Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (49 page)

When they were apart, Reagan wrote her notes and letters almost on a daily basis. Little drawings, too. One was a self-portrait showing him shedding tears over their separation. The caption read, “Look what happens when I'm without you. Your Roommate.” He also wrote, “Maybe that job in Wash. wouldn't be so bad—you'd be right upstairs.” He signed off as “Special Agent 33.” Reagan considered it his lucky number, as it was his jersey number in college.
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By the last score of the twentieth century, all “first ladies” (the term may have been coined in 1863 by the British writer William Russell when describing Mary Todd Lincoln) were supposed to have pet causes.
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“Causes” had started with Eleanor Roosevelt but had died down with Bess Truman and Mamie Eisenhower. Then Jackie Kennedy made the refurbishing of the White House her cause. That was it. Lady Bird Johnson's cause was “beautification,” Pat Nixon's was literacy, and Betty Ford's was breast cancer. Rosalynn Carter went a step further than her predecessors, taking an active role in policymaking in her husband's administration to the point of sitting in on cabinet meetings. She also had a private lunch on Tuesdays with the president to discuss policy.
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But Nancy Reagan had no cause except the cause of her husband. When Reagan was asked what his wife's main interest would be in his White House if he
was elected, he replied, “Me, first.”
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The elites and feminists were truly appalled that Mrs. Reagan didn't have a cause. Why, it was like saying that you preferred California wine to French wine. It was just simply not done, unacceptable, unsophisticated, and offensive to modern sensibilities.

Mrs. Carter made clear her differences with Nancy Reagan: “There was no way I could stay home and pour coffee and tea.”
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The divergence between the two men—and women—could not have been greater.

Reagan stepped in, ever the gentleman, to defend his wife. “I'm happy to say she would consider her first responsibility being Mrs. Reagan.” He then pointed out that she had been involved in a foster grandparents program in California and had raised money for the families of Vietnam POWs.
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Reagan zinged President Carter on the subject: “I think Nancy would find things of that kind to do, but she wouldn't attend cabinet meetings.”
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“
Voodoo economics.
”

I
t was in Pennsylvania where George Bush would make another assault on the formidable Mount Reagan. The state's difficult political terrain wasn't about to stop the stubborn Bush from trying to reach the summit and win the eighty-three GOP delegates at stake. Because John Anderson's campaign had not been able to land its candidate on Pennsylvania's Republican primary ballot, Bush was getting his long-hoped-for chance at a one-on-one against Ronald Reagan on neutral ground.

Bush wasn't ready to concede the race to Reagan. He was fighting tooth and nail to mount a comeback in Pennsylvania, devoting fourteen days to campaigning exclusively in the Keystone State. His campaign bought half-hour slots on local television stations to broadcast “Meet George Bush” extravaganzas in an attempt to flesh out what Bush stood for. He went after Reagan hard, claiming “jingoistic” comments by the Gipper over evacuating Cubans who wanted to flee Castro. Bush wanted to make clear how and where he differed with Reagan on the issues. “That was something I wasn't willing to do before,” he said. “I made a mistake [by not doing it] months ago.”
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Bush had won the support of the GOP state party chairman, old friend and fellow moderate Elsie Hillman, who, despite her breeding, had a tendency to say nasty things about Reagan to the media.
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A young liberal Republican, Jim Coyne, a candidate for Congress, was part of a coterie of state politicians working hard to defeat Reagan.
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Overall, however, Bush's support among elected officials in Pennsylvania was slim. The popular governor and lieutenant governor, Dick Thorn-burgh and William Scranton, though ideologically closer to Bush than Reagan,
wisely decided to stay neutral, knowing how popular Reagan had grown in the state over the years.
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Pennsylvania was in many ways a microcosm of America. It was urban and rural, industrial and white-collar, sophisticated and simple, traditional and ethnic, nouveau riche and old-money. It had rivers and mountains, farmers and bond traders, colleges and cows, professional sports, halls of fame, skyscrapers, and grain silos. Like most of America, it was heavily Democratic yet attitudinally conservative.

