counts, VP picks, convention strategy. After a while, Spencer took the liberty to probe Reagan’s deeper motivations. “Why are you doing this, Ron?” he asked. “Why do you want to be president?” Without hesitation, Reagan responded: “To end the Cold War. There has to be a way, and it’s time.”41
HOLLYWOOD CONFIDENCE
The Soviets were aware that Ronald Reagan had drawn a target on their chest. A classified KGB assessment from 1980 made it clear that the Kremlin was already convinced of the unshakable quality of Reagan’s core convictions. The KGB noted that unlike more “practical” anti-Communists like Richard Nixon, Reagan was committed to mischief against the Soviet empire and nothing would change him. “Reagan doesn’t react to our suggestions,” said a frustrated Politburo member. An equally exasperated KGB official tossed in the towel: “We aren’t going to change Reagan’s behavior.”42
What the Soviets sensed in Reagan’s character was also sensed by another, more benign adversary: Eugene McCarthy. McCarthy’s measurement of Reagan became evident in a private meeting one campaign night in Iowa. Reagan and Mike Deaver were astonished when the liberal icon abandoned the Democratic president and informed them he was endorsing the archconservative Reagan. Deaver walked McCarthy to the car and prodded him for his reasons. “I’ll tell you why,” said the Democrat matter-of-factly. “It’s because he’s the only man since Harry Truman who won’t confuse the job with the man.”43
McCarthy recognized Reagan’s self-security, and that the Californian was content in his own skin. He perceived that Ronald Reagan was not looking at the presidency as a means to fulfill some inner ambition. Reagan had long ago received recognition; unless he was unbearably insecure—which he was not—he had easily satisfied any longing. As GE Theatre colleague Earl Dunckel put it, “Hell, he doesn’t need the money and he really doesn’t care about the status of being president.” He sought the presidency simply because he wanted to do a job that needed to be done.44 As more than one Reagan campaign staffer noted of his pursuit of the presidency, he could take it or leave it.45
McCarthy sensed that, as did columnist George Will, who conjectured that Reagan was free of the need for applause—as a candidate and later as president—because he had heard enough in Hollywood.46 Will’s point was apt. Whereas many have sought the White House to satisfy an inner appetite, or desire for esteem or applause or recognition, Reagan craved nothing of the sort. His Hollywood confidence was evident after a 1980 debate with President Carter, when a reporter asked Reagan, “Governor, weren’t you intimidated by being up there on stage with the President of the United States?” “No,” he responded. “I’ve been on the same stage with John Wayne.”47
Self-assurance was perhaps one of his greatest assets not just during debates but also when Reagan was blasted by unsympathetic reporters on the campaign trail. For many candidates, that harsh media treatment is a shock that overwhelms them. “The thing about Reagan that was so unusual,” said Ben Elliott, who did his part for Reagan’s 1980 bid, and later became a speechwriter, “was that he wasn’t afraid to offend the liberal elites.” Elliott adds: “It took people a long time to realize that Reagan wasn’t intimidated by anybody. He had a life full of very rich experiences. He did many things…. And no one would intimidate him.”48
State Department veteran Peter Rodman agreed that Reagan was “totally impervious” to the judgment of the editorial boards of the New York Times and Washington Post—a truly liberating quality for a conservative Republican. Rodman notes that another California Republican that recently secured his party’s presidential nomination, Richard Nixon, had been constantly tortured by the liberal criticism.49 That distinction is profoundly important: for Nixon, this resentment fueled an unstoppable hatred that, by his own admission, consumed and destroyed him.50
Hollywood had formed that shield, that Teflon veneer. Dinesh D’Souza observed that Reagan was a bona fide celebrity who had starred with beautiful actresses like Ann Sheridan, Ginger Rogers, and Doris Day (and lesserknowns like Olympe Bradna, Viveca Lindfors, and Rhonda Fleming). His friends were men like Errol Flynn, John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Claude Rains. Fan clubs all over the country idolized him, filled with young girls who begged him for his picture. With all of that, asked D’Douza, what did Reagan care about what some assistant editor at Time thought about him?51
On November 4, 1980, Ronald Reagan won the U.S. presidency by a comfortable margin, taking forty-four of fifty states from Jimmy Carter, closing a campaign that in many ways began in Hollywood and in Dixon decades earlier. His biographer later found a message sent to Reagan that November 4 by a radio announcer at WSDR, fifteen miles downstream from where Dutch had lifeguarded: “The Rock River flows for you tonight, Mr. President.”
DECEMBER 1980: “HE’S GOING TO BRING DOWN THE SOVIET UNION”
What happened that first Tuesday in November 1980 was obviously quite visible to the general public. That was not the case for a dramatic moment that occurred a month later among two individuals at a party in Alabama, an encounter never revealed, until now.
Ollie Delchamps was founder of a supermarket chain. A friend of the late political strategist Lee Atwater, he became closely involved with the 1980 Reagan campaign.52 A very revealing incident took place between Delchamps and another successful Alabama businessman named Bob Callahan, Sr. in December 1980. It was a moment that Callahan has never forgotten and long sought to share with someone who could record it for the sake of history.53 Here, in his own words, is what Callahan experienced:
It was December 1980, the second full weekend, a Saturday. It was a cocktail party in Point Clear, Alabama. There was a man there named Ollie Delchamps. I asked him what Ronald Reagan planned to do once he became president. He basically gave me this P.R. statement, campaign literature kind of stuff: education, science, taxes, general policy. “No,” I said. “I want to know the real objectives, not what’s in the newspapers.” I was a bit forceful and blunt. He turned his back on me. “Oh, no,” I thought. “I made him mad!” Then he went over and huddled with some of his colleagues who were also a part of the Reagan side. I don’t know what exactly went through his head or what he was saying.
After a while, he turned around, walked back to me, and said, “What is it you want to know?” I told him again, “I want to know what Ronald Reagan really intends to do.” “Who are you going to tell?” he replied. I said, “No one but me and Ginger [Callahan’s wife].” “Let’s walk over to the corner,” he said. [Delchamps added:] “No one but Ginger, eh?” “Yes,” I said. “I promise. No one but Ginger.” “Okay,” he said. “Ronald Reagan wants to do three things: One, build up the economy. Two, build up defense. Three, he’s going to bring down the Soviet Union.”54
Those words—driven home by the fashion in which Delchamps cornered Callahan and swore him to secrecy—remain seared in Callahan’s memory: “Reagan is going to ‘bring down the Soviet Union,’ he told me. ‘Bring it down.’ Exact words. I’ve never forgotten that. And I never told anyone other than my wife. But I’m telling you now. I think it’s okay to share the story now.” Almost twenty-five years later, Callahan remembered the encounter like it had happened yesterday.55
WHILE THESE WORDS HUNG ON THE LIPS OF TWO MEN at a cocktail party, Reagan himself was getting prepared—not just for his arrival in Washington but for the inevitable struggle that was to come. To Ronald Reagan, this was the moment he had been preparing for since his earliest encounters with Communism; it was the culmination of a life spent standing up for his unflinching belief in the American way of life. Spurred and affirmed by his electoral success, he was ready to take the oath.
