Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (91 page)

R
EAGAN WENT TO
C
HICAGO
to make a major economic speech to quell a growing controversy about his tax plan.
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For months, a battle had been waged against his tax-cut proposal. Anderson had come up with a good sound bite: when asked how Reagan could cut taxes, maintain social spending, and build up the military, Anderson said, “It's very simple. You do it with mirrors.”
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Reagan's Chicago address, unofficially among the staff, became known as the “mirrors speech.”

Addressing the three hundred attendees of the International Business Council, Reagan answered the establishment's questions about his program by explaining that going after the billions in waste, fraud, and abuse would not do the trick alone. Fixing the terrible economy and the crumbling military were, he said, bigger priorities than balancing the budget, though his plan did call for a balanced
budget by the fifth year.
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When asked how long it would take for his plan to take effect, Reagan said, “It took Mr. Carter three and a half years of hard work to get us into this economic mess. It will take time to get us out.”
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In the speech, Reagan said that revenue from a restarted economy would not by itself pay down the deficit and so some already scheduled tax increases would have to go forward as well. He also abandoned his earlier support for elimination of taxes on interest and inheritance.
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But the Chicago address did not end the controversy over his economic plan. It only angered the business community and supply-siders. The National Federation of Independent Businesses and the National Association of Manufacturers blasted Reagan for proposing more tax cuts for individuals than for businesses.
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Meanwhile, doctrinaire supply-siders found Reagan's speech appalling. These purists screamed that establishmentarian economists from the Nixon and Ford administrations, including Alan Greenspan, had watered down Reagan's original bold proposals. And it was true that the Reagan campaign had shunted aside Jude Wanniski and Art Laffer, architects of the original economic proposal. Even a Reagan favorite, Jack Kemp, was not being sought out for his economic advice. One new Reagan insider opposed to the supply-side philosophy said, “None of us wanted to have to sell that notion in a political campaign, because none of us really believes it.”
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Reagan seemed to be doing better with working people. When Mondale, a union champion, went to Columbus, Ohio, to tour a Western Electric plant, he was unexpectedly greeted with signs that read, “Happy Retirement, Walter Mondale, Jan. 21, 1981,” and “I used to be a Democrat.” Reporters talked to the workers and several said they thought Reagan would carry a majority of the seven thousand employees there.
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Reagan embarked on a blue-collar tour that took him to Cleveland, Buffalo, and Erie, Pennsylvania. In Cleveland at Public Square, Reagan pummeled Carter over the administration's energy policies, saying they had discouraged domestic production for nearly four years. Carter had to deny the charge, which gave Reagan a new opening. In Erie, the Gipper told the sign-waving, button-sporting crowd, “My analysis of our energy situation evidently touched a nerve in the administration, because Mr. Carter responded immediately and personally.”
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He added that Carter had engaged in “half-truths.” Anyone who thought Reagan was not competitive or did not keep score knew nothing about the man.

That morning, Reagan had breakfast in Buffalo with Thomas Gleason, president of the International Longshoremen, making a bid for the union's endorsement. At a planned rally, however, only around fifty longshoremen showed up,
including a small group of protesters.
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More dockyard workers might have shown up for Reagan if there was work to be had, but a boat had not pulled into to be unloaded in almost two years, such was the sorry state of the shipping industry.

C
ARTER HIT A BUMP
in the road when it was disclosed that his nominal campaign manager, Timothy Kraft, was under investigation for possible cocaine use. Given that Hamilton Jordan had faced similar charges previously, this was the last thing Carter needed. Kraft took a leave of absence from the campaign and Jordan shortly reprised his 1976 role, having been cleared of the drug allegations.
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Kraft was an old Carter hand, though he was not a Georgian. After the 1976 campaign, a retreat was organized outside of Washington for the staff. Jordan led the meeting and introduced each, most with a wicked comment. When he came to Kraft, he pointed out that the tradition of the campaign had been for the staff to sleep in the homes of supporters to show a feel for the people. “I want to introduce a guy who's slept with more supporters than anyone in the campaign. In fact, instead of sending Tim his salary each month, we send him a dose of penicillin.” Kraft reportedly was not happy with Jordan's comments, but did not back down. In front of a crowd that included Jordan's wife, Nancy, he said, “Well thank you, Ham. And I'd like to say you've been an inspiration to us all.”
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R
EAGAN WAS STILL GETTING
pummeled in the news media about his campaign's poor decisions, his gaffes, and the way that his advisers were sequestering the candidate to prevent further adlibs. Words like “problem,” “damage,”
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“ill-prepared,”
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and “disarray”
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peppered the news stories analyzing the problems of the Reagan campaign. Reporters quoted officious GOP operatives, most not affiliated with the campaign, offering their unwelcome advice to Reagan, Bill Casey, Meese, and others. A Republican from California showed up in Washington and when reporter Bob Shogan of the
Los Angeles Times
asked why, he replied, “I'm here to see old-foot-in-the-mouth.”
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The major newspapers rolled out stories recounting past misstatements by Reagan—or past misunderstandings, depending on one's point of view.

The Carter team was thrilled, since the media were doing exactly what the president wanted: making Reagan the issue. Pat Caddell said, “Doubts about [Reagan] are growing, his lead is shrinking, and more and more people are wondering whether he's up to the job. If this impression hardens, he'll be out of the race.”
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In mid-September the
Washington Post
released a new poll that showed the two combatants tied at 37 percent apiece. Carter scored well ahead of Reagan on getting the hostages out of Iraq, but Reagan bested Carter on the ability to “get
things done.” In two crucial areas Reagan was losing. By a 48–40 percent margin, voters sided with Carter, wanting military parity with, instead of superiority over the Soviets. They also now sided with Carter on the issue of the conservative's tax cuts, opposing them by a margin of 51–39 percent.
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Reagan had not even come close to closing the sale with the American voter.