The country was in a full-blown recession by now, but few states were as bad off as Pennsylvania. It was falling apart at the seams. The coal and steel industries, once the pride of the state, were mostly closed. Unemployment was rampant. The infrastructure was crumbling—roads and bridges were badly in need of repair. The cities were crime-ridden and filthy. The confluence of three rivers in Pittsburgh was a septic tank of grunge and waste. Years of neglect, corruption, and decay had taken their toll, and Pennsylvania's young citizens were fleeing for the Sun Belt, hoping to find opportunity. Farm prices in Pennsylvania were dropping even as grocery costs were going up. President Carter's secretary of agriculture, Bob Bergland, was scheduled to meet with the Pennsylvania Farm Association, which was composed of a number of Republicans. When he discovered this, Bergland refused to meet with the Republican farmers. This did not sit well with the rest of the farm community.
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Real wages had declined sharply across the country, and Carter's economists forecast high inflation through most of the 1980s. They seemed to have no consistent answer for the out-of-control price spiral. Americans' purchasing power had dropped an alarming 7.3 percent since April 1979. The New York Stock Exchange was down to 778, having plunged 14 percent in one month, one of the steepest declines in history.
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Everything was either too expensive or in short supply or both. The national mood had sunk even further. An amazing 81 percent of Americans thought their country was in real trouble, the highest it had ever been in the history of the Yankelovich polling company.
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W
HILE
B
USH WAS DEVOTING
his energies to Pennsylvania, many observers had already counted him out. Names were being floated as candidates for Reagan's running mate. The media made much of the selection because of Reagan's age; conservatives considered the issue crucial as well, but for them it was a matter of ideology.

The name that reporters most frequently mentioned was their favorite, Howard Baker, with the rationale that he would help in the border states. The Reagans
were fond of the well-respected Tennessean, but Paul Laxalt knew that with conservatives, the moderate Baker was a nonstarter, especially because he had supported the Panama Canal treaties.

Laxalt harbored his own ambitions for the number-two slot. He was Nancy Reagan's favorite, but he made little political sense as a running mate. Laxalt was from the West, like Reagan; Laxalt was as conservative as Reagan; and Nevada had only three electoral votes, which Reagan was sure to take anyway. Also, the libertine nature of the state, exemplified by its gambling and legalized prostitution, made “Reagan's Best Friend” a problematic choice at best. Rumors of Laxalt's ties to shady characters, including Howard Hughes, were unfounded, but they posed a potential political risk for Reagan nonetheless.

Conservative outsiders were pushing Jack Kemp, but Reagan insiders winced because they viewed the hyperkinetic and voluble forty-four-year-old as uncontrollable. Also, the idea of a ticket that featured a former movie star with a former football star offended some Reaganites' sensibilities. Even worse, nasty but baseless homosexual rumors had dogged Kemp from the time when he'd interned in Reagan's gubernatorial offices in Sacramento in the 1960s. These objections did not stop a group of starstruck New Right supporters from creating a draft committee to “Back Jack,” with the winking support of Kemp's congressional office.
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Bill Simon was another possibility. He had governmental experience, was a Roman Catholic, and was a close friend of Bill Casey. Gerald Ford, however, was attempting to blackball Simon over offenses from four years earlier when Simon was in Ford's cabinet.
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Other names bandied about included Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, RNC chairman Bill Brock, temperamental former Nixon and Ford aide Don Rumsfeld, and a handful of moderate senators and governors.

Some guessed that Reagan wouldn't pick anyone at all. Speculation swirled in Washington that he would throw the convention open to the delegates and let them decide who should be his VP, just as Adlai Stevenson had done at the Democratic convention in 1956.

