Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (58 page)

Incredibly, at the same time, Ford was talking to Reagan by phone, promising to campaign hard for him—if he was the nominee, and if Reagan made some concessions, including granting Ford veto power over the Gipper's running mate. Reagan went along with Ford's demands for the time being and told reporters that the former president would be part of his planning team.
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Reagan still refused to say anything one way or the other about Bush's getting out except that “there is the smell of roses in the air.”
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He acknowledged that it was time for him to carefully consider a running mate, but he said that as long as Bush kept fighting, then he was going to keep on fighting.

Of course, the question was not whether Reagan would go over 998 delegates, but when. Bush's dying campaign was now speaking in contradictory voices. One day, Baker was saying one thing, Keene something else, and Bush yet another thing. It was clear that it was the end of the line for Bush, but he was unwilling to withdraw formally. He'd invested two years of his life in the race and the final primaries were only two weeks away. Keene, too, was in favor of pressing on. By winning Ohio and New Jersey, Keene reasoned, Bush would increase his leveraging power at the convention and establish “a strong base for whatever he wanted to do in the future.”
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Reporters rolled their eyes at Bush for refusing to withdraw. “There are dangers in any campaign,” wrote Judy Bachrach in the
Washington Star
, “one of the most subtle and nefarious being that when a guy is losing, and losing big, and accepting defeat with a modicum of grace and class (a talent Bush has only recently acquired), you start to like him. There is, after all, a fine line between pity and affection.”
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Bush had read his political obituary before. He'd come back from New Hampshire to win in Massachusetts. He'd come back from Illinois to win in Pennsylvania. He'd almost won in Texas. He'd come back from Indiana to win in Michigan. He wanted to fight on. First, though, he would head home to Houston and reevaluate his situation. Bush canceled the rest of his schedule in New Jersey for the weekend of May 23 and hopped on a private jet back to Texas.

Unbeknownst to Bush, once he was in the air his press aide Susan Morrison told reporters on the ground, “We're putting the campaign on hold.”
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And Jim Baker issued a statement—without Bush's approval—announcing that Bush was
suspending his campaign. Bush learned of Baker's action only when he landed in Houston. Suffice it to say, he was not happy.
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T
HE ALLEY FIGHT OVER
Bill Brock's stewardship of the Republican National Committee spilled out into the streets. Brock and Reagan had met in early May, and Brock told people after the meeting that he had Reagan's blessings to stay on as party chairman through the fall election. Paul Laxalt challenged Brock's version, telling reporters that Reagan may have wanted Brock to continue only “through the convention,” at which point he might exercise his option as the nominee to pick his own man to run things at 310 First Street, SE.
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Laxalt hinted that Lyn Nofziger might go over to the RNC as Reagan's in-house man, which sent chills up the spines of the staffers, who knew of Nofziger's low opinion of them.
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Reagan's men were anxious to dump others in the RNC also. Brock's key deputy, Ben Cotten, was a ringleader of the Reagan critics inside the RNC and was still feuding with Reagan's campaign, even on the eve of his nomination. Not normally interested in lower-level personnel matters, Reaganites took a special interest in seeing Cotten thrown out on his ear.
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The cochair of the RNC, Mary Dent Crisp, was likewise on double secret probation because of her accumulated four years of gossip and harsh criticism of Reagan. Rumors were going around that she was about to endorse Anderson but she denied them, telling the
Washington Post
, “I'm not a flake.” Many thought otherwise.
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Brock had revolutionized the committee, creating a house file of 650,000 names whose average contribution was $26, thus lessening the dependence on fat cats. He developed a program to help local candidates, building a farm team for the future. His projected budget of $31 million for 1980 was twice that of four years earlier. The party's slogan was “Vote Republican—For a Change.”
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Meanwhile, as
Newsweek
reported, Jerry Carmen from the Reagan headquarters was prowling the building on a daily basis, “frightening the help with asides about the high volume of 'deadwood' he has been finding.”
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Nancy Reagan had already made her displeasure with Brock known when someone alerted her to an RNC publication that extensively covered a speech by Gerald Ford but devoted not a drop of ink to her husband.
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Things were no better between Reagan and Bush in the spring of 1980 than they'd been six months earlier. Reagan's inner circle was newly angry with Bush for a joke he was telling at Reagan's expense: “What's black, flat, and glows in the dark? Iran after Reagan bombs it.” They were also convinced that Bush did not want to be Reagan's running mate and that Bush was playing for the 1984 nomination because he assumed Reagan would lose in the fall to Carter.
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T
ANNED, RESTED, AND REVIVED
after a couple of days at his ranch, Reagan hit the road again, campaigning in California, Missouri, New Jersey, and Ohio. Missouri was a telling inclusion. Unlike the other states, it was not hosting an upcoming primary; in fact, its GOP caucus had already passed. Rather, Missouri would be an important state in the general election.

Bush hadn't formally withdrawn from the race, but when he canceled his schedule and flew home to Texas, Reagan for the first time seemed to be claiming victory. Even then, it was a modest claim. “I guess I have to accept that I should start looking ahead to beyond the convention,” Reagan cautiously said to reporters.
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The long primary battle between Bush and Reagan seemed to be finally ending, but with a whimper and not a bang.

Reagan threw out an enticing offer to Bush. If he quit, Reagan would help him eliminate whatever campaign debt he might have left. Jim Baker called Vic Gold and asked him to go to Houston and convince Bush that it was fruitless to continue. “Vic,” Baker pleaded, “he won't listen to me. You have got to go.” Gold reluctantly boarded a plane for Houston.
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Bush was still telling crowds that his instinct was to “fight, fight, fight.”
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But Baker had been telling reporters for a few days that Bush was finally getting out—again without first telling the candidate or getting his approval. Baker was leading Bush to his own execution.

