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at Wexford, and that evening Kissinger and his wife were among one hundred guests at a private dinner Nancy gave for Mary Jane and Charlie Wick. The guest list also included David Rockefeller, Estée and Joseph Lauder, Drew Lewis, Charles and Carole Price from Kansas City, Jane and Guilford Dudley from Nashville, and Senator John Warner, who had a place nearby. Elizabeth Taylor, who was suffering from a bad back, could not attend.143 While Nancy was wary of Kissinger’s intentions, she realized his presence at her husband’s side was reassuring to the Eastern foreign policy establishment. On a personal level, the Reagans had grown more comfortable with the Kissingers after having spent time with them at the Buckleys’ in New York and Connecticut. Later in the campaign, Henry and Nancy Kissinger would give a dinner for Nancy Reagan at their River House apartment in New York.144

Meanwhile, James Baker was trying to arrange a debate with Carter and Anderson, to be sponsored by the League of Women Voters. But Carter refused to participate if Anderson was included, considering the renegade liberal Republican more likely to draw votes from the left than from the right. After several compromises were rejected by the White House, the League agreed to go along with a Reagan-Anderson debate on September 21, though they refused Baker’s request that Carter be represented by an empty chair. The gangly, bespectacled Anderson was no match for a well-briefed and dynamic Reagan, who made a point of referring to “the man who isn’t here” as often as possible. Prior to the debate, Carter had pulled slightly ahead of Reagan in the polls; afterward, Reagan regained the lead, with Anderson remaining at around 10 percent.145

The two major candidates’ numbers would seesaw back and forth all through October, as Carter abandoned his Rose Garden strategy of remaining cool and presidential and came out swinging. Campaigning in Chicago and Milwaukee on October 6, Carter called Reagan’s foreign policy “jingoistic” and “macho” and said it “would lead our country to war.”

In Philadelphia the next day, Reagan responded, “Well, I think he’s a badly misinformed and prejudiced man. Certainly he’s reaching a point of hysteria that’s hard to understand.”146 Three days later, in Florida, the President stepped up his attacks, saying, “I don’t know what he would do in 5 0 0

Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House the White House, but his opposition to the SALT II treaty, his opposition to Medicare, his opposition to many of the programs that are important like the minimum wage or unemployment compensation, his call for the injection of American military forces into place after place after place around the world indicate to me that he would not be a good president or good man to trust with the affairs of this nation in the future.”147

Carter, like Pat Brown and Jesse Unruh before him, had not figured out that going negative on Reagan had a boomerang effect—the meaner his opponent got, the nicer Ronnie seemed. Based on Wirthlin’s research that the

“most salient issue” for voters was high prices, Reagan hammered away at the administration’s inability to control inflation. At first he largely ignored the President’s attempt to portray him as a recycled Barry Goldwater. After Carter’s campaign introduced TV ads implying that Reagan viewed arms control negotiation as “a poker game” and nuclear war as “just another shoot-out at the O.K. Corral,”148 however, Nancy decided to take the highly unusual step of taping a one-minute commercial of her own.

“I don’t often speak out in campaigns,” she began, “but I think this campaign now has gotten to the point and the level where I have to say something. I am deeply, deeply offended by the attempts of Mr. Carter to paint my husband as a man he is not at all. I’m offended when he tries to portray him as a warmonger, as a man who would throw the elderly out on the street and cut off their Social Security when, in fact, he never said anything of the kind at any time. That’s a cruel thing to do. It’s cruel to the people.