“I can’t remember another instance where the defeated candidate is given the opportunity to make a major and . . . dominating performance. The President of the United States gives the best speech he had ever given, and in fact gave in his life, and he’s upstaged by his opponent,” Ford’s media consultant Douglas Bailey recalled.
15
Lou Cannon, who had covered Reagan and knew him better than anyone else in the media, said the speech, “revealed very, very deep convictions . . . it gave a glimpse of what a visionary Reagan was . . . it was Reagan’s heart and it set him apart.”
16
Reagan probably didn’t know it, but two years prior—within days of Ford’s taking office following Richard Nixon’s resignation—Ford’s longtime aide Robert Hartmann asked the new President which Presidential portraits he would like to hang in the Cabinet Room of the White House. Nixon had chosen paintings of both Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson but Hartmann believed that Ford needed to start making symbolic breaks with his predecessor.
Hartmann suggested a portrait of Andrew Jackson accompany the portraits of Abraham Lincoln and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Instead, Hartmann was surprised that Ford selected the likeness of Harry S. Truman.
17
Ford saw himself as Trumanesque—a simple, everyday man from the Midwest; plainspoken and scrupulously loyal while fanatically partisan. Further, Ford thought that he, like Truman, was a man thrust into the Presidency in difficult and unprecedented times. Both men were comfortable with the past and accepting of the present. Neither gave the future much thought.
By contrast, if Reagan had been given the choice of Douglas MacArthur or Harry Truman as a role model for himself, he would have chosen MacArthur without blinking an eye. Reagan, like MacArthur, saw himself as decisive, inner-directed, unafraid to make controversial decisions, and as a leader among men who was confident in the future. It is telling that Harry Truman and Douglas MacArthur despised each other. In 1976 and for sometime thereafter, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford also have little use for each other.
It is no surprise then that Reagan quotes five-star General MacArthur saying, “There is no substitute for victory.” The crowd goes wild with the concluding remark of his seven-minute address. Ford partisans will bitterly note later that Reagan never mentions Ford’s name.
Reagan’s speech is a historic and course-altering moment when the GOP parted company with its past to embrace the future.
The difference between Ford’s and Reagan’s speeches in Kemper Arena could be compared to the anecdote of Demosthenes and Aeschines, two Athenian orators debating the coming conflict with Sparta, also known as the Peloponnesian War, 2,500 years earlier. Aeschines delivered a well-crafted, thoughtful speech aimed at persuading his people to welcome the invaders to avoid a protracted and bloody war. The audience applauded politely and it was reported, “How well he spoke.” But Demosthenes, who delivered a rousing call to arms, expounding individual liberties and freedom as inherent rights, moved the Greeks to action. When he finished speaking, the Greeks said, “Let us march.”
Like Aeschines, Ford’s speech was also well received and well crafted. But when Reagan concluded his inspirational remarks, the delegates would have indeed marched for him.
Gerald Ford and his party were stuck in the past.
Ronald Reagan and his party will become rooted in the future.
“He was the most competitive son of a b—
who ever lived.”
D
ozens of books have been authored about Ronald Reagan. Indeed, since his death, a veritable flood of tomes has become widely available about the now beloved President. Interest has grown in evaluations of his life, his many careers, and his Administration.
Yet Reagan, the conservative ideologue, was not always revered. Gerald Ford derided Reagan in 1974 at a Gridiron Club dinner, saying, “Governor Reagan does not dye his hair. That’s ridiculous. He is just turning prematurely orange.”
1
Reagan probably laughed when he learned of Ford’s comment. But others inside and outside the GOP said and thought much worse things about him at the time. And few books were being written about him.
Certainly, several books have delved into the subject of Reagan’s 1976 campaign for President. Jules Witcover’s outstanding book
Marathon
is one of the best on all the candidates running that year. But it was published in 1977, so Witcover could not see the long-term effect Reagan’s insurgent challenge to Gerald Ford would have on the Republican Party and the country. His book was an important source for
Reagan’s Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It
All,
as was his reporting for the
Washington Post
in 1976.
