As one of the many young Americans first inspired to become politically active by Ronald Reagan’s stirring nationally televised speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater a few days before the 1964 presidential election, I am, shall we say, a bit biased in judging “Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the campaign that changed America,” by Craig Shirley.
For one thing, I played a minor role in that epic 1980 campaign and first met Shirley then. In the years since, I’ve watched and admired him as he built a successful public relations and communications strategy firm. Today, his firm does work for a lengthy list of prominent clients, including this newspaper.
Another, more important reason is that ever-beckoning phrase was the title of Reagan’s most memorable oration. To this day, it is difficult for me to read the words “rendezvous with destiny” without recalling the sustaining inspiration I felt the first time I heard Reagan speak them.
That said, I believe “Rendezvous” is a compellingly written, thoroughly documented treatise that is essential reading for anybody who seeks to understand what happened and why on Reagan’s third try for the White House. It’s not the final word but it will more than suffice until such a work is written, likely many years from now and from a more detached perspective.
Understand that folks looking for grand new revelations about Reagan will likely be disappointed. “Rendezvous” is a chronicle, not an investigation, and ought to be judged as such.
And a wonderfully detailed chronicle it is. Shirley has an eye for telling scenes that expose significant influences that shaped the Reagan campaign. He is also merciless in describing those scenes as, for example, his rendition of the desperate straits into which Reagan was plunged by campaign manager John Sears before and especially after the shocking loss to George H.W. Bush in the Iowa primary.
Sears’ strategy was that of the classic remote front-runner doing nothing – like actively campaigning or debating – that might occasion a damaging miscue. While he kept Reagan under wraps, Sears went through a $14 million campaign chest, with little to show for it.
A flood of whispers followed about Reagan’s age – encouraged, of course, by his opponents within and without the GOP. By the time the New Hampshire primary was going in earnest, that idea had become the conventional wisdom among journalists covering Reagan. He was old, tired, and about to fade, slowly, into history.
But it was just then that Reagan wrenched command of his campaign back from Sears, who was subsequently consigned to sulking status. The two men rarely talked, and when they did, according to Shirley, Reagan groused that Sears “didn’t look you in the eye, he looked you in the tie.”
But the change somehow eluded the boys on the bus. Late one night on a campaign flight, Shirley writes, “Reagan was standing in the aisle, twirling his glasses at one o’clock in the morning while most of the press corps were sleeping off their evening booze session after filing their stories.
“Reagan joked aloud – to see whether anyone was paying attention – that maybe he needed a new campaign manager. In fact, Reagan was not joking, but none of the slumbering and anesthetized journalists stirred.”
Shirley’s description of the maneuvering prior to the Nashua debate is but one of countless episodes he relates that together suggest another fact about Reagan that flies in the face of conventional wisdom about this remarkable man.
Liberals dismissed him as the empty-headed “great communicator,” but Reagan was in reality a deeply thoughtful individual who had reflected seriously for many years about politics and public policy.
So, too, Reagan was a commanding presence in his campaign, the Sears interregnum before New Hampshire being the exception that proved the rule. Reagan was his own man, not the puppet manipulated by Sears, Michael Deaver, or, later in the White House, Jim Baker.
One more thing: The headline above says “Rendezvous” is the second essential book on Reagan’s campaigns. The first is called “Reagan’s revolution: The Untold story about the campaign that started it all.” Written by Craig Shirley.
Mark Tapscott is editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner and proprietor of Tapscott’s Copy Desk blog on washingtonexaminer.com.
