John B. Roberts II

Joe Biden isn't the first president to have a bad debate. It happened to President Reagan, too, during his 1984 reelection campaign. This is how he recovered from the near disaster. I took a few days off from my work with the Ferraro investigation to make sure the Ohio whistlestop train tour was a success.

 

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     The first presidential debate was scheduled for October 7 at the Kentucky Center for the Arts in Louisville. The topic was domestic policy. ABC's Barbara Walters was chosen to be the moderator.

     For weeks debate preparation sessions had been underway with Reagan at Camp David and the White House. David Stockman, a former congressman from Michigan who Reagan had made head of the Office of Management and Budget, played the role of Walter Mondale. Stu Spencer attended many of the debate practice sessions alongside Reagan, but the debate preparation was largely in the hands of Chief of Staff Jim Baker and Staff Secretary Richard Darman...

     President Reagan spent Saturday, October 6, at Camp David in last minute preparations for the 90-minute domestic policy debate with Walter Mondale. Aside from an interruption to broadcast his regular Saturday five-minute radio address, the practice session consumed the day. The following day the Reagans returned to the White House. That afternoon, some 500 White House and campaign staffers gathered on the South Lawn to give them a send-off to Louisville. Accompanied by key White House and campaign staff, Ronald and Nancy Reagan flew to Kentucky for the first showdown with Walter Mondale.

     At the Hyatt Regency Hotel, the Reagans were scheduled to have a private dinner with Mike Deaver and one or two other close aides before the debate. Jim Baker and Richard Darman weren't included in the dinner but were scheduled to briefly join the group before the debate started. Both men fluttered around outside the room throughout the dinner, waiting to be beckoned inside.

When they were ushered into the room, Baker and Darman inadvertently made a huge mistake by using their few minutes of time with Reagan to talk about debate strategy.

     Only those who were really close to the president knew that despite his confidence as a public speaker, three kinds of events made him nervous: press conferences, State of the Union addresses, and debates. Reagan was most effective in these kinds of speaking engagements when he had a little quiet time with a few close advisors, including Nancy, before they took place. Instead of last-minute kibitzing, the goal of those close to Reagan was to create a relaxed atmosphere.

 

        Deaver accomplished this with humor. One time he passed Reagan a private note written on his personal stationary, with "Michael K. Deaver" at the top, saying, "Show them what an old fart can do." Everyone cracked up, and Reagan started the news conference in a light-hearted mood. 

        But Baker and Darman were never Reagan intimates. They neither knew nor understood the man. So instead of leaving the room in the tranquil mood they found it, they heightened Reagan's anxiety by turning the conversation to the debate.
Many of Reagan's close advisors already thought he had been over-coached. Darman and Stockman had given Reagan books of notes that were inches thick, layered in details and numbers about government programs and spending. Reagan was also expected to have command of similarly-thick notebooks outlining Mondale's record and vulnerabilities. Stockman, whom Reagan once called a "hard-headed son of a bitch," had pummeled Reagan when Stockman played the role of his opponent, Walter Mondale.

     When Reagan took the stage shortly before 9 p.m. Eastern time, he was over-prepared, saturated in the minutiae of government programs, and lacking in confidence due to the grueling debate practice sessions. The result was an awkward performance that culminated at the end of 100 minutes (the debate ran long) with a rambling, inchoate closing statement.

     Media polls taken during and immediately after the debate showed that the question of who won was a toss-up. Presidential pollster Dick Wirthlin tracked viewers' responses throughout the debate. His polling showed that the number of those who thought Reagan won the debate dropped from 49 percent to 41 percent after Reagan's closing remarks, ending in a near-tie with Mondale.

     Publicly, our team kept a stiff upper lip for the first few days after the debate. Campaign chairman Paul Laxalt called the debate "a wash" and dismissed Reagan's performance as due to "a heavy debate that did not lend itself to humor." Jim Baker said that simply by agreeing to debate Mondale, Reagan "put to rest all these charges that he's somehow out of touch, that he's not accessible, that he lives in a show-business cocoon." Deaver explained the clumsy closing statement by saying Reagan tried to talk extemporaneously in the final moments of the debate and didn't have prepared remarks. Campaign press secretary James Lake said laconically, that "We would have liked a better close."

Behind the scenes it was a different story.

     The first debate was a disaster, and everyone on Reagan's team knew it. Laxalt was furious at Baker and his team for botching the debate preparation. Nancy Reagan was even more irate. The truth was Reagan had prepared a closing statement. Darman included it in the briefing books. Inexplicably, somehow the debate prep team never got around to letting Reagan practice the closing statement. When he got on stage at Louisville, it was like an actor trying to deliver his lines without the benefit of rehearsal.

