And he sweeps a host of new Republican faces into office with him
By George J. Church. Reported by Laurence I. Barrett with Reagan and Christopher Ogden with Carter.
Landslide. Yes, landslide--stunning startling, astounding, beyond the wildest dreams and nightmares of the contending camps, beyond the furthest ken of the armies of pollsters, pundits and political professionals. After all the thousands of miles, the millions of words and dollars, the campaign that in newspapers across the land on the very morning of Election Day was still headlined TOO CLOSE TO CALL turned out to be a landslide. The American voter had struck again. Half the election-watching parties in the nation were over before the guests arrived. The ponderous apparatus of the television networks' Election Night coverage had scarcely got on the air before it was over. NBC called the winner at 8:15 p.m. E.S.T., and the loser conceded while Americans were still standing in line at polling booths in much of the country. In a savage repudiation of a sitting President not seen since F.D.R. swept away Herbert Hoover in the midst of the Great Depression, Americans chose Ronald Wilson Reagan, at 69 the oldest man ever to be elected President, to replace Jimmy Carter in the White House.
It was shortly after midnight when the hamlet of Dixville Notch, N.H., became the first community in the nation to cast its ballots and set a trend that never varied: 17 to 3 for the challenger. Once the big count began, all the shibboleths of the election--that Americans were confused, apathetic and wished a plague on all the candidates and, above all, that they were closely divided--were swept away by a rising tide of votes, some hopeful, many angry, that carried Reagan to victory in one of the most astonishing political and personal triumphs in the nation's history.
Even before the counting began, reporters' interviews with voters leaving the polls made clear that a remarkable Reagan victory was gathering force. That force quickly proved tidal. Some of the first returns came from states that Carter had to win to have any hope at all, and they made it mercilessly clear that the White House would no longer be his. On the tide rolled, through Carter's native south, into the nation's industrial heartland, on to the West, until, reluctantly at the end, even New York fell to the Republicans.
As the tallies piled up, they buried nearly every comfortable assumption that the pundits had made about how Americans would cast their ballots. Among them:
-- The growing promise that the American hostages in Iran would be returned--the closest thing to the "October surprise" that the Reagan camp had long dreaded--apparently helped Carter not a bit, and may have cost him dearly.
-- Independent Candidate John Anderson did not elect Ronald Reagan by significantly weakening Carter; indeed he had no effect on the election outcome as a whole.
-- The huge number of voters who had told pollsters that they were undecided evidently broke decidedly for Reagan, thus confounding the conventional wisdom that disaffected Democrats in the end would "come home" to their party.
-- Women, who had been thought particularly susceptible to Carter's charge that Reagan might lead the U.S. into war, did not vote Democratic in anything like the numbers expected.
When it was over, Reagan had won a projected 51% of the popular vote and an overwhelming 44 states, with the staggering total of 483 electoral votes. Carter took 41% of the popular ballot and a mere six states, with 49 electoral votes (Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, Rhode Island, West Virginia, as well as the District of Columbia).
Moreover, Reagan carried Republicans to victory--or perhaps Carter dragged Democrats to defeat--around the country. The Republicans took control of the Senate for the first time in 26 years and made substantial gains in the House, creating more conservative chambers for the Reagan Administration and knocking out of office some key Democratic stalwarts. The voters who cast their ballots for a President-elect who has pledged to reverse the tone and direction that have prevailed in Washington for almost half a century also retired such noted liberal Democratic Senators as Birch Bayh in Indiana, George McGovern in South Dakota, Frank Church in Idaho and John Culver in Iowa. Even Washington's Warren Magnuson, a fixture in the Senate since 1944 and No. 1 in seniority among all 100 Senators, went down to defeat. In the House, powerful Ways and Means Chairman Al Ullman got the ax, as did Indiana's John Brademas, the majority whip.
Reagan's triumph dismembered the old Democratic coalition. Jews, labor-union members, ethnic whites, big-city voters--all gave Reagan far more votes than they usually cast for a Republican. The disaster left the Democratic Party, which has held the presidency for 32 of the 48 years since 1932, badly in need of a new vision and a new agenda.
