Three Days in Moscow Read online

  When the League of Women Voters scheduled a debate and invited Anderson to participate, Carter refused to attend; he wanted a one-on-one match with Reagan. Reagan cheerfully took advantage of the opportunity to debate Anderson without Carter, and he did very well. Carter’s refusal made him look officious and petty—and maybe scared. By the time Carter agreed to a debate with Reagan the week before the election, the stakes were enormous.

  Patrick Caddell, Carter’s pollster, looked back on the debate as a fatal error. “The only strategic mistake we made in the entire campaign was to debate Reagan,” he said. “We had created all these doubts about Reagan. Reagan desperately needed a forum, where he could prove not only that he was more competent than the President, but simply where he could stand up and say, ‘Hey listen, I’m not going to blow up the world. Do I look like the kind of guy that will destroy your country and your future?’ He is very good at that. That was the reason for that debate.”

  It worked to Reagan’s advantage. He came into the debate slightly ahead of Carter in the polls, with the goal of presenting a picture of strength and moderation. He knew how to do so; he’d been doing it for years, swatting away the “extremist” tag his opponents had tried to pin on him since 1966.

  Carter was on the defensive, and he wasn’t at his best. Even Reagan was aghast when Carter described his view on the nuclear arms race by saying “I had a discussion with my daughter, Amy, the other day, before I came here, to ask her what the most important issue was. She said she thought nuclear weaponry, and the control of nuclear arms.” No stranger to the charming anecdote, Reagan thought that one fell flat, leaving the nation to imagine a weak president taking cues from his twelve-year-old daughter. (After the debate, Deaver had signs made to pass out at rallies, reading, “Amy Carter for Secretary of State.”)

  In the final moments of the debate, Carter attacked Reagan head-on, listing all the ways he was outside the mainstream. But Reagan dealt him a crushing blow with his closing statement: “It might be well if you would ask yourself, are you better off than you were four years ago?” The question struck a chord. Viewers heard it not only as a pocketbook calculation but as an existential reckoning. It was a clarification of the central question on everyone’s minds, and it was so powerful that it continues to be asked in campaigns to this day.

  With Reagan’s poll numbers rising, Carter’s final opportunity came in the form of an “October surprise”—news the weekend before the election that a deal on the hostages was imminent. The media was engaged in nonstop coverage of the drama. After all, Election Day would be the one-year anniversary of their capture. Carter suspended his campaign and returned to Washington as the nation held its collective breath. On Sunday afternoon, looking pale and exhausted, Carter told the country that although the new developments were positive, he could not say when the hostages would be released. On Monday, Caddell delivered the bad news to the Carters: his polling showed they were not going to win the election.

  On Tuesday, the Reagans were home in California, where they voted early. They were planning to watch the election returns with friends and were expecting a long night. Reagan was in the shower and Nancy was in the tub, with the TV on in the living room, when Nancy heard John Chancellor announce that Reagan was expected to win in a landslide. In those days, the networks didn’t try to wait until the polls closed in the West to announce a winner if the result seemed clear.

  The Reagans raced into the living room, wrapping towels around themselves. “And there we stood,” Nancy recounted, “dripping wet, wearing nothing but our towels, as we heard that Ronnie had just been elected!”

  In the Carter camp, the mood was stoic after Carter called Reagan to concede, but Rosalynn let out her true feelings later in her memoir. “I was bitter at what I had seen on television for weeks that I thought was so unfair to Jimmy; bitter about the hostage situation dominating the news for the last few days before the election as the media ‘celebrated’ the anniversary of the hostage capture.” She was bitter about so many things, and “I was the only one who admitted it.”

  To no one’s surprise, the two wives did not exactly hit it off. When Rosalynn invited Nancy to the White House for the obligatory tour during the transition, Nancy noted that “the chill in her manner matched the chill in the room.” Rosalynn refused to show Nancy the bedroom, which she really wanted to see, and turned the tour over to her secretary halfway through, pleading other commitments. Nancy was disappointed, but Rosalynn might have been surprised to know that she was also sympathetic, writing, “It must be painful to have to show the residence to the wife of the man who defeated your husband.”

  Nancy thought the place looked shabby, in desperate need of an update. That sentiment was probably responsible for fueling a rumor, which she insisted was not true, that she’d asked the Carters to move out early so renovations could get started.

  The transition meeting between their husbands was equally cool. Carter lectured Reagan for an hour on the important issues of the day, and Reagan listened attentively. Carter kept asking him if he wanted to take notes, and Reagan said no, he’d just listen. Privately, Carter thought that was ludicrous. How could he remember anything if he didn’t take notes? Carter, still smarting from his loss, believed that Reagan wasn’t up to the job. But according to an account by the historian Douglas Brinkley, the Reagan camp had a different version:

  “Reagan recalled verbatim everything Carter had told us,” Meese remembered, defending his old boss against accusations from the Carter camp that the president-elect had been inattentive. “He didn’t take notes because he didn’t need to.” Meese believed that Reagan had felt sorry for Carter at the White House that day—that the Gipper was just not a good hater. “Though he profoundly disagreed with Carter on policy issues, Reagan harbored no mean-spiritedness toward Carter,” Meese insisted. “It’s usually the loser that is full of sour grapes.”

