Back in the Saddle Again

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For two weeks, the pundits of 1984 spoke of little else but whether Ronald Reagan, at nearly 74, was too old to be president.

They did so primarily because of his performance in the first presidential debate with former Vice President Walter Mondale. What little traction Mondale did get following that debate was more or less halted a few days later when Vice President George H.W. Bush and Democratic vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro spent 90 minutes debating each other, and then neither was perceived to be the winner.

That meant that, to beat the already longshot odds against him, Mondale would have to beat Reagan decisively in the second debate, held 30 years ago tonight in Kansas City.

The debate was intended to be about foreign policy, and it started out that way with questions about Central America, the Soviet Union and regions that were crucial to American interests. The age issue didn't come up right away. It was the elephant in the room, though, that Henry Trewhitt of the Baltimore Sun finally confronted.

It was kind of hard to work in. Trewhitt tried to "cast it specifically in national security terms." Nice try. It served only as a straight line for Reagan.

"You already are the oldest president in history," Trewhitt said to Reagan. "And some of your staff say you were tired after your most recent encounter with Mr. Mondale. I recall yet that President Kennedy had to go for days on end with very little sleep during the Cuban missile crisis. Is there any doubt in your mind that you would be able to function in such circumstances?"

It took maybe 25 or 30 minutes to get to it, but, when it did, Reagan had a disarming response that he obviously had been holding for just the right moment.

"I want you to know that I will not make age an issue of this campaign," Reagan asserted. "I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience."

Everyone laughed, including Mondale, who must have realized that his last opportunity to seize the momentum was gone. Trewhitt gave Mondale an opportunity to speak about Reagan's age, and he did so, prefacing his remarks with his insistence that Reagan's age had not been made into an issue — which, of course, it had.

"What's at issue here," Mondale said, "is the president's application of his authority to understand what a president must know to lead this nation, secure our defense and make the decisions and the judgments that are necessary."

His argument wasn't terribly persuasive. I got the impression he knew that as he was giving his response.

To his credit, Reagan was more on top of things when he gave his closing statement than he had been when he made his closing statement in the first debate. It wasn't a meandering mess like the last one; it was the folksy kind of anecdote for which Reagan was famous. He told a story of how he was asked to write a letter that would be placed in a time capsule that would not be opened for 100 years.

Reagan spoke of driving along the California coastline, trying to organize his thoughts. It was made more complex, he said, by the fact that those who read the letter would know all about Reagan's time and whether the people of that time had met the many challenges they faced. He transitioned into a plea for another four years "to complete the new beginning that we charted four years ago."

Reagan ran out of time and was cut off before finishing his closing statement, but it was a huge improvement over the statement he made at the end of the first debate.

When the debate was over, both sides claimed victory. But both sides knew the truth. In the first Gallup Poll following the debate, Reagan's approval rating stood at 58% — precisely the share of the vote he would receive on Election Day, Nov. 6, 1984.

The Bear in the Woods

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"There is a bear in the woods. For some people, the bear is easy to see. Others don't see it at all. Some people say the bear is tame. Others say it's vicious and dangerous. Since no one can really be sure who's right, isn't it smart to be as strong as the bear? If there is a bear?"

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(Yesterday I wrote about Ronald Reagan's domestic–policy commercial from the 1984 campaign, informally known as "Morning in America.")

The Reagan campaign commercial of which I wrote yesterday is the one that most people remember from that campaign. Economic issues played such a critical role in Reagan's victory in 1980, and an advertisement illustrating how much better things were (by comparison) four years later was quite effective.

But I have always thought the better commercial was the one on foreign policy called "The Bear." It very cleverly illustrated the differences in thought regarding Russia (symbolized by a bear since at least the 17th century) and how much of a threat it was to the United States.

Again, Reagan's opponent wasn't mentioned by name.

But it very neatly summarized Reagan's philosophy of "peace through strength:"

"Since no one can really be sure who's right," adman/narrator Hal Riney said, "isn't it smart to be as strong as the bear? If there is a bear?"

That is the kind of question that never really seems to go out of style. America is today the world's last remaining superpower, but it has been cutting back on its active military. Consequently, many Americans live in fear that a rogue country like Iran or a terrorist group will gain possession of nuclear weapons.

I think it is safe to say that, if the party in the White House chooses to run a foreign policy commercial in the eight weeks before this year's midterm elections, it will not focus on the president's foreign–policy successes with crises brewing on virtually every continent on the globe — even though the president is not on anyone's ballot this year.