Another excellent book on the entire 1976 campaign is Elizabeth Drew’s
American Journal
. Drew, the Washington correspondent for the
New Yorker
, did a masterful job of recording many public events. But her book was also published in 1977 and is limited in its perspective. Longtime Reagan scribe Lou Cannon has also written a number of well-received books, including
Reagan
and several others that contain important information about the 1976 campaign and were also useful sources for this book. Furthermore, his reportage in 1976 also contained critical information.
Other books that dealt with the 1976 campaign include those by longtime Reagan aides. Peter Hannaford’s
The Reagans
was written in 1983, and Lyn Nofziger’s
Nofziger
was published in 1992. Both are important insider accounts of some of the events of 1976.
Yet in most books about Reagan, his 1976 campaign is limited to a page or two. Even Reagan himself in his autobiography,
An American Life
, devoted only a few pages to his 1976 quest. This is not to say that Reagan lacked a sense of history. He and John F. Kennedy probably had the most profound sense of history of any two Presidents of the twentieth century. Reagan’s little attention in
An American Life
to his 1976 campaign shows just how fiercely competitive he was. Few people understood just how much Reagan hated to lose. He simply concealed it better than other politicians. Mike Deaver, Reagan’s longtime aide and friend said, “He was the most competitive son of a b— who ever lived.”
“Citizens for Reagan” is the campaign that started it all. Many political scholars point to Barry Goldwater’s insurgent crusade in 1964 as the beginning of the conservative movement. Others go back even further and cite Senator Robert Taft’s challenge to Dwight Eisenhower at the Republican convention in 1952 as the beginning. Others still point to the now famous rally in Madison Square Garden sponsored by the nascent Young Americans for Freedom in 1962.
Each of these events was among the important turning points in the development and growth of the conservative movement. But none left such a permanent legacy as Reagan’s 1976 campaign. It marked the point when conservatives took over the Republican Party and changed its message and its ideology.
Conservatism—straight and without a chaser—was considered the province of the uninformed, the uneducated, the unknowing, the unwashed, the un-understanding (“You don’t understand” was a favorite patronizing putdown of conservatives by liberals in those days), the un-Harvard, the un-Yale, the un-Americans for Democratic Action, the un-
New Republic
, the un-United Nations, the un-Georgetown cocktail circuit, the un-Manhattan, the un-Beverly Hills, the “un.” Conservatives were accused, as Reagan pointed out in his 1964 speech, “of always being against things, we’re never for anything.”
Most national elections in the twentieth century were debates over which party could best manage government. The issues dividing the two parties and the two candidates typically pertained to internationalism, how quickly or slowly to grow the federal government, who could best manage it, and how far to allow its reach to extend. These debates were never about the threat the United States government itself posed to American freedoms. It was simply not logical. Not educated. Not sophisticated. Government was good, so it was good for you. And to some, more government was even better for you.
Issues like tax cuts, the role of government in our daily lives, aggressive anti-Communism, the projection of American military power to protect American interests, abortion, cutting government spending, the Strategic Defense Initiative, and of course Reagan’s appeal to national pride and patriotism might never have come to the fore as acceptable positions for the Republican Party had Reagan not run for President in 1976.
Without Reagan’s 1976 campaign, Americans would not have witnessed the reordering of the two major political parties and the shift in our political universe, with one party becoming predominately conservative and the other predominately liberal. One party became suspicious of the concentration of power. The other became addicted to it.
Dr. Donald Devine, a political scientist and a member of the first Reagan Administration, observed, “The Republican Party, absent the 1976 contest, would most likely have remained a moderate ‘Tory’ party that never becomes a majority governing party. The Democrats would have remained the majority party, and even if the GOP wins the Presidency in 1980, it would only be because of Jimmy Carter’s incompetence. . . . A rejection of Carter by the voters, and the GOP would have only become a one or two term interregnum of a natural Democratic majority political system.”
