Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (99 page)

Reagan turned serious for a moment when he brought up the issue of the hostages in Iran. Rising above all the rumors that the hostages would be freed before the election—including his own previous reference to a possible “October Surprise”—he said, “No one in America will rejoice more than I when America's long wait for a resolution of this crisis is over.” He concluded by making moving remarks about Al Smith, “a man of peace, good will and profound faith.” Reagan told of how Smith did not descend into bitterness the night he suffered his crushing defeat to Hoover, but instead said, in reference to his wife, “This is Katie's
birthday, let's go upstairs and cut the cake.” Reagan added, “That's what I call real class.” The Gipper was rewarded with a standing ovation.
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Reagan had clearly won this round with Carter. Now his campaign faced a decision on a bigger fight—the one-on-one debate.

The Reagan camp was still divided on this issue. Stu Spencer and Bill Tim-mons remembered Gerald Ford's disastrous performance in his second debate with Carter in 1976 and didn't want to see a repeat of it. But even some of the doves recognized that Carter was scoring political points by repeatedly challenging Reagan on this subject. Carter continued to rise in the polls and Reagan continued to decline. Finally, the night Reagan addressed the Al Smith dinner, Spencer convened an emergency meeting of the campaign's high command to decide the issue once and for all. The Reaganites commandeered a suite on the top floor of the Waldorf Astoria to hash things out.

After a couple of hours spent arguing in the deep of night, the high command reached a virtually unanimous decision: Reagan would have to debate Carter to stop the hemorrhaging of his campaign. The following morning, over a 6
A.M.
breakfast, Reagan met with his men, who told him of their view that the confrontation was now necessary. The strongest advocate was the newest member of the team, Jim Baker.
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Baker's show of confidence in his candidate meant a lot to Mrs. Reagan.

But Spencer could tell that the Gipper was way ahead of them. A couple of days earlier, during his campaign swing through South Dakota, Reagan had told Nofziger, “Lynwood, I think we're going to have to debate.”
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Reagan announced on the tarmac at LaGuardia Airport that he would now debate Carter, dropping his stance that Anderson had to be included. In his statement, Reagan said that given the independent's sagging support in the polls, the League of Women Voters was justified in excluding him.
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Anderson squawked, but there was little else he could do.

The League of Women Voters immediately issued revised invitations to a forum at the Cleveland Convention Center, tentatively scheduled for October 28, only one week before the election. A hurried meeting was arranged for representatives of both camps to haggle over the details. Jim Baker didn't try to spin things, saying bluntly that Reagan was debating only because he had fallen in the polls. The truth was that a lack of enthusiasm for Jimmy Carter was not enough of a reason to vote for Reagan. Reagan had yet to convince the American people that he would be an acceptable alternative to Carter.

The ferocious campaign between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter in many ways had come down to an all-or-nothing proposition for both men. A Reaganite
complained that it would be like “rolling the dice in one big crapshoot that could blow it all.”
⁶⁵
With only a week to go after the debate, the loser would have little time to repair the damage. In all likelihood, the winner would be the next president of the United States.

O
NCE THE DEBATE WAS
on the schedule, both campaigns' advertising went negative. The Carter campaign ran five-minute spots featuring the president saying that Reagan wanted to engage in a “shootout at the O.K. Corral” with the Soviets. Reagan's commercials stuck to the economy. The ads showed him standing in a field, looking into the camera, saying, “Everywhere I travel in America I hear this phrase over and over again. ‘Where is it going to end?’ Record inflation has robbed the purchasing power of your dollar.… I'm prepared to do something about it.”
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Reagan also used television to try to refute Carter's attacks. The campaign purchased a half-hour on CBS for $150,000 for Reagan to talk about foreign policy in an attempt to reassure nervous voters, especially women. The theme of the address was “Strategy of Peace in the '80s.”
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Reagan used the word “peace” so often in the speech that some writers referred to Reagan's “peace offensive.” The GOP nominee made his case that peace would come from strength, and that nothing would force the Soviets to the negotiating table quicker than a militarily strong America. He called for junking SALT II and starting over with SALT III: “The way to avoid an arms race is not to simply let the Soviets race ahead. We need to remove their incentive to race ahead by making it clear to them that we can and will compete if need be.” Reagan cited Senator John Glenn of Ohio, a Democrat who also opposed SALT II.
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Carter didn't let up, charging that Reagan's position on nuclear armament could lead to war because he sought superiority over the Soviets. The president claimed in a live radio broadcast from the Oval Office that Reagan was pushing America toward the “nuclear precipice,” and called Reagan “extraordinarily naïve.”
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Carter announced that he would once again seek Senate ratification of SALT II, even though the Democratic-controlled body had put the treaty on ice after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.

M
ORE AND MORE COLUMNS
appeared speculating that Reagan was about to blow the election. In state after state, it was too close to call. Confidentially (but lacking in confidence), one of Reagan's key aides told a reporter, “I think Reagan is slipping everywhere … If he doesn't do something dramatic, he's going to lose it by attrition.”
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Most of the Carterites were almost giddy. They had gotten the debate they wanted with Reagan and the president was on offense. Despite some lingering concerns about several states in the South, they felt, to a person, that the president's home region would not give up on one of its own. One Carter aide confidently told
Newsweek
, “The pieces are in place for us to win.”
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To shore up his backyard, Carter headed to Texas, Florida, and Louisiana. On the stump, his touch was noticeably lighter, less abrasive than it had been. Ted Kennedy had finally fallen into line, working crowds in New Jersey and other states, exhorting them to send Carter back to the White House. Kennedy had come around for two good reasons. One, his own political future: his aides were already plotting a 1984 campaign. Second, money: half of the money he raised on the trail for Carter would go toward the $1.7 million debt his own campaign had rung up. At one joint event, the two men finally clasped hands over their heads in the very pose that Carter had coveted at their convention.
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J
ACK
G
ERMOND AND
J
ULES
Witcover, the perceptive political duo for the
Washington Star
, paid a visit to the youthful governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton, for his assessment of how the campaign was shaping up. Though Carter was well ahead of Reagan in Arkansas, young Clinton, who was already a Jedi Master when it came to politics, distanced himself from the president and said that Reagan “comes across here as a guy who has a coherent vision.”
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Clinton was running for reelection and had his own headaches, including the thousands of Cuban criminals Carter had dumped on his state after Castro had dumped them on Carter.

