There He Goes Again: Reagan Will Run

After months of build up and teasing hints, the old actor cannily saved his punch line for the very end: the next to last sentence of his five-minute television speech. At 10:55 p.m. Sunday in Washington, a moment carefully chosen to put him on-screen at the end of prime time in the East and the beginning of it on the Pacific Coast, Ronald Reagan was set to appear live from the Oval Office. His text got swiftly to the point: “I’ve come to a difficult personal decision as to whether or not I should seek re-election.”

That was just to seize the audience’s attention, which Reagan hoped to milk for the last drop of suspense. First, of course, he had to explain his reasoning. So his text went over the horrors he had faced on entering the White House: “Our national defenses were dangerously weak.

We had suffered humiliation in Iran . . .

but worst of all, we were on the brink of economic collapse.” Then, in his prepared remarks, he proudly ticked off the accomplishments of three years: a stronger mili tary; lower inflation, taxes and interest rates; falling unemployment.

“But our work is not finished. We have more to do in creating jobs, achieving control over Government spending . . . keeping peace in a more settled world.” That can only be accomplished if there is a bond between President and people, “the real heroes of American democracy . . . You were magnificent as we pulled the nation through the long night of our national calamity.”

At last came the grand finale: “I am therefore announcing that I am a candidate and will seek re-election to the office I presently hold. Thank you for the trust you have placed in me.”

Thus did the President answer the political question of questions. Not will he or won’t he; that had never been in serious doubt. Rather, the problem was how art fully he would break the news everyone expected. He put on a virtuoso performance, orchestrating a long roll of drums that built skillfully to its preordained climax. By the time Reagan appeared on the screen Sunday night, his re-election campaign was already off to a rousing start.

It began with a State of the Union speech skillfully combining a boast that “America is back—standing tall” with a plea for cooperation to “finish our job.”

The 42-minute address, interrupted some three dozen times by applause, was upbeat, inspirational and politically calculating. While emphasizing the need for bipartisanship, it was carefully worded to shore up Reagan’s points of vulnerability and pre-empt Democratic issues. In classic campaign style, the speech contained something for everyone: for conservatives, a pitch for school prayer; for liberals, a pledge of stepped-up attempts to fight environmental pollution; for hawks, expressions of pride in strengthened military forces; for doves, a repetition of a standard line, this time ostensibly addressed to the people of the Soviet Union, that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Reagan deftly sidestepped one of his biggest political liabilities, giant budget deficits, by asking congressional leaders, including Democrats, to appoint representatives who would negotiate with the White House on how to reduce them.

The Democratic television response, starring Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis with a supporting cast of Democratic lawmakers and voters, was earnest, but it lacked the force and polish of the Great Communicator’s speech and offered little in the way of alternative programs. It argued that the poor and disadvantaged have not shared in the economic recovery, and warned that high deficits are a grave long-term threat. The Republicans, contended Oklahoma Senator David Boren, are “saying live for today and don’t worry about tomorrow.”

Out on the hustings, Walter Mondale, Reagan’s likely Democratic opponent, charged that the President’s speech “ducked” all the “central issues” by not offering specifics. That was exactly what Reagan intended. Marveled Democratic Congressman Tim Wirth of Colorado: “It was as brilliant a performance as I’ve ever seen, with strikingly little substance.”

The next day Reagan was on the road, flashing partisan fire. In Atlanta, for what amounted to some stump-speaking practice, he told a flag-waving “Spirit of America” rally of 13,000, “To those who say we must turn back to tax, tax, spend, spend, I can only reply, not on your life! The best view of Big Government is in the rear-view mirror as we leave it behind.” He got in an obvious shot at Mondale, observing that while John F. Kennedy had told Americans to ask themselves what they could do for then-country, “today we see candidates trying to buy support by telling people what the country will do for them and making promises to interest groups.”

