Setting Out to Whomp 'Em

By William R. Doerner

The Republicans sound the battle cry as they renominate Reagan and Bush

Very little was left to chance. The proceedings were so carefully scripted that virtually the only suspense was whether all 50,000 balloons in the Dallas Convention Center would disgorge on cue when Ronald Reagan and George Bush appeared on the podium for their victory waves the final evening. The party's conservative leadership was in such firm control that minority dissenters to the platform had no chance to raise their criticisms on the floor. Many of the principal speeches were edited by two Reagan campaign staffers, which may have been why there was such a similarity to the ring of the rhetoric.

But for whatever last week's Republican National Convention failed to achieve as political drama, it played wonderfully well as pageantry, especially after the King arrived for his coronation. Merely by waving at Wife Nancy on a giant closed-circuit television monitor visible throughout the hall, Ronald Reagan, Rex Republicans, brought his G.O.P. court roaring to its feet. Formally accepting his nomination to a second term, Reagan could hardly restrain the ecstatic ritual chants of "Four more years!" that repeatedly interrupted his speech. While savoring the moment, he finally pointed to his watch and reminded his audience, "It's getting late."

Even before he arrived in Dallas at midweek from Washington, it was clear that Reagan bestrode his party like few candidates before him. Not since 1972, when Richard Nixon faced George McGovern, had G.O.P. strategists been more confident of reviving what Kansas Senator Robert Dole called "an old and honored tradition, the two-term presidency." Not since Dwight Eisenhower's second campaign for the White House in 1956 could the Republicans offer a more salable candidate. Polls are showing Reagan at the peak of his popularity with American voters; they are also documenting signs of new national feelings of patriotism and optimism that could only benefit an incumbent, particularly one so adept at exploiting that mood--a mood Reagan gets much credit for fostering.

Despite omens so favorable that overconfidence seemed to be the G.O.P.'s lone hazard, the spirit of Dallas was surprisingly feisty, even belligerent. Speaker after speaker sharply berated the Democrats, eliciting war cries and hoots from a convention that seemed to smell blood. The best-received barbs, and the constant efforts to link Walter Mondale to the Carter presidency, reflected a conservative ideology that relished its moment of triumph within the party. In notable contrast to his acceptance speech in Detroit four years ago, Reagan endorsed the tendentious tone with an unusually sharp attack of his own. He called the election "the clearest political choice of half a century," involving "two fundamentally different ways of governing--their Government of pessimism, fear and limits, or ours of hope, confidence and growth." Indeed, he went so far as to suggest that the approach suggested by the Democrats is "accompanied always by more Government authority, less individual liberty, and ultimately totalitarianism."

The hard-swinging assaults were designed, Republican strategists said, to ensure that the party did not become complacent. Privately, however, G.O.P. leaders seemed assured that all signs were pointing to a November victory. Said Republican Pollster Richard Wirthlin: "The earth, the moon, the sun and the planets are all in a moment of favorable alignment." He could have added to that list the astronomical recovery of the economy. The Commerce Department last week revised upward its estimate of growth in the gross national product during the year's second quarter, from 7.5% to an annual rate of 7.6%. The Administration predicted that growth would continue for the rest of the year and aver age 6.5%, its highest one-year rise since 1955. Consumer prices, the most closely watched gauge of inflation, notched up in July at an annual clip of 3.5%, slightly higher than in the previous two months but still quite within an acceptable range.

Delivering the G.O.P. keynote speech this year would have been a challenge for anyone, inviting as it did comparisons with New York Governor Mario Cuomo's slick but stirring opening address to the Democratic Convention. The Republican choice, U.S. Treasurer Katherine Davalos Ortega, did not even try to make it a contest. As she noted, "There are many members of our party more eloquent than I." Her presence on the rostrum Monday night was mainly symbolic, designed to highlight a ranking woman and a Hispanic in a party that is attempting to woo both groups. Ironically, from the standpoint of convention planners, Ortega's principal oratorical weak point was neither her soft voice nor her slow speaking pace; it was the lack of a distinctive Spanish accent.

