⁹⁴

Sears, Lake, and Black went quickly to their rooms, packed, and left the state. Casey watched from a window as they walked across the parking lot to their car. John Sears had discovered too late that the fault was not in the star but in the underling.

Sears's and Lake's principal assistants quit in a show of loyalty. Black's assistant, Neal Peden, assumed she'd been fired and left with the others. She was
delighted to learn later that she had not been fired after all and was asked to return to the campaign.

After the firings, Linda Gosden, Lake's aide, took it upon herself to confront Nancy Reagan in a hallway and scream several obscenities at her.
⁹⁵
Peden, an attractive Mississippian and loyal Reaganite, said she was “horrified” when Gosden regaled the others over her confrontation with Mrs. Reagan.
⁹⁶
Though her father had known Reagan in Hollywood, Gosden had a history of rubbing the Reagans the wrong way. Several days earlier, after spotting Bill Casey in an elevator, she pointedly asked Reagan about the matter just before the candidate was to give a speech. “It was not a good time to bring up the subject of staff tensions,” Hannaford later wrote. “The conversation upset him, something that was noticed in his speech delivery by longtime Reagan-watchers among the news people covering the event.”
⁹⁷

Meese was not in the room for the execution because he, like others in the conspiracy, was busy making phone calls around the country to Reaganites and reporters, “letting them know what was happening.”
⁹⁸
A list of VIPs was assembled for Reagan to call that afternoon. It included William F. Buckley, Laxalt, and Jack Kemp.
⁹⁹
Talking points were compiled for the Reagan team as they hurriedly made their calls.
¹⁰⁰

Hannaford had aides deliver Reagan's bombshell to the flabbergasted national media at 3
P.M.
in the form of a press release, just moments after the triple firing. Two hours later Hannaford held a press conference. He said the resignations were the result of a need for “a sharp reduction in expenses and a restructuring of our organization.”
¹⁰¹
All were under strict orders not to cast aspersions on Sears, Lake, and Black. The three knew too much and were media favorites, and the campaign did not need to create any fresh problems for Reagan.

Lyn Nofziger bitingly said of Sears's firing, “They finally got Rasputin, didn't they?”
¹⁰²
Appropriately, the foreign-policy adviser, Allen, called their successful coup a “Leninist plot.”
¹⁰³

William J. Casey would immediately replace Sears as campaign chairman, but a triumvirate of Casey, Meese, and Wirthlin would in fact run the renewed campaign, coordinating with Laxalt. Hannaford would temporarily replace Lake until a full-time spokesman, Ed Gray, could be secured.

Years later, Meese reviewed Sears's undoing. “I think John was unable to move beyond the thinking of the Nixon campaign in 1968,” in which “decisions were made in smoke-filled rooms. John … didn't communicate. He would do things without telling the Governor.” Meese added, “He didn't like Lyn [Nofziger] being around, he didn't like Mike [Deaver] being around, he didn't want me around.”
¹⁰⁴
Reagan had his own take on Sears in a conversation with Theodore White: “I don't fault his ability at political analysis, but he wanted to do everything.… Morale was at zero … There was … a feeling that I was just kind of a spokesman for John Sears.”
¹⁰⁵

Casey had never run a national campaign. In fact, he had only performed minor tasks in the Eisenhower and Nixon campaigns. But he had been the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and held various other posts during the Nixon administration. Most important, he had Reagan's vote of confidence.
¹⁰⁶

The only apparent problem with Casey was that no one ever seemed to understand what he was saying. He quickly picked up—behind his back—the moniker “Mumbles.”
¹⁰⁷
Another benefit to selecting the balding and gray-haired Casey was that he looked much older than the Gipper, though in fact he was two years younger.

Not wasting time, other campaigns began to make overtures toward Sears, including, ironically, Dave Keene in the Bush operation. It had only been a year since Sears had hung Keene out to dry, prompting the young campaign aide to angrily leave Reagan for Bush. Politics does indeed make strange bedfellows.

W
ITH HIS REMARKABLE COMEBACK
in New Hampshire, Ronald Reagan had staved off what had seemed his sure political death. At the same time, in one swift action, he had rid himself of the source of so many of the mistakes that had hampered his campaign: John Sears. He still had won fewer than two dozen delegates and had 976 to go before he'd have enough to claim the Republican nomination at the Detroit convention in July. Certainly a long road lay ahead, and many hurdles remained. But he was finally off and running.

Only two days before the New Hampshire primary, Reagan had told listeners, “This isn't a campaign anymore. It's is a crusade to save this nation.”
¹⁰⁸

Millions of Americans seemed to agree.

