Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (41 page)

“
John, would you really find Teddy Kennedy preferable to me?
”

T
he four remaining GOP candidates—George Bush, John Anderson, Phil Crane, and Ronald Reagan—met in snowy Chicago for what turned out to be a fiery and freewheeling debate just days before the Illinois primary.

For months, Anderson had been largely ignored by the others, who regarded him as a bit of an oddball. Now he was the front-runner in his home state—according to newspaper polls—and as such was drawing extensive media attention. As a measure of his newfound celebrity status, he picked up a Secret Service contingent and was flush with cash, which included a transfusion from the FEC. Fittingly, his Secret Service code name was “Miracle.”
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Crane, in contrast, had been denied FEC matching funds because of his poor primary performances. His campaign was broke, and he was simply not a factor by this point. He frankly told people he was only hanging around in case something befell Reagan.

That left Reagan, Bush, and Anderson as the real players in the ninety-minute Chicago barnburner. With no reporters and only a moderator, this was a free-flowing debate, especially as Bush and Anderson swung hard at each other. Bush, desperate to turn this back into a two-man race, aggressively tried to push Anderson out of the Republican mainstream and grab the middle for himself. Bush had been running television ads attacking Anderson for signing the direct-mail letter for NARAL, the pro-abortion group, and during the debate Anderson charged that Bush's commercials were filled with “half-truths,” which was “worse than a
lie.”
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Gesticulating, Bush pointed his finger at Anderson and hotly charged him with being disloyal to the party. Anderson angrily yelled at Bush not to point any fingers at him. Undeterred, Bush hammered Anderson's proposed fifty-cent-a-gallon tax on gasoline.
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Reagan, smiling, stayed above the fray. When he did get a chance to chime in, he referred back to the dramatic moment at Nashua. Addressing moderator Howard K. Smith, Reagan joked about having to wait to speak: “Thanks, Howard, I thought that not having bought the mike myself, I couldn't talk.” The live audience laughed.
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The Californian was relentless. When Anderson tried to attack Reagan over his proposal to tell the Ayatollah Khomeini to release the American hostages by a “date certain” or else, Reagan responded forcefully that the Iranians needed to know that the United States meant business. When Anderson referred to liberal senators George McGovern and Frank Church as “good men,” Reagan said, “You see, that's where we disagree. I don't think they're good men.”
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When discussing foreign policy, he blasted weak-willed U.S. politicians: “We seem to be only able to find human rights violations among allies.… We cozy up to and hug and kiss as he [Carter] did with Brezhnev—where no human rights exist at all. Let's thumb our nose at the Soviet Union.”
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When asked about a role for Henry Kissinger in a future Republican administration, Reagan mirthfully told the crowd he thought Kissinger had a bright future in academia.
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He also stated his objections to wage and price controls, asserting that they had never worked, even when the Roman emperor Diocletian 1,700 years earlier had threatened capital punishment to those who violated the law. Reagan said, “I'm the only one here old enough to remember it.” The crowd roared again and the debate stopped as Smith waited for the laughter to subside.
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As the nationally televised conflagration wound down, Smith asked each of the four candidates whether they could support the others if they were the nominee. It gave Reagan the opportunity to issue one of his best lines of the year.

