Reagan's Revolution (21 page)

The most widely read were David Broder, Edward Walsh, Jules Witcover, and Lou Cannon of the
Washington Post
; Jack Germond, Fred Barnes, and James Dickenson of the
Washington Star
; R.W. “Johnny” Apple, James Naughton, Tom Wicker, and Jon Nordheimer of the
New York Times
; Bob Shogan of the
Los
Angeles Times
; and columnists like Robert Novak and Rowland Evans, George Will, Pat Buchanan, Mary McGrory, Elizabeth Drew, and Bill Safire. The broadcasters, such as Walter Cronkite, Chris Wallace, Charlie Gibson, Sam Donaldson, Tom Brokaw, David Brinkley, Brit Hume, Leslie Stahl, “Cassie” Mackin, and Frank Reynolds were known and respected. These journalists were given wide latitude by their organizations, and friendships often developed between reporters and the politicians they covered.

Reagan got rough treatment from the columnists and editorial writers to be sure but generally received fair treatment from reporters, in part because he knew how to handle them.

For over half an hour, the candidate deftly fielded one question after another and bested the Washington media at their own game. When he was sure of his facts, he answered with great detail and vigor. When he was less sure, he successfully sloughed off the question. After some reporters had danced around the subject, Reagan was asked directly, “Mr. Reagan aren’t you out of the mainstream of American life, and do you think the people want an extremist for President?” Smiling, Reagan reminded the reporter that he had been Governor of California for two terms and asked what extremism the reporter could cite that he had been engaged in during those eight years.
¹³

Again, the national media had underestimated Reagan and failed to remember that as Governor of California, he held weekly press conferences with the Sacramento media. Reagan became quite agile and able in these settings and left the National Press Club unscathed. He was also immediately assigned a Secret Service contingent that would grow to twenty-one men.
¹⁴

Unlike Carter, Wallace, and Reagan, all of whom had been Governors of their respective states, all of whom had never worked in Washington and all of whom were making their own populist appeal, Ford was a creature of Washington—an unpopular city with the American voter in 1975. But Ford’s campaign staff was not concerned with Carter or Wallace’s populist appeal in 1975. They were too busy examining what they believed was Reagan’s narrow appeal to a minority within the GOP. The statement they issued reflected that sentiment:

Despite how well Ronald Reagan does or does not do in the early primaries, the simple political fact is that he cannot defeat any candidate the Democrats put up. Reagan’s constituency is much too narrow, even within the Republican Party.

The statement concluded:

Although former Governor Reagan’s announcement was not unexpected, it is disappointing to many Republicans. While not unmindful of his ability, he does not have the critical national and international experience that President Ford has gained through 25 years of public service, first in the House of Representatives, then as Vice President and as President.

The President Ford Committee is a broad-based group working for President Ford’s nomination. We want a united party going into the General Election. Any motion against unity is counter-productive and damaging to our prospects next November.
¹⁵

Ford and his people, who thought they understood Reagan, the GOP, and the American electorate, were firmly convinced that Reagan’s conservative appeal would not fly in the general election. They were positioning Ford to Reagan’s left as the defender of the status quo heading into the Republican primaries. This strategy, combined with the mishaps of the Reagan campaign, worked for a time, but it came perilously close to driving Ford out of the race in the later primaries and state conventions. (While most of Ford’s campaign staff seemed to be unaware of Reagan’s political powers, they also did not seem to know how to spell his name or pronounce it. Memos referred to “Regan” and some would pronounce his name “Ree-gan.” The day after Reagan’s announcement, Nessen had prepared a summary of the press coverage for President Ford and the cover memo cited “Regan.”
¹⁶
)

Callaway, embellishing on Ford’s campaign statement, told the
Chicago
Tribune
that Reagan would cherry pick the questions he was willing to answer. Callaway argued that reporters and voters “cannot help but note how he ducked such tough issues as military spending, FBI activities, and federal aid to New York City. A President cannot duck the tough issues, nor should a Presidential candidate.”
¹⁷