“
You fellas are going to call me whatever you call me and I have a hunch that you are going to settle on ‘ front-runner.’
”

T
he Columbia Broadcasting System, known as the “Tiffany Network” for its high standards of programming, made some news of its own in February 1980. The network announced with poignant fanfare that the grand old man of the
CBS Evening News
, Walter Cronkite, who had become permanent anchorman in 1962, would retire in 1981, to be replaced by longtime reporter Dan Rather.
¹
A torch was passing for a generation that had grown up with “Uncle Walter.” Cronkite had been voted time and again “the most trusted man in America.” Cronkite was so revered that in 1972 the floundering Democratic nominee, George McGovern, had pleaded with him to become his vice-presidential running mate. Cronkite wisely demurred. After March of 1981, America would no longer hear Cronkite's signature sign-off, “And that's the way it is.”

Cronkite, a seafaring aficionado with a summer home on Martha's Vineyard, cherished his sailboat,
On Assignment
, and on more than one afternoon he would depart CBS headquarters in New York, saying, “If anyone asks where I am, tell them I'm on assignment.” For millions, Cronkite had been their captain, their calming presence, their voice of reason during the storms of the 1960s. Many remembered his hours upon hours of steady coverage of the assassination and funeral of President Kennedy; only once had he broken on air, slightly, when first announcing the death of his friend on the afternoon of November 22, 1963. Many others recalled his unprecedented step in the wake of the Tet Offensive in 1968: he editorialized on air against the Vietnam War. Lyndon Johnson remorsefully reflected that if he'd lost Cronkite, he'd “lost Middle America.” Johnson shortly withdrew from the 1968 presidential campaign.
²

In the morning, American kids' touchstone on CBS was Captain Kangaroo, played by the gray-haired and mustachioed Bob Keeshan, and in the evening, their parents' lodestone was Cronkite, who also had gray hair and a moustache. They served as reassuring father figures in an uncertain time

W
ITHIN A MATTER OF
hours after its primary, New Hampshire's citizens were heaving sighs of relief as the quadrennial political stalkers left for home. Finally, no more volunteer door knockers, no more phone calls at all hours, no more junk mail. At the now abandoned Reagan headquarters in Manchester, coffeepots were still half-full and uneaten pastries were strewn about.

Calm had returned to the Granite State.

Except at the
Nashua Telegraph
, where they were still smarting over the debate disaster. Angry readers flooded the newspaper with letters, denouncing Jon Breen for being rude to Ronald Reagan. The paper published a series of post-debate editorials telling its side of the story. It revealed that Jerry Carmen and John Sears had conspired to install another moderator, George Roberts, Speaker of the State House, to replace Breen should the need arise. It was becoming clear how the cunning Reagan folks had set up poor George Bush in Nashua.

Never at a loss for a shiv, Carmen said that primary day in New Hampshire must have been “too cold for silk stockings.”
³
The 6'3” Bush buttonholed the 5'6” Carmen and said he didn't like what Carmen was saying about him.
⁴
Nothing doing. It was impossible to intimidate Carmen and he poured it on Bush with even more glee.

G
EORGE
W
ILL HAD THE
final say on the soon-to-be legendary Nashua debate. “Americans are getting angry and seeking authenticity, and Reagan gave them authentic anger.… When Reagan is aroused, he is the most effective campaigner in living memory.”
⁵

Reagan left New Hampshire on a high. Before he headed on to continue his newly resurgent campaign, he delivered a message to the media, who had been so surprised by his landslide victory. Smiling broadly, he told reporters, “You fellas are going to call me whatever you call me and I have a hunch that you are going to settle on ‘front-runner.’”
⁶

There was more good news for the Reagan team: the Secret Service's mascot had been found. “Bobo,” the mechanical monkey that played Willie Nelson's hit song “On the Road Again,” had been “lost” several weeks earlier, said campaign aide Cindy Tapscott. In fact, Reagan and two young aides, Colin Clark and Mark Hatfield Jr., had engaged in their own little prank: they had kidnapped Bobo. Clark
sent the Secret Service a ransom note signed by the “Bobo Liberation Army.” The agents couldn't find Bobo—because Reagan, in on the gag, had mirthfully hid the stuffed monkey in his suitcase.
⁷

Reagan may have been laughing, but establishment Republicans were tearing their hair out over his rejuvenated campaign. They feared that Reagan, without Sears's moderating presence, would run wildly to the right and become a second Barry Goldwater, bringing a crashing defeat for the party in the fall. They thought George Bush and Howard Baker had blown it in New Hampshire and the only way to stop Reagan now was to get Gerald Ford into the race. Ford himself started making noises about coming in—again.

Bush and Baker saw things differently. Bush showcased his sense of humor in acknowledging the New Hampshire setback, saying that although he'd taken it “on the chin,” in truth it seemed “I took it a little lower.”
⁸
But he brushed himself off and Bush gamely challenged Reagan, saying, “I'm going out there and wear him down.”
⁹
Clearly, Bush still thought that Reagan didn't have the stamina for the campaign trail and that it was all some kind of athletic competition rather than a contest of ideas and leadership.