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

  The operation was not slapdash, however. Some of Reagan's able aides, including Nofziger, Deaver, Hannaford, and Ed Meese, who was Governor Reagan's chief of staff, began meeting over coffee one day a week, usually on a Friday morning, at the Bicycle Club restaurant to coordinate matters. CFTR also had substantial funding, starting out with a budget of nearly $1.5 million left over from the 1976 campaign committee, Citizens for Reagan (though at year's end about $600,000 would be returned to the Federal Election Commission because it represented unused matching funds).38

  As Reagan was the most in-demand conservative in America, Deaver and Hannaford expected the governor's personal income from his syndicated column, radio commentaries, and speaking fees to range between $400,000 and $750,000 per year. The demands kept Reagan perpetually in motion. His young aide Dennis LeBlanc recalled that as they flew together, Reagan was either reading or writing, making the most of his time. Nancy Reagan remembered the same: “But all the time he was writing. He would always fly first class. He'd sit by the window, and I'd sit in the aisle next to him. It didn't matter whether or not there was a movie being shown and all the lights were out—he'd turn on his reading lamp and would constantly be writing.”39

  JIMMY CARTER MOVED AHEAD quickly with his first address to the nation after becoming president, appearing on television less than two weeks after his inauguration. Dressed in a light-colored cardigan sweater in front of a roaring fire in the White House, Carter followed his populist instincts and took on the Washington establishment, vowing to bring the federal government to heel by freezing federal hiring and cutting regulatory red tape, and also the oil companies and utilities, calling on them to sacrifice.

  Taking on the oil companies was easy. They were unpopular and were already a favorite whipping boy in Washington. Taking on the entrenched bureaucracy was quite another thing. Shrink government? Since when did any Democrat advocate this? Moreover, in telling the American people that their future would be one of scarcity and sacrifice, Carter was making himself and his party the skunks at the garden party. The Democrats had owned the future since 1932, being the party of hope, but now Carter was ceding the political battleground of the future. The sour speech set the tone for Carter's presidency.

  Fittingly, the first movie aired in the Carter White House was All the President's Men. but Carter fundamentally misunderstood the consequences of Watergate. He made symbolic gestures, including taking limousines away from the White House staff, banning the playing of “Hail to the Chief,” carrying his own suit bag slung over his shoulder (though rumors were rampant that the bag was empty), wearing dungarees, and other “depomping the presidency” efforts. He thought the American people wanted their next-door neighbor to be president.40 Carter, like Ford before him, confused the dignity of the office with the character of the individual occupying it. The American people wanted somebody with a common touch, but they also wanted somebody with uncommon dignity. They didn't mind—indeed, actually liked—a little bit of pomp; what they objected to was pomposity.

  A New York Times story three weeks after Carter had taken office reflected Americans' skepticism about the Carter emphasis on “showboat populism.” “I want my President to have some class,” one American complained. Carter “carrying his own suitcases” put another off. “That's going too far.”41 Even Carter worried in his diary that he'd gone too far with the whole “depomping” thing.42

  Carter's peripatetic pollster, Pat Caddell, wrote, “We must devise a context that is neither traditionally liberal nor traditionally conservative, one that cuts across traditional ideology.”43 Carter's instincts were already in this direction, but he was governmentally tone-deaf.

  REAGAN'S METHOD OF TAKING on the status quo was far different from Carter's. In the opening months of 1977, he addressed important conservative organizations to explain his vision for a “New Republican Party.” First, in January, he addressed the annual dinner of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and then in early February he spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Reagan told his young listeners to look beyond the simple math of the two parties and instead focus on the disparity between self-identified conservatives and liberals. During his CPAC address he noted that “on January 5, 1977, by a 43–19 plurality those polled by Harris said they would ‘prefer to see the country move in a more conservative direction than liberal one.’”44

  Reagan called for bringing into the Republican fold those Democrats concerned with “social issues—law and order, abortion, busing, quota systems—[that] are usually associated with the blue-collar, ethnic, and religious groups.”45 In short, he proposed a fusion between those mercantile and economic interests long associated with the GOP, who were mostly concerned with government regulations, and social conservatives, who believed the fabric of society was also threatened by big, intrusive government.

  He told the conservatives to join him in creating a “new, lasting majority. This will mean compromise. But not a compromise of basic principle. What will emerge will be something new, something open and vital and dynamic, something the great conservative majority will recognize as its own, because at the heart of this undertaking is principled politics.”46

  Then Reagan took on the GOP, telling his CPAC audience that the party “cannot be one limited to the country-club, big-business image that … it is burdened with today. The ‘New Republican Party’ I am speaking about is going to have room for the man and woman in the factories, for the farmer, for the cop on the beat.”47

  He closed his groundbreaking speech by telling the assembled conservatives:

  Our task is not to sell a philosophy, but to make the majority of Americans, who already share that philosophy, see that modern conservatism offers them a political home. We are not a cult; we are members of a majority. Let's act and talk like it. The job is ours and the job must be done. If not by us, who? If not now, when? Our party must be the party of the individual. It must not sell out the individual to cater to the group. No greater challenge faces our society today than ensuring that each one of us can maintain his dignity and his identity in an increasingly complex, centralized society.

  Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business, galloping inflation, frustrated minorities, and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite.

  Our party must be based on the kind of leadership that grows and takes its strength from the people. Any organization is in actuality only the lengthened shadowed of its members. A political party is a mechanical structure created to further a cause. The cause, not the mechanism, brings and holds the members together. And our cause must be to rediscover, reassert, and reapply America's spiritual heritage to our national affairs.

  Then with God's help we shall indeed be as a city upon a hill, with the eyes of all people upon us.48

  Reagan received a resounding ovation from the young conservatives gathered at CPAC. The “True Believers” understood Reagan's call. The former governor was not only taking on the established order in Washington, he was also continuing the fight against the dug-in and hostile interests inside the GOP. His followers understood that Reagan was distrustful of the concentration of governmental or corporate power. Reagan believed in a “natural aristocracy” of men who climbed to their highest ambitions without the heavy-handed aid of nobility or government connections. He was defining a new ideology of optimistic and enlightened conservatism that was unsettling to the powers-that-be that ran the Republican Party. They didn't understand it, so how could they possibly support it?

  He showed off both his literate side and his sense of irony as he told the young listeners, “I have seen the conservative future and it works.”49 Of course, Reagan was paraphrasing Lincoln Steffens, a Communist sympathizer from America who uttered this line, minus the word “conservative,” upon returning from the Soviet Union in 1919.

  In the early d
ays of 1977, the conservative movement was growing and extending its power and influence. These conservatives had aggressively explored a third-party option for the past several years, but now they concluded that the better option was to take over the feeble GOP. It was a practical decision: the two-party system was favored by the new federal campaign laws, which enhanced the ability of the two major parties to mail at lower rates than other political entities. It was at this CPAC where conservatives began to refer to themselves as “The Movement.”

  THOUGH REAGAN WAS ENERGIZING conservatives, he more and more had to contend with the burgeoning “age issue.” American Conservative Union staffer Jim Roberts spoke for many when he told Lou Cannon of the Post, “If he was four years younger, we'd be off and running right now.… But there is a nagging feeling that he may be too old.”50

  If Reagan was too old, he certainly didn't show it. He appeared to be the picture of health, at least ten years younger than he really was. He was 6'1'', tanned, and broad-shouldered, with a crinkly smile and a ready handshake. The only signs of age were the blemishes on the back of his hands, a few wisps of gray in his temples, and the fact that he was hard of hearing in his left ear. He drank moderately and exercised daily, not including the heavy outdoor work at the ranch. He had quit smoking years earlier, using jelly beans to replace his nicotine craving. He hadn't lost a step, and actually appeared much more self-confident when speaking about national and global affairs than he had been just a year earlier. The Washington Post's David Broder described him as “inexhaustible.”51

  Reagan prepared better than most for his speeches, which he often wrote on his own. He was a perfectionist when it came to researching, writing, practicing, and delivering a speech. He was so superior in his speaking abilities that it was actually news when he turned in a poor performance.

  Reagan had worn contact lenses in public and glasses in private for years, as he was extremely nearsighted. Before he gave a speech, he would pop out his right contact lens to read the text and keep the left one in so he could see his audience and their reaction to him. Deaver and Hannaford often asked the governor if he just wanted to show up, make his speech, and then leave, but Reagan rarely took them up on this option. He liked to settle in, have dinner, and observe the other speakers, but especially the crowd, to judge its mood and temperament. He also hated missing out on the after-dinner dessert. Years later, as president, he was quickly hustled out of a CPAC dinner speech and later complained to an aide that he didn't get to stay long enough to have the apple pie à la mode that was being served that evening.

  AS THE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT accelerated its upward trajectory, the “New Right” was developing new ideas on policy, politics, and, most especially, tactics. What distinguished the New Right from its progenitors was an attitude, a belief in ideas, and a “take no prisoners” approach. These Young Turks became a formidable new force in American politics thanks to their impressive use of technology, such as direct mail, Quip machines (the precursor to the fax machine), telephones, and computers; their ability to raise money; and their sophisticated approach to public relations. Unlike previous conservatives, who despised the “liberal media” and thus shunned reporters and columnists or, even worse, denounced them, these conservatives courted the media, knowing controversy and action were two favorite topics of national political reporters.

  No New Right meeting of the era would have been complete without the presence of Paul Weyrich, head of the awfully named Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress and one of the leading theoreticians in the New Right; direct-mail impresario Richard Viguerie, “Godfather of the New Right”; Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus; and Phyllis Schlafly, “First Lady of the Conservative Movement” and author of the groundbreaking bestseller A Choice, Not an Echo, published in the days leading up to Barry Goldwater's nomination in 1964.

