Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (57 page)

The problem for Carter was that Reagan had already said he would be happy to debate Anderson in the fall. “Sure, that's alright with me,” the governor good naturedly said. “I'd like to hear him explain some of his positions.”
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Reagan's casual announcement put Carter on the spot, making the president look weak for refusing to debate Anderson.

Reagan's canny comments kept the three-way-debate issue alive for weeks. The national media pounded Carter over ducking Anderson. Polls showed that a majority of Americans supported a three-way debate. It didn't matter that, given the substantial obstacles to any third-party candidate's viability at the federal, state, and local levels, Anderson was marginalized to the point of being an entertaining sideshow. Reagan's pressure, the media fixation on the debate issue, and public sympathy for including Anderson ensured that Carter faced yet another embarrassment.

Of course, the Carter campaign caused many embarrassments of its own. The campaign staff decided to “deemphasize” the Iranian hostage crisis, as if it could somehow make more than fifty Americans just disappear.
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O
N
M
AY 13, THE
same day that Reagan won the Maryland primary, he also took the prize in Nebraska.
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He now needed just a handful more delegates to go over the magic mark of 998, and on May 20 he would have a shot at Michigan's 82 delegates and Oregon's 29. He was confident about both states, even though he had lost them to Ford in 1976.
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George Bush knew the situation was bleak, telling reporters that the numbers were “discouraging.”
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Rumors, hushed conversations, smoke signals, and veiled signs went back and forth between Gerald Ford and Reagan at the staff level. Bryce Harlow, who had
served every Republican president since Eisenhower, wrote to Ford advocating a Dream Ticket.
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The letter was leaked to reporters, who took the notion seriously because Harlow was one of the wise old men of the GOP. Reagan's men now signaled via
Newsweek
's Periscope section that Reagan was indeed interested in the revolutionary idea of running with the former president.
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Likewise, a Reagan man told the
Baltimore Sun
that the idea “warrants close examination and serious consideration.”
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Paul Laxalt did little to shoot down the idea, saying it had “a lot of support … but it is a long shot.”
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No one knew for sure how far the Ford talk would go or how serious it was, or whether Reagan was simply flattering his old adversary in hopes of enticing him to lend his aggressive support in the fall. If the Ford discussions were real, the Reagan and Ford people would need to address the obvious problem that both men were residents of the same state. The Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution prohibited a member of the Electoral College from casting both his votes for candidates from his own state, and California was too rich in electoral votes to trifle with.
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Ford would need to change his residence back to his native Michigan.

Though struggling to survive, Bush, like Reagan, had utterly devoted young people working for him, most now without pay. Some, such as Ron Kaufman, traveled to Michigan on their own dime. “As hokey as it sounds, I think working for Bush is the best thing I can do for the country,” Kaufman said, and no one doubted his sincerity.
¹⁹

Bill Peterson, a thoughtful journalist for the
Washington Post
, summed up what working in a national campaign meant in 1980. No outsider would ever really understand it. Peterson did: “You have to remember the kind of people who go to work in political campaigns. They are young, ambitious, fascinated with the process. People with few enough attachments that they can afford to gamble. The Bush campaign was a big gamble for all of them from the beginning.”
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Peterson's prose applied to all the campaigns and nearly all the workers in them. They were patriots, devoted to their candidates, believers in the rightness of their cause. They worked long hours for little or no pay. For most, it was not about money, power, or glory; they believed the man they worked for had the answers and was the leader America needed in the dark days of 1980. There was not one campaign in 1980 where devoted staffers did not, at some point, go without pay, and many were never reimbursed for lost wages.

They were so emotionally invested in their candidate, their cause, and one another, that the thought of giving up and walking away was abhorrent. When they were paid, they worked for what UPI described as “coolie wages.”
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On the Reagan campaign, one of the impressive young staffers was the conservative writer Anthony Dolan. Dolan had won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing
local corruption in Connecticut, and he wrote occasionally for
National Review
.
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He was also a certified character. In an earlier incarnation, he composed and sang right-wing folk songs in Greenwich Village coffeehouses. Dolan got his opportunity with the Reagan campaign when one top aide, with the unlikely name of Anderson Carter, resigned after feuding with some on the campaign staff and went back to his New Mexico ranch.
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As longtime Reaganite Carter was walking out the door, in walked Dolan, becoming an aide to campaign chief Bill Casey.

Another young operative in 1980 was Charlie Black, who reemerged after his dismissal from the Reagan campaign by busily organizing a political action committee for Congressman Jack Kemp.
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No one doubted for a moment that the real purpose of the group was to boost Kemp for the ticket with Reagan.

Former American Conservative Union executive Jim Roberts and direct-mail strategist Bruce Eberle were busily organizing their own draft-Kemp organization called Republicans for Victory in 1980. Kemp aide Dave Smick did not discourage the effort for his boss, but he told them to be careful.
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Others championing Kemp as the vanguard of the Reagan future were Congressmen Trent Lott of Mississippi, David Stockman of Michigan, and Newt Gingrich of Georgia, along with neoconservative writer Irving Kristol.
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While one of Kemp's colleagues told the
New York Times
—on background of course—that he was a “light-weight,” in fact Kemp was exploding with ideas, mostly economic. From enterprise zones to incentives for individuals, schools, and small businesses, he loved the arcane world of economics. Woe to the young staffer who asked Kemp a question about some obscure economist; while the aide might receive an excellent lecture, it could go on for hours.
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Kemp himself was intrigued with the idea of joining the ticket, but said nothing publicly.
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O
N THE DAY OF
the primaries in Oregon and Michigan, Reagan stood at 939 delegates, according to the generous media accounts at UPI.
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The wins he expected in the two primaries would put him over the top at last.