The evening's de facto keynote speech came from a more accomplished woman orator, U.N. Ambassador (and lifelong Democrat) Jeane Kirkpatrick, who drew an appreciative roar by announcing "This is the first Republican Convention I have ever attended." Kirkpatrick contended that Reagan's foreign policies have "silenced talk of inevitable American decline and reminded the world of the advantages of freedom." By contrast, she declared, in a more-in-sorrow-than-anger lecture that reflected her academic background, the previous Administration too frequently blamed the U.S. for problems it did not cause. "Jimmy Carter looked for an explanation for all these problems and thought he found it in the American people," said Kirkpatrick. "But the people knew better. It wasn't malaise we suffered from. It was Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale." The delegates loved it.

Any scant chance that the seamless proceedings might be interrupted by floor debates ended on Tuesday with the adoption, by acclamation, of a 74-page platform crafted almost entirely by the party's conservatives. The document endorsed the social agenda long advocated by Reagan, including voluntary school prayer, tuition tax credits for private and parochial education, and an anti-abortion amendment. But it went beyond White House wishes on some issues, nota bly in opposing "any at tempts to increase taxes," which Reagan has said he might have to do as a "last resort."

Dispirited G.O.P. moderates, who lost every battle to soften some of the platform language, glumly admitted that it was pointless to carry their fight to the convention floor. Said Connecticut Senator Lowell Weicker: "The far right controls the Republican Party." In adopting without debate such favorite conservative proposals as considering a return to the gold standard and a balanced-budget amendment, the Dallas convention seemed determined to prove Weicker right. George Bush, however, ridiculed the notion that "the furthest-out fringes" of the New Right had seized party control. "They don't have anything but great big mail lists and great big mimeograph machines," he said in a TV interview.

The first major floor demonstration followed the introduction of Jack Kemp, the ardent apostle of supply-side economics, who is touted by some conservatives as the logical heir to the Reagan legacy. Hundreds of KEMP signs waved and bobbed throughout the hall as the former pro-football quarterback took the podium. Looking suitably surprised by the well-orchestrated display of future support, Kemp went on to compare the foreign policies of Carter, "seeming to grow old before our eyes," with those of Reagan, who "actually seems to be getting younger." Turning to Central America, he charged that the opposition would "shun the task of cultivating democracy." Declared Kemp: "The leaders of the Democratic Party aren't soft on Communism; they're soft on democracy."

Former President Gerald Ford provided a ringing defense of the Reagan Administration's record of fairness, a favorite Mondale attack point. "Is it fair to make promises you can't keep? Is it fair to keep promises the country can't afford?" asked the ex-President. "That is Mondale's record." Citing the drastic fall in the inflation rate and other economic gains scored during the Reagan Administration, Ford concluded, "That's what I call being fair to everybody."

Reagan was welcomed to Dallas on Wednesday afternoon with a rip-roaring reception in an atrium of the lavish Loews Anatole Hotel. As cheering supporters lined a 14-story, banner-bedecked tier of balconies above him, the President began his remarks in an expansive spirit, pledging to build "an opportunity society for every man, woman and child." But he later invoked the war cry of the Dallas Cowboys, doubtless extending it to the Dallas Republicans. "There's an expression you have down this way that I like," Reagan said. "You don't just score victories--you whomp 'em."

That night Nancy Reagan captured the heart of the convention during a brief solo appearance. Radiant in a shimmering white dress, she thanked party regulars for their moral support during the days of Reagan's recovery from the assassination attempt of 1981. Closing with an appeal to "make it one more for the Gipper," she acknowledged the crowd's applause by blowing kisses. Then she spotted her husband's live image on a huge closed-circuit video screen behind the podium and began waving to him. In his hotel suite, Reagan, seated beside Bush and dressed casually in slacks and an open-necked shirt, at first looked puzzled as he was shown watching her. Then he waved back across the air waves.