Though the dimensions of the landslide were totally unexpected, both camps knew from their polling in the final days that the momentum was swinging to the challenger. The debate completed the process of certifying Reagan in the public mind as an acceptable President, and the hostage news seemed to remind voters of all their frustrations with the state of the country and Carter's performance as President.
On election eve, calling on all his skill in the medium he uses best, Reagan delivered a superbly moving half-hour TV speech. He called a roll of patriotic heroes from John Wayne to the three astronauts killed in a launch-pad accident, asked the voters "Are you happier today than when Mr. Carter became President?" and said, in relation to the U.S. role in the world, "at last the sleeping giant stirs and is filled with resolve--a resolve that we will win together our struggle for world peace." It was the kind of speech hardly another living politician would have been able to bring off, but Reagan did--magnificently--and not least because it was evident it is what he profoundly believes about America and its rightful world role.
Trying to recover, Carter put in a brutal final week--26 cities in 15 states and more than 15,000 miles in the air. In the last 24 hours before the election, Carter stepped up his blitz in a desperate cross-country chase that took him 6,645 miles to six key states ("I need you, I need you, help us!" he implored the crowds) before touching down in Georgia's dawn fog on Tuesday morning so that he could vote in Plains. His throat was raspy. His right hand was scratched red from ceaseless frantic "pressing the flesh" with the throngs that met him. He had put on pancake makeup to cover the red blotches on his face, but the signs of weariness showed through. He had scarcely slept since the latest hostage maneuvering broke early Sunday morning.
After voting with Rosalynn, Carter drove over to the railroad depot, the initial headquarters for his 1976 campaign, to greet an attentive crowd of 100 residents and 200 reporters. Suddenly, for the first time in public, he started to betray what he knew--that he was going to lose. While his aides dug their shoes into the red clay and stared at the ground, Carter gave a rambling talk for ten minutes about the accomplishments of his Administration. "I've tried to honor your commitment," he said at the end. "In the process, I've tried..." His voice broke, and tears welled up in his eyes. Rosalynn looked on in agony. Carter recovered his composure and ended quickly, "to honor my commitment to you. Don't forget to vote, everybody."
When the Carter party flew back to the White House, aides began working up the President's concession speech even before the first announcements were made. "I want to go out in style," Carter told his advisers. "I want this country to know it's going to have an orderly transition."
Later, Carter sat with his top aides in the family quarters on the second floor of the White House and watched the news of his defeat. "I lost it myself," he said. "I lost the debate too, and that hurt badly." He was composed, not vindictive, a man trying to analyze why the nation was rejecting him so emphatically. "I'm not bitter," he said. "Rosalynn is, but I'm not." Rosalynn agreed: "I'm bitter enough for all of us."
To make his concession speech, Carter appeared before his dispirited followers at 9:45 p.m., an hour and seven minutes before the polls closed on the West Coast. By admitting defeat, Carter may well have discouraged Democrats from going to the polls and supporting other party members on the ticket; the timing of his speech was a small reminder of how little he had cared about party affairs and loyalties.
Reagan was in bounding good humor throughout the final days, buoyed by reports from his pollster, Richard Wirthlin, that he was steadily gaining. On Monday he played Peoria, Ill., and he played it well, his voice getting richer and stronger throughout the day. At a campaign-closing rally in a shopping mall near San Diego, a few hecklers kept screaming "ERA!" Reagan stopped in mid-sentence and snapped, "Aw, shut up!" The crowd erupted with cheers of "Rea-gan!" The candidate cocked his head, grinned and said: "My mother always told me that I should never say that. But this is the last night of a long campaign, and I thought just once I could say it." It was Reagan at his avuncular best.
On Election Day, Reagan voted in the morning and refused to make any predictions. "President Dewey told me to just play it cool," he said. At 12:15 p.m., Wirthlin called with good news about the early returns. Reagan's response was to cross the fingers of one hand above his head and rap on wood with the other hand. At 5:35 p.m., he was stepping out of the shower, wrapped in a towel, when the phone rang: Jimmy Carter was calling to congratulate him.
