Reagan's Revolution (31 page)

Reagan was also not backing away from his contentions about America’s waning military strength or that détente had been a one-way street that favored the Soviets. As Steven Hayward recounted in
The Age of Reagan
,

Just as the controversy over détente was reaching a crescendo in 1976, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt went public with a story that Kissinger had confided his pessimism about America’s prospects during a train ride the two had shared to West Point in 1970. Zumwalt’s account held that:

“Dr. Kissinger feels that the U.S. has passed its historic high point like so many earlier civilizations. He believes that the U.S. is on the downhill and cannot be roused by political challenge. He states that his job is to persuade the Russians to give us the best deal we can get, recognizing that historical forces favor them. He says that he realizes that in light of history he will be recognized as one of those who negotiated terms favorable to the Soviets, but that the American people only have themselves to blame because they lack the stamina to stay the course against the Soviets who are ‘Sparta to our Athens.’”
⁵⁵

Kissinger denied this account in the strongest possible terms, and Zumwalt, who was in the process of running for the U.S. Senate in Virginia, could have been accused of embellishing a story. Yet corroborating evidence existed, as Hayward detailed that Kissinger aides Peter Rodman and Helmut Sonnenfeldt both subsequently confirmed that Zumwalt did not invent the exchange. Furthermore, the editor of
Partisan Review
, William Barrett, said he had essentially the same discussion with Kissinger at Harvard in 1952.56 Zumwalt’s account would become a major topic of conversation in several weeks, and would also become a flashpoint in the campaign.

A flashpoint involving differing recollections occurred between Jim Buckley, the conservative Senator from New York and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. Both recalled a meeting that took place at Rockefeller’s office, ostensibly about the 1976 campaign. The stories diverged when the Vice President said Buckley had offered his support for Ford in exchange for Rockefeller’s support for his reelection. Buckley was uncommitted to either Ford or Reagan at the time.

Buckley contends that the real purpose was to pressure him into supporting Ford over Reagan in exchange for their support of Buckley’s re-election. Buckley was being challenged in the Republican primary by moderate GOP Congressman Peter Peyser, whom Buckley aides had long suspected had the quiet support of Rockefeller.
⁵⁷

Of the Reagan children, the younger two, Patty and Ron, were doing little campaigning for their father, busy with work and school. Maureen and Mike were more involved and they did what they could when they could to pitch in with speeches to young voters, leading rallies and the like. Ron played a small role in Reagan’s radio operation in New Hampshire, but it did not last.

The Ford children were also involved in varying degrees. Jack Ford was an aggressive twenty-three-year-old defender of his father who never shied away from speaking his mind. He once told a reporter that Richard Nixon was a “creep.” Sons Mike and Steve were away at school and did not do too much campaigning in early 1976.
⁵⁸
Susan, eighteen at the time, was a hit with the national media because of her wholesome blonde good looks and also because her mother had inadvertently made her the subject of controversy during her
60 Minutes
interview. The Ford family was photogenic, happy and open. After the dark, brooding Richard Nixon, this simple fact alone added to the stability the country needed after the turmoil of Watergate. “Politicians’ families are, of course, part of the props; their smiling appearance alongside the candidate may have nothing to do with how they feel about being there, or about him,” Elizabeth Drew commented in her book,
American Journal,
“But the Fords do seem a family with real bonds, the President a man with human connections.”
⁵⁹

Stumping in Champaign, Illinois, just days before the Florida primary, Ford was a study in dispassion, as he never mentioned Reagan by name, simply saying in a veiled way that the country needed “knowledge,” leadership, and not the words of “those who would hide behind a blanket denunciation of our national government” and that “rhetoric is no substitute for practical achievement.”
⁶⁰

James Naughton wrote in the
New York Times
, “The measured response by Mr. Ford, who never once mentioned his Republican rival by name, reflected a decision by the President and his campaign strategists to try to project an air of calm self-confidence in the face of Mr. Reagan’s criticism.” Turning a nice phrase, Ford told the crowd jammed into a high school auditorium, “We are conducting our foreign policy with our eyes open, our guard up and our powder dry.”
⁶¹