Throughout the week, Reagan’s fabled luck held. Wall Street, always easily spooked by phantoms, went into a sudden swoon just before the State of the Union speech; traders bid the Dow Jones industrial average down almost eleven points on a rumor that the President had decided not to run. That only underscored Reagan’s popularity among investors. Soviet President Yuri Andropov, of all people, gave Reagan an indirect boost by issuing a generally conciliatory statement hinting at possible resumption of Washington-Moscow nuclear-arms-control negotiations. By Sunday night Reagan was ready for a party. He summoned 400 campaign officials to a 6 p.m. reception in the East Room of the White House, then had them bused to the Mayflower Hotel, where they joined hundreds of other Republicans to watch the announcement speech on large TV screens and to stage a rally lasting well into the early morning hours.

Reagan starts the campaign as the clear favorite. Polls show him scoring some of the highest ratings of his presidency; in a New York Times/CBS News survey released last week, 57% of those questioned generally approved of the way he is doing his job. The same poll had Reagan piling up commanding leads of 48% to 32% over Mondale and 51% to 29% over Senator John Glenn of Ohio. Other surveys show slimmer margins, and Gallup actually puts Reagan neck and neck with either Mondale or Glenn. But in no poll does the President trail nationally.

State-by-state political arithmetic is even more cheering to Republican planners. They are counting on an all but solid West and South, with the possible exception of Texas, to give Reagan a long head start toward winning the 270 electoral votes necessary for a second term. Right now they can identify only four states in which Reagan looks like a probable loser: Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota and West Virginia. In the other 46 states he seems to have a solid chance.

Reagan’s political advisers expect the biggest issue to be, as usual, the state of voters’ wallets. Right now, they are robust. The economy is enjoying strong increases in production, jobs and incomes, and inflation is at an eleven-year low. Deficits are a problem to which the President cannot afford to appear indifferent, but his advisers doubt that they will weigh decisively with many voters, unless the red ink threatens to choke off the recovery or spur a new round of inflation. Says Ed Rollins, director of the Reagan-Bush ’84 Committee: “I don’t think they can beat us on economic issues.”

Nonetheless, not one of Reagan’s advisers regards the race as a cinch. They remember uneasily that in January 1980 Jimmy Carter held a 29-point lead over Reagan in the Gallup poll. Most Reaganites expect the campaign to turn close by the time the nation casts its ballots.

If Reagan is strong on economics, he is vulnerable on foreign policy. Polls for the White House show a marked increase in the number of voters who are afraid of war, largely because of the icy state of relations with the Soviet Union, and Republican strategists worry about a revival of Reagan’s 1980 image as “trigger happy.” The vulnerability of the Marines in Lebanon is a sore point; 49% of the people questioned in last week’s Times/CBS poll wanted them brought home, vs. only 35% in October. “If Lebanon is in no better shape during the campaign than it is today, that could be a real problem,” says Nevada Senator Paul Laxalt, Reagan’s close friend and chairman of his campaign committee. Laxalt adds, “We have told Reagan that as we travel around the country, we find people are nervous about a new cold war. They don’t like it when the two superpowers don’t talk.”

Reagan also is likely to be hurt by the fairness issue, basically a belief that his tax and budget cuts have favored the white and wealthy over the poor, blacks, Hispanics and other minorities. Partly because of the fairness issue and partly because of the perceived aggressiveness of U.S. foreign policy, Reagan has made little progress in closing the gender gap; his support among women in the latest polls is 12% lower than among men.

What worries the President’s aides more than anything else is the simple fact that many more voters think of themselves as Democrats than as Republicans.

To win or keep the White House, a G.O.P. candidate generally must garner the votes of 80% of all Republicans, half of all independents and even a quarter of all Democrats. That might be difficult against Mondale, who is the least divisive potential Democratic candidate in many years. The former Vice President may not excite many voters, but he is at least acceptable to all the blocs that have been alienated by one or another of Reagan’s right-wing policies. And they represent a lot of votes: Pollster Louis Harris figures that “hardcore” anti-Reaganites, who would vote for almost anyone against the President, constitute 38% of all potential voters, vs. only 35% hard-core supporters who would vote for Reagan against any foreseeable opponent. “Unions, teachers, environmentalists, feminists, those are all groups that are anti-Reagan more than pro-Mondale,” says one Republican campaigner who fears their ability to organize and get out the vote.

