Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America Read online

  A malaise had descended upon America.

  Conditions were equally bleak in the international arena. The America of 1980 was confronting a so-called Cold War, but with 55,000 young Americans killed in Vietnam and another 33,000 killed in an earlier quagmire on the Korean Peninsula, it was difficult to see this “long twilight struggle,” as JFK put it, as anything but a hot war.8

  The Soviets were on the march after invading Afghanistan a year earlier and were arming anti-American guerrillas in Central America and Africa. The Soviet embassy in Washington was regarded as nothing more than a forward operating post for the KGB. America's military might was a thing of the past, and many GIs were on food stamps. The Eastern bloc was running amok and the West was losing. South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and other countries had fallen to Communism. NATO was withering, and Italy in the '70s had come within a hairsbreadth of voting into power a Communist government.

  Dominoes were falling across the globe.

  Yet despite America's troubles, and despite the low esteem in which Jimmy Carter was held, the odds were stacked against Reagan. Americans did not like to kick presidents out of office. In twenty previous elections dating back to 1900, only twice—in 1912 and 1932—had the American people found sufficient reason to boot the elected incumbent. More presidents in the twentieth century had left the White House feet first than had been given their walking papers by the American voter.

  THE ROAD AHEAD FOR Ronald Reagan would be rough, but the road behind had been strewn with many hazards. In 1980 he made his third try for the Republican Party's nomination. This was his last chance, after he lost in 1968 to Richard Nixon and again in 1976 to Gerald Ford. The defeat in 1976 was particularly bitter. His fight against President Ford had grown nasty and had been carried all the way to the Republican National Convention in Kansas City.

  Awful things had been said and written about Reagan, and not just by liberal editorialists. Some of the worst had come from the GOP establishment and self-appointed conservative leaders. Reagan was in many ways a libertarian, distrustful of the abuses of governmental power—including abuses by overzealous conservatives, some of whom viewed government as a weapon to be used against those who dared oppose them. Many in the New Right had opposed this candidacy, supporting other, more malleable contenders. They remained wary of him.

  So, too, did many on the left. David Lucey was the son of Pat Lucey, the Democratic governor of Wisconsin who became independent presidential candidate John Anderson's running mate in 1980. The younger Lucey recalled in an interview, “People on our side of the spectrum in 1980, we thought [Reagan] was a nutcase.”9

  Reagan's uphill climb, especially over the past four years, had been nothing short of remarkable. He had defied doubts about his age, his wisdom, his endurance, and his capacity—doubts not only from his political opponents but also from his own party and even top aides. He had also overcome a hostile media; a sometimes balky campaign operation; his own mistakes, gaffes, and indifference to the management of his last quest; and several bona fide heavyweight contenders for the 1980 GOP presidential nomination. His campaign had utterly collapsed seven months earlier after the disastrous loss in Iowa's caucuses to George Herbert Walker Bush. Only through sheer force of will did Reagan right himself and his campaign and turn it around to win the nomination.

  Even in the past twenty-four hours Reagan had had to overcome big obstacles. He had picked Bush to be his running mate only at the very last moment. He so resisted the notion of choosing Bush, the obvious choice to some if not to the Reagans themselves, that the Gipper had seriously pursued the Dream Ticket with Ford. Just a day earlier, the entire assemblage in Detroit—the media, the delegates, the hangers-on, the operatives—was convinced that the two men would go under the gun and marry at the political altar. Negotiations between Ford's and Reagan's representatives didn't break down for good until near midnight. Having exhausted all options, Reagan only reluctantly called Bush.

  Henry Kissinger, Reagan's old nemesis, was the Machiavellian behind the “co-presidency” idea. In the end, his presence and demands helped torpedo the deal. One Reaganite had the last word on the role of Kissinger's obstinacy in the negotiations when he said, “For the first time in my life, I felt sorry for the North Vietnamese.”10 Kissinger, who had negotiated Nixon's “peace with honor” end to the American military presence in South Vietnam, was interested in maintaining his own proximity to power, insisting on a major foreign-policy portfolio in any Reagan-Ford administration. It was a self-serving, behind-the-scenes role Kissinger had played in the past. During the 1968 presidential race, he had hedged his bets by relaying sensitive information to both the Nixon and Humphrey camps.11 Realpolitik, indeed.

