Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (95 page)

Another debate was playing out on Capitol Hill. Republican senators wanted to get the first installment of the Reagan tax cut up for a vote, to show voters that Carter and the Democrats were on the wrong side of the issue. Senator Bob Dole was Reagan's chief spear-carrier, and if anyone knew how to take a minority of recalcitrant GOP senators and beat the Democrats, or at least put them on the defensive, it was Dole, the legislative magician. Dole could not muster enough
support and the measure failed, along party lines, 54–38, but the Republicans had made their point: the GOP was foursquare for personal income tax cuts and the Democrats were on record opposing them.
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C
ARTER HAD NOT BACKED
off on his attacks, and now even John Anderson criticized the president for the warmonger swipes at Reagan. Carter, Anderson said, had made “an unfair, highly political, and undocumented charge” against Reagan and was using “scare tactics” to suggest “that the election in November is a choice between peace and war.”
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The president was being “demagogic,” according to Anderson.
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The Reagan campaign believed, before most of the president's team did, that Carter's harsh rhetoric was beginning to backfire, that voters wanted something more uplifting, more inspiring, than two men slugging it out in the gutter. Nofziger, always with his finger on the pulse of the people, said, “Clearly there is no great demand for this kind of campaign anymore.”
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With that, the Reagan-Bush campaign made a critically important strategic decision: it resolved to take the high road.

Reagan's message changed dramatically on the road. In Florida he spotted a sign that read “Blacks for Reagan.” Smiling broadly, Reagan departed from his speech and said, “God bless you, and God bless those who brought that sign and, by golly, it shows that you can't fool all of the people all of the time.”
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This change in sentiment eventually infused the entire campaign. Whereas Carter had continually attacked Reagan the man, Reagan's campaign would mostly stick to questioning Carter's record as president. In a major address to the World Affairs Council, George Bush characterized Carter's foreign policy as one of “bluff, bluster and backdown” and accused the president of weakening American influence. Bush reminded his audience of Carter's surprise a year earlier when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. “Ronald Reagan would take office next January with a full understanding of the expansionist nature and geopolitical intentions of the leaders of the Soviet Union.”
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Loosely translated, this meant that if elected, Reagan was going to ride roughshod over the Russians.

R
EAGAN WAS STILL WELL
behind in North Carolina and several other southern states, and Carter was fighting hard to hold on to what had been his. But it now looked as if the walls of Carter's once “Solid South” might tumble down. New polls showed Reagan creeping into small leads in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida. He was also leading in Virginia.
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The votes in the South, according to political observer Michael Barone, broke down into three categories: blacks, “country club whites,” and the swing vote of
culturally conservative, rural, blue-collar Democrats. Grit by grit, a slow, trickling stream of southern Democrats was moving toward Reagan or undecided, dismayed with their cultural brother, Carter. Jimmy Buffett was surprised to hear boos from a young crowd in Georgia when Carter's name was mentioned at a fundraising concert for the incumbent.
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A new category had also emerged in the South beginning in 1976: that of the politically active Evangelical church. Reagan continued to court this fast-growing constituency. He journeyed to Lynchburg, Virginia, to address thousands of supportive evangelicals at the National Religious Broadcasters Association Convention, telling them that if elected, he would push for voluntary prayers in public schools. Reagan sidestepped a controversy when asked whether he agreed with a recent statement by the Reverend Jerry Falwell that God heard the prayers only of Christians. “No,” he replied. “Since both the Christian and Judaic religions are based on the same God, the God of Moses, I'm quite sure those prayers are heard.”
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Reagan was also making some inroads up north. Nancy Reagan, on a rare solo mission, held a high-profile event in New Jersey with a number of current and former Democratic officeholders, including sheriffs, town mayors, and ward leaders, who endorsed her husband.
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When Reagan arrived for his own tour in New Jersey, he reminded the heavily Catholic state of his support for tax credits for parochial schools. A heckler yelled out that it was not constitutional and Reagan, not missing a beat, fired back, “Yes it is! Separation of church and state does not mean we have to separate ourselves from our religion.” A few other hecklers joined in and Reagan joshed to the overwhelmingly supportive crowd, “I wish they'd shut up!”
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When Ray Donovan, the developer who was the head of the Reagan campaign in New Jersey, and Roger Stone, the campaign's regional political director, were not butting heads, they were organizing a very effective operation in the state.

