Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (67 page)

No one can ever really know the inner workings of a family, and the Reagan family was no different. What was clear was that the two elder and the two younger Reagan children were mostly indifferent to each other.

For the sake of family unity, not to mention party unity, the four Reagan children met up in Detroit to root for their father. None of the four, however, flew out on the chartered plane with their parents. All took commercial flights instead.
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M
ONDAY'S HIGHLIGHT WAS THE
prime-time speech by former president Ford. He and Reagan were never terribly fond of each other, but Ford detested Carter, and at the end of the day he was a party man, ready to support even the man he believed had cost him the election four years earlier. Ford, who had once been at best a mediocre public speaker, had become pretty good on the stump since leaving the White House. The confidence of becoming a beloved elder statesman surely helped, but when it came to Carter and the Democrats, he needed little motivation. Ford ripped into Carter. The Georgian had “sold America short,” he said. He went on, “You've heard all Carter's alibis.… We must lower our expectations. We must be realistic. We must prudently retreat. Baloney!”
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Ford concluded by telling the Republicans something they hadn't heard in a while: “Let's start talking like winners and being winners.”
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Joe Louis Arena went wild. Delegates were hanging from the balconies, whooping and cheering for their now adored “Jerry.”

Earlier in the day, Ford had met with Reagan, and once again the subject of his going on the ticket had come up. In their meeting, Ford specifically questioned the qualifications of Lugar, Kemp, and Bill Simon. So Reagan and some of his men perked up that night when Ford told the thousands of devoted Republicans, “I am not ready to quit yet,” and that when the GOP fields “the team for Governor Reagan, count me in.” Maybe Ford had changed his mind after all about being on the ticket.
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Reagan and Ford met in private again on Tuesday. During the hour-long meeting on the sixty-ninth floor of the Detroit Plaza, they spoke once more about
the vice-presidential slot. Ford was dubious, but this time he did not reject the idea out of hand. Rumors began to build in Detroit that the Dream Ticket was possible.
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Bush, knowing his tenuous position with the Reagans, wisely decided to do nothing to look as if he was campaigning to be vice president. He would stay above the fray, let the others go through their machinations. Strict orders went out to his supporters: no one was to organize for Bush.

T
UESDAY'S PROCEEDINGS BEGAN PROMPTLY
at 5
P.M.
, but the convention quickly fell behind schedule.

The party's 40,000-word platform was adopted with little discussion. It was the longest platform in GOP history, but it passed with far less drama than the one in Kansas City four years earlier.
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Kansas City had been a bloodbath, with fights over détente, the Panama Canal, and Henry Kissinger. This time, the only hiccup occurred when the delegation from Hawaii moved for a suspension of the rules so a debate could be held over the ERA's removal. But the Hawaiians failed to get another delegation to second their motion, and that was that.
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Marty Anderson and the rest of the Reaganites were thrilled.

Tuesday's speaking schedule was laden with Republican heavyweights. Speakers included Jack Kemp; Senator John Warner of Virginia, considered a talented up-and-comer, and the subject of much media attention because of his marriage to actress Elizabeth Taylor; John Connally, who was always good for a stem-winder; Barry Goldwater, who still made the hearts of conservatives go atwitter; and, sandwiched in among all these conservatives, lonesome Henry Kissinger.

In addition to all that, Guy Vander Jagt was scheduled to deliver the convention's keynote address. Vander Jagt had been the 1953 national debate champ in college, and with his dulcet voice he could transfix a room. Most good politicians could give short extemporaneous remarks, but Vander Jagt was from the old school, the really old school: he delivered even his longest speeches from memory.

Vander Jagt prepared for this speech diligently, in no small part because he believed he was auditioning to be Reagan's running mate. He was never seriously considered.
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There was nothing fundamentally wrong with Vander Jagt's going on the ticket with Reagan. He was conservative enough, was an excellent campaigner, and had IOUs built up from here to Kingdom Come. True, he was rumored to have a wandering eye, but many men in politics had as much said about them. His big problem, it seemed, was that he had received bad advice from his staff about
becoming Reagan's running mate. He seemed to want it too badly. Just weeks before the convention, Vander Jagt shucked the steel-rimmed glasses he'd worn for years and switched to contact lenses. He also produced a slim self-published book that did not go over well with some of the Reaganites.

