THE RE-ELECTION

I regarded the 1984 presidential election as pivotal - not because I wanted to live in the White House for four more years, but because I believed the gains we'd made during the previous four years were in jeopardy. Although she never brought it up, I think Nancy would have preferred that I not run for reelection in 1984. But I never doubted I would. I wanted to preserve what we had accomplished, and there were a lot of things I still wanted to do that I hadn't been able to do yet. Foremost among them, domestically, were cutting the deficit and balancing the budget.

Although an economic expansion was under way, I thought we could do more to stimulate the economy by making our tax system fairer and simpler. I wanted to persuade Congress to cut more waste out of the budget and continue the process of making government smaller and less intrusive in our lives. I still thought I had a shot at balancing the budget during the next four years. To me, former Vice-President Walter Mondale, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1984, was another classic tax-and-spend liberal from the new school of the Democratic Party - the one that had parted company with its founders, Thomas Jefferson and his friends who believed that the least government was the best government and that "governments are not the masters of the people, but the servants of the people governed." The new school of Democrats thought of government in exactly the opposite way. In 1984, it had become a conglomeration of blocs and special-interest groups, each with narrow special agendas directed at grabbing more of the national wealth for their own interests. Thomas Jefferson's party had become the party of big promises, big government, and big taxes - the bigger the better.

Yet, when I watched Mondale's acceptance speech at the Democratic convention in San Francisco, it almost seemed (with one important exception) that he was trying to sound like a Republican. Apparently sensing that the public was in a conservative mood and fed up with big government, he talked abut old-fashioned values and improving the efficiency of government, and promised the people he wanted to do some of the very same things we were already doing - but he made it sound as if he had to do it to cure an economic crisis. Mondale reverted to type once, when he pledged to raise taxes on rich to reduce the deficit - after being introduced by a millionaire, Senator Edward Kennedy, who had assailed me as a friend of the rich. Mondale tried to make it sound as if he had undergone a metamorphosis. But I knew that the first thing he'd do as president was revert totally to form and join with Congress in enacting huge tax increases that would abort the recovery and destroy everything we'd spent four years trying to build.

A few days after the Democratic convention ended, I drew an assignment to help officiate at the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. While I was there I sensed a renewed national pride in America that made me feel warm inside. The spiritual rebirth I had hoped for was under way, as vigorous and as robust as the nation's economic turnaround. America was coming back, becoming proud of itself again, becoming confident again about the future. More than ever, I thought, we had to stay the course and not turn back. After leaving Los Angeles, Nancy and I spent almost two weeks at the ranch, a summer vacation that was the longest uninterrupted time we'd ever spent there, The weather was terrific except for one foggy day, but even that day we had our regular morning ride and I spent every afternoon pruning trees and fixing things around the ranch.

At the time, the papers were full of reports that I was planning to raise taxes if reelected. "They find every excuse to say I'm really hedging," I wrote in my diary one day. "Well d - m it, there will be no new taxes on my watch and Mondale is stuck with his campaign promise to raise income tax." After George Bush and I were nominated a second time amid a tumultuous celebration in Dallas, I said in my acceptance speech that voters had their clearest choice between the two national parties in fifty years: Despite the Democrats' attempts to change their tune during their four days beside San Francisco Bay, the choice was between a government of "pessimism, fear, and limits and [one] of hope, confidence, and growth." After the speech, Ray Charles sang "America the Beautiful" and I don't think there was a dry eye in the house.

I believe that someday we are going to have a woman president, possibly during my life, and I've often thought the best way to pave the way for this was to first nominate and elect a woman as vice-president. But I think Mondale made a serious mistake when he picked Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate. In my view, he guessed wrong in deciding to take a congresswoman that almost nobody had ever heard of and try to put her in line for the presidency. We have had many successful woman governors around the country who have demonstrated the potential to serve as president, but he overlooked them. I think if the Republicans had done this with a Jeane Kirkpatrick (our UN representative), for example, there would have been a lot more sense to it. I don't know who among the Democrats might have been a better choice, but it was obvious Mondale picked Geraldine Ferraro simply because he believed there was a "gender gap" where I was concerned and she was a woman; I don't think they picked the most electable woman.