At the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, Reagan mingled with old California backers and show-biz friends such as Jimmy Stewart and Charlton Heston, and got a surprising phone call from Ted Kennedy, offering his cooperation.
When Reagan finally went downstairs to make his victory speech to wildly cheering supporters, he struck the same mixed tone of humility and boyish glee that so obviously had charmed American voters during the campaign. Said he: "I consider that trust you have placed in me sacred, and I give you my sacred oath that I will do my utmost to justify your faith." That was the sober side; the other showed a few moments later when supporters brought him a cake shaped like the country, lush with flags marking the states he had carried. As the bearers held it up, the cake started to slip. Said Reagan with his widest grin: "When that began to slide, I thought that maybe the world was going out as I was getting in."
Reagan could certainly be pardoned for feeling that life begins at 69. His rise has been one of the most remarkable success stories in American politics, and he has come a long, long way. Entering political life only after his show-business career was washed up, he had his first run for elective office at 55, an age when many once successful men are thinking of early retirement. Despite eight effective years as Governor of California, he was twice denied his party's nomination for President.
Indeed, to achieve his triumph, Reagan had to break most of the unwritten rules about White House eligibility. At the start of the year, he was widely considered too old, and his background as a movie actor too frivolous, for the Oval Office. Above all, he was thought too conservative. Even last spring, as Reagan was sweeping aside a crowd of rivals in one Republican primary after another, Gerald Ford was grumbling that "a very conservative Republican [he did not have to say whom he meant] cannot be elected."
Reagan did moderate his tone and rhetoric as it became clear that he had a serious chance of winning. He spend endless hours countering the main charge of Carter's campaign: he was a warmonger. He constantly reassured voters that he would not dismantle Social Security, end unemployment compensation. Quoting Franklin D. Roosevelt as though he were a kind of patron saint, bizarre as the thought seemed, Reagan adopted the old Democratic pledge to create jobs and "put this country back to work."
Reagan never backed away from his basic principles or essential message: abroad, the source of most trouble in the world is the Communist drive for global domination; at home, the front of most American woes is the overblown, endlessly intrusive Federal Government. In foreign affairs, the U.S. must build up its military power and face down the Soviets. At home, Reagan's watchword will be less: less federal spending, less taxation, less regulation, less federal activism in directing the economy and curing social ills--in fact, less Government, period.
But though the conservative trend of the country was obvious from the election results, Reagan's mandate was a good deal less than indicated by his 483 electoral votes. The President-elect's victory was surely not so much an endorsement of his philosophy as an overwhelming rejection of Jimmy Carter, a President who could not convince the nation that he had mastered his job. Overseas, he could never seem to chart a consistent policy to deal with the rise of Soviet power and hold the allegiance of U.S. allies. But that failure was far overshadowed in the election by the roaring inflation that Carter's numerous switches in economic policy could never stop or even slow, and the rising unemployment that he seemed to accept as the price of an ineffective anti-inflation program.
Reagan scored heavily with his repeated question of whether voters felt they were better off than they had been four years earlier. Said Republican Governor James Thompson of Illinois: "A lot of people, the so-called silent majority, went into the voting booths and said, 'To hell with it. I'm not going to reward four years of failure.'" One telling incident: in the mill town of Homestead, Pa., half a dozen members of Steelworkers Local 1397, lounging around their union hall on Election Day, cheered Ron Weisen, president of the local, as he told a reporter that he was voting for Reagan. Said Weisen: "Carter ignored the steel workers for 3 1/2 years, and now he comes around asking for our votes. Well, he's not getting them." Near the group was a carton of Carter posters, that the workers had never bothered to unpack. Weisen sneered: "We'll turn them over and use them as place mats at our next beer bash."
Read one way, the election illustrates nothing so vividly as the perils of being President. The voters have just turned an incumbent out of office for the second election in a row for the first time since 1888, and ended one party's control of the Government after only four years for the first time since 1896. In a time of trouble at home and abroad, the President has become the lightning rod for all the discontents of the citizenry.
But for Ronald Reagan, that is a problem to face come Jan. 20. After four years of Jimmy Carter, Americans clearly yearned for someone who would do things differently or at the very least would provide more leadership. Evidently Reagan convinced them that he held out that promise. Now he has his chance to prove it.