Anderson and Crane said flatly that they could not support each other. Crane told Anderson he was in the wrong party and Anderson tartly wondered when the GOP started administering saliva tests. Bush said he could support anybody on the stage. Reagan fudged on whether he could support Anderson because of the rumors that the Illinois congressman might run in the general election as an independent if he failed to gain the Republican nomination. Anderson denied that he would run as a third-party candidate, but he also indicated that he could not support Reagan if he was the nominee. Several weeks earlier, Anderson had said he would vote for either Carter or Kennedy over any of the other Republicans, including the Gipper.
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Reagan turned to his fellow Illinoisan and deadpanned, “John, would you really find Teddy Kennedy preferable to me?”
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Anderson, almost never at a loss for words, was struck dumb for a moment, but the nine hundred people attending the debate at the Drake Hotel roared with laughter. Anderson finally grumbled something unfunny during the hilarity of the moment, but Reagan added, “I'm still waiting for John to say!”
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Asked whether he had a “message for Gerald Ford,” Reagan grinned and said, “Someone ought to point out if he's sitting in Palm Springs, it's snowing here!”
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When it was pointed out to Bush that both Anderson and Reagan had balked at supporting each other while he, Bush, had pledged to support whoever was the nominee, Bush picked sides and said of Reagan, “He's a good man.”
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For the first time in the campaign, Anderson was on the defensive, mostly over the charges that he was a Democrat in Republican clothing. He was forced to hold a press conference with the state GOP chairman so he could say with certainty that, yes, Anderson really was a Republican. In fact, some liberals who had abandoned Carter but couldn't stomach Kennedy were helping Anderson around the country. Anderson's own place of worship, the Evangelical Free Church, passed a resolution denouncing his position on abortion, calling on “Brother Anderson” to mend his ways.
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Anderson stuck mainly to the campuses, where he was welcomed like a rock star by the kids. Sometimes they chanted, “You've got to believe!”
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With his white hair and glasses, and propensity to lecture people, the fifty-eight-year-old Anderson walked and talked like a college professor. He quoted poets and philosophers, including Emerson. Anderson's message of a future of scarcity and his opposition to tax cuts and exploration for more oil was popular with the liberal elements of the academy. For them, Anderson was telling it the way it was. Except at Lewis and Clark College, where students wearing Reagan hats and buttons ambushed him.
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Reagan was anything but defensive, coming off his strong showing in the debate. The
Evans and Novak Political Report
said of the Gipper, “He has seemed like the Reagan of old, convincing a lot of skeptics.… His Illinois debate performance was superb; he was the clear winner—witty, quick, urbane.”
¹⁷

Reagan may have been doing well with Republican primary voters, but he still wasn't breaking through to the general population, according to a new poll in the
Chicago Sun-Times
. The survey showed that in a matchup against Carter, Reagan would get blown out in Illinois, 60–34. Bush was doing much better against Carter in Illinois, down only 42–36; Anderson was actually doing better than Carter in Illinois.
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Losing Illinois in the general election would be no small blow; Illinois, with eleven million residents, was the fifth-largest state in the country.

The polls must have been maddening to Bush. Most believed he would do better as the GOP standard bearer in the general election, but he couldn't get past Citizen Reagan or separate himself from Anderson.

A
S THE
I
LLINOIS PRIMARY
was steaming along, the vilest mass murderer in the nation's history—John Wayne Gacy of Chicago—was convicted for the slaying of thirty-three young men and boys. Within a matter of hours, Gacy was sentenced to death, which at least thirty-three families thought was too good for this monster. Thirteen psychiatrists had testified at the trial. Four said Gacy was sane, four said Gacy was insane, and four had no opinion. The thirteenth couldn't make up his mind. Gacy was sentenced to twelve death penalties as well as twenty-one consecutive life terms. The jury deliberated for just over two hours, apparently unconcerned with Gacy's mental state.
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The macabre crimes and sensational trial had gripped Chicago for months, mostly pushing the presidential candidates off the Windy City's front pages. Gacy had been involved in local Democratic politics and had actually once shared a platform with Rosalynn Carter. In the photo of the two, Gacy was clearly wearing an “S” lapel pin, issued by the U.S. Secret Service. It was a huge embarrassment and black eye for the agency, which was supposed to do complete background checks on people who got that close to their protectees.
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Earlier in the year, George Bush had refused Secret Service protection when it was offered to him, but now he was forced to change his mind. On the morning of March 15, the Puerto Rican terrorist group FALN (Armed Forces of National Liberation) took over Bush's campaign offices in New York for several hours, binding and gagging ten staffers. On the same day the terrorists invaded President Carter's campaign headquarters. FALN had detonated more than one hundred bombs in the United States over the previous six years, killing five people. Fortunately, the hostage crisis in each city was eventually quelled by local and federal law enforcement.
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Bush's son Jeb had already had death threats made against him while stumping in Puerto Rico. Finally and reluctantly, Bush acceded to his family's and his staff's insistence that he get the Secret Service protection.
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But the campaign staffers, undeterred by the fact that their lives had been in grave danger, simply went back to work. They had a race to win.