As each day of the general election campaign passed, I found myself getting angrier at Mondale, whose basic theme was that I was a liar: He claimed I said I was not going to raise taxes after the election when in fact I really intended to, already had a plan for it. I kept saying I wouldn't raise taxes, but he kept saying I was lying and deceiving the public. Many of our key supporters said to George Bush and me that we had nothing to worry about from the Mondale-Ferraro challenge because the economy was booming and the people always voted their pocketbooks. Inflation was down to 4.6 percent, unemployment had plummeted, interest rates were far below the level of four years before, and opinion polls said I had a solid lead over Mondale. Well, despite what they said, I told myself I was not going to get overconfident. I have never liked to lose and so I set out to campaign as hard as I could for a second term. By no means did I think of myself as a shoo-in, and throughout that summer and fall I was a little edgy.

In a campaign, I always like to act as if I'm one vote behind; overconfidence is a candidate's worst mistake. I knew anything can happen in an election campaign; it's just as well I did run scared, because in the view of many people, I nearly blew the whole race during my first debate with Mondale that fall. I wrote in the diary in early October after the debate in Louisville was over:

I have to say I lost. I guess I'd crammed so hard on facts and figures in view of the absolutely dishonest things he'd been saying in the campaign I guess I flattened out; anyway, I didn't feel good about myself. And yet he was never able to rebut any of the facts I presented and kept repeating things that are absolute falsehoods. But the press has been calling him the winner for two days now.

I had spent too many hours poring over briefing books and in skull sessions and mock debates preparing for the encounter, and on the night of the debate, I think I was just overtrained. I don't think anybody could have retained all the things pumped into my brain during the days leading up to the debate; I goofed a couple of times. Although I don't blame them, in a way I was hurt by people trying to help me: A debate was coming up and everybody around me started saying, "You have to know this you have to know that"; then they fill your head with all sorts of details, technicalities, and statistics as if you were getting ready to take an exam on those topics. Finally, when you're in the debate, you realize you just can't command all that information and still do a good job as a debater.

I don't feel low very often, but I take pride in my public speaking ability - after all, I'm an old performer. The verdict that I'd lost the debate didn't make me feel very happy. A lot of supporters tried to make me feel better afterward. But I knew I'd stumbled two or three times while millions of people were watching, and I was embarrassed. After Louisville, I had some genuine reasons to feel nervous about the campaign. Several polls taken after the debate indicated that some of my supporters were having doubts about me, and some of the pundits in the press claimed my stumbles proved that I was too old to be president. One White House television correspondent even proclaimed that the Louisville debate had brought to the surface what he called the "senility factor."

A second debate - covering foreign affairs - was scheduled in two weeks in Kansas City, so I had a second chance; another disastrous performance could send Nancy and me packing, headed back to the ranch for good. I decided I wasn't going to do as much cramming as I had done before the first debate, and it's a good thing I didn't, because something happened at the second debate that I think wouldn't have happened if I had been overtrained. One of the reporters on the panel asked me whether age was going to be a handicap or other factor in the campaign. I suppose it was a polite way of raising the fact that I was seventy-three; and the question alluded, by inference, to my troubles at the previous debate.

My answer to the question just popped off the top of my head. I'd never anticipated it, nor had I thought in advance what my answer might be to such a question. I just said, "I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience." Well, the crowd roared and the television cameras flashed a shot of Mondale laughing. I'm sure that if I had been as stuffed with as many facts and figures as I was before the first debate, I wouldn't have been able to come up with that line; your mind just isn't flexible enough if it's saturated with facts because you've been preparing for an examination.

According to the count of some reporters, Mondale took twenty-two tough personal potshots at me during the debate in Kansas City, most of which questioned my capabilities for leadership. But the majority of people watching the debate that night, the reporters wrote, remembered that one line more than any other I guess my response had satisfied them that I wasn't senile. After my goofs during the previous debate, I think it's possible I sewed up reelection with those fourteen words; I'm not sure. But the incident reminded me once again of how unpredictable, even fleeting things can often make a big difference in life.

Besides the debates, two other things stand out in my memory from the 1984 campaign. One was the enthusiasm of the blue-collar workers - voters traditionally allied with my former associates in the Democratic Party - that I met while stumping the country that summer and fall. While Walter Mondale and Ted Kennedy and Tip O'Neill were forever harping that I was the "rich man's candidate," everywhere I went crowds of working men and their working women roared with approval when I asked them whether they thought they were better off than they had been fours years earlier; the country was moving again, and they were sharing in the fruits of the economic recovery.