The debate, the economy and the hostages added up to drubbing
By John Stacks. Reported by Laurence I. Barrett with Reagan and Johanna McGeary with Carter.
"Too close to call." That was the cautious verdict of most professional pollsters measuring the Carter-Reagan race, at least until the last few days before the voting. Indeed, the only expert who had the figures to predict the historic runaway was Reagan's own pollster, Richard Wirthlin. The day before the election, California Pollster Mervin Field summed up what proved to be the conventional foolishness: "The choice of Reagan and Carter is as difficult a choice for the American public as they've had in at least 50 years."
Where did the experts-indeed, where did everybody-go wrong? Essentially , the pollsters missed a powerful sea change in the voters' mood that was going on as the Oct. 28 debate in Cleveland took place. Said David Neft, executive vice president of the Louis Harris organization: "This election locked in after the debate." In weekend polls before the election, both Harris and Gallup recorded a Reagan edge-but not enough for either to predict that he would win the industrial states that were thought to be the election's key.
TIME's pollster Daniel Yankelovich found Carter ahead in his last poll, which was taken two weeks before the debate. Yankelovich also believes that public opinion began changing rapidly only after the debate. "The dissatisfaction with Carter was there all along," he said, "but people couldn't bring themselves to vote for Reagan. The debate changed that."
The debate-and a lot, lot more. Clearly, other issues and events changed people's minds, since Carter's defeat was catastrophic, encompassing every section of the country and virtually ever sector of the population.
In one way or another, the Reagan great sweep touched nearly every traditional Democratic voting bloc. That fact is all the more remarkable since Reagan had won his party's nomination as an avowed conservative. Nonetheless, according to polling conducted by ABC television, Reagan captured an estimated 41% of the union vote, which went 62% for Carter in 1976. Four years ago, Carter won 55% of the labor vote in heavily unionized Pennsylvania; this year his share dropped to 46%.
The Roman Catholic vote, which in pre-election polls seemed leaning toward Carter, slid to Reagan, 46% to 42%. In recent years, the Jewish vote has been about 60% Democratic; this year, according to ABC, it split between Carter and Reagan, 42% to 35%, with a surprising 21% going to Independent John Anderson.
White Southern Democrats, who helped Carter carry his native South in 1976, deserted in droves. The fundamentalist television ministers happily took credit for this turnabout, claiming to have registered 4 million conservative voters. Said the Rev. Jerry Falwell of Lynchburg, Va., one of the founders of the Moral Majority: "I think that these Christian people came out of the pews into the polls and caused this avalanche."
Among normally Democratic voters, according to the ABC poll, 25% went to Reagan. Independents went heavily for the Republican challenger, 52% to 30%; Reagan even got 22% of those who called themselves liberals-not to mention 72% of self-described conservatives. Republicans were loyal (87%), while the President's onetime backers were far less consistent. According to an Associated Press-NBC survey, barely half of those who voted for Carter in 1976 did so this year.
Reagan did well in virtually every age group, taking 44% of those under 30 to Carter's 42%. He was surprisingly successful among women, who were expected to support Carter because of Reagan's opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment and his image as a warmonger. The ABC poll indicated that 47% of women voted for Reagan, 42% for Carter.
Only among blacks and Hispanics did the traditional Democratic ties still bind. Carter apparently took 82% of the black vote nationwide, Reagan only 13%. A survey in Texas showed that 84% of Hispanics went for the President, a marginal improvement over his 1976 showing. The Democratic loyalty of these two blocs, however, was no match for the massive desertions from the Carter cause among other groups.
Perhaps Carter's deepest humiliation was his poor showing in the South, except for his home state of Georgia. In winning all but one of the Southern states in 1976, Carter was actually bringing them home to the Democratic fold, since many had voted G.O.P in the 1968 and 1972 Nixon victories. This year Carter's unpopularity and the appeal of Reagan's conservatism returned the region to the Republican column. While he moved in to seduce the South, Reagan was able to take for granted his solid bloc of states in the West. This forced the President into an exhausting, multifront campaign: trying both to shore up supporting Southern states and to defeat Reagan in the industrial states of the northeast and Midwest. It was, in hindsight, a hopeless cause.
