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

establish name ID, campaign credibility and image. This effort requires visibility and big names while RFP [Reagan for President] is going to it’s [

sic

] strength—the people.

Across the state line in Wisconsin, GOP activists were also feeling snubbed by a candidate who had pretty much ignored them in 1976 and visited the state only once in 1979. So, Nancy agreed to appear at a Republican women’s banquet in La Crosse on November 1. “Mrs. Reagan’s visit to Wisconsin at this time is crucial to maintaining morale of the Wisconsin [Reagan for President] due to experiences in 1976,” organizers wrote in a memo to her. “This psychological attitude cannot be stressed enough, as when people gathered in the intervening years between 1976 to the present, the fear that the Reagan Campaign will ignore Wisconsin is still very real. Every appearance in Wisconsin by Governor and Mrs. Reagan will aid in putting this fear to rest.” In her speech there, Nancy assured the women: “The ladies of our party are the glue that keeps campaigns running smoothly and provide the day-to-day operations to make sure that victory is ours on Election Day.”

Whether the Reagans actually believed their own spin is unclear. But as the day of reckoning approached in Iowa, it was becoming increasingly obvious how badly they had miscalculated. Ronnie, still taking his above-the-fray posture, was absent when the GOP contenders debated in Des Moines in early January. With just over two weeks before the caucuses, that left the stage to six other candidates: Bush; Dole; ex-Texas governor John Connally; Senate minority leader Howard Baker of Tennessee; Phil Crane, a telegenic conservative congressman from Illinois; and independent-minded John Anderson, another House member from Illinois. Gleefully, they piled on the absent front-runner. “I want to say to Governor Reagan, wherever you are, I hope you’re having fun tonight because we are, and if you’re looking for a younger Ronald Reagan, with experience, I’m here,” Dole said, bringing laughter from the Iowa audience.

Ronnie plummeted in the Iowa polls, from 50 percent to 25 percent. Still, expectations remained that he would come out ahead in the crowded field. Nor did he and Nancy seem to have been terribly worried. As the results rolled in on caucus night, January 21, the Reagans were more than 1,500 miles away. They spent the evening at the home of movie industry friends, watching a screening of the hot new film Kramer vs. Kramer, starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep. They were shocked when pollster Richard Wirthlin called and delivered the news that Bush had edged past Ronnie to win by 2 percentage points.

Suddenly the campaign was in deep trouble. If Ronnie couldn’t pull it out in New Hampshire just over a month later on February 26, the race was over. A small-state primary is political hand-to-hand combat. It cannot be won with money and advertising alone. And even if it could, Ronnie didn’t have the financial capacity to do it. His campaign was already bumping up against the legal spending limits, which meant that if he blew a lot of his funds in New Hampshire, there might be nothing left for the long march through the primaries ahead. “We’re going to change our tactics,” Ronnie told Sears. “We’re going to take that bus into every village and town in the state. We’re going to live in New Hampshire until Election Day.” Ronnie also remembered a tactical mistake he had made there in 1976: he had left the Granite State two days before the primary, thinking he had won, only to see Ford take it by a nose. “This time,” Ronnie told Sears, “we’re staying until it’s over.” Nancy had never seen her husband work so hard. For the next few weeks, Ronnie campaigned morning until night, a display of stamina that quieted some of the concerns about his age.

But there were also some unforced errors. On February 16 Nancy created a controversy with a slip of the tongue at a big GOP dinner in Chicago. She was filling in for her husband, so that he could continue to stump in New Hampshire. Ronnie made a few comments to the Chicago crowd over a telephone that had been placed near a loudspeaker and rhapsodized about the spectacular sixteen-inch snowfall he was seeing at that moment in New England. It had transformed the barren winter landscape with a fresh coat of brilliant white. Well, Nancy blurted out, she wished he could be with her in Chicago, “to see all these beautiful white people.” Nancy immediately recognized her mistake and tried to recover. “These beautiful black and white people,” she said, though there were no African Americans in the room. The timing for such a gaffe could hardly have been worse. The press was already buzzing over another incident that had happened that same weekend. Ronnie had told an ethnic joke to a busload of reporters. The joke, which he had heard from his son Michael, involved Poles, Italians, the Mafia, cockfights, and a duck. So here they were, just ten days before the New Hampshire vote, with both the candidate and his wife having to apologize for racially and ethnically insensitive comments.

Things turned Ronnie’s way the following Saturday, on the final weekend before the primary, when he and Bush were scheduled to debate in Nashua. The sponsoring newspaper, the Nashua Telegraph, withdrew its financial support for the debate after Dole complained to the Federal Election Commission that it would amount to an illegal contribution if the other candidates were excluded, and the FEC agreed. Ronnie’s campaign proposed to split the costs with Bush’s. But Bush refused, so the Reagan campaign picked up the entire $3,500 tab for the debate.

By then, Sears had seen an uptick in Ronnie’s polling numbers. That suggested it would be better for him to face all the candidates on the debate stage rather than elevating Bush alone. So, Sears invited the others who were in New Hampshire to join the debate. Bush’s campaign called the change “an