Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (53 page)

The failure in the Iranian desert underscored one of Reagan's main campaign themes: the need for upgraded military strength. It turned out that the helicopters deployed in the mission were ancient and shoddy—this at a time when Carter was again trying to cut the military budget. When the U.S. Navy asked the White House for replacements for the aircraft lost in Desert One, it was rebuffed.
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U.S. News & World Report
said of the failed rescue operation that Reagan was the “big political winner.”
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The big political loser may have been John Anderson;
Time
and
Newsweek
had planned cover stories anticipating his third-party run, but he was booted off by the huge Desert One story.

The boost of support Carter had received soon sank in the quicksand of public opinion. House Speaker Tip O'Neill told President Carter over breakfast, “You seem snakebit.” Carter, always awkward in the face of O'Neill's Irish bluntness, sat in stony silence.
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R
EAGAN MADE A QUICK
swing through Tennessee, where he picked up the endorsement of Governor Lamar Alexander.
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While in Tennessee, Reagan was expected to say nice things about Howard Baker and nothing bad about the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

Four years earlier, he had been scorched on the eve of the Tennessee primary for suggesting that he would “look at” selling the multibillion-dollar federal project. To Reagan, the New Deal–era electrification venture was a boondoggle, but to thousands of locals, it was an icon of “good government” activism that had raised them up from wretched poverty. In a surprise, he ended up losing the Tennessee and Kentucky primaries to Gerald Ford by hair-thin margins, and most felt the furor over his remarks was the reason. In 1980, Reagan—once burnt, twice smart—addressed the issue right off the bat, telling a small crowd that he “had no intention of selling” the TVA. “I thought we might as well get that settled,” he said with a grin.
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Still, the Tennessee tour didn't go smoothly. First, the always punctual Reagan was a half hour late for a rally of three hundred fans who awaited his arrival; to make matters worse, he then ducked into a one-hour meeting with campaign advisers. It was bad advance work all the way around. The campaign event took place at the Stage Door Lounge, which was too small, meaning that influential Republicans had to be turned away. The local media were also kept at arm's
length, and Reagan got poor press reports as a result.
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Clearly, the frenetic pace of the campaign was taxing his campaign staff.

A
T A PRESS CONFERENCE
at the National Press Club in Washington, Anderson formally announced his third-party pursuit of the presidency and said that it would be called the National Unity Campaign for John Anderson. During the press conference he blasted Reagan, calling him a “dangerous” man.
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He released his fifty-six GOP delegates and returned to the FEC $307,000 in unspent matching funds.
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The Reagan and Carter camps were alarmed, as both saw Anderson with the potential to take voters away from them in the fall. But those in Bush's camp were thrilled. For months, they had groused that Anderson had been taking moderate GOP voters from Bush even though Anderson never had a realistic chance of winning the nomination. For the last round of primaries, Bush would finally have Reagan all to himself.

Nonetheless, Anderson had done a huge favor for future political strategists and consultants: he had identified the swing vote in American politics. In his corner stood middle-of-the-road, nonaligned, antiestablishment voters who swung back and forth between the two major parties. Disaffected visionaries on white steeds regularly ride into American political lore in search of an alternative to the two-party status quo. Whether the standard bearer was Teddy Roosevelt, George Wallace, or John Anderson (or, one day, Ross Perot), the quest always proved quixotic. But the aftereffects of a third-party challenge lingered, because one of the major parties ultimately absorbed and co-opted the message of the outsider.

