In dark times, Reagan ran on optimism

NEW YORK - In the face of a troubled economy and deep voter pessimism about the direction of the country, Ronald Reagan accepted his party’s nomination for president in 1980 with a stirring speech that promised better days ahead.

“I will not stand by and watch this great country destroy itself under mediocre leadership that drifts from one crisis to the next, eroding our national will and purpose,” he said in June of that year. “The time is now, my fellow Americans, to recapture our destiny, to take it into our own hands.”

With those words, Reagan announced his intention to change the direction of a country dealing with surging inflation, high unemployment, and an apparently ascendant threat from the Soviet Union. There was also a high-tension hostage crisis in Iran, where more than 50 Americans had been taken captive.

Not unlike today, Americans were nervous about the future and they doubted their leaders.

During the campaign, Reagan blamed the policies of his opponent, President Jimmy Carter, for the country’s problems. But he also believed there was a deeper cause – the inability of Carter and others to inspire confidence in the country with their words.

“The mood of the country was just as bleak, just as dark, just as scared in 1980 as it is today,” said Craig Shirley, author of the forthcoming book, “Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America.”

“In a way, the malaise in the country had been going on for 17 years going back to the assassination of JFK in November of 1963,” he said. “We’d had one president cut down by an assassin’s bullet, one president resigned because he had contempt for the constitution, a failed presidency in Lyndon Johnson, the first time America had ever lost a war, and then you had the cultural decline of the 1970s.”

Ordinary heroism
Polls showed that Americans no longer believed the future would be better than the present. Operating in this atmosphere of pessimism, Reagan’s overarching campaign theme was the restoration of America’s morale.

“Carter said people were in a malaise,” said Ed Meese, Reagan’s campaign manager, referring to a speech in which Carter spoke of a crisis of confidence in America. “Ronald Reagan’s idea was that the people aren’t in a malaise, the leaders are in a malaise. One of his objectives was to revive the can-do spirit of the American people.”

Reagan, a Midwesterner who seemed to effortlessly move from a radio career to one in movies and then politics, was tailor-made for this moment of history, Meese believed.

“[Optimism] was just such a natural characteristic of Ronald Reagan that it was implicit in everything we did,” Meese said. “He didn’t come out and say, ‘We should revive our spirits.’ He did this subtly by his own manner, by the ideas he projected and by his talks in which he expressed his confidence in the American people.”

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., who served on Reagan’s press team, believed this helped the candidate connect with blue-collar and working class voters.

“Ordinary Americans were treated as buffoons and criminals,” Rohrabacher said of their portrayal in 1970s media. “He talked about heroism being a trait of ordinary people who are meeting their challenges and the challenges of the country.”

Reagan's challenge
Carter was considered an easy political target. His public standing was low and he barely survived a primary challenge from Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., which helped split the Democratic Party. Public dissatisfaction was so high that the election attracted a strong challenge from third party candidate John Anderson.

Despite these advantages, Reagan faced a big challenge of his own: Many people, including many in his own party, doubted his ability to handle the job.

“There was a lot of skepticism in the media and in the public that someone who spent much of his life in Hollywood was qualified to be president,” said Gene Gibbons, a former White House correspondent who followed Carter and Reagan in 1980 for UPI.

Reagan, who wanted to cut taxes and strengthen the U.S. military, struggled to have his ideas taken seriously. The eastern and northern wings of his own party, the so-called Rockefeller Republicans, supported George H.W. Bush, Reagan’s eventual running mate, in the primary.

Reagan emerged victorious from the GOP primary, but he still had to convince the general public he was up to the job. He allayed their doubts, in part, by taking advantage of the communication skills he developed in Hollywood and later on national speaking tours for General Electric.

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