Ford noted that his Administration had requested a large increase in defense spending. Directly responding to Reagan’s attacks on his foreign policy, but again without mentioning Reagan by name, Ford said, “We know that peace and national security cannot be pursued on a one-way street. But we also know that returning to a collision course in a thermo-nuclear age can leave the human race in ashes.” He again described his foreign policy as “peace through strength.”
⁶²

Ford’s strategy was simple: stay above the fray, stress experience, use incumbency to its maximum benefit, hit Reagan hard through surrogates, and let the media describe Reagan’s flagging campaign in desperate terms. So far, it was working beautifully.

Ford was winning good reviews, and as far as he was concerned, if he never heard a disrespectful question from a reporter or saw another political cartoon, it would not be soon enough. Although he did mispronounce Fidel Castro’s name while in Florida, calling him “Fydle” Castro, it went nearly unreported by the media. Winning, as it turned out, paid extra dividends for Ford.
⁶³

For a time, Ford, often thought of as one of the unluckiest Presidents in American history, was beginning to discover his own luck too, as when headlines across the country trumpeted the drop in unemployment to 7.6 percent the Saturday before the primary in Florida.

Most things were looking up for Ford and his team. Summarizing the now-smoothly running Ford operation, the
New York Times
wrote, “In organizational terms, Mr. [Bill] Roberts hired 24 new staff members in 10 days; developed a direct mail program that included an eight-page tabloid on Social Security designed to appeal to the 70 percent of Republicans over 50; planned two highly successful visits by the President; hired a bagpipe band whose bass drum bore the legend ‘President Ford the Budget Saver’ to tour shopping centers, and installed hundreds of telephones for a canvass that has reached about 400,000 voters.”
⁶⁴

Ford’s upswing was something to contend with. Just two days before the primary, on Sunday, March 7, Reagan tried to downplay expectations in Florida by telling the panel of journalists on
Meet the Press
that he was engaged in an “uphill battle” against the incumbent President. Reagan analyzed the advantages of incumbency. He said the candidate “can make news and be on the front page of the papers every day without moving out of the Oval Office. An incumbent can go into an area and announce that a shipyard is going to stay open, he can go to another area and say that the highway is going to be built.”
⁶⁵
Ford had done each of these, proclaiming in New Hampshire that the government would keep open the Portsmouth Shipyard. In Florida, he promised to provide the federal funds for a new highway.

Reagan maintained his attacks on Ford’s foreign policy during the Sunday morning show, saying that Kissinger had a more “pessimistic view” of the world than he did. Reagan contrasted the Secretary of State’s view that “we have to make concessions to the Soviet Union because we are no longer the number one nation in military strength” with his own view: “We will once again become the number one nation.”
⁶⁶

When the topic shifted to how he would do in Tuesday’s Florida primary, Reagan told the panel that he had the lead among committed voters in Florida. He conceded that the pool of uncommitted voters was large enough to swing the results to Ford, but it appeared to some in the media—and was thus reported—as if Reagan was boosting his expectations, rather than playing them down.
⁶⁷

On the Ford White House’s use of patronage for political gain, Jim Dickenson reported in the
Washington Star
:

Reagan’s advisers [were] outraged that Jerry Thomas, former president of the state Conservative Union is in the Ford camp. Thomas is being considered for an appointment as Undersecretary of the Treasury, which the Reaganites consider a “political bribe.” Ford’s advisers were unmoved.

