Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (80 page)

Carter now had to pull together his badly fractured party if he hoped to defeat Reagan and fend off the challenge from the left in the form of John Anderson. It would be a monumental task. Carter's emphasis was on “unity,” but Kennedy and his 1,200 delegates had something else in mind.

Carter was due in Wednesday morning. Oddly, he would land not at John F. Kennedy International Airport, as chief executives normally did, but instead at Newark Airport in New Jersey.
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No one knew whether Carter was sending one more signal to Ted Kennedy.

K
ENNEDY HAD FINALLY DROPPED
out of the contest, but he got his opportunity to address the convention. On Tuesday night Madison Square Garden turned into a poignant tribute to the last son of Camelot. The floor of the convention was a sea of supporters waving blue and white “Kennedy '80” signs that included his handsome profile. The noise Kennedy's supporters made was off the scale. The band played an old family favorite, “McNamara's Band.”
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The crowd roared as Kennedy went to the podium at 8
P.M.
, on time for once. When the din finally died down, the senator opened with a joke: “Things didn't work out the way I wanted them to, but I still love New York.”
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He spoke wistfully of his campaign, saying, “We have learned that it is important to take issues seriously, but never to take ourselves too seriously.”

Kennedy then tore into Ronald Reagan and predicted a “march toward a Democratic victory in 1980.” He offered to “congratulate President Carter,” but still did not actually endorse Carter for reelection. No one missed the nonendorsement.

Seeing that Reagan was trying to cast himself and his party as the agents of the future, Kennedy said, “We must not permit the Republicans to seize and run on the slogans of prosperity. Progress is our heritage, not theirs. What is right for us as Democrats is also the right way for Democrats to win.”
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Kennedy was interrupted numerous times with chants of “We want Ted! We want Ted! We want Ted!”
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He took a populist line, noting that government officials from the president to congressmen to the bureaucrats all had free health insurance, and if they did, why shouldn't the rest of America? He quoted FDR in making the case against Reagan: “Can the Old Guard pass itself off as the New Deal? I think not. We have all seen many marvelous stunts in the circus—but no performing elephant could turn a handspring without falling flat on its back.”

Kennedy thundered that Reagan “has no right to quote Franklin Delano Roosevelt!” This set off a thirty-minute demonstration, despite the efforts of House
Speaker Tip O'Neill, serving as convention chairman, to bring the hall under control. Kennedy's address was an indictment of Reagan and the Republicans and a cry for the Democratic Party to return to its liberal roots. The words “justice” and “compassion” were thick through his remarks.

Nearing the end, Kennedy spoke reflectively of his campaign, his party, and his brothers. In true Kennedy fashion, he waxed literary, quoting Tennyson: “I am a part of all that I have met: Tho' much is taken, much abides.… That which we are, we are.… One equal temper of heroic hearts … strong in will. To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” Thousands of Democrats were reduced to tears.

Kennedy closed with the sort of eloquence his frustrated supporters—and indeed the country—had expected of him from the beginning of his campaign: “For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end, for all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”
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With a boyish, almost puckish grin that evoked the eternal youth of his martyred brothers, he waved to the crowd and walked off.

Twenty thousand Democrats exploded.

After another thirty minutes of adoring clamor, they were still chanting, “We want Ted!” O'Neill could not get control of the hall and finally surrendered to reality, signaling the band to play “Happy Days Are Here Again” and “For He's a Jolly Good Fellow.”
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Kennedy had left the podium with his family, but then reappeared halfway into the spontaneous demonstration, to the heightened frenzy of the delegates.

The address had been worked on and polished by Bob Shrum and Carey Parker, Kennedy's two principal speechwriters. Ironically, Shrum had quit the Carter campaign in 1976. Ted Sorensen, JFK's old wordsmith, had added his two cents to the draft. Kennedy, meanwhile, had practiced using a teleprompter.
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It all added up to the finest speech of his life. The performance renewed speculation that he should or would run again in four years.