  If politics was the art of the compromise, the art of the possible, the unlikely ticket of Reagan and Bush proved it. Both had to get over their mutual dislike and make possible a “team of rivals”—something many considered unlikely, if not impossible. Two years earlier Reagan had campaigned against Bush's son George W. in a Republican congressional primary in Texas, prompting U.S. News & World Report to write, “A Ronald Reagan–George Bush ticket for the Republicans in 1980? Party leaders who like the idea now say personal animosity between the two all but rules it out.”12

  REAGAN WAS BORN IN 1911, only a few years after Teddy Roosevelt had used the presidential “bully pulpit” to exhort America. TR once said, “The only true conservative … sets his face toward the future.”13

  Yet, rather than the old Rough Rider, it was another Roosevelt, a Democrat named Franklin, who was Reagan's favorite president and inspiration. FDR unveiled a new phrase at the Democratic National Convention in June 1936. The theme of his speech to his fellow Democrats and all of America was that the country had a “rendezvous with destiny.”

  Roosevelt told the Democrats, “There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations, much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.”14 Though the nation was still struggling in the depths of the Great Depression, FDR was giving his fellow countrymen hope. In telling Americans of their “rendezvous,” he was revealing that they and their country had a future, something many did not believe possible.

  FDR's words were prescient, as this “greatest generation” went on to defeat the Empire of Japan and Nazi Germany and then, with typical American magnanimity and generosity of spirit, rebuild those war-torn countries to get them back on their feet as prosperous democracies.

  The phrase “rendezvous with destiny” had its roots in a poem about World War I by Alan Seeger, a young American who had volunteered to join the French Foreign Legion. His poem was entitled “I Have a Rendezvous with Death.” That was unfortunately true, as Seeger was killed on July 4, 1916, during the battle of the Somme, at Belloy-en-Santerre, just days after his twenty-eighth birthday. His poem was published posthumously. John Kennedy so loved the romantic style of Seeger's poem that his wife, Jacqueline, memorized it and repeated it to him often.

  Seeger's phrase “rendezvous with death” was adapted for FDR's convention speech by a member of Roosevelt's original “Brain Trust,” the famous—or notorious, depending upon one's point of view—Tommy “The Cork” Corcoran. A New Dealer since day one, Corcoran was FDR's political fixer and had virtual run of the White House.15 Corcoran was helping with Roosevelt's speech for the convention in Philadelphia when he paraphrased Seeger's poem, transforming it into “rendezvous with destiny.” Years later Corcoran, bent and aged, told his tale to author and Bush confidant Vic Gold.16

  Listening to FDR that night in June 1936 was a twenty-five-year-old radio broadcaster at WHO in Des Moines, Iowa, known to his audiences as Dutch Reagan. The young man fell in love with the phrase “rendezvous with destiny.” To him there was something lyrical, something magical and heroic, about FDR's idiom.

  At the time Reagan was a New Deal Democrat. He would not switch his registration to the GOP until much later in life, when he was fifty-on
e years old.17 As he progressed in life and politics, he retained FDR's idealism and would use the expression in all his important speeches, even as he evolved from a “hemophiliac liberal,” as he later put it, to a populist conservative.18

  In October 1964, only two years after becoming a Republican, Reagan at the last minute was asked to give a nationally televised speech lauding the presidential candidacy of Senator Barry Goldwater. Toward the end of the speech, Reagan told his studio audience and millions of Americans, “You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We can preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness.”19 Reagan's fiery remarks electrified conservatives everywhere. The speech was later released as an LP album entitled Rendezvous with Destiny.