For all that, a Reagan re-election campaign looks eminently winnable, and that is a major reason why the President has determined to run again. Almost from the moment he entered the White House his aides assumed, and believe he assumed, that he would try for a second term. He might have changed his mind, they think, only if he had seemed sure to be defeated or if his health had failed, and nothing of the sort happened. The President, who will celebrate his 73rd birthday next Monday, gives every appearance of being in better physical condition now than he was on Inauguration Day.

Reagan’s advisers insist that he never bothered to discuss with them whether he should run; their talks involved only strategy and timing. The President debated his choice only with his wife Nancy. The First Lady has become much more comfortable with her own role in the public eye than she was at first. Though she is still haunted by the assassination attempt against her husband, she encouraged him to do what he wanted.

Essentially, say friends and advisers, Reagan is running again for the simplest of reasons: he believes in what he is doing, he likes his job, and he does not see anything else he could do that would be remotely as interesting. The President often seems surprisingly uninformed about the details of policy and content to follow the consensus of his staff (see following story). Nonetheless, he is dedicated to his conservative principles and feels personal as well as ideological satisfaction in putting them into effect. “Here’s a guy who for 25 years has been fighting the Communists with words,” says one adviser. “Now he can take action. Grenada is a good example of that.”

Reagan does not display the towering ego or consuming ambition that has driven other Presidents. But the White House does fill a personal need of another sort:

he has been performing before audiences all his adult life, and he is now playing to the biggest audience on earth. Much as he delights in riding horses on vacations at his ranch near Santa Barbara, he has confessed to friends that he would be bored living there full time—and that goes double for Nancy. Finally, his ego is at least big enough to make him doubt whether any other G.O.P. candidate could carry out his conservative mission equally well, or perhaps even win.

So the question debated within the White House was not what but when Reagan would announce. Most aides wanted him to declare his candidacy last fall, or by December at the latest. They feared that a delay would simply not seem believable to the public. Reagan insisted on late January, figuring that the longer he could keep speculation alive, the more public interest he would build. Advisers now concede that the boss’s political instincts, as usual, were keener than theirs: timing the announcement a few days after the State of the Union speech got the campaign started with the maximum splash.

The State of the Union speech is one of the great rituals of the Republic, enacted before the Cabinet, both Houses of Congress, members of the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the diplomatic corps and a prime-time TV audience numbering scores of millions. This speech was pure Reagan: a late draft showed about half the words rewritten in the President’s handwriting. Many of his changes softened proposed jabs at the Democrats. On this occasion Reagan wanted to project an image of firm but temperate leadership that is national rather than partisan, while still setting out the points that he will repeat on the stump all through the campaign.

Reagan’s principal message was that the U.S., prospering again economically and enjoying rebuilt military strength, is experiencing a rebirth of pride and hope. “Bipartisan cooperation,” presumably from a Congress that had passed most of the Administration’s essential legislation, he said, had stopped “a long decline that had drained this nation’s spirit and eroded its health.” Now, he said, the U.S. is “looking to the ’80s with courage, confidence and hope.”

Then came what amounted to a recitation of campaign issues, but presented in tones of national concern. “Tonight we can report and be proud of one of the best recoveries in decades,” said Reagan, stressing his strongest point. “Today, a working family earning $25,000 has $1,100 more in purchasing power than if tax and inflation rates were still at the 1980 levels.” Mindful of the fairness issue, he wrote into his text the words, “progress helps everyone.” But he read the line as “Congress helps everyone,” one of an unusual number of verbal flubs. Reagan recovered nimbly from this one. He corrected himself, then said benignly, “Congress does too,” to laughter and applause.

