Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (65 page)

T
HE
R
EPUBLICAN CONVENTION OPENED
in Detroit on Monday, July 14. The three networks estimated that more than forty million Americans would tune in, even though everybody knew what the outcome would be—or at least thought they knew the outcome. A GOP functionary, Ken Reitz, told reporters, “The whole idea is to make the event into a TV production instead of a convention.”
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With the media swarming Detroit and so many millions tuning in on television, Mayor Coleman Young and city officials did all they could to put lipstick on their pig. The city's garbage and bus strikes were settled just before the convention opened. The remaining trash was picked up, potted plants lined the streets and interstates, graffiti were painted over, hoboes were given the bum's rush, potholes were filled in, and the marquees of X-rated movie theaters were covered over. Since hotel space was so limited in the Renaissance Center, many delegates and reporters found themselves in third-rate hotels in other parts of the city or in the suburbs—or even in another country, probably a first for an American political convention. Numerous attendees stayed across the river in the Canadian city, Windsor.

One thing Mayor Young and his officials couldn't control was the weather. The week of the GOP convention was hot and humid, and the afternoons were punctuated several times by violent thunderstorms. Still, Detroit did its best to entertain the visitors. The city allowed bars and restaurants to stay open until 4
A.M.
to accommodate the GOP night owls. A madam thoughtfully offered to make her prostitutes available to the male conventioneers and even offered to throw in a “free sample” for the head of Detroit's finest. Another gentleman said he would use his divining rod to help the city find water, since he predicted that all the thirsty Republicans would cause the municipality to run out.
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City officials declined both charitable offers.

None of these sideshows could distract Reagan from his mission. His acceptance speech would be the most important moment in his political life. He had a small lead over Carter, but at the same point four years earlier, Carter had enjoyed a much greater advantage over Ford and yet had almost lost on Election Day. The
media were full of advice for Reagan. Lou Cannon offered this: “Reagan must demonstrate on … his acceptance speech Thursday, that he can reach beyond his standard rhetorical banquet fare and speak to the needs and aspirations of the nation.” Cannon observed that Reagan “remains a vaguely out-of-date and somewhat stereotyped political figure in key sections of the northeast and Midwest.”
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David Broder recognized that something bigger might be at stake than just another election. Broder wrote, “Ronald Reagan began his political life as a 21year-old follower of Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Now there are sober people who think Reagan, at age 69, might become the FDR of a born-again Republican Party.”
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Peter Hannaford, a Reagan favorite, was hard at work on drafting the acceptance address, but as with everything else the Gipper said in speeches, commentaries, or his columns, the final work would be pure Reagan. And Reagan knew what he had to do.

F
OR THE FIRST TIME
in years, the GOP was earning praise in the media. Many had grown weary of the holier-than-thou Carter and his tired, run-down Democratic Party, but they were equally impressed that the Grand Old Party had become a Brand New Party with a coherent philosophy, confidence, and the will to win. The stench of Watergate had been vented. Most of the old, creaky alliances of convenience were gone. Regional differences still existed, but far less so than in years past.

Behaviorally and attitudinally, the party was in many ways one big extended family. There were fights, to be sure, but blood loyalty kept the fights in the family. Liberals in an increasingly conservative party were not gone, but those left knew to keep their mouths shut or mouth the party line if they wanted to take part in the spoils of victory.

Consequently, Reagan arrived in Detroit without the burden of having to make the type of deals many of his predecessors had been forced to make. In 1952 Eisenhower had to pick Richard Nixon to placate the anti-Communist elements in the party. In 1960 Vice President Nixon humiliated himself by detouring from the GOP convention to pay homage—and make concessions—to Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York, the prince of the East Coast establishment. The agreement between the two became known infamously as the “Compact of Fifth Avenue,” but Barry Goldwater acidly referred to it as the “Munich of the Republican Party.”
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Goldwater himself failed to make any deals in San Francisco four years later, and thus liberal Republicans ran for the hills. In 1968 Nixon made many deals but broke all of them, and with them the hearts of Republicans. In
1976 Ford chose Bob Dole as his running mate to try to appease the conservatives who had nearly given the nomination to Reagan.