If there was any way to make Reagan more resolute than he already was naturally, it was to attack his intelligence or manhood. Chuck Percy, a liberal GOP Senator from Reagan’s home state of Illinois, took his own apocalyptic line against the conservative: “A Reagan nomination, and the crushing defeat likely to follow, could signal the beginning of the end of our party as an effective force in American life.” Percy went on to describe Reagan as “far out of the centrist stream.”
¹⁸

But Ford aide Jerry Jones had attended the press conference and came away impressed with Reagan. In a memo he prepared for Cheney, Jones wrote, “Some people around the building thought it was a very poor effort and he showed to be a lightweight. My impression was . . . really quite good. The man had done his homework, he had his answers down pat and he handled the questioners with a sense of candor, humor, and calm. . . . We are in for a real battle.”
¹⁹
Jones followed the next day with another memo, making clear that another Ford aide, David Gergen, shared Jones and Cheney’s opinion about Reagan.
²⁰

Reporters quizzed Nelson Rockefeller about Percy’s overblown statement, and Rocky did not entirely support it. While he downplayed Reagan’s chances, Rockefeller told the press that he was not going to be the Administration’s point man against Reagan and that he thought the man was qualified to be President. The Goldwater “bloody shirt” was often waved in Reagan’s face by moderate Republicans and some in the media during the campaign, as they overlooked the assassination of JFK, Goldwater’s mistakes, and Lyndon Johnson’s ruthless campaign against the Arizonan in 1964.

When asked about attacks on Ford in the campaign at the press conference, Reagan cited the “11th Commandment”: “Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican.” But a White House spokesman snidely told Barry Serafin of
CBS
News,
“When you live up to the original Ten Commandments, there is no need to add new ones.”
²¹

If Percy, the Ford campaign and others in the Republican Party did not understand Reagan’s conservative/populist appeal, it was discerned later by a Carter supporter, who demonstrated a prescient insight the Ford campaign lacked. After Carter was elected President, he met with a longtime supporter, Chuck Morgan, who told him he thought Carter could be elected President in 1976 because the most popular show on television at the time was
The Waltons
and because of the near hero status of Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, a courtly Southern gentleman who chaired the Senate’s investigation into Watergate. In 1976, Carter had made much of his farmer credentials and as the populist who would clean up Washington.

Morgan, who was originally from Alabama and was head of the Washington office of the ACLU, told his story years later to David Keene. Morgan continued to relate to President Carter that he was in his hotel room one morning late in 1979, shaving and listening to a television show in the background. A guest was to appear who had written and sold 30 million books. “I told Carter any man who could sell 30 million books was worth listening to. The author was Louis L’Amour, but I’d never heard of him. So I went out and I bought a couple of his books and I read them. They were all about good, honest cowboys who always did the right and heroic thing. And damned if you didn’t know it—every one of those books was about Ronald Reagan. And that’s how I knew he was going to be the next President.” Carter and his people looked at Morgan like he had three heads.
²²

Of Reagan’s plunge into the campaign, Jack Germond wrote for the
Washington Star
,

Ronald Reagan opened today a challenge to President Ford that threatens to tear apart a Republican Party already debilitated by the stewardship of Richard M. Nixon and the scandal of Watergate. . . . Reagan is viewed by political professionals in both parties as a genuine possibility for the nomination.

And it is all the more striking because it is being made within a party that in the past has prized political regularity at almost any cost . . . the challenger to an incumbent President . . . can gain imposing momentum simply by making a strong showing in early tests of strength such as those scheduled in New Hampshire . . . and Florida. . . . Indeed, Republicans already are speculating among themselves about whether Ford might abandon his candidacy should he lose either of those primaries.
²³

