Lights Camera Regan!

When I was ushered into Governor Reagan's office I was mildly shocked. He was wearing lipstick, a heavy coat of pancake make-up on his face and rouge on his cheeks. He looked as if he could have been in drag moments before my arrival, but had slipped out of his dress and into a well tailored, navy blue suit for our meeting.   

"Oh, this make-up", he began with a nervous laugh; "Well you see I've got to deliver my State of the State message to the legislature this morning." I nodded my understanding and proceeded to give my pitch about drug laws, which had become a nice little speech since by this time I have given it to a dozen governors.

It was January, 1970 and I went to see Ronald Reagan, then Governor of California, at the request of then Attorney General John Mitchell, who wanted me to visit with the governors of all the large states to convince them to adopt new drugs laws consistent with a federal law being proposed by, the Nixon Administration.

When 1 finished 1 waited for Reagan to question me, as had the other governors. He had no questions. So 1 asked him a few questions but backed off very quickly for 1 realised that he had no idea what 1 was really talking about. The Governor made a few banal remarks about drugs and then changed the subject to the speech he would soon be delivering, "on television". It was clear the speech was far more important than anything 1 had to offer, so 1 quickly ended the meeting.

Within the inner circles of the Nixon Administration Reagan was considered a "lightweight," so 1 was not surprised at our meeting. Nor was John Mitchell when 1 reported back. "Reagan's into images and only images," said Mitchell.

And over the years I was struck by how attractive that image was and is. Off camera the Reagans look good, but they also look their years. On-camera they look like an ad agency's conception of the perfect older couple, which is to say not old at all, even though today he is 69 and she is 57.

Nancy Reagan is more than just a smiling lady in the pictures, rather a true power and influence on her husband and his thinking. "Hell, Nancy's the one who brought him over to the right and made a conservative out of him," a close friend of theirs told me.

"She's strong and subtly pushes him, letting him think something was his own idea. But Ronnie would still be selling soap if it weren't for Nancy, and I'll tell you this also: if he's elected President, she'll end up running the country ."

A bit of an overstatement, perhaps, but probably not much. By all accounts Nancy Reagan is as sweet and charming as she appears. She is also intensely devoted to her husband and all that he stands for. So much so, in fact, that she has no qualms admitting, "Ronnie is my life; my life began when we met." Yet the line between fierce loyalty and overt control, whatever the degree, may be a fine one with the Reagans, be the issue large or small.

A case in point occurred during a recent press conference in Florida when Reagan remarked that a marijuana cigarette was probably a bigger cancer hazard than a tobacco cigarette. A reporter catching Reagan off guard pointed out that it wasn't necessary to smoke as many marijuana cigarettes to get the desired effect. As Reagan hesitated a beat, Nancy nudged him and whispered loud enough for one reporter to    hear, "You wouldn't know".

"I wouldn't know," Reagan replied.

 Such momentary lapses are rare for Reagan, who has pledged to take an annual senility test if he is elected. Usually he knows what he's talking about, and for good reason. Wherever he speaks he always falls back on what has come to be known as "The Speech". No matter how much the parts are rearranged, updated or edited, the message and the two main points - are the same and have been for the past 15 years: One; there is too much government in our lives (therefore we have inflation, high taxes, a bloated bureaucracy, and any other domestic evil he can think of at the time) and Two; the Russians are coming (therefore let's spend on defence, and let's reassert ourselves in foreign affairs). The key phrases - many times even the gestures and cadences - are repeated over and over again, even in informal, spontaneous situations.

Another favourite Reagan tactic is throwing out grossly exaggerated examples to make his point. Discussing government waste, for instance, he will announce that the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration has 144 regulations on climbing ladders. In fact it has two.

 The problem here is what his staff members explain as Reagan's over-reliance on magazine and newspaper articles that support his and Nancy's ideas, or as one aide complains, "He's stubborn. He says 'I know I read this somewhere', and if he thinks it's accurate and you can't find out otherwise, he'll use it."

 Ronald Reagan almost always talks in generalities, making it extremely difficult to pin him down on specifics. Elizabeth Drew, of The New Yorker says, "Talking to Reagan can be something like grappling with a wet cake of soap. He is pleasant enough, responsive, even garrulous, but often he follows much the same script that he does on stage, and many of his answers slide away."

Ronald Reagan is not dumb. He knows full well that elections are won on image, and by generalists. Saying the same things over and over is safe, lessening the chance of being tripped up and looking bad. He is also one of the best public speakers in American politics today, knowing how to stir a crowd and keep them in their seats listening it's the use of humour with a good delivery. He's sincere, and whether you agree or not with what he's saying, he says it well and obviously believes what he is saying.