N
O ARMS NEGOTIATIONS INVOLVING
heads of state were as deliberative as the talks setting the ground rules for the first and only debate between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. The campaigns spent two days fighting over the finest points of format and presentation. From the reporters who would serve on the panel, to camera angles, to tickets for the live debate, to who would walk on stage first, nothing was too petty to squabble over.

Jim Baker urged the same format as in 1976, but Bob Strauss wanted fewer reporters on the panel and time for the candidates to cross-examine each other. Baker shot down cross-examination by the contestants.
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Carter's team wanted the presidential seal on the front of his podium. “Yeah, right,” was Baker's reply. No seal.

The Reagan men wanted the podiums as close together as possible to accentuate the difference in height between the 6'1” Reagan and the 5'9” Carter. Nothing
doing, said Strauss. They would be as far apart as possible without actually going off the stage.

Carter's men pressed for a two-hour debate. The thinking was that over a long confrontation the older Reagan might tire in front of millions of Americans. Baker suggested one hour. The two sides compromised on ninety minutes.
⁷⁵

There would be no opening statements, but there would be closing statements. A coin toss backstage would decide who got to choose who would take the first question and who would make his closing comments first.

Symbolically, Reagan would stand to the audience's right, Carter to the left.

Sandwiches were brought in to slake the hunger of the debate negotiators. At one point, reporters in the hallway heard Strauss through a partially opened door yell, “I don't think you've heard anything I've said since we came in here!”
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A Bush-Mondale debate was junked, as the Reaganites secretly wanted. Baker said with a straight face that Bush was one of only two surrogates on the road for Reagan and he was needed out there. Mondale's chief of staff, Dick Moe, stormed out halfway through the second day of the session when it became clear that Bush would not be allowed to debate.
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At one point, Strauss excused himself to call Jody Powell at the White House for a clarification. He joked to Baker, “You know, I'm pretty close to Carter. I can go in the bedroom with Carter and ask him anything in the world, but Jody can go into the bathroom.”
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Four years of fighting and drinking on the East Coast's “Cannery Row” had taken their toll on Powell, though he was still a young man of thirty-seven. He had permanent dark circles under his eyes and was a chain smoker. Burning the candle at both ends was beginning to wear him down. The tough town had also rubbed the wedded Georgian the wrong way, as when he awoke one morning to see in black and white in the
Washington Post
an unsourced allegation that he was engaged in an extramarital affair.
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By all other reports, Powell was a happily married man.

Baker, a.k.a. “The Waco Kid,” ran a successful bluff, audaciously suggesting that the debate should be held the night before the election, pitching it in the guise of good government. In between the two days of negotiations, Baker went on ABC's
Good Morning America
to float the notion.
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The Carterites countered instead with October 28 … which was exactly the date Baker and the Reaganites wanted in the first place. Holding a debate the night before the election would have left the Reagan campaign absolutely no time to fix things if Reagan, as some in his camp feared—and the Carter camp hoped—made a gaffe in the live, nationally televised debate. October 28 also appealed to the Reaganites because it allowed their candidate more than a week to get ready for the debate.

Carter, of course, was born ready. Yet he faced a problem. For weeks he had been daring Reagan to debate. His men had gone further, letting it be known that they were champing at the bit for a debate and that they were utterly convinced that the president would trounce Reagan in a one-on-one setting. Now the debate was a go, and they had managed to inflate expectations sky high.

R
EAGAN PRESSED ON
. H
E
went to Illinois, yet again, accompanied by Nancy and two hundred reporters and staffers who filled seven buses. In Springfield he laid a wreath at Lincoln's tomb and then, in the fashion of the state, rubbed the nose on the statue of Abe for good luck. The night before, he'd gone back to Eureka for a boisterous homecoming rally in the Reagan Gymnasium. The last time he'd been there, his alma mater was unmoved. This time, however, they welcomed the football team's old right guard. He attended the homecoming football game the next day against Concordia. At the rally, Reagan's old coach, Ralph McKinzie, eighty-six, presented the Gipper with a jersey that read “Reagan 80” on the back. Ominously, Concordia clobbered Eureka, 33–13.
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B
OTH
R
EAGAN AND
C
ARTER
were playing it safe until their showdown at the Mistake by the Lake. Heading into their one and only debate, Carter had made it pretty well known what he thought of Reagan, which was not much. “Word went around that Carter expected to swamp Reagan,” recalled Reagan speechwriter Peter Hannaford.
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The Gipper, on the other hand, had been more circumspect. Only years later would it become clear what Reagan really thought of the thirty-ninth president. When asked in an interview whether Reagan was intimidated by being on the same stage as Carter, Stu Spencer replied that, no, Reagan wasn't intimidated because he didn't see Carter so much as the president of the United States and Leader of the Free World.

Reagan simply saw Carter as a “little shit.”
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