  In describing the meeting to reporters, Carter had his game face on, calling it “enjoyable” and “productive.” He even mentioned that their wives had had a “good visit.” But the truth was that he felt discouraged and demoralized. Like any president about to see his legacy upended, he thought he’d let the country down. Many years later, it still hurt. “Allowing Ronald Reagan to become president was by far my biggest failure in office,” he said.

  Chapter 4

  A Revolution of Ideas

  Have you got goose bumps?” Reagan asked Deaver. He was sitting behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office for the first time, at the end of a long Inauguration Day. His hands were spread out in front of him, pressing against the old English oak, gripping the desk, and getting a feel for it. It was a solemn moment, the fullness of his new role settling in on him late at night—the first of many times he would feel wonder at the office.

  January 20, 1981, had been full of similar moments of awe, interspersed with the bittersweet and the human. The peaceful transition of power was ceremonial but also intimate, winners and losers standing together: on one side, the weary, demoralized Carters, bruised by their loss and resigned to reality; on the other, the Reagans, bright-eyed and optimistic, entering an exciting new phase of their lives. The scene had been played out on many other occasions. It was the noble tradition of the transitory nature of command in America—the victor and the vanquished, together under one flag.

  The day began early at Blair House, where the Reagans were staying, along with all of their family members—Nancy’s parents and brother, Richard, with his wife, Patricia, and their children; Reagan’s brother, Moon, and his wife, Bess; Maureen and her fiancé, Dennis; Michael and his wife, Colleen, and their son, Cameron; Patti; and Ron and his wife, Dora. When Deaver woke Reagan at 8:00 A.M. and said he had to get up because the inauguration was in four hours, Reagan asked plaintively, “Do I have to?” He was just kidding.

  The previous night there had been a star-studded inaugural gala—Hollywood’s tribute to its favorite son. It was spearheaded by Frank Sinatra, jus
t as he’d done for Kennedy twenty years earlier to the day. This time the gala was televised by ABC so Americans could vicariously share in the glamour. All the old stars were there, among them Jimmy Stewart, Bob Hope, and Ethel Merman. The emcee, Johnny Carson, joked, “This is the first administration to have a premiere.”

  As Reagan rose and began to prepare for Inauguration Day, he took a call from President Carter, who told him in a voice made weary by forty-eight hours without sleep that the hostages would be released that day, but he didn’t know at what hour they’d be in the air. Reagan sincerely hoped it would come to pass while Carter was president. Surely he deserved that. Reagan decided that if the hostages took off before he took his oath of office, he would open his speech with praise for Carter.

  At 9:30, the Reagans joined the Bush family at St. John’s Episcopal Church for a brief service before returning to Blair House to make final preparations. Soon afterward they entered the North Portico of the White House across the street, where the Carters were waiting in the Blue Room for the traditional preinaugural coffee. Reagan was dressed in a club coat, striped pants, and a gray vest—no top hat—and Nancy in her signature bright red dress and coat by the designer Adolfo. It was an awkward meeting. The Carters looked exhausted and grim, wincing at the niceties and going through the motions as if they’d have liked to be anywhere else. In the car on the way to the Capitol, Reagan chatted nervously while Carter stared out the car window in silence. Their wives, in a separate car, barely spoke as they rode.

  The capital was swarming with people; the predictions were that the inauguration would boast the largest crowd ever, aided by the unusually balmy weather, overcast with temperatures in the mid-fifties. Yellow ribbons fluttered in the breeze, a symbol of hope that the hostages would come home.

  For the first time, the ceremonies would take place at the west front of the Capitol instead of the east front, facing the Washington Monument and looking beyond to the graves at Arlington. The change had been dictated by Congress the previous year as a cost-saving measure, but it perfectly fit the symbolism of the western president-elect. He could take the oath with his gaze set on the nation outside the closed circle of Washington—across the plains to his childhood home and then to the coast, where he had begun his political journey.

  Reagan especially appreciated the view of Arlington and wanted to incorporate it into his speech. He wrote most of the speech himself, organizing his thoughts on four-by-six-inch cards, but he had the assistance of Ken Khachigian, a masterful longtime Republican speechwriter who had been with him during the campaign.

  In preparing the speech, Reagan gave Khachigian a thick stack of index cards with notes from his past speeches. Those were his themes, the simple, consistent notions he had held for years. In a sense, there was no such thing as a new speech for Reagan. He was content with his principles, and the only question was how to give them a fresh treatment. When Khachigian came back with a draft early in January, Reagan thought it too flowery. Reagan’s rhetoric was always personal—poetry, when it was used, was not pretentious. He took out his yellow lined pad and began rewriting the draft in his own words. It was a short speech, only twenty minutes long, and it focused on two primary points—efficiency in government and strength in foreign policy—the familiar ideas of Reagan’s political life, going all the way back to 1964.