     The detail-laden, wonkish debate strategy devised by Baker, Darman and Stockman had played into Mondale's strengths. The former vice president put Reagan on the defensive almost immediately, and Reagan struggled in a morass of numbers and statistics to refute Mondale's charges. If the foreign policy debate, scheduled for two weeks later on October 21, went as badly, it would change the course of the campaign.

     Reagan was depressed. He blamed himself for letting the team down.

Spencer and Laxalt demanded that planning for the foreign policy debate be taken away from Baker and Darman. The president agreed, and responsibility for debate preparation shifted to the campaign team.

     In the reshuffling of responsibilities, Darman concluded that he was in danger of being fired from his job at the White House. He wasn't far off the mark. Aside from Chief of Staff Baker, Darman had few supporters in the White House. Nancy Reagan would have been happy to see him go. The same was true of Laxalt, who complained privately that the Baker-Darman-Stockman debate sessions had "brutalized" the president.

     Darman took preemptive action. He threatened to disclose confidential matters if he was fired. The implication was that he would depict Reagan as muddled and too old to serve a second presidential term if he were made the scapegoat for the debate fiasco. The threat worked. Darman kept his job, at least for the time being, even if the ploy meant he would no longer be trusted by Reagan's inner circle.

     There were only five days between the first presidential debate and the vice-presidential debate between George H.W. Bush and Geraldine Ferraro. It was the next major event in the campaign. Expectations were high that Bush would dominate the debate, which was bad for our campaign. Any stumbles by Bush would be magnified and give further momentum to the Mondale-Ferraro ticket...

*  *  *

     I didn't have any more time to worry further about the Ferraro operation. I had to pack my bags and fly to Ohio. I was going to take a train trip through the fields and small towns of farm country. The pressure was on the campaign to make sure that Mondale couldn't capitalize on his newfound momentum from the first debate, and we were counting on a whistle stop train tour to restore Reagan's edge over Mondale.

Since September, the White House had been working on a whistle stop tour modeled after Harry Truman's 1948 campaign....after the Louisville debate there was one overriding reason to go through with it. If we could pull it off, it was precisely the sort of event that might restore Reagan's morale. It was in the country's heartland. The train would pass through a series of small towns where presidential visits were so rare that they might occur only once in a lifetime. The crowds would be proud and excited to see a president, especially on an historic train car....

     My job was similar to what it had been at Normandy. Steve Hart was again in charge of press for the trip, and I was there to handle one of the sites where Reagan would speak. Then I would hop on the train and back up Steve throughout the day by handling the White House press pool that traveled with the president ...

   After lunch I called Art Teele at campaign headquarters. "How's it going back inside the Beltway?" I asked.

 

 "Very ugly. Have you seen today's news summary?"

 

  "No, there are no copies out here. What's it say?"

 

   "Safire's column is headlined 'Farewell to Hubris.' He says Mondale quote 'creamed' Reagan in the debate. He says at the end Reagan looked like quote 'an old fighter on the ropes.'"     
      

   Bill Safire was a former Nixon speechwriter whose column in the New York Times was must-reading.

 

   "Safire tells it like it is," I said. "He's not a partisan hack. You've got to give him that."  

 

   "Listen to this one," Art said. "Can the old man hack it for another four years? That dirty question, once only a whisper, is now out in the open as a central feature of the campaign … even the huge lead President Reagan has built up is not entirely secure unless he can somehow trump the issue."
    "Who wrote that?"

     "Joseph Kraft."

     Kraft was a respected journalist whose syndicated column ran in more than 200 newspapers. In the 1960 campaign he'd been a speechwriter for John F. Kennedy, but when it came to his reporting, he was scrupulously objective.

           
     "Anybody else jumping on the age issue?"

 

     "It's been percolating all week, but now it's hit critical mass. The Wall Street Journal ran a piece 'The Fitness Issue' on Tuesday, and the New York Times has one today headlined 'Reagan's Health: How Issue Emerged.' Tip O'Neill's jumped on it, Tony Coelho's talking about the age issue, David Broder's done a column on it. It's the new conventional wisdom."          

 

     Barely two weeks ago, when Mondale's campaign chairman Jim Johnson and Tony Coelho were asked about Reagan's age in a television interview, they downplayed its importance. The tide had clearly turned.
     At 73, Reagan was the oldest incumbent president ever to run for reelection. Our campaign polling still showed Reagan with a comfortable lead over Mondale in both the Electoral College and the popular vote. But if the voters developed doubts about his ability to finish a second four-year term in office, the lead would narrow or even disappear.

