I now know from Craig Shirley that Reagan spoke without notes. But it didn’t seem like that was the case at the time. I thought Reagan, because he was so clear in what he was saying, must be reciting the text of what would have been his acceptance speech had he won the nomination.
The audience—fifteen thousand people or so—was rapt. Some were weeping. Nobody got up. The arena was still. And Reagan was eloquent. It was obvious the delegates were his, both the Reaganites and the Ford delegates. The Ford people were locked into backing an incumbent President of their party. But their hearts were with Reagan. In the time it took for Reagan to speak, the Republican Party escaped the clutches of its moderate establishment and fell into Reagan’s lap. He lost the nomination, but won the party—and ultimately the Presidency, the country, and the world.
After the convention, the future was obvious. The nomination was Reagan’s in 1980 if he wanted it. But I guess this wasn’t as clear to others. Some Reaganites from the 1976 campaign urged Jack Kemp to run, figuring Reagan would be too old in 1979 to win the nomination. Several others jumped to George Bush (the father). And the press, wrong once again, grabbed onto the idea that Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee, a moderate with great skill as a legislator, would emerge as the powerhouse in the 1980 race.
The media and the political community simply didn’t understand the role 1976 had played in Reagan’s advance to the White House. It escaped them that Reagan had achieved credibility as a candidate, developed a fervent national following, and created a lasting political organization. Worse, what they knew for sure about Reagan—that his conservatism was too extreme for most voters—was wrong. When it came to Reagan, the political cognoscenti didn’t have a clue.
That leads me to Craig Shirley and
Reagan’s Revolution
. I’ve known Craig for two decades. He is not a journalist or an historian or a political scientist or a professional writer. He’s a Washington-based political consultant who knew and understood Reagan far better than the supposed experts. Craig has also proved to be a dogged reporter and researcher and a man of rare political insight. Even now, many who’ve written about Reagan don’t know what to make of his appeal to so many people, not just conservatives. Some still insist Reagan was a boob propped up by a clever staff. Others claim it was merely his optimism and acting skill that made him a political success. Craig knows better. He knows it was Reagan’s belief in America, his deep conservative convictions, and his faith in ordinary people that catapulted him to greatness. Raw political skill? He had that too.
The centrality of 1976 to the Reagan story has never been told before. I don’t know why. There are books on Reagan’s years as Screen Actor’s Guild President, volumes on his Governorship, and monographs and memoirs touching on every aspect of his Presidency. But 1976 proved too elusive a subject for everyone except Craig.
Reagan’s Revolution
fills a huge gap in the Reagan epic. It is, in fact, the missing chapter in the life and times of Reagan. Or I should say was. Thanks to Craig, that critical chapter is no longer missing.
“This is our challenge.”
August 19, 1976.
I
n the sweltering Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Gerald Ford—the incumbent but unelected President of the United States—has just accepted the Republican nomination before the assembled perspiring Republican Party delegates, alternates, and journalists. Millions more Americans are watching at home. It is late in the evening, but half the crowd in the hall is still restless.
Ford’s speech, by the standards of a John F. Kennedy or a Dr. Martin Luther King or his challenger, former California Governor Ronald Reagan, is passable. But for him, it is the best political speech of his life. Indeed, it is well received by many in the crowd and a press corps accustomed to his malapropisms, mangled syntax, and star-crossed Administration of the past two years.
However, the convention and the party are not healed following the long and brutal campaign between Ford and Reagan. The battle has resulted in Ford’s nomination by only fifty-seven votes more than the 1,130 required to secure the nomination. This is out of the total 2,257 ballots cast by the delegates the previous night. Reagan’s narrow loss of the nomination came on the heels of losing a critical rules fight on the floor of the convention. His supporters are angry and the animosity between the two warring camps is palpable.
Ironically it is Reagan and not Ford who has won a majority of the Republican primary votes over the previous eight months: 4,616,126 to 4,481,845. Reagan garnered 50.7 percent of the total primary vote, while Ford received 49.3 percent.