“The nice thing about the incumbency is that you can use it,” says one.
⁶⁸

Returning to Florida for a final campaign swing, Reagan stumped in Titusville and extended his attacks on Ford’s foreign policy, this time challenging him on Cuba:

Let us hope there will now be a change in our Government’s policy toward Castro. Only last March, Dr. Kissinger said the State Department instructed our delegate to the Organization of American States to vote in favor of lifting the embargo of trade with Cuba. In August, the Administration lifted our prohibition on trade with Cuba by foreign subsidiaries of U.S. firms.
⁶⁹

On Monday, March 8, Ford won the endorsement of the influential
Tampa
Tribune
, a paper read widely by the senior voters Ford needed. It could not have come at a better time.
⁷⁰
Ford campaign workers at offices in West Palm Beach, St. Petersburg, Clearwater, and other Florida cities listened to the President as he spoke to them over loudspeakers in each office. “It’s going to be a close ballgame, but I think we’re going to win,” Ford said, telling them not “to quit in the last quarter,” perhaps a direct reference to the last-hour faltering in Reagan’s New Hampshire campaign that likely led to Ford’s victory.
⁷¹

One thing that helped Ford with the Florida voter was that the White House prepared a free audiotape featuring Betty Ford urging the Sunshine State’s voters to go to the polls on Tuesday. The White House then sent the cassette to all of Florida’s radio stations. With a straight face, Mrs. Ford’s Press Secretary, Sheila Weidenfeld, called the recording a “public service announcement” because it did not appeal for votes for her husband.
⁷²

On the day of the Florida primary, voters turned out beginning at 7 A.M. at 3,405 precincts to choose between Republicans Ford and Reagan or among Democrats Carter, Wallace, Pennsylvania Governor Milton Shapp, Arizona Congressman Morris Udall, and Washington Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson.

Although a part of the Old Confederacy, Florida had changed much in recent years due to the influx of retirees from other parts of the country. The president of the Florida Poll, Paul Cohen, told the
New York Times
that 95 percent of Florida’s Republican voters came from other states, making it “the least Southern state in the South.” The population had grown by over 1.6 million in five short years. It had also become a diverse state economically, racially, and religiously.
⁷³

Ford was now considered a slight favorite, but Reagan was scoring heavy points with his aggressive attacks on the President’s foreign policy. He was also still drawing big crowds wherever he went, and this continued to be impressive to the national media covering his campaign. Reagan, once again, vowed to continue the fight, even if he lost in Florida, right to “the final fight on the convention floor.” But both camps were also looking ahead to the contests over the next month, including Illinois, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and New York.

Reagan left Florida on Tuesday for Illinois to campaign in his birth state after a final round of campaign appearances while Ford remained in the White House. Laying the groundwork for upcoming expectations, Reagan told reporters,

I never thought that Illinois was a strong state for me. Illinois was my home state—I know something about Illinois politics and I know the machinery involved. Our case has been taken to the grass roots, but I know the Ford people by reason of the incumbency have had whatever party machine there sewed up from the beginning. I was never optimistic we had it in the bag.
⁷⁴

Reagan’s aides were now convinced that he would lose in Florida, despite their best efforts, which portended bad things for Illinois. Still, Reagan believed that he and Ford would go to Kansas City with neither having enough delegates for a first ballot nomination
.

As if Reagan was not suffering from enough headaches and fatigue from the exhaustive campaigning, the Young Republicans of California failed—by seven votes—to formally endorse his Presidential bid. Their endorsement required a two-thirds ballot win. Reagan received seventy-six votes; forty-one went against him, and seven abstained. The group was from California and conservative and it came as a minor surprise that Reagan did not win.

In Florida, Ford scored his fourth win in a row over Reagan, by 53 percent to 47 percent. Ford received 318,844 votes to Reagan’s 282,618. And Ford picked up another forty-three delegates to just twenty-three for Reagan.
⁷⁵

Reagan’s regular entourage of the national media included correspondents from ABC, NBC, CBS, the
New York Times
, the
Washington Post
, the
Los Angeles
Times
,
Time
, and
Newsweek
. Among themselves, they began to wonder where and when the Reagan train wreck would end—and to which campaign they would be assigned next.