It's an attractive package. The simple slogans, the irrelevant data, jokes, camera appeal and social grace - neatly wrapped and presented with the skill and timing of a professional actor - have in an age of confusion brought the Presidency within Reagan's grasp. It's a development that many find difficult to take seriously. The rum our goes that when Jack Warner, the head of Warner Brothers, first heard that Reagan was going to run for President he responded, "No, no, the casting is all wrong. Jimmy Stewart for President, Ronnie for best friend."

Ronald Reagan's first political speech was as class president at Eureka College, a small Christian college in rural Illinois. He entered the college in 1928 after a relatively poor childhood, with his family moving from one small Midwest town to another. Ironically, that speech was in support of a student strike, a phenomenon that Reagan would encounter again and again as Governor of California in the turbulent 1960s.

The response to that speech left an impression on the young Reagan. "I discovered that night that an audience has a feel to it and, in the parlance of the theatre, the audience and I were together. When I came to actually presenting the motion, there was no need for parliamentary procedure: they came to their feet with a roar - even the faculty members present voted by acclamation. It was heady wine."

Graduating in 1932, Reagan got a job as a sports caster with an Iowa radio station. While covering a baseball game on the west coast he got a screen test at Warner Brothers and was given a contract at 200 dollars a week. Between 1937 and 1951 he made fifty-one movies, most of them forgettable. "The studio", he says, "didn't want the pictures good, it wanted them Thursday."

In 1942 Reagan joined the Army, though despite his hawkishness in later years he never himself went into battle - becoming a Captain with a film unit in Hollywood.

 Up until his army years Reagan was a card-carrying liberal. "I was a near helpless haemophiliac liberal", he says now. "I bled for 'causes': I had voted Democratic, following my father, in every election." Reagan's father was a first - generation Irish Catholic; his mother; a Scots-English Protestant. He ascribes his love of politics as well as his early liberalism, to his background: "As a first-line Irishman, I relish it. There seems to be something blarney-green in the blood of most sons of the old sod. . . that gives zest to the shillelagh psyche." Unlike most candidates today, Reagan does not wear his religion or ancestry on his sleeve and that bit of green hokum is the only nod he gives to his Irish background.

After the war, as newly elected president of the Screen Actors' Guild, Reagan had to grapple with labour problems that threatened to shut down Hollywood. Reagan believed that the problems were instigated by the communists who were trying to "take over the motion picture business. . . for a grand, world-wide propaganda base". His liberal friends' opposition to the McCarthyism exposed to him, he later said, the "seamy side of liberalism",

Most accounts give his growing absorption in Guild politics as the reason for his divorce from Jane Wyman in 1948. In 1951 he met a young starlet named Nancy Davis. They were married a year later. Nancy's father was a prominent Chicago surgeon and a staunch right-wing Republican, and Reagan's friends say Dr. Davis was a strong influence on him.

By now, Reagan's acting career was fading. Then, in 1954 he received the biggest break in both his show business and political career. General Electric, with plants all over the United States, paid him 125,000 dollars a year to host a new TV series and to travel around their plants boosting company morale.

Reagan went on the road from eight to sixteen weeks a year, sometimes giving fourteen speeches a day to GE employees. Mostly he talked about Hollywood, but when they started asking his opinion on current events Reagan was somewhat surprised to hear himself starting to form a political philosophy in his answers.

Although for all practical purposes Reagan was a conservative by this time, he still considered himself a Democrat. Now even that was changing. Edward Langley, a public relations man for GE who travelled with Reagan during those years, remembers the metamorphosis.

"Gradually, and only he knows precisely when," Langley recalls, "he came to share the Middle American views of his audiences. Reagan then, as now, was a consummate crowd-pleaser who loved the applause and the interplay with his listeners. Eventually, from whatever mixture of performing instinct and new conviction, he started taking his audiences' opinions for his own, and telling them what they wanted to hear."

In 1964 he gave his now famous "Islands of Freedom" speech for the ill-fated Republican presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater. "We stand here on the only island of freedom that is left in the whole world," Reagan told a national television audience. "There is no place to flee to, no place to escape to. We defend freedom here or it is gone." Contributions poured in after his address, still Goldwater lost by a landslide.

It was now obvious to many observers that Reagan was becoming interested in the presidency himself. Most dismissed the idea as quixotic, but he shocked everyone by being elected Governor of California in 1966.