A major reason for the voters' rejection of Carter was the economic issue--a widespread sense of anger that the President had proved incompetent to handle something that affects every paycheck and pocketbook. In talking with pollsters, voters listed inflation as their prime concern more frequently than any other issue. According to Election Night surveys, those who said inflation was their main worry went to Reagan 3 to 1.
Voters were also fearful about unemployment. Full employment has traditionally been a strong Democratic issue. Carter won over Reagan only narrowly among those voters who listed unemployment as their prime worry. Said New Yorker Joe Augeri: "I voted for Reagan today because I think the country needs a change, a new direction, a new management team running the Government. It was the inflation rate going up again and the country falling into a worse recession that changed my mind about Carter two or three weeks ago."
That sentiment was echoed across the country. In Warren Mich., Maria Poyiatzis complained about increasing joblessness. Said she: "People like me want to work. I've already been laid off for one year, and I almost feel like I have to go begging for money." In Chicago, Dick Hillosky, a Democratic polling judge, watched voters streaming into the voting because they're so angry they can't see straight."
Pollsters were aware of the economic discontent but did not consider it enough to turn a seemingly stalemated election into a rout. Just before the Cleveland debate, the figures of Reagan Pollster Wirthlin had his candidate running seven points ahead of Carter. But the national polls did not show this big a margin of victory, and even Wirthlin conceded that with the margin of error calculated, the popular vote could be close. Wirthlin saw Carter as capable of picking up last-minute support from Anderson, as well as undecided voters, who were 13% of the electorate. It was the debate that changed the situation fundamentally. Said Wirthlin: "The debate was successful in conditioning the environment for the takeoff."
What lifted, as a result of the debate, was a lingering public fear that the Republican challenger was too hawkish to be President--an impulsive hip-shooter who might, as Carter implied, accidentally get the country into war. Relaxed and self-assured, Reagan was seen by more than 100 million people as something different from the image that Carter had tried to create for him. Bill McCleave of Parma, Ohio, was undecided before the debate; afterward, he said: "The hesitation I had about Reagan was on how he was going to handle foreign policy. The debate helped answer that question. I don't think he's so stupid that he's going to start a war."
Once that barrier to voting for Reagan was overcome, the floodgates opened, allowing pent-up frustrations with the nation's situation and dissatisfaction with Carter as President to pour through. Wirthlin found that on the day after the debate, Reagan had moved to a nine-point lead.
Meanwhile, Carter's in-house pollster, Patrick Caddell, was finding somewhat different numbers. The weekend before the debate, Caddell had Carter running just about even with Reagan, 41% to 40%. After the debate, Caddell waited 24 hours to let the impact sink into the electoral psyche and then surveyed the country again. By Thursday, Caddell's figures had Carter down by 4 1/2 points. The President's forces concluded that Reagan had gained because of his debate performance, but they also believed this advantage would gradually erode. Caddell predicted that within 72 hours voter sampling would show an end to Reagan's short-lived boost; indeed, by the Saturday before the election, Caddell found that Carter and his challenger were once again in a dead heat. Wirthlin also took a Saturday sample, and he got dramatically different results: he found Reagan moving ahead by ten points after a temporary postdebate drop.
Then came Sunday morning and the sudden prospect that the 52 hostages seized by Iranian militants in Tehran might be release. No event had a more pervasive impact on the 1980 campaign, and its final weight in the landslide will be debated for a long time. But there is no disputing that the hostage question shadowed the candidates for an entire year. The hostages were seized on Nov. 4, three days before Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy announced his doomed candidacy against Carter. An early morning announcement by Carter, suggesting that there was new hope for the hostages' release, helped the President win the Wisconsin primary last April. Even the failed raid into Iran, which cost eight American lives brought a slight improvement in the President's poll standings.