Despite the formidable odds against his third-party candidacy—or perhaps because of them—Anderson took on a renewed faddish appeal. Liberals, especially in Hollywood and the media, took up his cause—including multimillionaire Stewart Mott, crown prince of hopeless liberal causes. Mott, an unreconstructed liberal, was quirky but had a heart of gold. The political cartoon strip
Doonesbury
started touting Anderson, and he landed a guest appearance on
Saturday Night Live
.
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Rumors made the rounds, fed by an interview with Morton Kondracke of
The New Republic
, that CBS anchor Walter Cronkite might agree to become Anderson's running mate.
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A
LTHOUGH
K
ENNEDY HAD WON
Pennsylvania over Carter, he still faced very long odds. On Saturday, April 26, he tied Carter in the Michigan caucuses, and neither candidate was helped. Kennedy needed more than a draw, but it was enough to keep him in the race, and by keeping Teddy in the race, it prolonged the fight for Carter. This could only spell trouble for the president, whose approval rating had
plummeted again after the momentary spike resulting from the aborted Iranian rescue attempt. The miserable economy had quickly sent it back down. By the end of the month a New York Times/CBS poll put his approval rating at 21 percent.
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Carter's men looked to sharpen their attacks on Kennedy. They were disturbed by the fact that the Pennsylvania primary had marked the first time middle-class conservative Democrats had swung their support to the challenger. By this point, Carter had 1,109 delegates to 639 for Kennedy.
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Over the last weekend in April, Reagan took more GOP delegates in state meetings in Minnesota and Missouri. He now stood at 429 delegates to 96 for Bush. Reagan was still less than halfway to the 998 needed for a first-ballot nomination.
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O
N THE STUMP IN
Texas, Leon Jaworski, the famous Watergate prosecutor, Houston native, and supporter of George Bush, tore into Reagan. “Is it to be Ronald Reagan, extremist, whose over-the-counter simplistic remedies and shopworn platitudes … or is it George Bush, moderate, sensible and sound in his views and objectives?” Bush “rolled his eyes heavenward” while listening to Jaworski's over-the-top rhetoric, although he was also clearly enjoying it.
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Jaworski also ripped John Connally for endorsing Reagan. It was all complicated by the enigmatic customs of Houston society and politics, as socialite Joanne Herring knew all too well. The striking blonde said it was about money, one-upmanship, the right parties, the right clubs, and the right church. If your great-granddaddy hadn't fought at the Alamo, you were a newcomer. Bush, despite living there for more than thirty years, was made to feel like a greenhorn by the folks around Connally. Bush was oil, and for many in Houston, that was new money. It was laugh-aloud ironic, because he'd come from the oldest money in America, New England society. But to Herring and her high-society friends, it was a matter of the highest import. Herring was friends with both Connally and Bush, but she was supporting Reagan. He was the toughest anti-Communist, and killing commies in Afghanistan had become her pet charity.
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An outsider in the state, Reagan did his best to win over Texans. At Baylor University in Waco, Reagan offered the school's mascot, a live bear, a soft drink. The bear happily accepted the gift and Reagan quipped, “I'll tell you one thing, I'm not going to take it away from him.”
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A member of the drill team kissed Reagan, leaving a large set of red lip prints on his cheek.

He was less welcomed at the LBJ Library in Austin, where a small group of student protesters chanted, “Reagan go home!” They also carried signs that
said, “LBJ is rolling in his grave.” Some got downright nasty when they displayed a Reagan campaign poster covered with Nazi swastikas.
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The irony of students sticking up for Johnson because Reagan was speaking at his presidential library was lost on no one. Twelve years earlier, tens of thousands of student protesters had camped out at the White House and chanted morning, noon, and night, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” Johnson cursed a blue streak about the anti–Vietnam War protesters, but their relentless harassment led in part to his abrupt departure from the political scene.

