Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (43 page)

The old Wizard of Oz knew what he was doing. As long as he engaged Anderson in a left-right squabble, he was depriving Bush of both media attention and liberal votes that might have gone to him but were going to Anderson because Reagan was attacking him.

Anderson had slipped a bit in his own internal polls, so he flew off for one final tour of the state. He charged that Reagan was embracing “Coolidge-era economics” and went hard after the Californian on foreign policy and national defense, saying that Reagan was unnecessarily saber rattling.
⁵⁵

Reagan was not backing away from issues of foreign affairs. In fact, that same day, speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations in Chicago, he gave what Dick Allen, his adviser on global and national defense matters, touted as a “major foreign-policy address.” In the speech Reagan outlined his call for rebuilding the U.S. Navy and his support for an all-volunteer Army, provided that military salaries were raised enough to attract good people. He also called détente an “illusion” and tore into Carter's foreign policy, stating that it was marked with “vacillation, appeasement, and aimlessness” and that Carter was bringing shame to America. The audience warmly applauded Reagan.
⁵⁶

Reagan took questions from the crowd afterward. When asked about the Soviet Union, he said he would negotiate with the Soviets, but only from a position of strength. He called it his “grand strategy” based on three principles: that America was morally right and the Kremlin was morally wrong; that to have a strong military, America must have a strong economy; and that the way to peace was through strength.
⁵⁷

The media noted once again that Reagan was in fine form. He had worked hard on the speech with Allen, having met for three hours in Atlanta with seven experts, including Fred C. Iklé, former head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. It was only the second time in the campaign that the text of a Reagan address was distributed to the media beforehand.
⁵⁸

Bush, however, was unmoved by the Reagan address. Challenging his opponent's lack of specifics, he said sourly, “Let's call it the Reagan secret plan for ending the Iranian hostage crisis,” an allusion to Richard Nixon's secret plan in 1968 to end the Vietnam War.
⁵⁹

The day hadn't started well for Bush. In Chicago, several reporters had asked him when he was going to drop out of the race. Things didn't look good heading into the primary.

O
N PRIMARY DAY
, M
ARCH
18, John Anderson came crashing back to earth. Reagan won again, taking just under 50 percent, with Anderson at a disappointing 37 percent. Bush had collapsed to only 11 percent.
⁶⁰
He had done worse than expected. He spent the day campaigning in Wisconsin, where he was heckled by a man who accused him of orchestrating murders while serving as head of the CIA.
⁶¹

Anderson, voting in his home precinct in Rockford, told reporters that voting for himself made him feel “kind of funny.”
⁶²
Apparently, hundreds of thousands of GOP primary voters shared that view.

More than one million people voted in the Illinois GOP primary, up nearly half from 1976. Reagan was helped by the influx of conservative Democrats. He took 39 delegates and Anderson only 26. Bush got a paltry 2 delegates in Illinois. Reagan was now ahead in the delegate tabulation with 206 to Bush's 47 and Anderson's 39.
⁶³
The only bad news of the day was that Reagan's Don Totten lost to an Anderson delegate. But across the rest of the state, Anderson had been swamped by Reagan's “rednecks,” as Anderson derisively referred to Illinois conservatives.
⁶⁴

Reagan and his rednecks had a better feel for Illinois than did Anderson and the elites of the daily newspapers. The
Chicago Tribune
and the
Chicago Sun-Times
endorsed Anderson and the rest of the state's daily newspapers endorsed Bush. Not one daily newspaper in the state endorsed Reagan.
⁶⁵

The debate in Chicago had been crucial for Reagan. According to Dick Wirthlin, 52 percent of Republicans said Reagan had won the debate, 14 percent said Anderson, and only 3 percent said Bush. “Bush was the big loser,” said Reagan's pollster. “People knew where [Reagan] stood on the issues. In the debate, however, they saw a different kind of man, a warm human being with a touch of humor. That's where Reagan picked up the extra votes that made this contest come out the way it did.”
⁶⁶

Reagan had been born in Tampico, Illinois, growing up in various parts of the state; yet this primary and this campaign were not about where Reagan was from, but where he was going and where he wanted to take the country. He pledged to his supporters to keep going and not relax.