Another thing I will always remember: an outpouring of affection and support from college and university students I never expected. Although there were always a few hecklers on the campuses I visited, they were usually outnumbered by students enthusiastically cheering the policies of the previous four years, and this really took me by surprise: These students in the eighties seemed so different from those that I'd dealt with as governor a decade earlier. Two days after the Kansas City debate, following a busy schedule of campaigning that began at the University of Oregon and ended with a giant rally on the campus of Ohio State University, I wrote in the diary: "The O.S.U. students were on fire; another small heckler group only added to the fun. By this time I was so in love with young America I was all choked up. For lunch we went to the T.K.E. house, my fraternity. These have been the greatest four days I can remember."

As election day approached, our campaign polls showed that following the second debate I had increased my lead over Mondale substantially. But I was still edgy. What happens, I thought, if my supporters read the polls and decide their vote isn't necessary? I kept pressure on the staff, telling them to work me hard and add as many appearances to the campaign schedule as they could before election day. Two days before the election, after getting up in Milwaukee and flying to rallies in Minnesota, Missouri, and Chicago, we arrived in Sacramento for a rally the following day. Nancy and I were put up in a suite at the Red Lion Inn that had a bed on an elevated platform. About 3:30 A.M., Nancy got up to get an extra blanket and took a header off the platform that left her with an egg-size lump on the left side of her head.

In the morning, she could hardly walk and I was very frightened for her, but a doctor who saw her said the injury, while painful, would not leave any lasting damage. Still worried, I resumed the campaign schedule. That day I felt a twinge of nostalgia as I spoke as president before a huge crowd that gathered on the steps of the state capitol - the same place where twice I'd been sworn in as governor. From there, we flew to Southern California for some final campaigning and then our traditional election-night party at the Jorgensen home to await the voters' verdict. Nancy was still badly bruised but feeling better. While we were having dinner, I was called to the telephone. It was Walter Mondale, conceding.

The next day, with Nancy still sore from her fall, we flew to Rancho del Cielo for three days of rides in the morning and cutting and splitting wood from downed oak trees in the afternoons. It was a happy time. I was feeling high after the election; we had taken forty-nine states and fifty-nine percent of the vote, and I saw the election as approval of what I'd been trying to do and a mandate to continue it.

In the rotunda of the Capitol on a very cold day ten weeks later, I pledged to do that. George Bush and I first took our oaths of office, as required by the Constitution, on Sunday, January 20, in the White House. The formal inaugural ceremonies and parade were scheduled the following day. But on Sunday afternoon, the inaugural committee came to the White House and suggested I cancel the parade and outdoor ceremony because the wind-chill factor the next day was predicted to be twenty degrees below zero or worse; doctors were warning that at that temperature, exposed skin would freeze in about fifteen seconds. We couldn't inflict that on the bandsmen and other people who had come to Washington for the parade, so we canceled it, and just before noon the following day, George ad I took our oaths of office a second time before about one thousand people in the Capitol rotunda.

Afterward, at the traditional inaugural lunch with congressmen, Tip O'Neill made a point of telling me privately that he was very much aware of the fact that we had received fifty-nine percent of the vote during the election. I hoped that was a signal he'd be more agreeable the second time around, but it didn't work out that way. As far as he was concerned, it still wasn't six o'clock. I felt sorry for all those bandsmen who had come to Washington from the fifty states and were deprived by cold weather of a chance to participate in the inaugural parade, so that afternoon Nancy and I helicoptered to a big arena in Maryland where thousands of disappointed paraders from all over the nation were gathered in their uniforms and regalia. I got a chance to thank them and they got a chance to play some of the music they'd planned for the parade. We all had fun, and I think it made up for some of their disappointment. That night, there were eleven inaugural balls. Nancy and I got to all of them and danced a few steps each.

The next day, January 22, it was back to work. On the economic front, my biggest goal for the second term was to make the federal tax code less complicated and less onerous on the Americans who would not only accelerate the economic expansion but make our whole system of taxation more fair. In 1986, after almost two years of haggling with Congress, we got the tax reform bill we wanted.

Courtesy of Simon and Schuster