When the Iranian Majlis issued its conditions for the hostages' release on Sunday, Carter left the campaign trail to return to the White House. Meanwhile, Caddell went back to his polling. In his third postdebate survey, Caddell found Carter trailing Reagan by five percentage points-an unexpectedly sudden movement in the relative strengths of the two candidates. Clearly worried now, Caddell did some spot polling on Monday afternoon and took a final crash survey that night. The findings were painful. Carter was ten points down and falling fast. Wirthlin had reached the same conclusion 24 hours earlier.
The two pollsters disagree on just what happened. Wirthlin thinks the hostage question was a cumulative negative for Carter, a symbol of his numerous other failures in domestic and foreign policy. But Wirthlin does not think there was a sudden change in opinion about Carter because of the hostage news.
Caddell has another analysis. Says he: "What happened was a protest vote, not a choice between candidates. We saw an enormous reaction to frustration about the hostages, but it also reflected other sources of frustration." His survey showed no real change in the voters' approval-disapproval ratios on the two candidates. But Caddell did find that opinion turned quickly against the terms demanded by the Majlis; on Sunday, 31% viewed the terms as unreasonable; the next day, 47% did.
The Carter forces translate this movement in opinion to mean that the President was the victim of a sudden welling up of national frustrations, catalyzed by the last-minute roller- coaster developments involving the hostages. Throughout most of the campaign, Carter aides assert, their candidate had managed to focus voters' attention on Reagan's shortcomings. With the return of the hostage problem to center stage, the spotlight shifted--disastrously, as it turned out--back to Carter. Said White House Press Secretary Jody Powell: "It seems to me to go to the whole question of frustration, not just at Iran or even gas prices, but at a whole lot of things people see as happening and being unable to do anything about."
Throughout the campaign, Reagan and his team had been worried that a pre-election deal with Iran to release the hostages might save Carter from defeat. Their best hope was that voters would take a cynical view of any last-minute developments in the hostage crisis. Caddell's final polls suggested that no more than a quarter of the votes believed that Carter was manipulating the Iranian situation for his own political benefit. Nonetheless, there was a residuum of distrust of Carter that some voters did attach to the hostage situation. Said Robin Case of Newark, N.J.: "Isn't it interesting that the yearlong hostage crisis finally comes to a head the Sunday before election? It is his fault they were taken hostage in the first place."
Other specific issues cropped up in voters' minds, leading them to reject Carter for a second term. Resentment of Brother Billy's unsavory wheeling and dealing with Libya surfaced even in Plains, Ga. The President's mean streak which appeared in his campaigning broadsides implying that Reagan would encourage racism and that he was a reactionary ideologue, turned people off and damaged Carter's reputation as a decent, well-intentioned man. The campaigning President, as some voters saw it, was spending most of his time criticizing Reagan and very little explaining his goals for a second term. But in the end it was almost everything in his record that, fairly or unfairly, convinced a majority of voters that Carter was simply not worth re-electing. A New York Democrat, Steward Brown, put it simply: "I think he is an inept man."
The magnitude of Reagan's victory raises the question of whether it might lead to a fundamental realignment in American politics. The states between the Rockies and the Mississippi River, with only one or two exceptions, have voted steadily Republican for three presidential elections. Carter's special aim to the South has been shattered, and there is not much prospect that a Democratic candidate in 1984, such as Kennedy or Walter Mondale, could reclaim it. Thus the likelihood is that the Republican inroads will continue to expand and grow.
The shift in allegiances of such groups as Jews, Catholics and blue-collar workers also suggests what Political Consultant Horace Busby has called a "Republican lock" on these formerly democratic blocs. In Cleveland, Cuyahoga County Republican Chairman Robert Hughes, to be sure a prejudiced witness, says, "This is a watershed election. It has shattered the traditional voting patterns."
Pollster Caddell, understandably shielding his candidate from charges that he helped destroy the Democratic majority, disputes that notion. Says he: "Nothing in the data on the congressional vote or ideological preference or party preferences suggests any party realignment is taking place. The result was totally historical." But even Caddell concedes that the damage was serious, noting, "the protest vote carried down the line from incumbent to party."
Yankelovich believes that the result was first and foremost a personal repudiation of Carter. He cautions against concluding that any vast change has occurred. What he does see is a splendid opportunity for the Republicans to fashion a lasting majority based on new ideas-especially if Reagan can build the kind of record in office that will encourage continued loyalty.