Reagan was freed of the petty, sail-trimming politics that had bedeviled the GOP men who went before him. He was assuming command of a party that had mostly grown to adore him. He was a politician, like the others, but he was also about to take the helm of a new GOP, unbattered, unbowed, unencumbered by political deal-making. One delegate from Arkansas hand-lettered a sign for her convention boater that simply and pointedly read, “This Time.”
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In a sense, Reagan benefited from his party's lackluster recent history. Whereas the Democrats were struggling to live up to the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and other leading lights, the Republicans of recent years had only the demon-haunted Nixon, the kind but accidental Ford, and the hands-off Eisenhower. These GOP leaders were not giants; they seemed to hold on to power only to deny it to the Democrats, not because they sought to do anything bold or great.

Ronald Reagan, in contrast, had a bold agenda, a plan for his presidency and for his country. Before he could achieve that plan, he needed to inspire his own party—the conservatives and the moderates, the social conservatives and the sociable conservatives. In Detroit, he would bring them all together for a big prayerful hootenanny.

Or so he hoped.

“
There are always brush fires in politics.
”

G
erald Ford appeared on ABC's
Issues and Answers
the Sunday before the proceedings began in Detroit and was forced once again to knock down the rumors that he would be Ronald Reagan's choice for the ticket. He was as Shermanesque as possible, saying, “Under no circumstances would I be the candidate for the vice presidency.” Ford then praised George Bush to the heavens, calling him “very attractive, very dedicated, experienced.”
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Ford's denial was a page-one story in newspapers across the country.

Ford had ruled himself out, Howard Baker was being ruled out by conservatives, and Reagan was truly stymied. The redoubtable Tommy Thomas, Reagan's state leader in Florida, was adamant that Reagan not take Bush, who he believed was “part of a liberal Republican ‘conspiracy’ to take control of the government.”
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Even the most optimistic of Bush's men were dubious that he'd be picked.

Reagan seemed to be publicly talking himself out of choosing Bush. He told the
Los Angeles Times
, “I think there's something cynical in choosing someone of a different political view than your own with the idea in mind of getting votes. I think your choice should be based on who do you feel could be a President if he had to be.”
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Reagan was still miffed at Bush over “voodoo economics” and other offenses, as well as Bush's poor performance at the Nashua debate.

He had shown just how miffed, days before the Detroit convention in a private meeting with field staff. Most members of the staff were for Jack Kemp as running mate, but when asked his opinion, Don Devine, the campaign's political director for Maryland, voiced his opinion that Reagan should choose Bush. Devine told the candidate, “I gotta lot of problems with Bush myself, ideologically, but I
think we need to do that …” Before Devine could finish, Reagan stormed, “I'll never choose that man; he lied about my record!” The meeting ended abruptly as Reagan stormed out. Devine was “scared shitless,” he remembered in an interview. According to Devine, Frank Donatelli, another field director, later told him privately, “Thank God you did it, because I was going to say the same thing and you got yelled at!”
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In choosing a running mate, Reagan needed someone who was qualified and was comfortable with his conservatism but who could also reach out to the dwindling moderates in the party and unify the convention while earning the respect of the national media. And given Reagan's age, he needed someone who could step into the role of president. Eight VPs in American history had been required to assume the presidency. Reagan was mindful of what the first vice president, John Adams, had said. “I am Vice President. In this I am nothing. But I may be everything.”
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Reagan wanted to be certain that there were no embarrassments or hiccups of the sort that vice-presidential nominees had created in the past. Four years earlier, Bob Dole had embarrassed Ford by talking about “Democrat Wars” and generally ignoring the demands of the national campaign office.
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Typically, Dole would get on his plane, throw away the schedule, point in a given direction, and tell the pilot to go that way.