  Spelling out the economic problems he was determined to solve, he presented the firm view that had been a standard of his campaign stump speech:

  In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.

  Second, he signaled that the enemies of freedom would not be given a pass in his administration. Again, this was an old theme, dating back to his initial political awakening:

  As for the enemies of freedom, those who are potential adversaries, they will be reminded that peace is the highest aspiration of the American people. We will negotiate for it, sacrifice for it; we will not surrender for it, now or ever.

  Our forbearance should never be misunderstood. Our reluctance for conflict should not be misjudged as a failure of will. When action is required to preserve our national security, we will act. We will maintain sufficient strength to prevail if need be, knowing that if we do so we have the best chance of never having to use that strength.

  Above all, we must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have. It is a weapon that we as Americans do have. Let that be understood by those who practice terrorism and prey upon their neighbors.

  Reagan summoned Khachigian and told him he wanted to tell a particular story as homage to all the soldiers resting at nearby Arlington National Cemetery. The story had been related to him by a friend, describing a soldier named Martin Treptow, who had been killed in action during World War I and was buried at Arlington. Treptow had kept a diary with a stirring inscription: “My Pledge: America must win this war. Therefore, I will work, I will save, I will sacrifice, I will endure, I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost, as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone.”

  Khachigian dutifully checked out the story. No diary could be found, and it turned out that Treptow was buried in his home state of Wisconsin, not Arlington. When he told Reagan, assuming the story wouldn’t be used, Reagan didn’t care. “Put it in,” he said. He was a master of the emotional truth and often didn’t sweat the small details. Indeed, the Treptow story would become one of the most memorable moments of his inaugural address. It came at the end, and Reagan used it to make his final point:

  The crisis we are facing today does not require of us the kind of sacrifice that Martin Treptow and so many thousands of others were called upon to make. It does require, however, our best effort and our willingness to believe in ourselves and to believe in our capacity to perform great deeds, to believe that together with God’s help we can and will resolve the problems which now confront us.

  And after all, why shouldn’t we believe that? We are Americans.

  At 11:57 A.M., moments after Vice President Bush took his oath of office, Reagan rose to stand before Chief Justice Warren Burger, who would be delivering the presidential oath. Nancy was at his side, holding his mother’s Bible, old and taped together, opened to Nelle’s favorite verse, II Chronicles 7:14:

  If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

  Nelle had presciently scrawled a note in the margin: “This is a good verse for the healing of nations, too.”

  At the moment of his oath, the sun broke through, a beam landing on the platform, so when Reagan stepped to the podium to deliver his address, the gray gloom had lifted. Before speaking he glanced at Carter, hoping for a sign that the hostages had taken flight. Carter gave a barely perceptible shake of his head. No, they were still on the ground. The perfect movie ending was not to be.

  Reagan gave his speech, and then the Reagans departed to the traditional luncheon with congressional leaders in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall, the columned Greek Revival amphitheater that had been the meeting place of the House of Representatives in the early days of the nation. There they feasted on California cuisine, drinking California wines. At 2:15, Reagan rose to address the guests, grinning happily. “Some thirty minutes ago,” he said, “the plane bearing our prisoners left Iranian airspace, and they’re now free of Ir
an.” The assembly cheered, and there was a tremendous sense of relief.

  It was always speculated that the Iranians had deliberately waited until Carter was no longer president to set the hostages free, a final humiliation for the man they loathed so much—and maybe an appeasing gesture to Reagan. If that were true, the Reagans had nothing but contempt for the evil symbolism. Nancy learned that when the phone rang in the car taking Carter and former vice president Walter Mondale to Andrews Air Force Base with news of the release, they burst into tears. “I’ve had my differences with the Carters, but they certainly deserved better than that,” she wrote.

  The long afternoon continued with an inaugural parade, beginning with the Reagans riding in an open limousine down Pennsylvania Avenue, waving to the crowds, before taking their place in the viewing stands. The parade featured eight thousand marchers, including a band from Dixon, and hundreds of equestrian teams. Three hot-air balloons rose above the crowds. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir rode a seventy-foot float and stopped before the presidential viewing stand to sing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

  “Home” at the White House at last, after the ceremonies and parades, it all sank in for the Reagans. Everything was perfect in the living quarters on the second floor—they were especially amazed to see their own furniture from California, already neatly arranged and waiting for them. They walked through the rooms holding hands, and despite Nancy’s earlier opinion that the place was shabby, it had an Inauguration Day glow. There were inaugural balls to get dressed for—eight of them—but they took time to pause and luxuriate for a moment in the wonder.

  REAGAN FELT A SENSE of familiarity about going to work the first day and sitting down behind his desk. He had descended from the family quarters at 7:30 A.M., walking along the portico at the Rose Garden and entering his new office.