M
RS.
R
EAGAN MADE HER
first appearance before the convention Tuesday evening, looking lovely in a white dress. The delegates warmly welcomed her. The rumors all over the convention were that she was stridently opposed to Bush's joining “Ronnie” on the ticket.
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As always, Bob Novak and Rowly Evans had the inside dope. “[Reagan] and Nancy Reagan have made clear to their aides that they simply do not think Bush is up to the presidency,” they wrote. “That judgment, highly colored by Bush's performance in New Hampshire, seems an ineradicable mind set.”
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Deep down, the Reagans insistently wanted Laxalt as the Gipper's veep—especially Mrs. Reagan. Just as insistently, they were being told no by Reagan's men.

T
HE CONVENTION CROWD WAS
energized when Goldwater was introduced by his son, Barry Jr., a congressman from California whose jawline was even more pronounced than his father's. “In our hearts, we knew he was right,” the son told the delighted crowd, playing on the campaign's slogan in 1964. Junior elaborated: “A prophet in his own time? You're damn right!”
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The seventy-one-year-old senator, who was locked in a tight race for reelection in Arizona, took to the stage. Barry did not disappoint. He jokingly asked the crowd whether he could accept their nomination and they cheered. At one point, Goldwater departed from his prepared text to tell the sweaty delegates that the arena was “the hottest damn place I've been all year.”
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Some things never changed.

Goldwater admonished the conservatives at the convention to do “less carping” and refrain from “thousands of interpretations of morality and conservatism.”
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It was vintage Goldwater. Twenty years earlier he told conservatives they needed to “grow up.”

But the carping and fighting that Goldwater warned against would never die completely. The New York delegates asked for a way to memorialize Nelson Rockefeller, who had died a year earlier, but they were rebuffed by convention officials. Conservatives had waited for years to dance on Rocky's grave and now—finally—they were.
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Following Goldwater on the dais was another Arizonan, House Minority Leader John Rhodes, who had been installed as permanent chairman of the convention. Rhodes gave an uncharacteristically thunderous speech that accused Carter of playing politics with the American hostages in Iran.
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Jack Kemp spoke afterward, as the proceedings continued to fall behind. He was greeted with a sea of printed signs that read “Reagan-Kemp” and a giant banner that proclaimed “Jack Kemp—the GOP's No. 1 Draft Choice.”
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Kemp was proud of his football career, but even he sometimes got sick of the gridiron analogies.

Spot surveys of the Virginia, Washington State, Oklahoma, and Arizona delegations showed support for Kemp as the running mate. Meanwhile, Bush was getting support from some key delegations, including, surprisingly, the conservative delegations of Alabama and Idaho. NBC had surveyed 77 percent of the conventioneers and Bush was preferred with 47 percent to Kemp's 35 percent.
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Reagan had doubts about the youthful Kemp. “Reagan himself has never been convinced that he had the weight of experience or ability to be a president,” reported Jack Germond.
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Lugar had fallen badly off the pace, especially after his bland speech on Monday. One Reagan aide quipped, “The best thing that happened to Lugar was that Reagan was flying to Detroit at the time and didn't see it.” Caspar Weinberger was asked his opinion of Don Rumsfeld's going on the ticket with Reagan and minced no words, saying, “He's a pretty abrasive fellow and he's no admirer” of Reagan's.
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George Romney, the former governor of Michigan, weighed in with his own blunt opinion: “Reagan's got two problems. He's an amateur with no experience in Washington. And he's ultraconservative. Ford would answer both questions. It would sweep the convention. If he doesn't take Ford, he better take Bush or he'll be in trouble.”
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Just as emphatically, however, Jesse Helms and other conservatives were still vowing publicly to stop Bush from going on the ticket. The vice-presidential issue was spinning out of control.