To counter the widespread fear that he is a hard-line militarist who is increasing the risk of war, Reagan sounded a line he will repeat frequently: because his military buildup has strengthened the nation, “we can now move with confidence to seize the opportunities for peace.” He adroitly addressed an appeal for renewal of arms-control negotiations “to the people of the Soviet Union,” telling them “there is only one sane policy, for your country and mine, to preserve our civilization … the only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used. But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely?” Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin joined in the applause.

In making this point, Reagan got some unexpected help from Andropov, who is thought to be running the Soviet government from a dacha outside Moscow while he recovers from his still mysterious illness. In what was billed as an “interview” with Pravda and released by the Soviet news agency TASS the day before the State of the Union speech, Andropov asserted, “I want to confirm that the Soviet Union is prepared to solve the problem of nuclear arms in Europe only on a constructive, mutually acceptable basis.” While this wording was ambiguous and coupled with repetitions of standard Soviet bargaining points, it seemed to hint at slightly greater willingness to resume the missile-limitation talks that Moscow broke off in November. Reagan happily responded in a brief exchange with reporters: “I welcome that [Andropov’s remarks], and I think it is a reply to all this feeling that we have no communications with them.”

Domestically, Reagan in the State of the Union speech made bows to right and left. Since the New Right has been miffed by his lack of attention to the so-called social issues, he put in plugs for antiabortion legislation and school prayer. “If you can begin your day with a member of the clergy standing right here leading you in prayer,” said he, addressing his remarks to Congress, “then why can’t freedom to acknowledge God be enjoyed again by children in every schoolroom across this land?” For liberals, Reagan observed that “preservation of our environment is not a liberal or conservative challenge; it’s common sense,” and pledged to add $50 million to this year’s $410 million budget for the Environmental Protection Agency—”one of the largest percentage budget increases of any agency.” The figures are complicated and slippery; by one method of calculation the EPA would still have 10.4% less to spend than it had in Jimmy Carter’s last budget. But the move responded to public concern. Said Environmentalist Leader Marion Edey: “He’s reading the same polls we are.”

The thorniest problem that Reagan had to address was the deficit, because he had rejected all steps that seemed likely to be of much immediate help in getting it under control. The President repeated his philosophical objections to tax increases (“immoral”), and in his budget message Feb. 1 he will propose only minor cuts in nonmilitary spending, yoked to a huge increase in defense outlays. Yet he had to say something. Reagan and his advisers agreed on an idea almost literally at the last minute: the night before the speech, an all but final draft contained a big hole for a yet to be approved insert on the deficit subject.

It was filled, once again, with a plea for bipartisanship. “I know it would take a long and hard struggle to agree on a full-scale [deficit-reduction] plan,” said the President. “So what I have proposed is that we first see if we can agree on a down payment.” Reagan announced that he had called congressional leaders and asked them to “designate representatives to meet with representatives of the Administration” to agree on immediate steps. “We could focus on some of the less contentious spending cuts that are still pending before the Congress,” said Reagan, and “these could be combined with measures to close certain tax loopholes.” The package might reduce deficits by $100 billion over the next three years.

As a serious step to cut deficits, the President’s plan has grave defects: large though they seem, the amounts he is talking about are small in comparison with the budget shortfalls expected over the next few years. As a political ploy, his idea is shrewd. If congressional Democrats refuse to participate in the conference, or fail to agree on anything, Reagan can blame them for lack of progress on the deficit; if some agreement does result, the President can take credit for it. Said one delighted G.O.P. Senator: “He’s a Houdini.”

Having thus flummoxed the opposition at the outset, Reagan will keep up the pressure. Plans call for him to travel the country one or two days in most weeks from now on. Initially, he will concentrate on reminding voters of how seriously the economy was ailing in 1980 and how much it is improving now. As he said last week in Atlanta, “Are you worse off or better off than you were four years ago?” Come autumn,

Reagan will switch to emphasizing progams that he will contend need to be adopted to keep the recovery rolling.