With an increasingly conservative Senate and House, Reagan has a chance to govern more effectively than his defeated opponent did. It is noteworthy, however, that much the same could have been said of Jimmy Carter exactly four years ago this week.
When Jimmy Knew
Traveling with the President in the campaign's last hours, TIME Correspondent Christopher Ogden provided the following report on Jimmy Carter's painful moment of truth:
When Jimmy Carter flew back to Washington on Sunday to handle the hostage crisis, he thought he was in good shape in the polls taken daily by his own expert, Pat Caddell. He had gone into the Cleveland debate one to two points ahead of Reagan by Caddell's soundings, and the trend was in his direction. "It looked good," said one of the President's aides. By Friday, however, the debate results seemed to be taking effect. Jody Powell spoke of a "pause in momentum." Carter had dropped about four points, to one or two behind. but he was still in striking distance. Sunday, new figures had moved the President to five behind. He would have to campaign Monday, and so out he went.
The long day was nearly at an end when Carter's Air Force One dipped out of rainy skies into Seattle Monday night. Hamilton Jordan was on the phone from Washington with Powell. As the plane came in to land, the connection was broken. On the ground, Carter was rushed into the hangar packed with more than 1,000 cheering supporters and gave one of the best speeches of his campaign.
He was exhausted but exhilarated. It was over, and he felt a win was definitely possible. As he leaped off the stage to work the crowd, some junior staffers surprised him by putting on the public address system his 1976 campaign theme song. The tune had not been played since his last campaign. Carter started to choke with emotion when he heard it.
In the meantime, Powell was reconnected with Jordan. The President's chief political strategist had bad news. Caddell had just come over with his latest poll figures. Carter had dropped to ten points behind Reagan. The lead was insurmountable, Caddell had said. Jordan told Powell the election was lost. Powell was profoundly shocked. Carter was still inside shaking hands.
When the President bounded onto the plane for the long flight back to Georgia, Powell readied himself by pouring a stiff drink. He said he needed one to break that kind of news. but before he could collar the President, Carter was back in the staff cabin, talking with domestic Affairs Adviser Stu Eizenstat and Rick Hertzberg, his chief speechwriter. They had been pleased with day. The aides agreed that the last appearance had been great. Powell was agonizing. Carter then went back farther in the plane to ask the press pool to come up with him to the front for a chat. That lasted another 45 minutes. Carter still didn't know he had lost before the polls even opened.
Finally, after they were in the air more than an hour, and Carter had finished a double martini, Powell got the President alone. Calling him "Governor," as he often does in private, Powell passed on Caddell's findings. Carter was devastated. He couldn't believe it. "In one sense, both he and Rosalynn were so naive," said an aide. "They had just never even considered the possibility of losing."
Rosalynn met her husband at the helipad when he arrived in Plains. When he told her the grim news, she was incredulous. She spent the rest of the morning fighting to maintain control, looking as if she had been hit in the stomach with a sandbag. On the flight to Washington after voting in Plains, they were finally alone in their forward cabin. They broke down together and cried.
A Determined Second Fiddle
Bush will probably urge policies of caution and balance
By George J. Church. Reported by Douglas Brew and Evan Thomas with Bush.
George Bush seemed nervous. It was a rare occasion on which he shared a platform with the head of his ticket, Ronald Reagan. Bush's voice was reedier than usual, his introductory praise of Reagan awkwardly effusive, his applause during Reagan's speech a shade overeager. Then a man sitting in a tree shouted something that made the crowd in Birmingham, Mich., laugh. A puzzled Reagan announced into an open microphone: "I didn't hear." Like a jack- in-the-box, Bush popped up to cup his hand around Reagan's ear and whisper what the tree sitter had said about Jimmy Carter: "He's a jerk." Reagan chuckled, and Bush sat down smiling, glad to have been of service.