 

*  *  *

     It seemed forever before we got word that Air Force One had landed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Reagan was greeted there by General Earl O'Loughlin and his wife Shirlee, Colonel Charles Fox and his wife Sharon, and Congressman Bob McEwen and his wife Elizabeth. Another Ohio congressman, Mike DeWine, rode with the presidential motorcade to Dayton.

     So did half the White House, it seemed. James Baker was there, along with Dick Darman, Margaret Tutwiler, and John Rogers. Ed Rollins and Lee   Atwater had both come for the train trip, along with Ken Khachigian. Mike Deaver and Bill Henkel were there, along with the president's doctor, the military aide, Jim Hooley as the lead advance man, Dave Fischer, the president's personal aide, White House Press Secretary Larry Speakes, Admiral Poindexter from the National Security Council, Kathy Osborne, the president's personal secretary, and Mark Weinberg from the White House Press Office. Steve Hart, my close colleague and friend, was with the travel press.

 

     The "Heartland Express" whistle stop tour was likely to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience not only for Ohio but also for the White House staff. I imagined the competition to get a seat in the motorcade had been fierce. Early in the campaign, I'd handled the media when Reagan toured a Ford factory in Ohio. Deaver was the only member of the White House senior staff who'd come along for that event.

     It took just under half an hour for the motorcade to get to the Old Montgomery County Courthouse mall from Wright-Patterson. Reagan was greeted offstage by former Ohio governor James Rhodes and Stuart Northrop, president of the Huffy Corporation. 

        I met the motorcade and directed Mark and Steve and the travel press to the pathway leading to the press platform. As they always do when they're separated from the president, even briefly, the press got nervous.They hustled down the chute so they could set up in time to cover the president's remarks. The band struck up "Ruffles and Flourishes" followed by "Hail to the Chief " and the crowd was electrified. But I wasn't. Reagan looked tired, gray, almost listless.
The plan called for former Ohio governor Rhodes to introduce the president with brief remarks. Instead, he droned on interminably, as if he'd forgotten who was running for reelection. The crowd began to get bored, and then restless, and all the while Reagan listened through it patiently. It did nothing to enliven his mood. I thought we missed a trick in not having an old-fashioned hook on hand to yank the ex-governor off the stage, vaudeville-style.

           
         When Rhodes finally relinquished the podium, Reagan delivered his stump speech. It lasted about 10 minutes, every second of it agonizing to me. Over the years I'd been present when Reagan spoke dozens and dozens of times. This was one of the most lackluster deliveries I'd ever heard from Ronald Reagan. It was flat, almost monotone, as if he was reading it instead of delivering his speech with the usual Reagan timing, style, and impact. The crowd still applauded wildly. Many of them had arrived before dawn, but you wouldn't have known it from their enthusiasm. 

     At least Reagan had energized them.
     I reminded myself that seeing a president is a unique event for most people. I was judging Reagan's performance with the jaundiced eye of a longtime observer—the same point of view the press accompanying Reagan would have. If his spirits didn't pick up during the day, tomorrow's stories would be about a tired-seeming Reagan going through the motions in Ohio.

 

*   *  *

     An hour down the line from Dayton was our first stop, a small town called Sidney.. We were in vast expanses of farmland, but everywhere there were people. Mile after mile, people lined the tracks, sometimes in groups no bigger than one or two families, sometimes in crowds, to catch a glimpse of the president on the historic train. Many carried campaign placards; others waved flags or just cheered the train. The atmosphere was festive, the mood catching.

     When we pulled into Sidney the crowd numbered in the thousands, sandwiched into an open area near the depot. Red, white and blue bunting was everywhere. I escorted the press pool to their viewing area. A few minutes later, the band played "Ruffles & Flourishes" and "Hail to the Chief" and the audience went wild.

     When Reagan gave his 10-minute stump speech my ears perked up. Small changes had been made since he'd given it in Dayton. There was no doubt they were improvements. Then I noticed Ken Khachigian, scribbling on a text of the speech as the president spoke. Khachigian was at work again as Reagan's chief speechwriter. He was taking notes based on the audience reaction to the president's lines. My guess was that he   was refining the speech between stops to make it more effective, like a scriptwriter tweaking an actor's lines between takes....