2
To paraphrase political writer Samuel Lubell, the GOP would have remained the moon to the Democrat’s sun.
Those who knew Reagan best say he never would have run in 1980 had he not run—and lost—in 1976. His appetite was whetted and his pride was at stake. Losing in 1976 taught Reagan how to run and win the GOP nomination in 1980, thereby initiating one of the most polarizing campaigns in American history. As noted political writer Michael Barone said, “In most American Presidential campaigns in the twentieth century, the distinctions are blurred for the most part . . . 1980 was dramatically different because the choices were so stark and clear.”
3
Rarely before had the choice been so clear between two competing candidates and two competing philosophies. As Nancy Gibbs and Matthew Cooper would write in
Time
years later, “We know a legacy when we see one. Ronald Reagan not only changed the landscape when he was in office, but he had also fundamentally changed his party.”
4
As Reagan mulled whether to challenge Gerald Ford for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1975, he was not the dominant figure in the party, and his conservatism was not widely embraced by the party’s leadership. Reagan’s stature in the world is taken for granted today, and so is the place of conservatism as the dominant ideology in the Republican Party. But this was not the case in 1975. While conservatives were never particularly enamored of Gerald Ford, there had been a glimmer of hope that he would be some kind of ideological improvement over Richard Nixon.
But conservatives’ hopes were quickly dashed. Upon becoming President, Ford grossly misread and misunderstood the mood of the Republican Party and its ever-accelerating move to the right. Nixon met with the Soviets and signed agreements, so Ford went to Vladivostok, met with Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev, and signed an agreement. Nixon went to China and met with Mao, so Ford went to China and met with Deng Xiaoping. Nixon filled his Cabinet with moderates and liberals, and Ford did likewise. Nixon appointed liberal, activist judges to the federal bench, including the Supreme Court, and Ford did likewise. Nixon fiddled with the economy, so Ford proposed a tax increase and the “WIN” program (“Whip Inflation Now”), which provided the nation’s comedians with fodder for months.
To the consternation of conservatives, Ford also chose former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller as his Vice President in late August of 1974, who was confirmed by the Congress later that year. Conservatives had not forgotten his petulance at the 1964 convention in San Francisco when he lost the nomination to Goldwater. Conservatives were appalled at the announcement.
Many Republicans, including Republican National Committee Chairman Mary Louise Smith, George H.W. Bush’s former Deputy, thought that the party should try to “broaden the base” and “move to the middle.” Reagan and other conservatives interpreted these suggestions as a rebuke of conservatism and a selling out of their ideology. Sometimes their opposition to Reagan was personal.
For example, in 1975, Roger Stone, a young aide in the office of the Young Republicans, headquartered in the building owned by the Republican National Committee, hung a studio portrait of former Governor Reagan and Mrs. Reagan, much to the chagrin of the Ford supporters in the building. Stone was told by those on high to take down the offending photo immediately— or else the funding the national party provided the Young Republicans might be cut off.
5
In addition to opposition within his own party over his conservatism, Reagan was thought by most of the liberal intelligentsia of the media and the academy to be “unqualified” to be President. It was neither the first nor the last time he would be underestimated.
“I suspect that the Ford White House was subject to what most of Washington was, a sort of dismissing the actor from the West Coast. They thought Ronald Reagan was purely a production of Hollywood and not a very good actor quite frankly. I don’t think there was a single person . . . who understood that this was not just a talented communicator . . . or that he was an avid reader or understood what the hell he was talking about,” recalled GOP consultant and Ford aide Douglas Bailey.
6
At the higher echelons, the Republican Party was in conflict over what it stood for. Longtime Reagan friend and counselor Ed Meese told PBS in a documentary about Reagan in 2001, “There was still a big government groundswell among the liberal element, and certainly the idea of conservatism as we know it today was not something that politicians embraced very eagerly. Nor did the voting public. So in that sense, Reagan was ahead of his time.”
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