Most political pro's explain his election as simply: Reagan was in the right place at the right time. Californians had been shocked by the recent riots in the black ghetto of Watts in Los Angeles and by the student demonstrations at many college campuses in the state. In addition, there was the threat of new open housing laws and a rapidly expanding state bureaucracy that was already draining large amounts of tax dollars. Reagan calmed the voters' fears by telling them that he was one of them - an ordinary citizen who would see that some common sense and order was restored to state government. He was elected by the substantial margin of almost one million votes.

 As Governor (1966-1974), most political observers agree, he was basically an efficient if not 'overly creative administrator. He fought many tempestuous battles with liberal institutions and programs, but he was not quite the guns-blazing hard-liner that he later portrayed himself to be. For example, -although he did provide 5.7 billion dollars in tax rebates to the citizens of California, most of the rebates were in property taxes. But he raised state income taxes three times. The last boost came complete with a new tax structure that took a bigger bite from banks and corporations - his faithful conservative supporters. And even though he was constantly lashing out at rebellious students and their teachers, threatening state schools with budget cuts left and right, state spending on higher education actually rose 136 per cent during Reagan's two terms as governor.

Nevertheless, throughout eight controversial and stormy years, Reagan's popularity with voters remained high - at times registering as much as a 70 per cent approval rating. Clearly he knew his audience.

He made a short and belated effort to run for President in 1968, then supported Richard Nixon in 1972 and throughout Nixon's travail with Watergate. Reagan was no great Nixon fan but he could hear opportunity knocking and he wanted to stay on the good side of party officials.

When Nixon finally resigned, Reagan quickly formed an exploratory committee to take soundings of the political waters.

Two years later I stood in Kansas City and watched as Ronald Reagan, a man who had been in professional politics less than ten years, fell just 117 votes short (out of 2257) of capturing the Republican nomination for President.

Today, the question is not "Is Reagan for real?" but "Can he be stopped?" The answer is definitely "yes” and the person who will probably do it is Ronald Reagan.

Aside from the occasional contradictions and embarrassing gaffes, such as saying that Vietnam veterans aren't eligible for GI benefits (they are), Reagan's campaign seems to be in a constant state of flux, without any overall strategy or philosophy.

Up until the Iowa Caucuses, where Reagan suffered an upset, his campaign was run by the Bismarckian John Sears. Sears restricted Reagan to just 48 hours personal campaigning in Iowa on the theory that extensive personal appearances would give the impression "that he's an ordinary man like the rest of us". When Reagan lost Iowa to George Bush he began ignoring Sears's advice and campaigned widely. It paid off, and on the day of the New Hampshire primary Sears and several of his aides were fired.

What Reagan gained in popularity he lost in other ways. His appearances no longer carefully stage managed by Sears, he began to make more and more gaffes, demonstrating that he was being poorly briefed by his staff. Internal wrangling in his campaign has led to shifting positions on tax cuts and the Olympic boycott and the China fiasco.

In preparing for the expected attacks that Reagan is simplistic and shallow, one group of advisers is urging him to take the initiative and provide more details. At the same time, his new campaign manager, Paul Laxalt, insists, "The main thing for Reagan is to stay out of trouble and not seriously shoot himself in the foot."

One scary question that emerges from all this is where does Reagan stand while all these intra-mural battles are being fought around him? Is he the captain of the ship, or the captive? A person who once worked closely with Reagan told me recently, "Reagan doesn't understand the politics of all these problems. Nor does he understand the business of politics. It's something I like about him; on the other hand, it's a weakness because he has no internal measuring mechanism, and it makes it difficult for him to assess the political advice he invariably gets as a presidential candidate and as a president. He is subject to being battered around, to never being quite confident enough about the quality and character and sagacity of the advice he's given."

Then there is the excerpt from a speech that he gave a couple of months ago to a retirement community in Florida. Normally, I skip quickly through the overheated rhetoric but this time one paragraph caught my eye - and wound up haunting me for several days. Reagan is talking to senior citizens about assassinations, bombings, kidnappings, terrorism - the moral depravity of a world turned upside down, when he suddenly says, "All of these things have happened to a United States that most of you can remember, as I do remember, a United States that even where an American was on business, or vacation, or wherever, and got caught in some little country that was having a revolution, or got caught in a war, all that the American had to do was pin to his lapel a little American flag and he could walk right through that war and nobody would lay a finger on him. Well, I want to see that United States back in the world again."

To me, it is well beyond political hyperbole. It is flirting with senility. And next month, the man with that vision of the United States, Ronald Wilson Reagan, celluloid hero, may finally make it to the Presidency. If he does he will be inaugurated almost two years after the death of John Wayne. He was born just two years after the deaths of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.