     From Sidney the train traveled an hour and 20 minutes to Lima, Ohio. The pattern repeated itself. The band struck up and the crowd erupted in cheers. Reagan spoke for 10 minutes. I listened closely. The speech was sharper; it hit on the laugh lines and high notes with greater precision than before. Still, Khachigian kept taking notes. As we traveled down the tracks between whistle stops, he was inside polishing Reagan's lines...

 

     It was now late in the day. We had a little over half an hour to get to Deshler, the next to last stop. The major challenge during the ride was keeping my eyes open. That lack of sleep was catching up and the rhythm of the train rocking its way down the tracks was hypnotic. When we pulled into Deshler I took the press pool to the back of the train and Reagan spoke again from the rear platform of the Ferdinand Magellan. This time, his delivery was just as energetic as before, but to my ear something new had been added. It was a hint of nostalgia, as if a unique and magical day was wrapping up, and he and the crowd knew it. It was like a subtle taste in a complex wine, and I don't know if anyone else detected it, but it was there. 

     Reagan seemed to be lingering longer at the end of each whistle stop speech to soak up the atmosphere and adulation from his supporters....By the time we pulled away from Deshler it was well after 6 o'clock.
The approach of dusk didn't dissuade the crowds lining the tracks between towns. The trip from Deshler to Perrysburg, our final stop, took about 30 minutes. It was almost dark when the train began braking and we pulled into the station.

 

     Someone yelled, "Fire!" on one of the press cars and a journalist came running up the aisle in a panic. I whipped my head around and saw the orange glow of flames on the glass windows. Somebody else yelled, "Fire!" and there were cries of "Where, where?" Steve Hart and I exchanged glances and raced down the corridor to calm the reporters. 

      One of the advance team at Perrysburg thought it would be a good idea to light the tracks approaching the station with torches. Steve and I had been briefed on this old-fashioned touch, but we hadn't given the press a heads-up. Everyone thought it would be a nice surprise. Instead it was an unpleasant adrenalin rush. We explained that it was harmless and apologized for causing the confusion.
     At Perrysburg, the crowd seemed to like the torchlight. The president gave his final 10-minute stump speech of the day and five-minute photo op with local Republican leaders. But instead of getting directly into the presidential motorcade and leaving for the airport, he sent Bill Henkel and Jim Hooley to assemble about a dozen of us from the advance team in the vintage rail car next to the Ferdinand Magellan.

Ronald Reagan came into the car, closely followed by Mike Deaver. Reagan was brimming with energy and Deaver was beaming. Henkel introduced  us as the ones who were responsible for organizing the day's events.

     "Well, I want to thank you all very much," Reagan said, "Believe me, I know that things like this don't just happen."

     The official photographer tried to get a group photo. While he was shooting, Henkel introduced one of the team.

     "Mr. President, this is Terry Baxter," Bill said. "You remember him, he's the one who had the fight in New Jersey."

 

     Baxter was one of the best advance men, mild-mannered and diligent. But on a recent event in New Jersey, a local Republican official had hounded him with request after request for special treatment for his VIPs. Terry was patient, and he tried to accommodate any request within reason, but when the man tracked him down at a restaurant where he was trying to have a quiet dinner and threw a brand-new set of demands at him, Baxter lost it and punched him hard. Terry ended up briefly in jail until the White House persuaded the man to drop the charges.       

 

     Reagan looked at Baxter.
     "Well," he smiled, "are you still the champ?"

 

     Baxter flashed a bashful grin and nodded "yes" as the room erupted with laughter. 

     Reagan thanked us all again, and then we scrambled for our spots in the motorcade.

*  *  *

 

      The next morning I packed and headed to the airport. It was an early morning flight and breakfast would be served on the plane. The only problem was my rental car. The lights had been left on and it wouldn't start. An African American phone company technician who was pulling lines out of the railroad station stopped working when he saw me trying to start the car. He tried to help me with a jump start, but we just couldn't get it to turn over.

     Even at this early hour, there were a few customers drifting in and out of the porn shop between the hotel and the train station. I decided I didn't want to spend another day in Dayton. I got a cab to the airport and I told the rental company where I'd left their car.

At the airport I picked up some local newspapers to sample the coverage. The official estimate of the crowd size for the Heartland Special was a quarter of a million people. The pictures were great. The whistle stop tour reinforced the themes and feel of the campaign's television advertising, and the Reagan who returned to Washington wasn't the same disheartened candidate he'd been when he arrived in Ohio.

     The date was October 13.

      I jotted some notes on the flight back to National Airport. Reagan and Deaver were "sky-high" at the end of the day.