  Weyrich had come up through Wisconsin politics and radio, and ended up in Washington as a speechwriter for Senator Gordon Allott of Colorado. Seated next to him in the senator's office on Capitol Hill was a talented young conservative writer, George F. Will. In 1979 Time magazine selected Viguerie, who raised many millions of dollars for conservative causes, as one of the “Fifty Future Leaders of America.” Others on the list were Bill Clinton, Ted Turner, and Jesse Jackson. He was more libertarian in his outlook than the others, and was known to enjoy a good game of poker and Jack Daniel's whiskey. Phillips was one of the original signers of the Sharon Statement, the founding document of Young Americans for Freedom, written at the Connecticut estate of William F. Buckley. Phillips had traveled a long ideological road; in 1960, when he was running for student council president at Harvard, one of his biggest supporters was a hyperkinetic liberal named Barney Frank.52 Schlafly had gone back to college to get her law degree while still a homemaker raising children, and became a leading voice against what she called “radical feminism.”

  These New Right leaders began to flex their muscles, same as Reagan. They no longer feared rejection at the hands of the GOP establishment, because there was little of a GOP establishment to speak of anymore. They'd put up with a lot over the previous thirty years, from Wendell Willkie to Tom Dewey to Dwight Eisenhower, Nelson Rockefeller, and finally Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. All, at one time or another, had insulted or ignored conservatives. These moderate Republicans were now gone and the party was an embarrassing shell of itself.

  The conservative movement was far more consequential and important than the Republican Party itself. The conservatives would lead. They would dictate policy. They would bring the party to them rather than the other way around. Woe to the Republican officials who deviated from conservative orthodoxy, because the New Right delighted in making an example of them. In punishing heretics, the True Believers could be ruthless.

  The New Right eschewed the traditional alliance between the GOP and big business. Congressman Jack Kemp, a rising star in national politics, told a seminar at Harvard that “the movement needs a visible break with big business. Big business has become the handmaiden of big government.”53

  Kemp was a trumpeted addition to the New Right's growing panoply of young and articulate leaders. He had movie-star good looks and had been a pro football quarterback, first with the San Diego Chargers and later for the Buffalo Bills. With his keen devotion to economic theory, he had become a close friend and devotee of the economic theories of Wall Street Journal columnist Jude Wanniski and economist Arthur Laffer. In 1976, impressed with their presentation on supply-side economics, Kemp introduced a “jobs-creation bill” providing for large cuts in income taxes across the board for all Americans, as an idea to jump-start the economy while producing greater revenue for the federal treasury.

  Though Kemp had been a Ford delegate in Kansas City (mainly because of a personal relationship with Ford from their days together in Congress), Reagan did not hesitate to get behind the young congressman's tax-cut plan. After his initial radio commentary on Kemp's bill in the fall of 1976, Reagan did another five-minute broadcast endorsing Kemp's idea in late March 1977. It was a “tax plan based on common sense,” Reagan said, reminding listeners of the success of the Kennedy tax cuts of the early 1960s.54

  BY THE SUMMER OF 1977 Reagan had emerged as the most high-profile and vocal critic of the Carter administration, scoring it on policy and politics and hypocrisy.

  In the month of June alone, Reagan made thirteen major policy speeches in New York, Washington, and other locations while keeping up with his daily radio commentaries and his twice-a-week column. He went after Carter over détente and his desire to recognize Vietnam, which Reagan charged with “holding an estimated nineteen million people in forced captivity, including some in concentration camps.”55

  He also hit Carter on the forthcoming Panama Canal treaties,56 for which the Carter White House had scheduled a signing ceremony on September 7. During the 1976 primaries Reagan had come out strongly against any agreement that gave up U.S. control over the Panama Canal, decrying s
uch a move as a “giveaway” of the canal to Omar Torrijos, the military strongman of Panama. In fact, Reagan's near-successful comeback against Gerald Ford had been due in large part to his exploitation of this issue. If Ford never heard again Reagan's refrain from 1976—“We built it! We paid for it! It's ours! And we're going to keep it!”57—it would be too soon. The Carter White House attempted to persuade Reagan to support the documents it had negotiated, but after considerable contemplation he demurred. He returned to the theme he had sounded during the campaign, citing his concern that the United States would surrender the “rights of sovereignty we acquired in the original treaty.”58

  Not every conservative sided with Reagan on the canal issue. Most notably, National Review editor William F. Buckley Jr. and actor John Wayne, both friends of Reagan's for many years, publicly supported the treaties. The fight over the canal came to define the resurgent conservatives and the growing New Right. Reagan talked about the issue so often, he opened up one radio broadcast by saying, “Would it shock & surprise you if I did a little talking about the Panama Canal? I hope not because that's what I'm going to do.”59 He called Carter's efforts to rally support “a medicine show, a wave of propaganda.”60 At the end of every commentary came his signature signoff, “This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.”