A name rarely heard in the running-mate discussions was that of George Bush. He was low or nonexistent on most lists—especially those of Ron and Nancy Reagan. There was just too much lingering hostility and bad blood. That antagonism would only intensify in Pennsylvania.

T
HE MAYOR OF
P
HILADELPHIA
, Bill Green, owed Ted Kennedy dozens of favors plus interest. Green ducked repeated entreaties to pay Teddy back before he finally came out and endorsed the senator. It was a significant if belated boost.
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Kennedy
also picked up the support of several important labor unions. He was in motion for the first time since winning New York and Connecticut and was undoubtedly helped by the fact that Carter had not been to Philadelphia once since winning the state in 1976. There was not much brotherly love for Brother Carter in April 1980.

John Anderson attempted a fool's errand of trying to mount a write-in effort in Pennsylvania. He seemed to be talking himself into the third-party effort, telling reporters that he would disappoint so many who had voted and contributed and who believed that “they thought John Anderson was different.” The Harvard-educated pol told reporters he hadn't yet completed his “ratiocination,” which sent them scurrying for their pocket dictionaries.
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It didn't seem to matter to Anderson that several years earlier, in a debate with former senator Gene McCarthy, he had criticized McCarthy for running as a third-party candidate in 1976 and had forcefully defended the “two-party system.”
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Reagan, meanwhile, was coming under increasing scrutiny. The “gaffe issue” was growing. He claimed that Vietnam vets did not qualify under the GI Bill for benefits, a statement he later had to retract. Reagan took responsibility for his mistake, though two retired, high-ranking officers had in fact told him otherwise.
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He joked “that having only been a captain himself he figured they were right.”
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But as reporters pushed, Reagan got testy, saying their preoccupation with his verbal mistakes was the result of “journalistic incest.”
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Several days earlier, CBS had done an extensive report about a claim Reagan had made regarding the size of Alaska's proven oil reserves. Reagan did not back away on this question, charging, “They were doing exactly what they accused me of doing.… [They] went out and found some source that would give them a different answer and they then took that source as an absolute guarantee.”
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CBS also claimed that Reagan exaggerated the size of the 1963 Kennedy tax cuts and the extent to which the federal payroll had grown under Carter. Reagan, in turn, took a swipe at the network, saying that his figures were “not entirely [correct] but more correct than CBS.”
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The truth was, however, that the story nailed Reagan on several items, showing where he was just plain wrong.

Reagan and his men had gotten along well with many in the media, including ABC and NBC, but less so with CBS, which they believed had an institutional liberal bias against the Gipper. This particular story was assembled by a longtime Reagan basher, Bill Plante. His six-minute piece ended with him speculating on Reagan's intelligence: “Does it really matter? To some, it's a sign that Reagan isn't smart enough for the job he seeks.”
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The strain of the campaign trail got to all the candidates, and Reagan was not immune. Some were bothered more than others. Carter easily showed displeasure with reporters and his staff. Bush was almost unfailingly polite, as was Kennedy. Reagan for the most part had a superb temperament, but even he had his moments. On a bus during the Connecticut primary, Reagan wanted to read a newspaper before meeting with some reporters. Why? “I want to see what the bastards are saying so I can protect myself. You can sure tell when you're in hostile territory.”
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The
Los Angeles Times
published an extensive account in which Reagan's claims as governor were challenged. Reagan had often done battle with the
Times
, but this piece was symptomatic of the growing scrutiny Reagan faced as the front-runner. A Reagan aide patronizingly explained away one gaffe: “He read that in
Reader's Digest
. He reads everything he can get his hands on and he remembers this stuff. Unfortunately nobody has been checking it out for him.”
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Ed Meese saw the growing problem and told reporters that he would ensure that Reagan's team would review everything “with a fine-tooth comb” before showing it to the governor.
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The gaffe difficulty wended its way up the food chain to Paul Laxalt. Laxalt was no spin doctor. He said simply, “I think it's a problem. It's going to have to be met and it's going to have to be met factually.”
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