"We knew he had his legs back for the rest of the campaign," I wrote in my notes.

 

 

Joe Biden isn't the first president to have a bad debate. It happened to President Reagan, too, during his 1984 reelection campaign. This is how he recovered from the near disaster. I took a few days off from my work with the Ferraro investigation to make sure the Ohio whistlestop train tour was a success.

 

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The first presidential debate was scheduled for October 7 at the Kentucky Center for the Arts in Louisville. The topic was domestic policy. ABC's Barbara Walters was chosen to be the moderator.

For weeks debate preparation sessions had been underway with Reagan at Camp David and the White House. David Stockman, a former congressman from Michigan who Reagan had made head of the Office of Management and Budget, played the role of Walter Mondale. Stu Spencer attended many of the debate practice sessions alongside Reagan, but the debate preparation was largely in the hands of Chief of Staff Jim Baker and Staff Secretary Richard Darman...

President Reagan spent Saturday, October 6, at Camp David in last minute preparations for the 90-minute domestic policy debate with Walter Mondale. Aside from an interruption to broadcast his regular Saturday five-minute radio address, the practice session consumed the day. The following day the Reagans returned to the White House. That afternoon, some 500 White House and campaign staffers gathered on the South Lawn to give them a send-off to Louisville. Accompanied by key White House and campaign staff, Ronald and Nancy Reagan flew to Kentucky for the first showdown with Walter Mondale.

At the Hyatt Regency Hotel, the Reagans were scheduled to have a private dinner with Mike Deaver and one or two other close aides before the debate. Jim Baker and Richard Darman weren't included in the dinner but were scheduled to briefly join the group before the debate started. Both men fluttered around outside the room throughout the dinner, waiting to be beckoned inside.

When they were ushered into the room, Baker and Darman inadvertently made a huge mistake by using their few minutes of time with Reagan to talk about debate strategy.

Only those who were really close to the president knew that despite his confidence as a public speaker, three kinds of events made him nervous: press conferences, State of the Union addresses, and debates. Reagan was most effective in these kinds of speaking engagements when he had a little quiet time with a few close advisors, including Nancy, before they took place. Instead of last-minute kibitzing, the goal of those close to Reagan was to create a relaxed atmosphere.

 

        Deaver accomplished this with humor. One time he passed Reagan a private note written on his personal stationary, with "Michael K. Deaver" at the top, saying, "Show them what an old fart can do." Everyone cracked up, and Reagan started the news conference in a light-hearted mood. 

        But Baker and Darman were never Reagan intimates. They neither knew nor understood the man. So instead of leaving the room in the tranquil mood they found it, they heightened Reagan's anxiety by turning the conversation to the debate.
Many of Reagan's close advisors already thought he had been over-coached. Darman and Stockman had given Reagan books of notes that were inches thick, layered in details and numbers about government programs and spending. Reagan was also expected to have command of similarly-thick notebooks outlining Mondale's record and vulnerabilities. Stockman, whom Reagan once called a "hard-headed son of a bitch," had pummeled Reagan when Stockman played the role of his opponent, Walter Mondale.

When Reagan took the stage shortly before 9 p.m. Eastern time, he was over-prepared, saturated in the minutiae of government programs, and lacking in confidence due to the grueling debate practice sessions. The result was an awkward performance that culminated at the end of 100 minutes (the debate ran long) with a rambling, inchoate closing statement.

Media polls taken during and immediately after the debate showed that the question of who won was a toss-up. Presidential pollster Dick Wirthlin tracked viewers' responses throughout the debate. His polling showed that the number of those who thought Reagan won the debate dropped from 49 percent to 41 percent after Reagan's closing remarks, ending in a near-tie with Mondale.

Publicly, our team kept a stiff upper lip for the first few days after the debate. Campaign chairman Paul Laxalt called the debate "a wash" and dismissed Reagan's performance as due to "a heavy debate that did not lend itself to humor." Jim Baker said that simply by agreeing to debate Mondale, Reagan "put to rest all these charges that he's somehow out of touch, that he's not accessible, that he lives in a show-business cocoon." Deaver explained the clumsy closing statement by saying Reagan tried to talk extemporaneously in the final moments of the debate and didn't have prepared remarks. Campaign press secretary James Lake said laconically, that "We would have liked a better close."

Behind the scenes it was a different story. The first debate was a disaster, and everyone on Reagan's team knew it. Laxalt was furious at Baker and his team for botching the debate preparation. Nancy Reagan was even more irate. The truth was Reagan had prepared a closing statement. Darman included it in the briefing books. Inexplicably, somehow the debate prep team never got around to letting Reagan practice the closing statement. When he got on stage at Louisville, it was like an actor trying to deliver his lines without the benefit of rehearsal.