1
Wrote one journalist of Reagan’s ascendancy, “His candidacy has been extraordinary. He was seen by many as shallow and simplistic and even dangerous. All but a handful of Senators and Congressmen shunned him. He was opposed by nearly every state organization. He had practically no editorial support. But when it was all over, Reagan—virtually alone—had collected several hundred thousand more votes than the President in the contested primaries. The popular explanation was that his opponent Ford was dull. But Reagan on his own had surely touched a public nerve.”
2
Ford’s slim margin of victory in Kansas City is even less impressive when the
force majeure
behind him is considered. His incumbency, the advantages of the White House and the Republican Party infrastructure—including the Republican National Committee, most of the state and county party leadership, most of the GOP’s elected officials, and Ford’s own re-election committee, the President Ford Committee—have all been thrown into the fight against the former two-term Governor of California. Reagan’s campaign subsisted only through the support of a few courageous elected officials and conservative activists.
Even Reagan’s old movies, shown occasionally on late-night television in local markets, have been banned from airing after the Ford Committee filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission alleging illegal corporate contributions to Reagan under the new campaign finance laws. Once Reagan had declared himself in the running, the Federal Communication Commission had barred their broadcast entirely, as they violated the “equal time” provisions.
An Iowa straw poll had been conducted on January 19. Ford prevailed over Reagan, albeit narrowly, 264 to 248. There were sixty-two undecided voters, and a smattering of votes for other Republicans.
3
The
Des Moines Register
presciently reported, “The results of the poll sent a clear message to both camps that a good many partisan battles lie ahead, before the state’s 36 delegates to the Republican National Convention are chosen.”
4
Iowa Governor Robert Ray, a moderate and a Ford supporter, told the
Register
, “I don’t think our caucuses have the same meaning as the Democrats [which had chosen McGovern in 1972 and Carter in 1976].”
5
Maybe not. But given the arcane and complicated system the Iowa Republicans had created to choose their delegates, they certainly acted as if they cared. The straw poll at the time meant little.
But it did initiate the protracted process of choosing local delegates to Iowa’s statewide Republican convention in June, where national delegates would be elected to proceed to the Republican National Convention in Kansas City in August. On the night of the critical procedural vote, these delegates gave Reagan and Ford eighteen votes apiece. The following night, when Ford seemed sure to win the nomination, the President won nineteen of Iowa’s delegates, while Reagan took seventeen.
Ford’s selection of Senator Robert Dole of Kansas as his running mate, a conservative with a wit and slashing tongue, has not assuaged the bitter feelings of Reagan’s passionate supporters. Recognizing his slim chances against former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, whom Democrats chose as their nominee for President at an uncharacteristic love fest in New York the previous month, the President knows he also needs a unified convention. So he beckons for Reagan and Mrs. Reagan to join him and Mrs. Ford, Senator Dole, Dole’s wife Elizabeth, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, and the rest of the thin and tattered ranks of what passes for the GOP’s stars assembled at the podium.
Sources differ on whether Ford’s invitation to Reagan was being staged. But if it was, someone must have forgotten to tell Reagan. He initially waves Ford off, believing it is Ford’s night. While there is no love lost between the two men, Reagan is respectful of the office Ford holds and knows that the spoils go to the victor. Also, Reagan isn’t acting. He really has little interest in sharing a platform with the President. The previous year has been too acrimonious, too bitter, and too closely fought for either man to simply overlook their differences now. This is especially true for Reagan, who has sometimes been the brunt of personal attacks by the Ford campaign.
The animosity between the supporters of the two runs deep. Brad Minnick, a young aide to Ford’s Floor Manager, Senator Robert Griffin, said, “Some of the Ford people saw Reagan . . . was out for his own gain. Ford’s team had no real love for him. They resented that Reagan didn’t mention Ford in his speech and that he upstaged Ford. The resentment was both personal and ideological.”
6
But Ford insists, smiling, and Reagan waves him off again. Finally, as the arena thunders with applause and shouts for Reagan, he relinquishes and makes his way to the podium, where Ford asks him to make a few comments.