Anderson tried to say it was now a two-man race between him and Reagan—and since Reagan could not win in the fall against Carter, Anderson claimed he was the GOP's logical nominee. Losing his home state so badly, though, was a devastating blow. Jim Baker, while not happy with Bush's distant third, saw the silver lining in Anderson's not being able to win on his home court. Bush promised to make a last stand in upcoming Connecticut.

O
N THE
D
EMOCRATIC SIDE
, Carter routed Kennedy in Illinois, 65–30 percent.
⁶⁷
Carter took 165 delegates to only 14 for Kennedy.
⁶⁸
Mayor Byrne's endorsement had only hurt Kennedy's already faltering campaign. She was radioactive, and all of her endorsed local candidates lost that night as well. Kennedy had also been endorsed by Albert Shanker, head of the half-million-strong American Federation of Teachers.
⁶⁹
Shanker's support was not the nuclear shot in the arm Kennedy had hoped for in Illinois. Kennedy had lost 2–1 among Irish and among Catholics.
⁷⁰
He never had a prayer in Illinois.

Kennedy had now lost more than a dozen Democratic contests while winning almost zilch. Amazingly, he was performing so poorly in primaries while Carter was performing so poorly in the Oval Office. Despite unveiling plan after plan, President Carter had done nothing to get a hold on the dreadful economy. Interest rates had lurched up again, this time to 18.25 percent; mortgage rates were out of control.
⁷¹
Carter attacked the economy as half a budget-balancer and half-Keynesian. He proposed a ten-cent-per-gallon tax on gasoline, elimination of Saturday mail delivery, some cuts in the federal budget, and a mishmash of regulations, but also large increases in social spending and some largesse for the cities.

On foreign affairs, too, Carter was undermining his own strength. In a White House press conference, the president had told startled reporters and even more startled Kremlinologists that the United States would abide by SALT II, though the treaty had yet to be ratified by the Senate. A poll conducted by Lou Harris in mid-March showed that nearly half of all Americans thought Carter was “a failure” on the Iranian hostage crisis. His numbers had dropped precipitously in just a little over a month. A huge majority, 71 percent, said America had been made to look “weak and helpless” by the Ayatollah Khomeini.
⁷²

Yet although he tried, Kennedy couldn't capitalize on these mistakes. The Republicans were determined not to miss the same opportunity in the general election.

R
EPORTERS WERE BEGINNING TO
write pieces speculating on Reagan's running mate, a sure sign that the press believed Bush and Anderson would soon throw
in the towel. The usual suspects were being mentioned: Don Rumsfeld, Howard Baker, and Bill Brock, among others. Reagan's only stipulations at this point were that his running mate must be younger and agree with him philosophically.

And yet Reagan still hadn't captured the hearts of all Republicans. GOP voters had flirted with Bush, Ford, Connally, and Anderson and still had not set their hearts on Reagan. When queried by NBC whether anyone would emerge to stop his drive for the nomination, Reagan calmly replied, “They'll find someone.”
⁷³

Like the tormented King Tantalus in Greek mythology, the more Reagan reached for the object of his desire, the more it eluded his grasp. In a New York Times poll, by a 52–27 margin, Republicans still favored Ford over Reagan as their standard bearer against Carter in the fall election.
⁷⁴

Reagan had miles of primaries to go—and, for his fellow Americans, promises to keep.

“
Nobody said it would be easy. Nobody was right.
”

F
resh off his big win in Illinois, Ronald Reagan jetted to Brooklyn for a day of campaigning, but it didn't go according to plan. Hecklers chanting, “Reagan wants war!” greeted him. The Gipper shot back, “I'll tell you, you jokers. If I did want war, you're where I'd start it!”
¹
Reagan had been in the Big Apple only a couple of hours and he was already starting to sound like a New Yorker.