The detail-laden, wonkish debate strategy devised by Baker, Darman and Stockman had played into Mondale's strengths. The former vice president put Reagan on the defensive almost immediately, and Reagan struggled in a morass of numbers and statistics to refute Mondale's charges. If the foreign policy debate, scheduled for two weeks later on October 21, went as badly, it would change the course of the campaign.

Reagan was depressed. He blamed himself for letting the team down.

Spencer and Laxalt demanded that planning for the foreign policy debate be taken away from Baker and Darman. The president agreed, and responsibility for debate preparation shifted to the campaign team.

In the reshuffling of responsibilities, Darman concluded that he was in danger of being fired from his job at the White House. He wasn't far off the mark. Aside from Chief of Staff Baker, Darman had few supporters in the White House. Nancy Reagan would have been happy to see him go. The same was true of Laxalt, who complained privately that the Baker-Darman-Stockman debate sessions had "brutalized" the president.

Darman took preemptive action. He threatened to disclose confidential matters if he was fired. The implication was that he would depict Reagan as muddled and too old to serve a second presidential term if he were made the scapegoat for the debate fiasco. The threat worked. Darman kept his job, at least for the time being, even if the ploy meant he would no longer be trusted by Reagan's inner circle.

There were only five days between the first presidential debate and the vice-presidential debate between George H.W. Bush and Geraldine Ferraro. It was the next major event in the campaign. Expectations were high that Bush would dominate the debate, which was bad for our campaign. Any stumbles by Bush would be magnified and give further momentum to the Mondale-Ferraro ticket...

*  *  *

I didn't have any more time to worry further about the Ferraro operation. I had to pack my bags and fly to Ohio. I was going to take a train trip through the fields and small towns of farm country. The pressure was on the campaign to make sure that Mondale couldn't capitalize on his newfound momentum from the first debate, and we were counting on a whistle stop train tour to restore Reagan's edge over Mondale.

Since September, the White House had been working on a whistle stop tour modeled after Harry Truman's 1948 campaign.... after the Louisville debate there was one overriding reason to go through with it. If we could pull it off, it was precisely the sort of event that might restore Reagan's morale. It was in the country's heartland. The train would pass through a series of small towns where presidential visits were so rare that they might occur only once in a lifetime. The crowds would be proud and excited to see a president, especially on an historic train car....

My job was similar to what it had been at Normandy. Steve Hart was again in charge of press for the trip, and I was there to handle one of the sites where Reagan would speak. Then I would hop on the train and back up Steve throughout the day by handling the White House press pool that traveled with the president ...

   After lunch I called Art Teele at campaign headquarters. "How's it going back inside the Beltway?" I asked.

 

"Very ugly. Have you seen today's news summary?"

 

"No, there are no copies out here. What's it say?"

 

"Safire's column is headlined 'Farewell to Hubris.' He says Mondale quote 'creamed' Reagan in the debate. He says at the end Reagan looked like quote 'an old fighter on the ropes.'"     
      

Bill Safire was a former Nixon speechwriter whose column in the New York Times was must-reading.

 

"Safire tells it like it is," I said. "He's not a partisan hack. You've got to give him that."  

 

"Listen to this one," Art said. "Can the old man hack it for another four years? That dirty question, once only a whisper, is now out in the open as a central feature of the campaign … even the huge lead President Reagan has built up is not entirely secure unless he can somehow trump the issue."
"Who wrote that?"

 "Joseph Kraft."

Kraft was a respected journalist whose syndicated column ran in more than 200 newspapers. In the 1960 campaign he'd been a speechwriter for John F. Kennedy, but when it came to his reporting, he was scrupulously objective.

           
 "Anybody else jumping on the age issue?"

 

"It's been percolating all week, but now it's hit critical mass. The Wall Street Journal ran a piece 'The Fitness Issue' on Tuesday, and the New York Times has one today headlined 'Reagan's Health: How Issue Emerged.' Tip O'Neill's jumped on it, Tony Coelho's talking about the age issue, David Broder's done a column on it. It's the new conventional wisdom."          

 

Barely two weeks ago, when Mondale's campaign chairman Jim Johnson and Tony Coelho were asked about Reagan's age in a television interview, they downplayed its importance. The tide had clearly turned.
At 73, Reagan was the oldest incumbent president ever to run for reelection. Our campaign polling still showed Reagan with a comfortable lead over Mondale in both the Electoral College and the popular vote. But if the voters developed doubts about his ability to finish a second four-year term in office, the lead would narrow or even disappear.

