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NATIONAL POLITICS: REPUBLICAN NOMINATION RACE 1984

The Great Communicator's Vision of America

During his campaign in 1980 Ronald Reagan borrowed his image of America from a sermon delivered on shipboard by the great colonial leader John Winthrop in 1630 as he and fellow Puritans were sailing toward the New World. Their settlement, Winthrop said, would be a "City upon a Hill" watched by "the eyes of all the people." Therefore, he asserted, "we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in his ways and to keep his Commandments.…" This vision of America is the one Reagan offered Americans throughout his first term in office, as he returned repeatedly to the image of the "City upon a Hill" in advocating a return to traditional patriotic, moral, and religious values. As Theodore H. White summed it up, Reagan "saw the future in the lost summertime of the nation's past, when neighborhoods were safe, when families held together…when U.S. power bestrode the world. He wrapped both past and future in the American flag" (Time, 19 November 1984). To the nearly 55 million people who voted for Reagan in 1984 it did not seem to matter that the past he evoked so skillfully was one made beautiful by selective memory. Nor did it seem to matter that Reagan, who spoke so often of religion, was the first divorced president, seldom attended church himself, and so far had done little to obtain the constitutional amendment requiring school prayer for which he had promised to fight in 1980. "I think I'll put in an amendment to build a chapel at Camp David so he could go to church," House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill (D-Mass.) quipped in March 1984.

The President's Popularity and the Economy

Despite his personal popularity, the president's poll ratings were not consistently high. In late 1982, with unemployment reaching 10.7 percent (the highest point since the Depression), Reagan's approval rating declined, reaching a low of slightly better than 40 percent in January 1983. After the Democrats handed the Republicans a significant, but not major, setback in the 1982 elections, Republicans began to position themselves to replace the president should he decide not to seek a second term. Senate majority leader Howard Baker decided not to seek reelection to the Senate in 1984 and began planning for a national presidential campaign—in 1988, if not 1984. Vice President George Bush did some fence-mending with right-wing groups that had opposed him in 1980, beginning a gradual slide to the right.

An Economic Upswing

Then the economy started to get better. The Democrats were able to pass some quick-fix legislation to rescue Social Security from bankruptcy, ease unemployment, and reduce the huge federal deficit somewhat. There were still signs that the economy was in trouble: high interest rates and a fast-growing federal deficit. Yet, ironically, the Democrats had eased the president's political problems, and as unemployment declined his approval rating climbed, reaching 57 percent in January 1984 and remaining high throughout the year. By the time primary season opened in early 1984 all thoughts of opposing the president for the Republican nomination had evaporated. In 1984, when Reagan asked "Are you better off than you were four years ago?," most Americans said yes, and it was difficult for the Democrats to convince them otherwise. In a poll taken on election day 57 percent of voters said the economy was better than it had been four years ago, and they overwhelmingly gave the president credit for the improvement.

The "Teflon" President

While the majority of the American public was expressing approval for Reagan the man and crediting him for an economic recovery that was largely not of his making, a surprising number of his supporters did not agree with his policy positions. A Harris poll taken on 24 July 1984 revealed that 32 percent of the respondents favored Reagan and approved of his opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, while 27 percent favored him but disagreed with his stand on the issue. In that same poll only 10 percent favored the president and agreed with his administration's relaxation of federal pollution controls, while 42 percent said they favored the man but opposed his policies on this issue. The numbers in regard to Reagan's position against an immediate nuclear freeze are closer together but also surprising: 23 percent favored him and his policy; 29 percent favored him and opposed his policy. On the issue of Reagan's cuts in aid to the poor, however, there was considerable agreement: 34 percent favored him and his policy; only 14 percent favored him and opposed his policy. Results of a New York Times poll, reported on 11 August 1984, revealed that 28 percent of respondents favored Reagan and his stand against abortion, while 31 percent favored him but opposed his position on that issue. Similar poll results throughout Reagan's first term had Democrats wondering why the president never seemed to be blamed for his mistakes or unpopular policies. Congresswoman Pat Schroeder (D-Colo.) said in August 1984 that Reagan was "perfecting the Teflon-coated Presidency…nothing sticks to him. He is responsible for nothing—civil rights, Central America, the Middle East, the economy, the environment. He is just master of ceremonies at someone else's dinner."

The Republican National Convention

Whatever policy differences existed among Reagan supporters in the nation as a whole, few were apparent among the Republicans who met in Dallas on 20-23 August. Major American political parties have historically embraced individuals with a wide spectrum of political views, and to some extent the Democratic Party has continued to exhibit such diversity into the 1990s. Yet by 1984 the Republicans had become an ideologically coherent, truly conservative party. Only 1 percent of the delegates at the convention called themselves liberals, while only 25 percent labeled themselves moderates. Billed as a moderate in 1980, Vice President Bush continued to redefine his political orientation. At one point during the convention he came up with "I'm conservative, but I'm not a nut about it."

Platform

Conservatives kept tight control over the platform, rejecting not only support for the ERA but also a moderate proposal for a plank favoring "equal rights and equal responsibilities for women." In fact they were sometimes more conservative than their party's standard-bearer, opposing all tax increases and calling for an end to progressive tax rates. The platform also restated the strong antiabortion stand it took in 1980. Congressman Jim Leach, a moderate Republican from Iowa, warned, "The country is a progressive, moderate nation. Yet our party is becoming ideologically narrow." Sen. Lowell Weicker of Connecticut, one of the small minority of liberal Republicans at the convention, described the platform in terms more graphic than Leach's: "It's a pain in the ass to explain.…No ERA and no exception for rape or incest. On women's issues, it's a stinkeroo." Convention speaker Sen. Barry Goldwater met with approval when he asserted, "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice"—a statement that had contributed heavily to his defeat in the 1964 presidential election.

Inching Back toward the Middle

Yet Reagan's campaign staff knew that regardless of the views of party stalwarts, their candidate had to appear middle of the road to win the election. The climax of events at the convention—a film biography of Reagan and his acceptance speech—stressed a return to prosperity and patriotism, the maintenance of peace, and Reagan's personal popularity. Most important was the economy. In his acceptance speech the president said:

In 1980, the people decided with us that the economic crisis was not caused by the fact that they lived too well. Government lived too well. It was time for tax increases to be an act of last resort, not of first resort.…America is on the move again, and expanding toward new eras of opportunity for everyone.…Our opponents are openly committed to increasing your tax burden. We are committed to stopping them, and we will.