Such is often the case with losing politicians. Unsophisticated commentators say in such circumstances—as they did in Kennedy's case—“If only he'd spoken like that in the primaries, the results might have been different.” What these observers failed to understand is that it is precisely because the circumstances are different that losing candidates speak differently. The reason is simple: they have nothing more to lose.

T
HOUGH
T
ED
K
ENNEDY'S LONG
struggle had ended, one of his key aides and close friends, former Wisconsin governor Pat Lucey, was still thinking about what he could do to hasten Carter's defeat in November. He was being encouraged to do
something to undermine Carter by his old friend Paul Corbin, political operator extraordinaire and one of the truly great characters of American politics.

The day before, Lucey had resigned as a member of the Badger State's delegation in protest over the defeat of the rules suspension. Dismayed that Kennedy had lost, Lucey said ominously that he would “reserve the right” to support someone other than Carter.
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It so happened that John Anderson was in New York at the time. He was there for a press conference to announce that Mary Dent Crisp, who had been forced out of the Republican National Committee for her anti-Reagan stances, would become chair of his independent campaign. Sure enough, Lucey was spotted paying what he thought was a covert visit to Anderson's hotel, where the two met in private. When Governor Lucey emerged, he praised the independent candidate, saying that he and Kennedy had “very similar positions. I am not at this moment prepared to endorse either Mr. Anderson or Mr. Carter.”
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Lucey and Corbin were up to something.

O
N
W
EDNESDAY EVENING
, C
ARTER
was renominated, winning 2,129 delegate votes to 1,146.5 for Kennedy and 53.5 for a smattering of other aspirants. Texas put Carter over the top. With that, Kennedy's political ally and close friend Thomas P. O'Neill III, the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts and the son of the House speaker, moved that the convention unanimously renominate Carter, at Kennedy's urging, and the delegates did so—although some protested, shouting, “No!”
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Kennedy sent a statement to the hall, and O'Neill, the father, read it to the delegates: “It is imperative that we defeat Ronald Reagan in 1980. I urge all Democrats to join in that effort.”
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Kennedy also sent word that he would appear on the dais with the president Thursday evening, signaling his awaited endorsement.

The hall mostly cheered Carter's renomination. The rebel yells of several joyous southern delegates reverberated around the Garden. Jody Powell, Carter's loyal and effective press secretary, choked up over his boss's renomination, which many had thought impossible less than a year earlier.
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The convention again sang “Happy Days Are Here Again,” but were they?

A behind-the-scenes kabuki dance had gone on all day long between the Carter team and the Kennedy men over the platform and Kennedy's statement, and the president and Senator Kennedy spoke by phone to try to hash things out. In another sign of weakness, Carter had to send the platform committee a long letter outlining his positions on various issues and where he disagreed with Kennedy. Rumors of a walkout by disappointed liberals and feminists also had to be quashed.
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Many Democrats were less than enthusiastic about the party's presidential ticket. “It's just not there this year,” said Bill Clinton, the thirty-three-year-old governor of Arkansas. “You can only do that one time—elect the first southern president.”
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Clinton had given one of the best speeches of the week, contrasting the Democrats' past with America's future, but it was largely overlooked.
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O
N
T
HURSDAY
, A
UGUST
14, the night Carter accepted the nomination, the Kennedy blue signs gave way to the president's green placards. Before Carter spoke, Vice President Mondale addressed the crowd. A favorite of the delegates, Mondale had been renominated with ease (although one delegate cast a ballot for George Orwell).
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Now he gave a highly partisan speech that energized the convention. In refrain after refrain he said, “Most Americans believe,” after which he would cite a federal program. The crowd then answered, “But not Ronald Reagan!” Mondale tore into Reagan's tax-cut proposal, saying that the only way it could be funded would be to wreck every social program, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, aid to veterans, aid to children, aid to cities, and aid to the states. He also went after Reagan for wanting to use the U.S. military to quell crises around the world.
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After Mondale's spirited speech and especially the Kennedy stem-winder of two nights earlier, President Carter had tough acts to follow. Like Mondale, Carter aimed his fire at Reagan. Unlike Mondale, he distinctly underwhelmed the delegates with his speech.