  But the GOP of 1964 was far different from the party of sixteen years later. The party in 1964—eastern-based and dominated by country clubs and corporate boardrooms—deemed Reagan's phrase unsophisticated and the man himself a vulgarian. Serious Republicans simply did not talk that way. It was tacky.

  Reagan did not back away from the phrase. As the post-Nixon Republican Party struggled for relevance in early 1975, Reagan used it in a speech before the annual gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington. The speech was widely regarded as one of Reagan's most important to the conservative movement, as it laid down critical ideological markers.20

  Reagan turned to the phrase again in November 1979 when he announced his third and final attempt at the Republican Party's presidential nomination. This Reagan, more hopeful, also quoted his favorite political philosopher, Thomas Paine, telling the American people, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”

  SINCE THE TIME WHEN he was just a shirttail kid, Reagan had been infused with heroic dreams. He had read Horatio Alger's books as a youngster, books about poor but honest and brave boys who were rewarded in the end for their character. He had dreamt of being in the cavalry, leading the charge. He had come a long way from those small towns in the Midwest that novelist Sinclair Lewis derided.

  Reagan sprang from those quintessentially small-town values that the worldly liberal Lewis mocked as parochial and philistine. Ronald Reagan was in fact born on “Main Street,” in an apartment above the local bank building in Tampico, Illinois. His father, John Edward Reagan, was an alcoholic Irish-American who, when working, sold shoes. Reagan's mother, Nellie Wilson Reagan, was a devoted member of the Christian Church who worked with the needy, sometimes even inviting released convicts to stay at their home.21

  Reagan and his brother, Neil, had a comfortable relationship with their parents, so much so that as children, they called their parents by their first names. In turn, the boys were always called “Moon” and “Dutch.” As a baby, Reagan's father nicknamed him, exclaiming when his second son was born, “Why he looks just like a fat little Dutchman!” As the boy grew older, he refused to use his Christian name, Ronald, thinking it was sissified. After becoming president, residing in the upstairs quarters of the White House, Reagan would often joke that he was “living above the store again.”22

  It was from his mother that Reagan inherited his faith in the goodness of people. His humanitarian streak would surface throughout his life. Once in the 1950s he received a letter from a despondent woman, deeply worried about her young son, who was suffering from depression. Reagan was the little boy's hero. Reagan did not want to simply show up at the door, knock, and ask for the youngster, so he devised a plan to go through the boy's neighborhood, as if he were taking a survey for General Electric. He arrived, clipboard in hand, to interview the starstruck child. Reagan engaged him in conversation and gave him advice on life. The mother wept at Reagan's kindness. She and her son asked Reagan to stay in touch. He of course did.23

  By 1980, that world had changed completely. The verities of pre-Vietnam America seemed to be a thing of the past. Cynicism was not only rampant—it was fashionable.

  STANDING ON THE DAIS in Joe Louis Arena, Ronald Reagan gave his remarks accepting the nomination of the Republican Party for president of the United States. Reagan used strong sentences and powerful prose to make his case against Jimmy Carter, against big government, and for his conservative approach, whose centerpiece was “family, work, neighborhood, peace, and freedom.” The nominee mentioned but three presidents: Lincoln and FDR warmly, Carter less so.

  Reagan called on all his fellow countrymen, not just Republicans, to join his crusade. “I want to carry our message to every American, regardless of party affiliation, who is a member of this community of shared values.”24 He made an open appeal to the young, considered a Democratic constituency. “They expect you to tell your children that the American people no longer have the will to cope with their problems; that the future will be one of sacrifice and few opportunities.”25 He also appealed to labor and minorities. In reaching out to these groups, Reagan was asking for the support of staunch members of the Democratic Party's coalition who were being taken for granted by the incumbent Democrat; he was “breaking precedent,” as he had quipped the night before.26

  Like any good leader, Reagan knew that he needed to tell a story to make his case. As a Hollywood veteran, he realized that all good scripts contain three essential elements: introduction, conflict, and resolution. His landmark speech in 1980 reviewed the state of affairs in America—its awful conditions and his bold solutions.