At first Bush didn't want to listen to Gold's pleas, either. He couldn't drop out, the candidate said; people in California and New Jersey had been working for two years for him. So Gold laid it out for Bush: “George, if you carry this to the convention, you will end up like Nelson Rockefeller.… The party will hate you, so when are you going to concede?” At that, Bush finally gave in. Gold said, “Okay, I will write the goddamned statement.”
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Bush met with his family and his closest campaign advisers, reviewing the delegate count and the budget. Of his family, his son Jeb took the news the hardest; he urged his father to stage an “Alamo-style” last stand against Reagan.
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But there would be no more last stands for George Bush. On May 26, he at last ended his presidential sojourn.
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Bush was forced to offer up tribute to Emperor Reagan to gain any favor in his court, and he made a good stab at it by announcing that he would release his delegates at the convention and call on them to vote for Reagan. He also sent a telegram to Governor Reagan praising his “superb campaign.”
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Bush had waged a spirited effort and he might have beaten Reagan after his stunning upset in the Iowa caucuses if just a few things had gone his way. Politics is about timing and judgment as much as anything else, and if Bush had displayed
better judgment after his win, he and not Reagan might have been on his way to Detroit as the nominee. Yet Bush had refused to move off the “Big Mo” message. He never did anything with the spotlight once it had been put on his candidacy. Ultimately, there was no “there there” except for a résumé, “Big Mo,” and a bland version of Republicanism.

His timing had been off in the Nashua debate; in his comeback wins in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania; in his near-win in Texas; and of course in his big win in Michigan. Each time, Bush had been trumped by events favoring Reagan, especially the vote-robbing candidacy of John Anderson.

Bush was proud that he was a literalist and not a lyricist. He wasn't very interested in highfalutin ideas. In his concession speech, he told a weeping crowd in Houston, “I see the world not as I wish it were, but as it is.”
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Bobby Kennedy and Ronald Reagan would have argued with that. RFK had famously quoted George Bernard Shaw, “I dream things that never were and ask, ‘Why not?’”
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Reagan had once paraphrased the journalistic muckraker and socialist Lincoln Steffens, giving one of Steffens's famous lines about the Soviet Union an ironic twist, saying, “I have seen the conservative future … and it works.”
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Bush was never comfortable with inspirational, straight-from-the-heart rhetoric, seeing it as a sign of weakness. His discomfort with emotion was a product of his Episcopalian upbringing. Brahmins like Bush just didn't like to wear their feelings on their Brooks Brothers sleeves; it was considered gauche to betray too much passion. Bush may have portrayed himself as a twang-voiced Texan to the voters, but make no mistake, his genuine personality had been forged on the privileged playing fields of Andover and Yale.

Even in the concession speech, Bush didn't want to back down. He'd “never quit a fight,” he said.
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He did take the measure of the man who had just beaten him, saying, “Losing to Reagan isn't that bad.” Even so, he didn't blame himself for the loss; he blamed ABC and CBS. When they'd called the race for Reagan, he complained, his money flow dried up.
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Like most politicians, Bush overlooked his own failings.

Bush, with wife Barbara at his side, told reporters, “I made a point.”
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What that point was, he failed to explain.

During the press conference, he faced the inevitable question about whether he would consider being Reagan's running mate. Bush snapped at the reporter who posed the question, saying once again that he was obdurately uninterested.
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As much as Bush had resisted conceding, a huge burden seemed to lift from his shoulders as soon as he made the announcement. After the press conference, he invited reporters to his home for cocktails. There he was the picture of relaxation,
lounging barefoot in yellow slacks as he chatted with journalists.
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When some reporters noticed the Yale alumni magazine resting on the coffee table, Bush said, “That's the first time we've been able to put that out for months.” Then he held up a copy of
National Review
and said, “I guess we can put this away now.”
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Bush ostensibly was kidding around, but people often reveal a lot about themselves when they're supposedly being facetious. Now that his campaign was over, Bush's social mask had slipped a bit, and his little “joking” revealed how he really felt about the conservatives in his party.
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Bush had garnered around 270 delegates, had raised and spent $15 million,
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had made a lot of friends, had written thousands of thank-you notes, and had earned the respect of many in the media and the ire of a few others. And yet, after his two-year political jog across the country, no one knew any more about where George Bush stood on the issues than they had before he started out on his quest. All they knew was that he hinted he was more physically up to the presidency than Reagan, had no family problems like Ted Kennedy, and would bring “excellent, good people” to government.
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In the end, it just wasn't enough for GOP voters. “Poppy” Bush remained a cipher in a rep tie.

Lyn Nofziger, the unparalleled quipster in Reagan World, said that Bush's “Big Mo” had slowed to “slo mo” and finally “no mo.”
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Ronald Reagan, finally, was the last man standing in the Republican field. Ever gracious, he called Bush to thank his former opponent for his promised support. Even at this point, Reagan did not make a bold statement of victory. “I don't think it's quite sunk in yet,” he told reporters when asked about having locked up the nomination. “Maybe someplace along the line later today I'll go home by myself and let out a loud yell.”
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Reagan recognized that he did not have time to celebrate; he had to get on with the business of taking on the incumbent president. “It isn't the end of the road,” he said. “It's a beginning. There's another long road ahead.”
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“
My message has not been for Republican ears alone.
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T
he day after George Bush withdrew from the contest, the Kentucky primary took place, and Ronald Reagan, as if to put an exclamation point on his now inevitable nomination, won there by an incredible 11–1 margin, tallying more than 78,000 votes to less than 7,000 for his now-departed opponent. Reagan stomped out the dying embers of Bush's campaign in the Nevada and Idaho primaries as well, getting 83 percent in each.
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