The same day, the
New York Times
warned in an editorial, “[T]he discrepancy between the Reagan rhetoric and the Reagan record is sure to become well known. As it does, it can only be severely damaging to the challenger’s cause.”
²⁴
But Tom Pettit of
NBC News,
who at times could be rough on Reagan, reported that the new candidate “can’t be dismissed as merely an old actor, ex-sports announcer, and one-time after-dinner speaker. He’s a celebrity politician who must now be taken seriously. . . . He was twice elected Governor of California. California survived.” Petit also described Reagan’s conservative proposals as “simple” and “basic.”
²⁵

Howard K. Smith, in his commentary for
ABC News,
had perhaps the most unusual take of anybody on the Reagan challenge to Ford, charging that Reagan’s candidacy would be “damaging to the quality of government for the next year,” because it would take Ford away from his duties as President of the United States. Smith’s commentary thankfully stopped short of recommending either a monarchy or dictatorship, so that the American people would be able to avoid the distractions of representative government.
²⁶

After his press conference, Reagan immediately departed on a two-day campaign swing that took him to the first four primary states he was to contest: New Hampshire, Florida, North Carolina, and Illinois. Massachusetts and Vermont fell immediately after New Hampshire, but the Reagan campaign decided to forgo any effort in those states, believing these Republican primary voters would not be susceptible to Reagan’s conservative message.

Reagan was paying for his own charter plane, while the Republican National Committee would pay for Ford’s travels until January 1, 1976. The Federal Election Commission ruled against a Reagan request that the RNC pay for his travels as well, but said Ford’s travels were for “party building.”
²⁷
To Reagan and his supporters, it seemed that some were more equal than others.

At the first stop in Florida, Reagan’s airport press conference in Miami was marred when a young man named Michael Lance Carvin brandished a gun. Everybody hit the deck, including Nancy Reynolds, who was part of Reagan’s permanent traveling entourage. She observed that Reagan never lost his cool, even when the Secret Service was grappling with the gun and the young man. Reagan, in fact, moved forward to catch a little boy who had been pushed down during the mêlée.
²⁸
The gun turned out to be plastic.

It was small wonder that Reagan never flinched. During his tenure as president of the Screen Actors Guild, repeated threats against his life forced him to carry a gun. In 1967, shortly after becoming Governor, the Weathermen firebombed his house in Sacramento. They also bragged that they had a bullet with Reagan’s name inscribed on it at their headquarters.

The aftermath of the Miami incident inaugurated the Secret Service’s lifelong love affair with Reagan, when he told reporters about preventing assassination attempts, “I don’t think there’s anything you can do except place your confidence in these guys, and they’re awfully good.”
²⁹
Asked about its effect on his support for gun rights, Reagan argued that it “would be naïve and foolish to simply disarm the citizen.” He reiterated his longstanding support for tougher sentences for anyone using a gun in the commission of a crime. Mindful of the assassinations of some political leaders in America, a Reagan aide told
CBS News,
“If he didn’t feel like a candidate before, he does now.”
³⁰

Reagan pushed forward to North Carolina and gave an uneven performance at an airport press conference, where he got into a debate with reporters about desegregation in the U.S. military. The next stop was New Hampshire where things went more smoothly. At one campaign rally in Bedford, Reagan was asked about the “$90 billion” proposal, but he successfully deflected it, and the campaign staff heaved a sigh of relief.

Reagan was also asked in Manchester about Percy’s statement, to which he responded, “I think moderation should be taken in moderation.” That drew a lot of belly laughs. Reagan then brought down the house when he elaborated, “When you’re on the operating table, you hope the doctor has more than just moderate skills. Let’s put what we and our party believe on our banner and not water it down.”
³¹

Almost immediately, the Federal Communications Commission ordered all television stations in the United States to stop airing old Reagan movies or reruns of his television show,
Death Valley Days,
as they would violate the equal time provisions of the FCC Act. Reagan, with tongue firmly planted in his cheek said, “Somebody must have goofed, because I’ve made some movies that—if they put them on television—I’d demand equal time.”
³²
When Reagan was sworn in as Governor of California at one minute after midnight on January 2, 1967, he turned to former actor and then U.S. Senator George Murphy and joked, “Well, George, here we are on
The Late Show
again.”
³³