The president entered Madison Square Garden to “Hail to the Chief,” the very song he had banned in 1977.
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Before Carter laid into Reagan, he honored the Democratic Party's long tradition. But when he tried to pay tribute to a fallen hero of the party, Hubert Humphrey, the name came out “Hubert Horatio Hornblower … err … Humphrey!”
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The crowd tittered. It was not an auspicious beginning.

Carter quickly shifted his focus to accusing Reagan of having an itchy trigger finger: “The life of every human being on earth can depend on the experience and judgment and vigilance of the person in the Oval Office. The president's power for building and his power for destruction are awesome. And the power's greatest exactly where the stakes are highest—in matters of war and peace.”
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Of course, with the American hostages still being held captive in Tehran, Carter himself was plagued by rumors that he was planning a full-scale invasion of Iran.

“This election,” the president intoned, “is a stark choice between two men, two parties, two sharply different pictures of what America is and what the world is. But it's more than that—it's a choice between two futures.”
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He envisioned a future of “security and justice and peace,” but the other possible future, he said, would be one
of “despair,” “surrender,” and “risk.” His voice rising, Carter said that Reagan would “launch an all-out nuclear arms race” and initiate “an attack on everything that we've done in the achievement of social justice and decency in the last fifty years.”
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Here, the president was signaling the rough treatment that he and his Georgians had in store for Reagan in the fall campaign.
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Carter suffered under few illusions about Americans' attitudes toward his presidency, so with little to trumpet over the past four years, he would need to turn all his guns on Reagan, in an attempt to destroy the Republican's legitimacy as a candidate. “The question in the fall,” admitted a Carter aide, “is who is the bigger turkey? I think people will decide that Reagan is.”
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By this point in the speech, sweat was pouring off the president's face, and the front of his shirt was noticeably damp. Not much of what he was saying was sticking, though. Indeed, toward the end of the speech, bored delegates could be seen yawning and fidgeting. One problem was that the address—crafted primarily by Hendrik “Rick” Hertzberg, who with Pat Caddell had fashioned Carter's now-orphaned “malaise” speech—reflected the input of a number of different Carter advisers. It ended up touching the bases of all the Democratic constituencies—labor, minorities, women, Jews, farmers, teachers, and others—and a laundry list of typical activist initiatives.

Things did not get better for Carter after he concluded his bland and uninspiring fifty-one-minute speech. Embarrassingly, a scheduled balloon drop failed, robbing the Democrats of the celebration they had planned for the national television viewership. Tom Brokaw of NBC tried to query a visibly upset Hamilton Jordan on the floor, asking whether the failed balloon drop was a metaphor for the Carter campaign.

In an attempt to show unity, the Democrats trotted out an array of famous and not-so-famous Democrats—cabinet officials, governors, members of Congress, White House staff. Mondale joined him on the stage, then their families, and then a goofy display of Democratic power brokers appeared as Bob Strauss, chairman of the Carter campaign, screamed out their names as the Democratic power brokers joined Carter on stage. It looked like a badly organized high school assembly in which everybody was included so as not to offend anyone.

When Zbigniew Brzezinski was announced, the somnolent delegates booed lustily. Some delegates booed Carter himself, while the rest of the crowd offered tepid applause. Then, like the cavalry coming over the hill, Ted Kennedy appeared on stage. The delegates perked up and the noise in the hall grew appreciably louder and warmer. They began chanting, “We want Ted!” as they had two nights before. Kennedy, with a small smile pasted on his face rather than his usual broad grin, waved to the audience and moved from one side of the dais to the other,
always away from Carter. Carter kept following Kennedy, like a little kid, trying to engage Kennedy in the traditional victory clasp, but Kennedy would have none of it. It was embarrassing and Carter was furious.
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