Reagan, however, clearly needed to take a break from his arduous schedule. Speaking at the University of Oregon, he was hissed and booed by some students, and his temper got the better of him. To one heckler who was especially boorish, Reagan bellowed, “You don't want to hear the truth! That's why you're stupid!” Reagan was trying to give a speech on how the Carter administration's tight credit policies were choking off small businesses, but instead it looked as if he might put his own fingers around the throat of the student. He cooled down … mostly. “I said ‘stupid.’ I shouldn't have said that. It was very impolite. He was just rude.”
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The next day, Reagan got an even more unwelcomed retort from the people of Michigan: he was completely routed in the state's Republican primary. Bush won Michigan big, 57 percent to Reagan's 32 percent. Nobody saw it coming. The media hadn't bothered to do any polling, since they assumed that Reagan would win, and neither campaign had had the money to poll the state. The turnout in Michigan was paltry, only 13 percent, but it didn't matter. Bush had won big; it was his biggest win yet, in fact. Although Reagan won Oregon, most media organizations—and even his own campaign—showed him still short of the delegates needed for the nomination.
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It was Bush's night, or at least he and his team thought it should have been. Bush had won Michigan on sheer grit. Reagan had seventeen primary wins to Bush's six, but the results in Michigan opened up questions anew about the Gipper's ability to carry big northern states in the fall. For a moment, Bush was exultant, his campaign reinflated.

Yet at precisely the moment that Bush seemed to have again jump-started his campaign, ABC and CBS called the nomination for Reagan. ABC was the first to call it, at 11:30
P.M.
eastern time, at the top of
Nightline
: “ABC News projects that Ronald Reagan has now gained enough delegates to clinch the Republican nomination for president.” CBS followed minutes later.
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Reagan appeared on both networks, where he was congratulated by reporters. Bush's men were galled when they later found out that the networks had told Reagan the day of the primaries, when votes were still being counted, that they would declare him the nominee of the Republican Party.
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Frustrated and furious, Bush told reporters he “shouldn't be written off.”
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Jim Baker was as angry as Bush at the networks for prematurely calling the race. The normally calm Texan said raising money for the upcoming California contest in this environment would be “goddamn tough.”
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Reagan said he wasn't going to argue with ABC and CBS, although he stopped short of actually claiming victory. He issued a statement saying, “The future looks very good,” but conceding that “we don't have the number needed for nomination.” Reagan was secluded at his ranch, but later went down the mountain to meet with reporters gathered in Santa Barbara.
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Members of his staff spoke on background to Lou Cannon of the
Washington Post
and were far less gracious than Reagan was. “Within the Reagan camp, there are those who care less for Republican rival Bush than they do for Jimmy Carter, or maybe even the Ayatollah Khomeini,” Cannon wrote. “These Reaganites see Bush as a party wrecker whose persistence in a long-lost cause diminishes the chance for Republican Party unity in November. They would like to criticize their
opponent in these terms.”
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No one need guess who these erupting Reaganites were. Lyn Nofziger and several others detested Bush. Reagan, though, was keeping his own counsel on Bush's departure from the race.

Reagan's own ultracautious count showed him at 910 delegates.
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There was also the matter of technically uncommitted but in fact pro-Reagan delegates already selected. And in one week, on May 27, the primaries in Kentucky, Nevada, Arkansas, and Idaho would take place. No one thought for a moment that Reagan would not do well in each. Then one week after that, hundreds of delegates would be selected in not only California, Ohio, and New Jersey but also Montana, New Mexico, and South Dakota. Reagan had an 8–1 polling lead over Bush in his home state and strong delegate slates in the Buckeye State and the Garden State.
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Even with Bush running out of time, money, and primaries, Ford publicly encouraged him to hang in there. Clearly, the Reagan staff's proffered olive branch of a Ford VP slot was not having the desired effect. By this point, it was the political equivalent of drawing to an inside straight for Bush.

The Reagan operation leaked to reporters that if Bush got out now, Reagan just might consider him for the ticket. Few, if any, in the media or either camp believed that was based in reality. Bush obviously didn't believe it, because he pushed on to New Jersey for a day of campaigning.

Jim Baker and Dave Keene met on Capitol Hill to review the bleak situation with a couple of dozen Bush supporters, but the group of congressmen came out of the meeting declaring that Bush should get out and endorse Reagan for the sake of the party. The leader of Bush's supporters on Capitol Hill was Barber Conable, the venerable congressman from western New York. When reporters confronted Bush with his erstwhile supporters' statement, he was “visibly shaken,” according to the
Washington Post
.
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Bush conceded to reporters that he did not believe he would have sufficient resources to contest California unless he went into debt for $250,000. His campaign, however, said money was budgeted and available for Ohio and New Jersey.
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A Potemkin Village–like office had been opened in San Francisco for Bush, manned by son Jeb Bush and Rich Bond, and then was just as quickly closed.
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Bond was sent back to Washington to wait for the final decision. He had organized Bush's big win in Iowa, and there was a poignant symmetry to his being in on the first victory for Bush and now the possible last defeat.
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Ambassador Bush was sequestered in a reeking Holiday Inn located in a swamp just off the New Jersey Turnpike. The mangy hotel didn't even have a bar, just a corner where one could get a lukewarm beer.
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Bush was out of touch with his campaign team in Virginia. With his nerves frayed, he went on a local radio
show, where a caller harassed him and told Bush he ought to get out of the race. Bush lost it. “I don't need a lecture from you on that,” he shot back.
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He also spoke in private with former president Ford, who was in New Jersey. Ford, the old Navy man, encouraged Bush, another old Navy man, once again not to give up the ship.
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