The convention's mood turned nostalgic as it welcomed Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, the G.O.P.'s 1964 presidential nominee and at 75 still its grandest old conservative. As Goldwater, who has undergone surgery for heart and hip ailments in recent years, limped to the podium, few in the hall needed reminding that an electrifying televised campaign speech on Goldwater's behalf 20 years ago by a Hollywood has-been had launched Ronald Reagan on his political career. Reagan aides had hoped that Goldwater would not dwell too much on his old crusades, but the Senator was unswayed by pleas that he not repeat the most famous and divisive line from his own acceptance speech. He uttered it with gusto: "Let me remind you, extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."

Furthermore, Goldwater said, "it has been the foreign policy and defense weakness of Democrat Administrations that have led us to war in the past," thus reviving an old, seldom used Republican charge that a Democrat was in the White House at the start of every war fought by the U.S. in this century. Other Republican speakers had limited their Democrat bashing to the current ticket, but Goldwater had crustily rejected all requests to tone down his remarks. Explained a Reagan aide: "He insisted on keeping the lines he liked."

The President's close friend Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada was chosen once again to place Reagan's name in nomination. In so doing, he praised the President's brand of leadership as "guts with reason," citing as an example his decision to send U.S. troops to the Caribbean island of Grenada. Said Laxalt: "He made the tough call. If he hadn't, Grenada today might well be in the Soviet orbit." The Nevada Senator was sharply effective in his attacks on the Democratic Party, which he said "is now the home of special interests, the social-welfare complex, the antidefense lobby and the lighter-than-air liberals."

As Wednesday night's roll call proceeded predictably--votes for Reagan and Bush were cast on the same ballot--the President and Bush were joined in the Reagans' suite by their wives. The Missouri delegation's vote boosted the uncontested ticket over the top just 45 min. later than the script said it would. Ever ready with a one-liner, Reagan quipped, "We've been sweating this out."

Reagan began the next morning with an "ecumenical prayer breakfast," attended by 17,000 Christian laymen and church leaders, most of them evangelicals. To the delight of his audience, the President delivered his strongest attack ever on opponents of a proposed constitutional amendment that would permit voluntary school prayer. Claiming that the amendment's passage has been blocked by its critics "in the name of tolerance," Reagan asked, "Isn't the real truth that they are intolerant of religion? They refuse to tolerate its importance in our lives." In a debatable assertion that went well beyond the issue of school prayer, Reagan went on to say that "religion and politics are necessarily related," and "this has worked to our benefit as a nation."

Bush maintained the convention's rhetorical tone in his acceptance speech. Referring to the opposition as "the tax raisers, the free spenders, the excess regulators, the Government-knows-best hand wringers," the Vice President declared, "You've had your chance. Your time has passed."

The task of introducing the star attraction fell to the star himself. As the lights in the hall dimmed, an evocative film portrayal of the President, with Reagan as narrator, appeared on the screen. The video was something of a cross between a Pepsi-Cola commercial (happy young people, catchy music) and The Natural (mythic baseball heroism inspired by Love and Personal Fidelity, back-lighted by the sun, awash with violins). That was no surprise: the 18-min. movie was crafted, in large part, by Phil Dusenberry, coauthor of the screenplay for The Natural and vice chairman and executive creative director of the BBDO, Inc., advertising agency, which handles the Pepsi account.

The movie, in fact, became one of the few subjects of public debate at the convention. Both CBS and ABC declined to air it on the grounds that it was a political commercial, a position all three networks had taken when asked to show a similar film about Mondale during the Democratic Convention. But NBC agreed to broadcast the Reagan production, contending that the controversy about whether the film would be aired had turned it into a newsworthy event.