Anyway, the 1984 advertisement did seek to define Reagan and his foreign policy record, and it did so quite well. It reassured skittish voters that Reagan was not the reckless warmonger his critics made him out to be, that he favored a strong defense as a way to keep the peace, that such an approach was prudent in the world of 1984.

That sounded reasonable to voters, who had reached their own conclusions on whether Reagan was reckless after nearly four years of his leadership. Available evidence suggested otherwise to them.

The 1984 campaign really was the most rare of opportunities for an incumbent, it seems to me. Conditions were so much better than they had been four years earlier that Reagan could define himself instead of allowing his opponent, former Vice President Walter Mondale, to define him, and frame the debates in ways that were favorable for that definition.

The "Bear in the Woods" ad is a perfect example of that. In almost every modern political campaign for an office in the federal government, an advertisement on foreign policy — by candidates in either party — will be designed to reinforce negative perceptions/stereotypes about the opposition. But in 1984, the Reagan campaign was able to focus on political philosophy and explain to voters why the president believed his policy was the wisest choice.

It really was a brilliant piece of political advertising.

The Reagan camp had months to prepare the ads, too. There was no opposition to Reagan's bid for renomination so his staff was able to fine–tune the advertisements for the fall campaign under virtually no pressure — at least by campaign advertising standards.

Ford's Self-Inflicted Wound

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On this night in 1976, President Ford and Jimmy Carter met in the second of their three televised debates.

Ford had been making gains on Carter since their first debate. He still trailed Carter in the polls by a considerable margin, but that margin clearly was narrowing. And Carter, who was known to be a "born again" Christian, received negative publicity for an interview he gave to Playboy.

In early October 1976, things seemed to be moving in Ford's direction.

However, Ford himself froze his momentum in its tracks with what can only be called a self–inflicted wound.

When the candidates met in San Francisco 35 years ago tonight, the subject was foreign policy, which was generally regarded as a strength of Republican nominees during the Cold War.

Carter, perhaps feeling particularly vulnerable after surveys had indicated that more people thought Ford won the first debate than thought Carter did and his interview with Playboy drew a sharp response from feminist leaders and Christian evangelicals, went on the offensive from the start.

Ford retaliated gamely, and the tone of the second debate was established. This would be a bare–knuckles brawl.

In their first debate, Carter seemed intimidated by Ford's office. "[T]his time, the aura of the presidency was no shield for Ford," wrote Jules Witcover in "Marathon," his account of the '76 campaign.

Carter was not as timid as he had often appeared in the first debate. He was aggressive, hammering away at every opening, and I recall thinking, about 10 or 15 minutes into the debate, that Ford seemed almost shocked. This wasn't the Jimmy Carter he had expected.

But that hardly explained what happened next. Max Frankel of the New York Times, in a question about U.S.–Soviet relations, observed that "[w]e've virtually signed ... an agreement that the Russians have dominance in Eastern Europe" and proceeded to ask Ford, "Is that what you call a two–way street of traffic in Europe?"

Astonishingly, Ford replied — as he concluded a rather routine recitation of "several examples" in which his administration had negotiated with the Soviets "from a position of strength" — that "there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration."

The remark was patently ridiculous.

Some of Ford's defenders — and the president himself — later tried to put a positive spin on the remark. They would claim that Ford was really saying that his administration had never acknowledged Soviet domination of eastern Europe.

And that had a defiant, almost revolutionary, sound to it — except that wasn't precisely what he said.

When NPR's Pauline Frederick, the moderator, tried to go to Carter for his rebuttal, Frankel interjected with a followup for Ford.

"[D]id I understand you to say, sir," he asked in disbelief, "that the Russians are not using eastern Europe as their own sphere of influence in occupying most of the countries there and making sure with their troops that it's a Communist zone?"

Given an opportunity to explain himself then, on the spot, Ford further muddied the waters, saying this instead:

"I don't believe ... that the Yugoslavians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Rumanians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. Each of those countries is independent, autonomous: it has its own territorial integrity and the United States does not concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union."

The damage had been done.

James Naughton of the New York Times observed an "audible intake of air" in the theater that night, Witcover wrote. Even more tellingly, Ford committee director Stuart Spencer, who was watching the debate with security adviser Brent Scowcroft, remembered that "Scowcroft went white. Right then I knew we had problems."

In hindsight, I suppose, Ford's remarks could almost be regarded as prophetic, considering the events that unfolded in the decade to come. But, on this night in 1976, it was nothing less than ludicrous to suggest that Poland and the other countries in eastern Europe were not dominated by the Soviet Union.