  Noting the thousands of Americans he had met on the campaign trail, Reagan observed, “They are concerned, yes; they are not frightened. They are disturbed, but not dismayed. They are the kind of men and women Tom Paine had in mind when he wrote—during the darkest days of the American Revolution—‘We have it in our power to begin the world over again.’”

  The former Democrat then returned to FDR, saying, “Nearly 150 years after Tom Paine wrote those words, an American president told the generation of the Great Depression that it had a ‘rendezvous with destiny.’ I believe this generation of Americans today also has a rendezvous with destiny.”27

  Approaching his conclusion, Reagan told the assembled and those watching across America, “I ask you not simply to ‘Trust me,’ but to trust your values—our values—and to hold me responsible for living up to them. I ask you to trust that American spirit which knows no ethnic, religious, social, political, regional, or economic boundaries; the spirit that burned with zeal in the hearts of millions of immigrants from every corner of the Earth who came here in search of freedom.”28 Many of the delegates wept.

  As Reagan neared the end of his speech, he hesitated, as if debating whether to continue. He went ahead, albeit haltingly. “I'll confess that I've been a little afraid to suggest what I'm going to suggest. I'm more afraid not to. Can we begin our crusade joined together in a moment of silent prayer?”29

  More than twenty thousand people fell silent.

  Solemnity covered Joe Louis Arena, and only the mechanical sound of the air conditioning could be heard faintly in the background. Several moments passed. Reagan then lifted his head, looked out at the GOP convention, and ended the proceedings by saying, in a voice husky with emotion, “God bless America. Thank you.”30

  A roar erupted from the Republican faithful. Reagan's apotheosis was complete; his conservative crusade was officially joined.

  LIKE HIS POLITICAL HERO, Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan had a clear vision of what he wanted to do if he got the job of president. He, too, had a rendezvous with destiny.

  Reagan's first job was in 1926, as a lifeguard at the Rock River in Lowell Park, near his home of Dixon, Illinois. “I saved 77 lives,” Reagan proudly asserted many years later. The high school boy, tall, athletic, and good-looking, would notch a mark on a wooden log for every life he saved.31

  His instincts as a lifeguard never left him. In 1967, at a poolside party, a little girl fell into the water and quickly sank to the bottom. No one noticed what happened except for Governor Reagan, who, while st
ill in his suit, jumped into the pool and saved the child.32

  Now the former lifeguard sought the challenge of a lifetime.

  Ronald Reagan was out to save America.

  1

  EXIT, STAGE RIGHT

  “It was the worst I'd ever seen him.”

  August 20, 1976

  Ronald Reagan was angry, frustrated, and disappointed.

  He left the Republican Party's convention in Kansas City satisfied that he'd done all he could do to wrest the nomination away from President Gerald Ford, yet at the same time Reagan was disquieted that he'd lost to a man he deemed a political inferior. Reagan gave an impromptu, eloquent, and bittersweet address to the delegates on the last night of the convention, and those assembled thought this would be the last time they would ever see him. Many in Kemper Arena wept. They sent Reagan off with a resounding outpouring of affection.

  He had attempted the extraordinary: seizing the nomination from an incumbent president, albeit an embattled one. He'd come astonishingly close. Ford won the nomination by only 57 votes more than the 1,130 he needed, beating Reagan by just a handful of delegates. Had Reagan prevented Ford from winning the nomination on the first ballot and forced a second balloting, he may well have won the GOP nomination. The delegates in North Carolina, Kentucky, and other states were mandated to vote for President Ford on the first ballot but would have been free to vote for Reagan a second time around, and he was their real preference. Reagan had certainly been welcomed more warmly than the incumbent by the seventeen thousand GOP faithful in Kemper Arena. A California state senator, H. L. Richardson, summed up the abilities of the two when he said, “Reagan could get a standing ovation in a graveyard. Ford puts you to sleep in the third paragraph.”1