The Triumph of Nancy Reagan Karen Tumulty (motivational novels .TXT) 📖

showed Ronnie reading from a script. He was just too good at it, and the last thing they wanted to do was remind voters that he had been a Hollywood actor. Ellis—whom Nofziger regarded as “a right-wing zealot with a lot of far-out ideas, some pretty good”—thought otherwise. He suggested broadcasting a half-hour speech by Ronnie across the state. Sears and the other boys at headquarters told Ellis it was a terrible proposal. They couldn’t imagine that anyone would want to watch such a thing. What’s more, the only footage available was a grainy videotape that had been made two weeks before. As the two sides continued to argue, Helms appealed to Nancy and convinced her that it was time to shake things up with a bold play. She arranged for the senator and Ellis to receive a copy of the leftover video.

The tape showed Ronnie sitting behind a desk against a stark blue background, looking directly into the camera with his hands folded. It had been produced in a local Florida television station studio, and the production values were hardly ideal. But Nancy recognized it held something magical. What she saw was the man who had given that speech for Goldwater back in 1964. “A Time for Choosing” had changed Ronnie’s destiny. If not for that powerful address, he would never have been elected governor. It was time to put her faith back where it belonged, in Ronnie. Voters needed to see and hear him directly, straight and unfiltered.

The campaign spent a precious $10,000 to air the speech on fifteen of North Carolina’s seventeen stations. “Two hundred years is a dot of time, measured against the span of recorded history, but in that dot of time, we have achieved a higher standard of living, a greater range of opportunities for a greater number of people than has any other people who ever lived,” Ronnie said in the address. “And yet we celebrate our bicentennial beset by troubles that have us in a time of discontent.” He noted out-of-control inflation and a growing national debt, high taxes, the financial shakiness of the Social Security system. Ronnie compared Ford’s long record as a member of the “Washington establishment” against his own view that “changes must be made, and those changes can better be made by those who have not had a career in Washington and who are not bound by longtime relationships and personal ties.” He said US foreign policy under Ford and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, was “wandering without aim,” and warned: “This nation has become number two in military power in a world in which it is dangerous, if not fatal, to be second best.”

As the New York Times noted later, the “last ditch, desperation maneuver” broke every rule of politics at a time when thirty-second ads ruled the airwaves, but “all indications are that it had a powerful impact, so powerful that the speech may have made the difference for Mr. Reagan between victory and defeat.” An NBC News poll found that one in five North Carolina voters made up their minds in the last week of the primary campaign, after the pundits and political professionals had left Ronnie for dead. Those late deciders went for the former California governor by nearly three to one. Ronnie shocked everyone by winning North Carolina, sweeping almost every big county. His victory marked the first time since 1952 that an incumbent president actively running for a party nomination had been defeated in a primary contest.

It was a pivotal moment for the candidate’s wife as well. Nancy’s initial impulse to give up on her husband had been a betrayal. She had listened too much to the naysayers, the people who supposedly knew what they were doing. She had flinched, but she wouldn’t again. No one knew Ronnie or believed in him like she did, and if he really wanted this, she was the best one to help him figure out how to win it. “I never again heard Nancy talk about her husband getting out of the race,” Nofziger said. “Today I’m sure that if he had yielded then, conservatives would never have given him a second chance in 1980.”

After North Carolina, Ronnie swept Texas, Georgia, Indiana, and Nebraska. By the first week of May, he was gaining on Ford. After another round of victories, esteemed CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite pronounced that “Ronald Reagan, as of tonight, looms as a serious threat.”

Spencer, however, continued to pull no punches against his old client: “My basic premise was every three weeks or so, I’ve got to knock Reagan off his rhythm. I have to do something to piss him off.” He succeeded spectacularly with an ad that ran right before the June 8 California primary. It was a time of mounting tension in Rhodesia, and Ronnie had made ill-considered comments indicating he might be willing to send troops there. The television spot that Spencer produced concluded with a reminder that was meant to terrify: “When you vote Tuesday, remember: Governor Reagan couldn’t start a war. President Reagan could.”

When Ronnie heard about the ad, he slammed his fist into the bulkhead wall of his campaign plane. He recognized immediately that the shot had been fired at close range. “That damn Spencer’s behind this,” he said. Nancy’s anger at Spencer was more like ice, hard and cold. “It was quite awhile before I could forgive Stu for that one,” she wrote. The incendiary ad didn’t change the outcome in California; Ronnie won his home state by nearly two to one. But to Spencer’s great satisfaction, it reverberated in Ohio and New Jersey, where Ford won primaries the same day.

Both Nancy and her mother were stung by what they regarded as another act of betrayal by a onetime ally. Their family friend Barry Goldwater, for whom Ronnie had done so much in 1964, began criticizing the former California governor publicly that spring and formally endorsed Ford in July. Goldwater warned that Ronnie had a “surprisingly