“
The past few days have revealed a man capable of far more petty vituperation than most Americans thought possible even in a dank political season.
”

A
s the presidential race tightened, the war of words between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan only escalated. Reagan said Carter had replaced the Declaration of Independence with a “Declaration of Indifference” over the broken American dream, and blasted the Carter record as a “litany of despair, of broken promises, and sacred trust abandoned and forgotten.”
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Carter returned fire, accusing Reagan and the Republicans of behaving in a “distorted and irresponsible fashion.”
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Both candidates knew the stakes: political experts rated the race a tossup in seventeen states that accounted for a pivotal 236 electoral votes.
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With tensions boiling over, debate negotiations between the Carter and Reagan campaigns broke down. No future meetings were contemplated between Robert Strauss and Jim Baker. In the eyes of the media, Round One of the debate over the debates had gone to Reagan and his corner man, Baker, as Carter had come off looking petty for not allowing John Anderson to participate. This was quite an achievement for Baker and the Reagan campaign, since Strauss was without peer as a media schmoozer.

George Bush attacked Carter for not agreeing to debate his two opponents. When journalists asked Bush about his own experience debating Reagan in their
Nashua Telegraph
confrontation months earlier, the VP nominee was ready. “I learned the hard way. Jimmy Carter will learn too.”
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The Houstonian's mission was clear: Take it to Carter, don't screw up, and focus on the local media, not the national media.

Cynicism was rampant across the land. Many voters had tuned out all three candidates, complaining about the same old, same old. A lot of them were telling
pollsters they had no plans to vote. It was the most fluid election anyone could remember in a long time.

M
ANY, BUT NOT ALL
, of the kinks had been worked out on Reagan's plane and back at his Virginia headquarters. The speechwriting was being vetted better, the schedule made more sense, the candidate was doing only a couple of big speeches a day, usually on the same theme, and the media for the most part were being held (unhappily) at bay. Reagan had just completed a successful tour of the industrial Midwest, meeting tens of thousands along the way while providing good visuals for the cameras. With the media off his back temporarily, Reagan went back to using the four-by-six cards that he preferred but that his advisers had stopped him from using to try to curtail gaffes.

As part of the effort to smooth out operations, the campaign had taken control of the press shop at the campaign HQ away from Lyn Nofziger. Nofziger did retain the title of press secretary, but now his role was limited to the plane.
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The hand of Jim Baker, who was quietly asserting himself more and more, was suspected in some quarters. The two men never had much use for each other and would shortly come to loathe each other.

Reagan's plane was officially named LeaderShip '80 by the staff and unofficially the Ponce de Leon by the traveling press. Life on the stretched-out Boeing 727 was for the most part riotous, if also tiring and haphazard. In addition to Mrs. Reagan's trick of bowling an orange down the aisle, takeoff was often marked by enterprising reporters and staffers putting food trays in the aisle and attempting to “surf” their way down the plane.
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Things were even more rollicking on the second, “chase” plane that the Reagan operation leased as the campaign moved into overdrive. This one was nicknamed, not too inaccurately,
The Zoo Plane
. The campaign referred to the tarmac press conferences as “feeding the animals.”
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One might think that traveling with the president of the United States would be more prestigious and luxurious, but the Carter team had turned Air Force One into a model of penny-pinching. The law stipulated that when a president was traveling for even partially political purposes, his campaign had to reimburse the federal treasury in full. It was not unusual for the Carter campaign to bill the traveling media at twice or even three times the cost of flying first class on commercial airlines. The campaign even billed senators and representatives for the privilege of flying with the president. Most campaign staffers were banned from the plane, as their seats could be turned into profit centers for the Carter campaign.

Walter Mondale's plane was an even less desirable spot. For fiercely competitive reporters, and especially for the network correspondents, it was all about
covering the presidential candidate, not the understudy. Mondale made so little news that the media dubbed his plane Morpheus 2.
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W
HILE
R
EAGAN WAS MARGINALLY
ahead of Carter in several regions of the country, he was again well behind the president in most of the South. To try to make inroads there, the campaign sent Reagan and Bush on a trip to Texas. Reagan always liked the Lone Star State, and more importantly, Texas loved Reagan. Reagan's field staffers liked Texas, too. Whenever one staffer would stop by the state headquarters of Democrats for Reagan, a former funeral home, he and a comely young assistant would quietly retire to the basement, where they would avail themselves of a left-behind coffin for an afternoon assignation.
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Carter headed to Texas as well, needing to carry the state as he had in 1976. In Houston he spoke before enthusiastic Democrats, hitting Reagan for being “muzzled” by his staff.
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The president seemed to believe that the only way to get his second term would be to increase the attacks on Reagan. That was certainly what Pat Caddell was advising campaign surrogates: pound Reagan. Any hope Carter had of riding a revived job market into a second term had been dashed by the latest economic reports. The second quarter, in which the economy had perked up a bit, had proven to be an anomaly; the newest projections for the third quarter had the economy in negative growth, as it had been for much of 1980 and all of 1979. Two million Americans had lost their jobs in the previous twelve months. Economists everywhere were gloomy.
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The prospects looked little better on the foreign-policy front. Secretary of State Edmund Muskie told the American people it was doubtful that Tehran would release the hostages before the election.
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Carter said something more hopeful while in Texas, but he quickly scaled back his Pollyannaish view when reporters complained about the contradiction. The first anniversary of the taking of the hostages would fall on November 4—Election Day. Privately, the president fretted that this would hurt his chances unless the hostages were released beforehand.
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