The film, paid for by the Republican Party, was created, along with one about the First Lady, at a cost of $425,000. It opens with flash visual cuts melded by harmonic melodies: Reagan taking the oath of office, a dad embracing his little girl, ethnic workers giving thanks for their jobs. From there it flows through scenes of Reagan riding his horse, the liftoff of the space shuttle, the Statue of Liberty (twice) and a somewhat jarring replay of the assassination attempt followed by Reagan talking of how the late Terence Cardinal Cooke of New York had told him that "God must have been on your shoulder." The emotional culmination is a teary Ronald Reagan, choking as he tries to finish an address to graying veterans of D-day gathered in Normandy last June.

It was an act that only Ronald Reagan could follow. The sole uncertainty was whether he would use his speech as the opening shot of the re-election campaign or as an uplifting conciliatory counterpoint to many of the speakers who had preceded him. For the most part, he chose the former course, disappointing some supporters who had hoped he would use the occasion of his final investiture as candidate to explore a vision of where the party, and the nation, should move during the next four years. He was urged to do so by some aides. But in the end, said one, Reagan decided "there is no advantage in sitting on your lead."

Not that the President's 55-min. speech disappointed his listeners. On the contrary, they interrupted it 95 times with applause. They answered with hearty choruses of "No!" when Reagan asked whether they had any doubts that the Democrats would "make Government bigger than ever and deficits even worse, raise unemployment" and "make unilateral and unwise concessions to the Soviet Union." In fact, they were so eager to be roused that they would not allow Reagan to complete one of his punch lines. Saying that he was tempted to compare Democratic spending habits to those of a drunken sailor, Reagan said, "But that would be unfair to drunken sailors." The audience erupted in laughter before he added, "Because the sailors are spending their own money." Another interruption occurred when Reagan paraphrased Will Rogers and accused the Democrats of never meeting "a tax they didn't like." The President had to wait for applause to subside before adding, "Or hike."

The President had been nettled by the Democrats' searing appraisal of Reagancomics in San Francisco. More than half the speech was devoted to defending his record. Then he set forth a particularly stark delineation of the choice between the Democratic plan for the future and his own, using a formulation similar to the sharp "war and peace" alternatives that Jimmy Carter envisioned on the 1980 campaign trail. Said Reagan: "Isn't our choice really not one of left or right but of up or down--down through the welfare state to statism, to more and more Government largesse ... The alternative is the dream conceived by our founding fathers, up, up to the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with an orderly society." He concluded with a rambling evocation of the new patriotic spirit conveyed by the passage of the Olympic torch across America.

As Reagan noted near the end of his speech, "Four years ago we raised a banner of bold colors--no pale pastels." Certainly there was nothing muted about what the President, or his party colleagues and their platform, had to say last week. As the ardent cheering for Reagan's acceptance speech swelled, even the balloons behaved. Red ones fell from nets on the ceiling, white ones rose from the floor.

Reagan may be far ahead in the polls, but it was clear in Dallas as it had been in San Francisco--each convention raising partisan adrenaline to fever levels--that the fall campaign will be hard-fought. As the Republicans headed home, Walter Mondale returned to the campaign stump after a four-day hiatus. He sent Reagan a telegram repeating his challenge to at least six debates.

Nor did Reagan lose any time getting on the campaign trail. At a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Chicago, he accused the Democrats of being responsible for a "dismal chapter of failed policies and self-doubt." They "claimed to be for a strong defense, he chided, while advocating the cancellation of the B-1B bomber and MX missile and supporting a nuclear arms freeze. That sort of stance, he said, reminded him of the saying, "Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build one."

Summer may still be sweltering along, and ten weeks may remain before Election Day. But for the two seasoned campaigners in this year's presidential race, the training schedule is over; the game is on. --By William R. Doerner.

Reported by Laurence I. Barrett and Christopher Ogden/Dallas

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett, Christopher Ogden/Dallas