In New York City, of all places, Reagan inveighed against government. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Carter had halted the construction of the badly needed replacement for the West Side Highway; the crowd of hardhats and unionists, who supported the $1 billion project, loudly cheered Reagan. Lou Cannon noted that Reagan was striking a New Deal theme when he told the workers, “I happen to think that the best social program is a job.”
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The union workers gave Reagan a hardhat, an item that would come in handy given all that Carter was throwing at him.

The Republican candidate moved on to Pennsylvania and discovered to his delight that he'd moved ahead of Carter there, 40–33 percent, according to a Gallup
poll. Reagan told a crowd in Wilkes-Barre, “Mr. Carter does not represent the same values as such great Democrats as John F. Kennedy or Harry Truman.”
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As certain pockets in the East were moving toward Reagan, the western states were beginning to fall in line behind the Gipper, with only Hawaii looking dubious. The West, from the election of Dwight Eisenhower up to 1976—excepting LBJ's landslide in 1964—had been reliably Republican in presidential elections. And of course, the West was Reagan Country. Carter's forays into this region were not bearing fruit.

By early October, Carter was stymied. His recovery in the polls had stalled after the Reagan-Anderson debate, and now reporters were beginning to ask him about the “meanness” issue. When Reagan criticized the SALT II treaty with the Soviets, saying that “the one card that's been missing in the negotiations has been the possibility of an arms race,” Carter surprisingly did not respond. While the president's advisers may have finally been considering a new approach, they still had Walter Mondale to go on the attack. “This underscores what I think is a reckless, irresponsible and dangerous attitude by the Republican nominee,” the vice president said of Reagan's comments.
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Carter didn't hold his tongue long, however. Speaking at a black-tie Democratic Party fundraiser, he threw a below-the-beltway punch, stating that if Reagan was elected, he would bring about “the alienation of black from white, Christian from Jew, rich from poor, and North from South.”
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The
Washington Post
had become so inured to Deacon Carter's “mission from God” inflammatory rhetoric that the story ran on page two and the appalling language was buried at the end of the article.

The Carter campaign tried to enlist other attack dogs. Pat Caddell called Bob Shrum, Ted Kennedy's speechwriter, to ask him to have Teddy attack Reagan as “anti-Catholic.” Shrum replied, “Well, I'll ask him, but he isn't going to do it. Not in a million years.”
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Shrum knew his man. Teddy rejected the request out of hand.

Carter got a bit of good news on the economy for the first time in a long time. The unemployment rate dipped from 7.6 percent to 7.5 percent, and inflation had actually gone down for the first time in more than four years, dropping 0.2 percent for the month of September.
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If Carter could convince enough voters that the economy was on the way back and that Reagan was not the way to go, he still had time to eke out a win, as in 1976.

To help along the process, the Carter administration was spreading federal aid around as if it were manure. Millions for a gasohol plant in Michigan, tens of millions in largesse for Chicago, all announced by Carter or cabinet officials on
the stump.
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There was little Reagan could do except cry foul, just as he'd done in 1976 when Ford was rolling out the federal pork in primary after primary.

A
T THE BEGINNING OF
October, Washington's attention temporarily shifted from the presidential race to a pair of Capitol Hill scandals. First, Michael Myers, Democrat of Pennsylvania, became the first congressman to be expelled from the House of Representatives in nearly 120 years. Myers was one of the politicians whose hand had been caught in the Abscam cookie jar. He had already been convicted in court, despite his imaginative defense that the video of him stuffing money into his pockets was in actuality of another man; if it was him, Myers claimed, he was only “play acting.”
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He would ultimately be sent to federal prison.