That scene illustrates the paradox that Bush will face when he is sworn in as Vice President. As No. 2 to a President who will turn 70 only 17 days after his Inauguration, Bush has unusually strong prospects of some day succeeding to the Oval Office himself. Quite apart from any possibility that he might have to finish Reagan's term, the widespread expectation that Reagan will retire after four years makes Bush a potential front runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 1984. But Bush knows that he can capitalize on his position only by loyally serving a very traditionalist chief who will probably require him to play the Vice President's classic public role of Invisible Man--and that he can exert influence only by metaphorically, if not literally, whispering into Reagan's ear.
As Bush sometimes told campaign audiences, "If I gain Reagan's confidence, I'll have tons to do. If I don't, I'll be going to funerals in Paraguay." To TIME he predicted with characteristic preppie self-confidence: "I'll get into the inner circle because I'm intelligent and motivated by what's in the best interest of the country." Reagan has said that he will seek Bush's advice on foreign affairs, national security matters and relations with Capitol Hill, befitting Bush's background as a former congressman, envoy to the U.N. and China and director of the CIA. Bush will probably urge a policy of caution and balance, two qualities that Reagan had trouble convincing some voters he possessed.
But Bush makes clear that he expects to operate strictly behind the scenes while doing little in the public eye, except perhaps attending those foreign funerals. His model Vice President is Nelson Rockefeller. At meetings of the National Security Council that Bush attended in 1975-76 as head of the CIA, he recalls, "Rockefeller gave his advice and would speak up even if he disagreed with President Ford. He was strong, and Ford was impressed." Bush says he will do the same, but he adds that "if Reagan took a position that I disagreed with, I would not try to embarrass the President of the United States" by even leaking dissent. He showed that style during the campaign. While Bush was visiting China in August, Reagan said he favored "official" relations between the U.S. and Taiwan; Bush was infuriated but kept his anger to himself and tried to assure his hosts that Reagan's remarks had been misinterpreted.
Bush has been practicing a long time for such a role. In his Government posts, he loyally carried out presidential orders; asked once how much autonomy he had enjoyed as a diplomat he candidly replied: "None." and this fall, as Reagan's running mate, he conducted a campaign that was the very model of self- effacement. He said so little of national interest that a reporter for the Los Angeles Times once phoned his editors to discuss a Bush story, was put on hold and fell asleep; when the reporter woke up six hours later, he found he was still on hold.
Bush frequently did make regional headlines and get on local TV news shows with ringing defenses of Reagan against Jimmy Carter's attacks--and indeed against the criticism that Bush himself had voiced during the Republican primaries. Asked about his charge that Reagan's plan for a 30% cut in income tax rates over the next three years constituted "voodoo economics," Bush blandly replied that Reagan had changed his economic policies (true, but not about the depth to tax cuts). As Election Day neared, some of Bush's aides griped privately that Reagan had run a bumbling campaign; one grumbled that if Bush had been the nominee, he would have been leading in the polls by 20 points. but Bush praised Reagan warmly to the end, telling one audience in Pittsburgh's black ghetto that "there is not a bigoted bone in Ronald Reagan's body. Not one."
Such loyalty is all the more remarkable because Reagan initially balked at putting Bush on the ticket; he doubted Bush's toughness. As the campaign began, the two knew each other chiefly from having shared podiums at party functions and debates during the primaries; Bush cannot remember ever having seen a movie starring Reagan. Bush insists that they now get along famously. "I really, really like the man," he bubbles. They conferred by phone about three times a week during the campaign, but Reagan paid Bush the compliment of letting him run his own race, secure in the knowledge that Bush would not upstage him. Bush also won Reagan's regard by scoring well among suburban voters, who found in Bush's dress and Eastern Establishment airs an image of reassuring moderation.
For all his determined playing of second fiddle, Bush still yearns for the top spot. Late in the campaign, he made one rare show of independence: at a time when there were many crucial swing states to visit on Reagan's behalf, Bush waited out a snowstorm to fly to the safe state of Iowa and campaign for Congressman Thomas Tauke, who had endorsed Bush on the eve of the Iowa caucuses that rocketed Bush to national renown in January. Much as Bush may have to stay under wraps, the vice presidency will give him many more chances to repay such past favors, rebuild the network of supporters he established during two years of arduous campaigning for the 1980 nominations, and otherwise prepare for a renewed White House bid of his own.