With Jack Kemp attracting so much attention in Detroit, some of his enemies began recycling nasty rumors about him that had sprung up in 1967. That year the native Californian Kemp, then the quarterback for the Buffalo Bills, had interned in the offices of Governor Reagan in Sacramento. Columnist Drew Pearson, who was always on the hunt for misinformation, exposed a homosexual “ring” (two men on Reagan's staff). An unnamed “athlete” was also mentioned in the scurrilous column. The two men were fired from the governor's staff and faded into obscurity. Kemp went back to his job as quarterback of the Bills.
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Not long thereafter Bill Buckley founded the National Committee to Horsewhip Drew Pearson. Pearson was the bane of every conservative's existence.

The issue faded until late 1978, when columnist Bob Novak discovered top Carter aides, including DNC chairman John White, spreading the ancient rumors about Kemp. White told Novak that he'd heard about it from another reporter, who in turn said he'd been told by a high White House aide. Novak queried Lyn
Nofziger, who had handled the investigation into the scandal in 1967. Nofziger told the columnist that Kemp was not involved, and that in his opinion Kemp was not gay. Novak even went to San Francisco to track down one of the men fired years earlier and asked him point-blank whether Kemp had been involved. The man replied in no uncertain terms that Kemp was not involved. Novak wrote a column detailing the smear campaign against Kemp in December 1978, and the issue faded again until Detroit.
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Anybody who knew Kemp knew the whole thing was nonsense. Kemp liked women and women liked Kemp. Nevertheless, as Reagan approached decision hour on his running mate, the rumors were back in circulation.

W
HEN
H
ENRY
K
ISSINGER SPOKE
near midnight, the word had already been spread throughout the hall to please not boo him and embarrass the party, the convention, or Reagan. Some of Jesse Helms's supporters had threatened an anti-Kissinger demonstration on the floor of the convention, but cooler heads prevailed. One Helmsite astonishingly told the
Washington Post
that “this is ‘a unity convention.’”
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Then hell froze over.

Kissinger was not lustily cheered, but he was surprisingly well received by the red-meat conservatives. He called Reagan the “trustee of all our hopes” and later self-deprecatingly joked at his ability to unite people, as liberals and conservatives alike had booed him.
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The convention was now running two hours behind. Try as he might to get Vander Jagt on in prime time, John Rhodes was unable to do so. The idea had been suggested to get Kissinger to go last, but no one had the energy to take on Kissinger and his ego.
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The hour was extremely late, and there were still parties to get to, a lot of drinking to be done, gossip to exchange. The delegates had been listening to speeches and introductions for more than seven hours, and they were on tilt. Even these fanatical Republicans and conservatives could take only so much speechifying. Those delegates still on the floor were restless. One put a sign on her chair, “Wake me at 9:30.”
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And yet there were still other speakers to go. A former Reagan basher, Richard “Rosey” Rosenbaum of New York, was in Detroit to support the nominee. No GOP cavalcade of the era was complete without the towering, bald old Rockefeller retainer. His rendition of “Ronnie Reagan!” in his high-pitched voice made people double over with laughter. Rosenbaum, a liberal Republican through and through, had been a hate figure to Reaganites four years earlier, but this time around he had signed on with Reagan. And he wasn't anything if he wasn't effective. A wizard at
organization and fundraising, he had helped the naïve Reaganites navigate through the moderate backwaters of New York Republican politics. Rosey had done such a good job that he was asked to give one of the seconding speeches for Reagan.
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There was even a surprise last-minute addition to the already-heavy speaking schedule. The 121 black Republican delegates had come up with the brainstorm of inviting the president of the NAACP, Benjamin Hooks, whose annual conference Reagan had missed several weeks earlier. Now was a chance for some real fence mending. Though the black delegates had to threaten a symbolic walkout to make their point, when their idea got through to the Gipper, he embraced it immediately.
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