N
ATIONAL JOURNALISTS GATHERED IN
Washington for their annual Gridiron Dinner, at which they spoofed the high and mighty but rarely themselves. In one skit, Reagan was depicted as a forgetful Wizard of Oz.

The media had yet to add things up. Bush had lost by greater margins than expected in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, and Georgia. His win in Massachusetts was by a smaller margin than expected. Since Iowa, Bush had continually underperformed and Reagan had continually overperformed. Now, after leading handily in Illinois in late February, Bush had slipped to third place in the state; his numbers had fallen by 18 points in just two weeks, in the Chicago Tribune poll.
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The accumulated bad news for Bush was blowing into Illinois, but he vowed to stay in the race and “keep plugging away.”
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Many in the media had become mesmerized by “the politics of politics,” which was about polls and money and consultants and gossipy conversations over drinks into the wee hours of the morning. The Bush campaign excelled at this, whereas Reagan's Ed Meese, Dick Wirthlin, and Bill Casey, all teetotalers, turned in as soon as the Gipper did. Lyn Nofziger and some lesser staffers enjoyed the late-night repartee with the national media, but Bush's Jim Baker, Dave Keene, Pete Teeley, and Bob Teeter outgunned them in this department.

Less and less attention was being devoted to message. Reporters' near-obsession with the mechanics of politics—the “horse race”—led an exasperated Bush to proclaim he would answer no more questions about his campaign's tactics, because he was being hit badly for avoiding any discussion of issues. Indeed, the Bush campaign produced one of the odder television spots of the season. In it, Bush was in an elevator with a young reporter to whom he curtly said, “I'm no longer going to talk about polls and strategy. I'll talk about issues, and that's all I'll talk about with you.”
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Bush may have finally realized that issues were important, but his run of poor primary performances was hurting him even with members of the GOP establishment turned off by the conservative Reagan. The governor of Illinois, Jim Thompson, blew off Bush's request for an endorsement even though he'd been winking at Bush for the better part of a year. Thompson now told reporters that he'd seen Reagan's big wins and thought it would be better to stay out of the fight. Thompson called his confidants together and told them nothing could stop the Reagan express now and they'd better learn to live with that fact, despite their differences with the Gipper.

In Illinois, as in many other states, there was bad blood between the GOP establishment and the conservative rank and file. Thompson had invited Reagan to a private dinner at the Governor's Mansion, but at State Representative Don Totten's urging, Reagan turned down Thompson's invitation. In order to see the Gipper, Thompson sneaked into Reagan's suite on the ninth floor of the Drake Hotel just hours before the big debate.
²⁶

A curtain-raising story on Reagan ran on the front page of the
Chicago Tribune
. Although the article covered Reagan's prowess at public speaking, it featured a litany of quotes about Reagan's age. “Given the demands of the office, Reagan's age is a time bomb,” said presidential scholar Fred Greenstein. Barry Goldwater was quoted warning Reagan to slow down: “I just hope he doesn't kill himself trying to prove that he is young.”
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Just several months before, Reagan had been widely admonished for inactivity; now he was being criticized for being too active.

But he was having too much fun. At one stop, a woman displayed a youthful photo of Reagan from his movie days. She sighed to Reagan, “You sent this to me!” Reagan looked at the photo and deadpanned, “I was never that young.”
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Two years earlier, Reagan had gone to Eureka College for a reunion, where he was seated next to a wheelchair-bound elderly man who knew all about Reagan. Reagan deliberately dropped some papers so he could get a close look at the man's name tag and was mortified to discover that it was his roommate from college.
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