Throughout the campaign, Reagan probably will stick to the relatively centrist pose he struck in the State of the Union speech. The President certainly is not backing away from his principles; he pleased hawks last week by letting it be known that he had signed an order directing a start on research for his star wars antimissile system. But he is campaigning as a genial, avuncular figure. Even his partisan remarks in Atlanta were phrased in a spirit of good-natured ribbing rather than harsh attacks on the Democrats, and in the State of the Union speech he echoed Kennedy by calling space the “next frontier” and pledging to develop a permanently manned space station “within a decade” (see SPACE).

That posture might change, and abruptly, if Reagan is reelected. Aides generally agree that Reagan would be more conservative, more ideological, less amenable to compromise in a second term. He would be both freed of any worry about the next election and presented with his last opportunity to remake American society according to his conservative principles.

On the social issues, Reagan might not do much more than talk aggressively; he once accurately if indiscreetly called them “peripheral” to his main concerns of limiting taxes, spending and regulation and generally shrinking the size of Government. But advisers think that he will mount a much stronger attack on the growth of spending for such “entitlement” programs as Social Security and Medicare. As an example of what to expect, those who served on his staff in California point to a conference he held at the start of his second term as Governor: he demanded immediate action to shape a program that would check the growth of state welfare spending. Of course, even a second-term President has to compromise, as Reagan did as a second-term Governor: in exchange for tighter requirements for getting or staying on the Golden State’s welfare rolls, he agreed to higher benefits for those who did meet the test. In another four years as President, he would face irresistible demands for higher tax revenues to reduce the deficit, but his principles would not let him agree to a general increase in rates; he said in the State of the Union speech that he would propose a “reform” program, trading still lower rates for elimination of deductions and exemptions. It would be a hard battle.

On foreign policy, Reagan might actually be less hard-line in a second term, for the same reason that he would be very tough on domestic issues: it would be his final chance to leave his mark on history. Aides insist that he wants to be remembered as the President who achieved a major, verifiable weapons-reduction deal with the Soviets, and would press hard for one. That assumes that Moscow would cooperate, a very large assumption.

A second term would entail major changes in personnel as well as policy, and for a President as heavily dependent on his staff as Reagan is, the reshuffle would be extremely consequential. Presidential Counsellor Edwin Meese, a staunch conservative, is already leaving the White House; Reagan formally nominated him last week to be Attorney General in the wake of the resignation of William French Smith, once the President’s personal lawyer. The other two members of the “troika” that constituted a kind of inner Government are expected to depart soon after Election Day: White House Chief of Staff James Baker, a pragmatist and tactician, to another post in the Government, and Deputy Chief Michael Deaver, one of Reagan’s oldest and closest friends, to private life.

Reagan probably would not continue the troika system. So he would have to choose a single, powerful chief of staff; the selection would tell a great deal about the direction of a second Reagan Administration. Current betting favorite: Drew Lewis, former Secretary of Transportation and a pragmatic tactician in the Baker mold. Conservative alternative: Secretary of the Interior William Clark, an old Reagan crony who served as chief of staff in California and, not very successfully, as National Security Adviser in Washington. In the Cabinet, George Shultz may bow out as Secretary of State at the end of the first term, presenting Reagan with another fateful prag-matist-conservative choice. Leading candidates: Middle East Envoy Donald Rumsfeld, a non-ideologue, and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, yet another pal from California days and a reflexive hardliner.

The personnel choices that would leave the deepest imprint on the U.S. for many years to come would involve the Supreme Court. Reagan so far has named only one Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, but he might be able to nominate several more during a second term. Aides believe he has already settled on three appointments: Clark (whether or not he has become White House chief of staff in the interim), Meese, and William French Smith, probably in that order. All are highly conservative and, if confirmed, might do more to enshrine the New Right’s social issues agenda in the law of the land than Reagan ever could by promoting legislation. Says one adviser: “Reagan now knows that this will be the only effective way over the long run to get done what he wants done on ‘family’ issues.”

All of which makes fascinating—to some citizens, frightening—speculation.

For now, there are these certainties: Reagan is running, he remains a master politician, and he will be very hard to beat.

—By George J. Church. Reported by Laurence I. Barrett and Douglas Brew/ Washington