*  *  *

It seemed forever before we got word that Air Force One had landed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Reagan was greeted there by General Earl O'Loughlin and his wife Shirlee, Colonel Charles Fox and his wife Sharon, and Congressman Bob McEwen and his wife Elizabeth. Another Ohio congressman, Mike DeWine, rode with the presidential motorcade to Dayton.

So did half the White House, it seemed. James Baker was there, along with Dick Darman, Margaret Tutwiler, and John Rogers. Ed Rollins and Lee Atwater had both come for the train trip, along with Ken Khachigian. Mike Deaver and Bill Henkel were there, along with the president's doctor, the military aide, Jim Hooley as the lead advance man, Dave Fischer, the president's personal aide, White House Press Secretary Larry Speakes, Admiral Poindexter from the National Security Council, Kathy Osborne, the president's personal secretary, and Mark Weinberg from the White House Press Office. Steve Hart, my close colleague and friend, was with the travel press.

 

The "Heartland Express" whistle stop tour was likely to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience not only for Ohio but also for the White House staff. I imagined the competition to get a seat in the motorcade had been fierce. Early in the campaign, I'd handled the media when Reagan toured a Ford factory in Ohio. Deaver was the only member of the White House senior staff who'd come along for that event.

It took just under half an hour for the motorcade to get to the Old Montgomery County Courthouse mall from Wright-Patterson. Reagan was greeted offstage by former Ohio governor James Rhodes and Stuart Northrop, president of the Huffy Corporation. 

        I met the motorcade and directed Mark and Steve and the travel press to the pathway leading to the press platform. As they always do when they're separated from the president, even briefly, the press got nervous.They hustled down the chute so they could set up in time to cover the president's remarks. The band struck up "Ruffles and Flourishes" followed by "Hail to the Chief " and the crowd was electrified. But I wasn't. Reagan looked tired, gray, almost listless.
The plan called for former Ohio governor Rhodes to introduce the president with brief remarks. Instead, he droned on interminably, as if he'd forgotten who was running for reelection. The crowd began to get bored, and then restless, and all the while Reagan listened through it patiently. It did nothing to enliven his mood. I thought we missed a trick in not having an old-fashioned hook on hand to yank the ex-governor off the stage, vaudeville-style.

           
         When Rhodes finally relinquished the podium, Reagan delivered his stump speech. It lasted about 10 minutes, every second of it agonizing to me. Over the years I'd been present when Reagan spoke dozens and dozens of times. This was one of the most lackluster deliveries I'd ever heard from Ronald Reagan. It was flat, almost monotone, as if he was reading it instead of delivering his speech with the usual Reagan timing, style, and impact. The crowd still applauded wildly. Many of them had arrived before dawn, but you wouldn't have known it from their enthusiasm. 

At least Reagan had energized them.
I reminded myself that seeing a president is a unique event for most people. I was judging Reagan's performance with the jaundiced eye of a longtime observer—the same point of view the press accompanying Reagan would have. If his spirits didn't pick up during the day, tomorrow's stories would be about a tired-seeming Reagan going through the motions in Ohio.

*   *  *

An hour down the line from Dayton was our first stop, a small town called Sidney.. We were in vast expanses of farmland, but everywhere there were people. Mile after mile, people lined the tracks, sometimes in groups no bigger than one or two families, sometimes in crowds, to catch a glimpse of the president on the historic train. Many carried campaign placards; others waved flags or just cheered the train. The atmosphere was festive, the mood catching.

When we pulled into Sidney the crowd numbered in the thousands, sandwiched into an open area near the depot. Red, white and blue bunting was everywhere. I escorted the press pool to their viewing area. A few minutes later, the band played "Ruffles & Flourishes" and "Hail to the Chief" and the audience went wild.

When Reagan gave his 10-minute stump speech my ears perked up. Small changes had been made since he'd given it in Dayton. There was no doubt they were improvements. Then I noticed Ken Khachigian, scribbling on a text of the speech as the president spoke. Khachigian was at work again as Reagan's chief speechwriter. He was taking notes based on the audience reaction to the president's lines. My guess was that he was refining the speech between stops to make it more effective, like a scriptwriter tweaking an actor's lines between takes....