Despite the handful of youthful protesters at the Johnson Library, Reagan confidently campaigned among young Americans at high schools and college campuses, where he was often greeted warmly. Just the week before, he'd been on the campus of St. Mary's, a Catholic women's college affiliated with Notre Dame. Reagan was welcomed wildly by the students and he told them of coming to Notre Dame years before when he was filming the part of George Gipp for the movie
Knute Rockne, All American
. The kids rewarded Reagan with a blue and gold jersey inscribed “Gipper” and the number 80.
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On April 24, he paid a courtesy call on Governor Bill Clements, who, while blowing Reagan a big wet kiss, officially stayed neutral in deference to his fellow Texan Bush.
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As Reagan walked through the state capitol, a group of older women saw the Gipper and, well, they swooned, sighing and cooing. One exclaimed, “He is still so cute.”
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The Bush campaign, recognizing the financial advantages it had over Reagan, was planning on spending at least $600,000 on television advertising in Texas.
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The campaign was so pleased with the “Ask George Bush” half-hour TV productions done in Pennsylvania that it also aired them in Texas.
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Nervous local television operators rifled their inventories of films to weed out old Reagan movies and keep them off the air, for fear of triggering the FCC's equal-time provisions.

Bush, exhausted, gave a poor performance in Dallas by mangling his speech in front of a crowd that had begun by being supportive but became quiet and uncomfortable as he struggled to finish. Later in the day, an empathetic supporter asked Bush where he was off to next. The exhausted Bush replied, “Oh gosh, I don't know. Just on and on and on.”
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Though Reagan didn't have much money to spend, he was being aided—indirectly—by an outspoken Texan, Eddie Chiles, who put his enormous wallet where his mouth was. Chiles was the head of the Western Company, which supplied equipment to oil companies. Chiles ran ads throughout the South that opened with an announcer saying, “What are you mad about today, Eddie?” Chiles would then expound on some aspect of government or the culture, making a
conservative case against each. In the background was patriotic music. He also distributed tens of thousands of bright red bumper stickers that shouted, “I'm mad as hell too, Eddie!”
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Chiles never mentioned Reagan in his ads but he didn't have to. Everybody knew who and what he was talking about. Some local stations, fearing FCC complaints, refused to run his spots.

Texas was a hothouse for conservative activism. Reaganites such as Tom Pauken had been aggressively organizing and running for office.
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Joanne Herring, the beautiful Houston socialite and popular local television hostess, was a staunch anti-Communist who was egging Democratic congressman Charlie Wilson to join her one-woman crusade against the Soviets' invasion of Afghanistan. The Hunt brothers of Dallas—William Herbert Hunt and Nelson Bunker Hunt—funded many conservative and patriotic organizations, as did T. Boone Pickens, Harold Simmons, Dick Collins, and others. Most of these superrich Texans, unknown to the country at large, were superstars in GOP and conservative circles. Most shunned the limelight, but Chiles bathed in it. Always fascinated with playthings, he bought the hapless Texas Rangers baseball team in 1980 for $4 million. Nine years later, he sold the team to a group of investors headed by a ne'er-do-well oilman, George W. Bush. Young “George W.” was sometimes mistakenly referred to as “Junior,” an appellation he detested.

As in previous primaries, Ambassador Bush was dogged by right-wing literature that accused him, because of his former membership in the Trilateral Commission, of being part of a conspiracy to bring “one-world” government to America. It clearly got under his skin, and he was forced to denounce the unsigned pamphlets yet again. He went to Dallas and appeared on a local talk show hosted by Charlie Rose. The set featured an all-female audience that, together with Rose, hurled questions at Bush, who did well in the setting. After a year of this, Bush had become an old hand at working a live audience. Yet, once again, he was asked about the Trilateral Commission, and once again, he was forced to deny being part of a conspiracy.
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In Fort Worth, Bush said that Reagan had “absolutely none” when it came to foreign- policy experience.
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He then threw gasoline on the fire by suggesting that Reagan's campaign was responsible for the malevolent brochures. Returning Bush's fire, Reagan denied knowing anything about the brochures, but he let loose on his opponent when he said, “The only person I've seen raise the Trilateral issue is George Bush and maybe he should tell us why he resigned?”
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The battle escalated when Bush pointed out that Reagan campaign manager Bill Casey and longtime adviser Caspar Weinberger were also members of the commission. Reagan said that Weinberger never thought it was a conspiracy and asked again why Bush had resigned.
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