The old trouper hasn’t forgotten how to make an entrance.
Some of Ford’s forces, while not quite hoping Reagan falls on his face, still believe that Reagan is “just an actor,” incapable of giving a good speech without his notes or a prepared text. This fact would only later be learned by his pollster, Dick Wirthlin. It is not quite a setup, but they would like to see Reagan fumble a bit at the lectern. Then his armor wouldn’t look so shiny to his devoted followers.
7
Even after all the months of battling Reagan down to the wire for the GOP nomination, many on Ford’s team still underestimate him and hope his vaunted reputation for public speaking will pale when compared to Ford’s acceptance speech, which he spent hours practicing before a videotape machine, reviewing with a phalanx of speechwriters—including two joke writers on the White House payroll. No President before that even had one on payroll; Ford had two.
Reagan has no prepared remarks, but he has always been his own best speechwriter. With his God-given Irish humor, he would never need a professional joke writer even after he became President. Arriving at the podium before a stilled and hushed crowd, Reagan proves the Ford forces not only wrong but woefully wrong.
Reagan is masterful in his extemporaneous speech, and the hall is rapt with attention. “There were so many people crying,” remembers journalist Terry Wade who was on the floor that night for Donrey Newspapers. Wade wrote a column the next day with a lead reflective of Kemper Arena this night: “Ford won the nomination, but Reagan won their hearts.”
8
A twenty-six-year-old conservative, Frank Donatelli, who in 1975 and 1976 organized two separate but important independent efforts in support of Reagan for the Young Americans for Freedom and Young America’s Foundation said, “It was simply the most bittersweet moment of my life.”
9
Unknown to all at the time, except Reagan himself, his speech signals the end of the old GOP order and its obsession with the past. Reagan’s comments are not a “concession speech,” they are a rallying cry for the beleaguered GOP that points not to the past but to the future. The American public has known of Reagan for years, through his movies, on television in the 1950s, as a Governor, and as a Presidential candidate. But these remarks, broadcast live on all three networks, constitute his first real introduction to the American people. They like what they see.
On the floor of the convention, Senator Paul Laxalt, the genial son of Nevada sheepherders for whom Will Rogers would have invented his famous phrase had they ever met, turned to his daughter, Michelle, and said, “this is probably the most exciting convention of your lifetime . . . mine too.”
10
For more than a year, Laxalt had been the Chairman of the campaign committee, Citizens for Reagan, and had traveled hundreds of thousands of miles to forty-five states on Reagan’s behalf. When Reagan’s mood drooped, or when he needed a kick in the pants, Laxalt was his unflinching and tireless corner man. At the time, the two most important people in Reagan’s life were Nancy Reagan and Paul Laxalt.
Laxalt later wrote in his memoirs, “Then, for a magical few moments, Ron delivered the finest, most moving speech I’ve ever heard. He spoke of the realistic aspirations of all Americans, that America should be a ‘shining city on a hill.’”
11
In his comments, Reagan speaks of writing a letter for a time capsule that people would open a hundred years hence. He says, “They will know whether or not we met our challenge. Whether we will have the freedom that we have known up until now will depend on what we do here . . . and if we fail, they probably won’t get to read the letter at all because it spoke of individual freedom, and they won’t be allowed to talk of this or read of it. . . . This is our challenge.” Reagan also uses words like “successful,” “cause,” “united,” “determined,” and, of course, “victory.”
12
Sam Donaldson, reporting for ABC, said, “The first real emotion of the night wasn’t for the ticket, but for the man who wasn’t on it.”
13
Kenny Klinge, a grassroots organizer for Reagan in Virginia, North Dakota, and Iowa, was standing in an aisle next to a “big-time Ford supporter from Florida” when she exclaimed, “Oh my God, we’ve nominated the wrong man.”
14
As Reagan addresses the awed crowd of thousands in the Kemper Arena, only his nemesis, Henry Kissinger, and Kissinger’s wife are not paying attention to him—talking with each other while she smokes a cigarette.