From Sidney the train traveled an hour and 20 minutes to Lima, Ohio. The pattern repeated itself. The band struck up and the crowd erupted in cheers. Reagan spoke for 10 minutes. I listened closely. The speech was sharper; it hit on the laugh lines and high notes with greater precision than before. Still, Khachigian kept taking notes. As we traveled down the tracks between whistle stops, he was inside polishing Reagan's lines...

 

It was now late in the day. We had a little over half an hour to get to Deshler, the next to last stop. The major challenge during the ride was keeping my eyes open. That lack of sleep was catching up and the rhythm of the train rocking its way down the tracks was hypnotic. When we pulled into Deshler I took the press pool to the back of the train and Reagan spoke again from the rear platform of the Ferdinand Magellan. This time, his delivery was just as energetic as before, but to my ear something new had been added. It was a hint of nostalgia, as if a unique and magical day was wrapping up, and he and the crowd knew it. It was like a subtle taste in a complex wine, and I don't know if anyone else detected it, but it was there. 

Reagan seemed to be lingering longer at the end of each whistle stop speech to soak up the atmosphere and adulation from his supporters....By the time we pulled away from Deshler it was well after 6 o'clock.
The approach of dusk didn't dissuade the crowds lining the tracks between towns. The trip from Deshler to Perrysburg, our final stop, took about 30 minutes. It was almost dark when the train began braking and we pulled into the station.

 

Someone yelled, "Fire!" on one of the press cars and a journalist came running up the aisle in a panic. I whipped my head around and saw the orange glow of flames on the glass windows. Somebody else yelled, "Fire!" and there were cries of "Where, where?" Steve Hart and I exchanged glances and raced down the corridor to calm the reporters. 

One of the advance team at Perrysburg thought it would be a good idea to light the tracks approaching the station with torches. Steve and I had been briefed on this old-fashioned touch, but we hadn't given the press a heads-up. Everyone thought it would be a nice surprise. Instead it was an unpleasant adrenalin rush. We explained that it was harmless and apologized for causing the confusion.
At Perrysburg, the crowd seemed to like the torchlight. The president gave his final 10-minute stump speech of the day and five-minute photo op with local Republican leaders. But instead of getting directly into the presidential motorcade and leaving for the airport, he sent Bill Henkel and Jim Hooley to assemble about a dozen of us from the advance team in the vintage rail car next to the Ferdinand Magellan.

Ronald Reagan came into the car, closely followed by Mike Deaver. Reagan was brimming with energy and Deaver was beaming. Henkel introduced us as the ones who were responsible for organizing the day's events.

"Well, I want to thank you all very much," Reagan said, "Believe me, I know that things like this don't just happen."

The official photographer tried to get a group photo. While he was shooting, Henkel introduced one of the team.

"Mr. President, this is Terry Baxter," Bill said. "You remember him, he's the one who had the fight in New Jersey."

 

Baxter was one of the best advance men, mild-mannered and diligent. But on a recent event in New Jersey, a local Republican official had hounded him with request after request for special treatment for his VIPs. Terry was patient, and he tried to accommodate any request within reason, but when the man tracked him down at a restaurant where he was trying to have a quiet dinner and threw a brand-new set of demands at him, Baxter lost it and punched him hard. Terry ended up briefly in jail until the White House persuaded the man to drop the charges.       

 

Reagan looked at Baxter.
"Well," he smiled, "are you still the champ?"

 

Baxter flashed a bashful grin and nodded "yes" as the room erupted with laughter. 

Reagan thanked us all again, and then we scrambled for our spots in the motorcade.
*  *  *

The next morning I packed and headed to the airport. It was an early morning flight and breakfast would be served on the plane. The only problem was my rental car. The lights had been left on and it wouldn't start. An African American phone company technician who was pulling lines out of the railroad station stopped working when he saw me trying to start the car. He tried to help me with a jump start, but we just couldn't get it to turn over.

Even at this early hour, there were a few customers drifting in and out of the porn shop between the hotel and the train station. I decided I didn't want to spend another day in Dayton. I got a cab to the airport and I told the rental company where I'd left their car.

At the airport I picked up some local newspapers to sample the coverage. The official estimate of the crowd size for the Heartland Special was a quarter of a million people. The pictures were great. The whistle stop tour reinforced the themes and feel of the campaign's television advertising, and the Reagan who returned to Washington wasn't the same disheartened candidate he'd been when he arrived in Ohio.

The date was October 13.

 I jotted some notes on the flight back to National Airport. Reagan and Deaver were "sky-high" at the end of the day.

"We knew he had his legs back for the rest of the campaign," I wrote in my notes.