He was welcomed more warmly later in Queens and Manhattan. Reagan had often been critical of New York City, but his initial strength in the Empire State could be found, perhaps surprisingly, in the city rather than upstate. The reason was that in New York City, the GOP “has tended to be more conservative as a counter to crime and decaying neighborhoods,” in the words of the
New York Times
.
²

Nancy Reagan got a taste of campaigning New York–style. State Senator John Calandra told her he would do everything he could to help her husband, “even if I'm invited to tea in a whorehouse.”
³

While campaigning in the city, Reagan praised Mayor Ed Koch, a Democrat, for his efforts to root out corruption, cut spending, and reduce crime. Koch in turn praised Reagan while complaining about the “Arabists” around the Carter administration. Carter's campaign chairman, the normally calm Texan Robert Strauss, referred to Carter's Jewish critics as “emotionally hysterical nuts.”
⁴
Relations between Jewish Americans and the Carter White House were worsening. Vice President Walter Mondale spoke at an event in New York “attended by prominent
Jews and was roundly booed virtually every time he mentioned Carter's name,” the
Washington Post
reported.
⁵

Anti-Carter sentiment offered an opening to Reagan, who expanded his message while stumping in New York state. As he talked about support for Israel and the plight of the inner cities, it was clear to reporters that he was already turning his attention to the fall contest. Reagan called for a partnership between government and private industry to help alleviate youth unemployment and said that any attempt to cut government “must not come at the expense of the poor and the disadvantaged.”
⁶
He also called for increased funding for Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America as a way to undermine the Soviets—remarks pleasing to Americans of Eastern European descent, many of them traditional Democratic voters.
⁷

In Syracuse, Reagan hammered Carter over his handling of the hostages in Iran. Up to this point, he'd pulled his punches on this issue. No more. “There must come a time, if we are to get them back, when we tell them [Iran] this is the end of the road,” Reagan declared.
⁸
He had met in private with the mother of a hostage and came away disgusted when she told him President Carter would not meet with her.
⁹

While Reagan turned an eye to Carter, the president's campaign began to plot its assault against Reagan. One column by James “Scotty” Reston of the
New York Times
, who frequently savaged Reagan, reviewed how the Carter White House feared all the Republican contenders except Reagan, who was “Carter's favorite opponent.… Seldom in the history of American politics has a party out of power shown so much generosity to a President in such deep difficulty.”
¹⁰
Pat Caddell, Carter's pollster, was bragging that the president would not only hold on to his base in the fall but would also pick up a sizable number of Republican voters alienated by the “extremist” Reagan.

By this point most national political journalists were writing off George Bush's chances. Bush had staggered out of Illinois, stunned at the Reagan avalanche that had buried him. He'd flown to New York with no press in tow; they had been disinvited from his plane, as he didn't want to hash over the results of Illinois.

Many others who had dismissed Reagan were starting to recognize that his chances for the nomination looked good. A sure sign that the winds were shifting came when power junkie Henry Kissinger called Bill Casey and sanctimoniously told the campaign manager that he “would do nothing to hurt the governor.” Casey, unmoved, queried why, then, had Kissinger stepped in front of the television cameras just a couple days earlier and urged Jerry Ford to get into the race? Kissinger answered sheepishly that he had done what he had to do.
¹¹
Kissinger had
flirted with John Connally the year before, when many thought Connally would be the Republican nominee. Now, with Reagan ascending, Kissinger deigned to say he could serve in a Reagan administration—as secretary of state, of course. As always, Kissinger's most important constituency was … himself.

Casey took control of the Reagan campaign. To be sure, he made missteps, such as telling ABC, NBC, and CBS after the fact that he'd canceled the campaign's charter plane, leaving three camera crews stranded in Atlanta.
¹²
Staffers joked behind his back about his forgetfulness, his wardrobe, his dandruff, and his dated knowledge of politics.