But Carter, sensing a vulnerability that he could exploit, said that Ford must have known about the presence of Soviet troops in eastern Europe. If he did not, he was incompetent. If he did and ignored them, pretended they did not exist, he had been dishonest. That was about as blunt as the choice could be. The president of the United States was stupid or a liar. There was no third alternative.

Asked later by Witcover about his reply, Ford admitted he had been "a little careless" but doggedly continued to stand by what he had said.

But it was no temporary storm that had to be ridden out. For Gerald Ford, it was much worse than that. Even before he became president, Ford had been ridiculed by Lyndon Johnson, who suggested that Ford, a star football player at Michigan, had played football too often without a helmet in the years before he was elected to the House.

(LBJ also once said that "Jerry Ford is so dumb he can't fart and chew gum at the same time" — which reporters cleaned up to read "Ford can't walk and chew gum at the same time." I've never been sure which comparison was more damaging.)

In short, it was the resurrection of the ghost that Ford's staff feared the most — the impression that he was dumb. It had plagued him since his career in the House. It had been a national joke when he stumbled a couple of times in front of TV cameras, launching some of Chevy Chase's most memorable skits on Saturday Night Live.

Ford never recovered.

Some people thought at the time — and some people still believe — that Ford's gaffe in the second debate kept him from winning the election, but I disagree.

I believed then — and I still believe today — that Ford was going to lose, anyway, because of the pardon of Richard Nixon. He needed everything to go his way from the time of the Republican convention to Election Day if he was to have even the slightest chance of winning. What happened 35 years ago tonight didn't help his cause.

My personal view of that decision has evolved over the years, and I have reached the point where I am partially inclined to agree with Ford, who argued that issuing a pardon was the only way to put Watergate behind us and refocus on the issues the nation faced in the mid–1970s.

But, in 1974, the majority of Americans were so angry at Nixon that, when Ford pardoned the former president, he sealed his fate with them.

The Domino Theory

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On this day in 1954, President Eisenhower put into words the philosophy that has guided American foreign policy for more or less half a century — the "domino theory:"

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"Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the 'falling domino' principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences."

Dwight Eisenhower

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This theory was certainly prevalent during the Cold War. The belief that, if one nation fell to the Communists, other nations in the region would quickly follow was a popular one. But it did not originate with Eisenhower. It has its roots in the early post–WWII era. Sir Winston Churchill warned, in his famous "Iron Curtain" speech in 1946, of the threat posed by the Soviets.

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The "domino theory" had not yet been given a name, but it had been given a face — communism and Stalin.

When I was a teenager, many of my friends laughed at the "domino theory," dismissing it as simplistic and ludicrous, but, secretly, we all worried that the war in Vietnam might not end before we were old enough to be pressed into service. The war had been raging since we were small and, when I was 13 or 14, it was not unrealistic to think the war might continue for a few more years, just long enough for us to be whisked away to the rice paddies and jungles of South Vietnam — making premature death a distinct possibility.

American involvement in Vietnam finally ended when I was 15, but not before two American presidents, Johnson and Nixon, had devoted much of their presidencies to promoting the idea that more and more Americans had to be sent there so the thousands who had already died would not have died in vain.

The same mindset permitted the American occupation of Iraq to continue, sucking up billions of dollars and thousands of lives — in spite of the assurances by those in power that the war would be over quickly and Americans would be greeted as liberators with flowers thrown at their feet.

Earlier this year, Barack Obama pledged that the American presence in Iraq would be over before Labor Day 2010. Opponents of the war would like for all Americans to be brought home from that country right away, but the realists understand that to arbitrarily remove all of our troops at this point would invite chaos to that war–torn land.

Cynics have observed that there are political implications in ending the American presence in Iraq a couple of months before the next election, but it is the only responsible way to handle the situation.

South Vietnam eventually fell to the Communist North, but the other "dominoes" in the region did not fall, as Johnson and Nixon and the many devotees of the theory expected.

Iraq, too, seems to stand as a testimonial against the validity of the "domino theory." The Iraqis may have cast aside the yoke of Saddam Hussein's tyranny, but that has not encouraged the other nations of the Middle East to follow suit and embrace democracy.

Hastily removing the troops from Iraq, however, might produce the domino effect in reverse. A chaotic Iraq, unprepared to defend its borders, might be prone to fall under the influence of its regional neighbors.

And that might trigger a fresh round of "domino theory" advocacy.