Too often, there had been a slapstick quality to the selection of the second man for the ticket. The very first political convention, 1832, was not even for the purpose of selecting a president; it was for dumping a vice president. President Andrew Jackson couldn't wait to get rid of John C. Calhoun and replace him with Martin Van Buren.

In 1900 Teddy Roosevelt was put on the ticket with William McKinley mainly because he had become such a pain to the New York GOP party bosses that they hoped he would never be heard from again. To their dismay, McKinley was assassinated in 1901 and they heard far too much for far too long from the old Rough Rider. The office had opened in the first place only when McKinley's first vice president, Garret Augustus Hobart—who was a threat to no one except an open bar and a free buffet—literally partied himself to death. As one writer recounted, Hobart “went to six dinner parties and a dozen receptions a week. He died in office, some say the first politician to be killed by the Washington social scene.”
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In 1960, in an eleventh-hour deal in Los Angeles, John F. Kennedy offered the vice presidency as a conciliatory gesture to his main opponent, Lyndon Johnson. JFK needed Johnson's support in the general election but assumed that the proud Texan would turn him down. To his and his brother Bobby's consternation,
LBJ said yes—and then tearfully refused to step aside when the Kennedy camp tried to get him to do so.

In 1964 Barry Goldwater selected little-known conservative congressman William Miller from upstate New York because he “bugged” Lyndon Johnson.

A famous Hubert Humphrey campaign ad in 1968 targeted Richard Nixon's running mate, the little-known Spiro Agnew. The commercial's soundtrack featured nothing but a man's nonstop, derisive laughter at the prospect of Agnew as VP. Later Agnew set a new standard for embarrassment, as far as the Washington establishment was concerned.

And, of course, in 1972 George McGovern went through a comedy of errors because his campaign failed to look carefully into running mate Tom Eagleton's history of severe mental health problems.

Reagan was intent on avoiding such pitfalls. A press conference was scheduled for 11
A.M.
on Thursday morning to make the announcement. He wanted this thing to go smooth as silk.

Right.

R
EAGAN OFTEN JOKED THAT
in his Hollywood days, he made some pretty bad movies, which “didn't have to be made well, they had to be made by Thursday.” This time he would have plenty of time to prepare for an audience of thousands in Detroit and millions across America. This performance, though, would be live. There would be no directors yelling “cut.” He had to get it right on the first take. The media understood the importance of his acceptance speech. “Most of the national television audience,” the
New York Times
observed, “has never heard him give [a] speech.”
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To espouse his statecraft, Reagan would first need great stagecraft. Detroit's Joe Louis Arena would help give him that. The visuals looked terrific, with the speaker's platform high above the convention floor. The platform, a deep blue half circle, boasted the convention's slogan in huge letters across the front: “Together … A New Beginning.” Splayed under the motto was a sea of red and white carnations. On either side of the stage were two huge American flags, the thirteen-star flag on the left and the fifty-star flag on the right. The lighting and the camera work, though maybe not up to Hollywood standards, would be sufficient for Reagan's purposes.

The rest was up to the Gipper. The old trouper had always known when to manfully leave the stage, but he also took pride in knowing how to gracefully make an entrance.

C
ONSERVATIVES COULD SCARCELY BELIEVE
it. At last, their man, Reagan, was about to become the nominee of the GOP. Some bitterly remembered how their first hero—Senator Robert Taft of Ohio—had, in their view, been robbed of the nomination in 1952. Forces supporting Dwight Eisenhower challenged the seating credentials of some southern delegates supporting Taft, who were then replaced with delegates for Ike. Conservative boos rained down on Eisenhower's forces, especially New York governor Tom Dewey. Conservatives cheered when Governor Frank Clements of Tennessee eviscerated the Eisenhower supporters, labeling them as “broad fairways of indifference.”
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