The day after the House voted to expel Myers, Congressman Robert Bauman of Maryland, a fiery young conservative and chairman of the American Conservative Union, was charged with soliciting sex from a sixteen-year-old male prostitute.
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Bauman, who had a wife and four children, admitted to “homosexual tendencies” and blamed those “tendencies” on alcoholism.
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He checked into rehabilitation and conservatives checked Bauman off their lists.

R
EAGAN'S OPPONENTS STEPPED UP
their attacks. A heckler in New Jersey called him a “pig.”
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The National Organization for Women (NOW) said he was “medieval.” At their convention in Texas, NOW members broke out into a chant: “ERA, here to stay! Ronald Reagan, no way!” The women's group adopted a resolution to picket Reagan and Bush, though it did not go so far as to endorse Carter's candidacy.
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Carter was back in the role of the underdog—a role his campaign always said he preferred. The president's supporters redoubled their attacks on Reagan. Mondale said Reagan's position on the SALT treaty “threatens civilization.”
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Edmund Muskie, the secretary of state, said that if Reagan was elected, the country would be in a perpetual state of war.
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Even Mrs. Carter, in her own way, knocked Reagan. She told crowds she was “proud” that her husband was the “president of peace,” and as the
New York Times
reported, her message was “a mixture of not-so-subtle digs at Ronald Reagan's conservatism, age and competence.”
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Carter's union supporters began to plan their own attacks on Reagan—largely because they had almost nothing positive to say about the president. In the battleground state of Pennsylvania, labor officials held a crisis meeting in Harrisburg. Jim Mahoney of the AFL-CIO's political committee said frankly, “Let's face it—Carter is a tough job to sell.… We have to do a hatchet job on Reagan.” Another said, “I can't tell Joe Worker that Jimmy Carter is great. He knows he is
worse off today than he was four years ago.… What I have to do is make Reagan a devil.”
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Carter gave his presidency a better grade than did his union supporters. The president went on
60 Minutes
and said, “Under the circumstances, I think about a B. The actual results, maybe a C.”
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Carter himself continued to tear into Reagan. Appearing before thousands in downtown Chicago, he labeled Reagan's rhetoric on national defense “jingoistic” and “macho” and said that his opponent wanted to “push everybody around.”
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That night at a party fundraiser, Carter restated the sinister theme he had unveiled a few days earlier: “You'll determine whether or not America will be unified, or if I lose this election, whether Americans might be separated, black from white, Jew from Christian, North from South, rural from urban—whether this nation will be guided from a sense of long-range commitment to peace, sound judgment and broad consultation.”
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Again Anderson condemned Carter for using “feverish, anything-goes tactics.”
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Since the end of September, Reagan had been mostly circumspect about Carter's attacks, talking about what he wanted to talk about and not allowing himself to be diverted. Indeed, he'd joked with audiences that his secret agenda was to cancel Social Security and start World War III. Yet when reporters confronted him with the newest broadside from Carter, Reagan became visibly irritated. His response was mostly measured nonetheless: “I'm saddened that anyone … could intimate such a thing.… Certainly he's reaching a point of hysteria that's hard to understand.”
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Carter was the subject of another round of editorials blasting him for his ruthless speechifying against Reagan. The president's high command convened an emergency meeting and determined that a change in tactics was required. The Carterites finally had to face facts: the president's relentless assault on Reagan had blown up on Carter. Not only had Carter been unsuccessful in provoking Reagan, but he had also tarnished his image as a decent man and instead developed a reputation for nastiness. The president's men acknowledged as much, saying that the strategy “ends up backfiring.…What we're doing isn't working.”
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Even Bob Strauss was critical of Carter, saying he “used a poor choice of words sometimes.… He gets into personal confrontation.”
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Carter had no choice but to tamp down his rhetoric. Reagan campaign aide Michele Davis went out drinking one evening with a group of reporters covering the campaign and was astonished to hear them. She wrote in her diary, “They sure do talk shit about the Carters. Funny.”
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