Ronnie and Nancy_ Their Path to the White House - Bob Colacello [303]
As Nancy remembered the scene, things got even more dramatic: “Ronnie rarely loses his temper, but he certainly was angry that night. ‘You got Deaver,’ he told John, ‘but, by God, you’re not going to get Ed Meese! You guys have forced me to the wall.’ I was sure he was going to hit John, so I took his arm and said, ‘It’s late, and I think we should all get some sleep.’”89
“We tried to work it out,” she explained at the time, “and I tried to be helpful, but by the time we got to New Hampshire, it was obvious to all of us that we were kind of applying Band-Aids. It was a situation that just wasn’t going to work. Ronnie decided that, before he knew what the results were, he would make a change, so that if he lost it wouldn’t seem that this had come about because he had lost—which I thought was very nice of Ronnie.”90
Reagan later discussed Sears with presidential historian Theodore White, saying, “I don’t fault his ability at political analysis, but he wanted to do everything. And when I wanted to bring someone in to really handle an office situation where the morale was at zero . . . he delivered an ulti-matum . . . that he would leave if that was done. So I just knew that it could not go on that way. . . . There was . . . a feeling that I was just kind of a spokesman for John Sears.”91
On the afternoon of February 26, while New Hampshire voters were still going to the polls, Reagan again summoned Sears, Black, and Lake to his hotel suite. As Nancy and Casey sat nearby, he handed Sears a statement that began, “Ronald Reagan today announced that William J. Casey 4 8 6
Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House has been named campaign director . . . replacing John Sears, who has resigned to return to his law practice.”92 Sears’s two colleagues were also dismissed. Reagan announced later that day that Ed Meese had been promoted to chief of staff and Richard Wirthlin to chief of strategy and planning. The new triumvirate would soon be joined by Nofziger, who took over as press secretary; Anderson, who came back to oversee policy; and Deaver, who resumed traveling with the Reagans on the campaign plane, a Boeing 727 named LeaderShip ’80.
Reagan overwhelmed Bush in New Hampshire, 50 percent to 23 percent.
Trailing behind were Howard Baker with 13 percent, John Anderson with 10 percent, and John Connally, Robert Dole, and Philip Crane with less than 3 percent each. These last three would soon drop out and endorse Reagan, who in this state had not only agreed to underwrite a debate with Bush but also generously invited the other candidates, who had been excluded by the newspaper sponsoring the event, to join them on the platform. When the moderator threatened to shut off Reagan’s microphone, he seized the moment and famously declared, “I paid for this microphone,” while Bush just stood there, not knowing what to do. It was in New Hampshire, too, that Bush coined the all-too-memorable phrase “voodoo economics” to put down Reagan’s supply-side-based promises of tax cuts, a balanced budget, and increased military spending.
Over the next three months the new campaign team “let Reagan be Reagan” once again—attacking Carter for his feeble response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, criticizing him for not doing enough to free the fifty-two American hostages seized at the American embassy in Tehran, railing against the Panama Canal Treaty, even after it had been ratified by the Senate. Turning to the economy, a rejuvenated Reagan said, “I suggest that when one administration can give us the highest inflation since 1946, the highest