Posted on 06/11/2004 6:06:06 AM PDT by dvwjr
The begining of the Reagan Revolution in print - The Washington Star: November 5th, 1980.
by
Jules Witcover
Washington Star Political Editor
Voters from every section of the nation swept Ronald Reagan into the presidency last night by a landslide so devastating his Republican Party also won control of the Senate for the first time in 28 years. Eight Democratic senators lost, including seven liberals, decimating their ranks.
Reagan, who will become the 40th president, defeated President Carter in at least 42 States with 469 electoral votes to only six states and the District of Columbia with 49 electoral votes for Carter. Independent John B. Anderson failed to carry a single state.
Two states were undecided with Reagan narrowly ahead for Arkansas six electoral votes and Carter holding a slight lead for 14 votes in Massachutts, where a relatively strong vote for Anderson cut into Carter's total and kept Reagan a close second.
In the popular vote, with 95 percent of all voting unit in and with many states reporting a heavy turnout, Reagan had 41,047,235 votes, or 51 percent, Carter 33,165,253 or 41 percent, and Anderson 5,293,558 or 7 percent.
Reagan shattered the president's 1976 Southern base, carried the Northern industrial belt running from Connecticut and New York west through Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin and repeated former President Gerald Ford's Western sweep of four years ago.
Carter, in almost complete returns, carried only his native Georgia, Vice President Walter Mondale's home state of Minnesota, West Virginia, Rhode Island, Maryland, Hawaii and the District of Columbia. He became the first Democratic president seeking a second term to be defeated in 92 years. The last was Grover Cleveland in 1892.
For control of the Senate, the GOP needed a net gain of nine seats, and these seven Democratic liberals fell in the Republican sweep: Sens. Warren G. Magnuson of Washington, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Frank Church, chairman of the Senate Foreign Re-lations Committee, George McGovern of South Dakota, Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, Birch Bayh of Indiana, John Cullver of Iowa and John Durkin of New Hampshire. An eighth Democrat, moderate Robert Morgan of North Carolina, also lost.
In addition, Republicans won Democratic seats in Alabama, Florida and Alaska, where incumbents had lost in primaries. Even with the possible GOP loss of Sen. Barry Goldwater, in a close race in Arizona, the Republicans still posted enough gains to make the present Senate minority leader, Howard H. Baker of Tennessee, the majority leader. It was an unexpected windfall for Baker, who opposed Reagan for the GOP nomination but dropped out and endorsed him when his own campaign never got off the ground.
The 11 Republican pickups in the Senate, even assuming a Goldwater loss, give the GOP a 51-49 edge. The Republicans were in also in a very close race in Vermont, where Demo-cratic Sen. Patrick Leahy held a narrow lead.
Democrats also suffered some painful defeats in the House, where the Republicans appeared to be in a position to gain about 25 seats. Among the losers were House Democratic Whip John Brademas of Indiana, and four figures in the Abscam scandal - Michael Myers, John Jenrette, Frank Thompson and John Murphy. One other, Raymond Lederer, survived.
Ways and Means Committee Chairman A1 Ullman of Oregon was trailing closely in his bid for re-election.
The GOP held on to governorships in Vermont, Delaware and Indiana and picked up three from the Democrats - in Arkansas, where a bright young star, Gov. Bill Clinton, was upset, and in Missouri and Washington State. The Republican candidate was also leading in North Dakota, now held by a Democrat.
Reagan's victory was a resounding rejection of Jimmy Carter and his economic policies, under which the nation's inflation and interest rates, and unemployment in some Midwestern cities, rose to post-Depression highs. It will no doubt be argued, too, by the Democratic Party that Reagan's victory was a triumph of style over substance.
But whatever was in the minds of the American voters yesterday; Reagan can also lay claim to a mandate for his conservative positions, modified but not abandoned in the 1980 campaign. His age, 69, which will make him the oldest man to enter the White House for a first term in history, proved to be no great obstacle either.
A central objective of the Reagan campaign was to cut into the normally Democratic blue-collar vote by hammering, away at Carter's record on the economy. According to comments by voters as they left the polls yesterday, that goal was met. The CBS News/New York Times poll reported on the basis of 8,632 interviews at polling places that 45 percent of blue-collar voters ap-proached said they had voted for Reagan, compared to 48 percent for Carter.
Among other voter groups as well, Reagan either ran better than Carter among the sample or fared better than a Republican nominee normally does. Among Jewish voters, usually heavily Democratic, it was Carter by only 47-35. Among women, Reagan ran dead even with Carter, 46-46, and among men, he was ahead 53-38.
Only among black voters, who helped deliver Jimmy Carter's margin of victory in 1976, did he best Reagan overwhelmingly. The exit polls showed Carter ahead among blacks, 83 percent to 14. But Reagan led Carter among whites in the sample by 54 percent to 36. And among suburbanites, Reagan was ahead 55-35.
Carter, who received the disappointing returns at the White House, went to the Sheraton-Washington Hotel and conceded on television at 9:50 p.m. Carter told a applauding but sorrowful crowd that he had telephoned Reagan, congratulated him and pledged his full cooperation in the transition of power.
Flashing in defeat the broad smile that in victory had become his trademark, Carter said: "I promised you four years ago that I would never lie to you, so I can't stand here and say it doesn't hurt."
In conceding, the president gave Mondale, his running mate and 1984 presidential hopeful, a strong plug. "In some ways," he said, "I've been the most fortunate of all presidents because I've had the daily aid of a wise man and a good man at my side, in my judgment the best vice president anybody ever had, Fritz Mondale."
But the dimensions of the ticket's defeat could complicate Mondale's political ambitions - and encourage the argument now that the party erred in rejecting Sen. Edward M: Kennedy in the 1980 primaries, and should make him its nominee four years hence.
President-elect Reagan, who watched the numbers roll up for him in Los Angeles, said of his election: "There's never been a more humbling moment in my life." He quoted Abraham Lincoln telling reporters on his election: "Well, boys, your troubles are over, mine have just begun."
Then he added: "I am not frightened by what lies ahead, and I don't believe the American people are frightened by what lies ahead. Together we're going to so what has to be done. We're going to put American back to work again."
Reagan's chief political strategist, Stuart Spencer, said his man won because the president never succeeded in making Reagan the issue rather than his own performance in the White House, and because Carter failed to take adequate political advantage of his office.
"The Carter campaign was designed to make Ronald Reagan the issue," Spencer said. "Ronald Reagan being the great communicator he is, managed to turn it around and make the Jimmy Carter record the issue... They just couldn't get a handle on him (Carter) to run as the incumbent ... especially when he had a record to defend."
A widespread impression last night was that it was Reagan's performance in last Tuesday night's nationally televised debate that had turned the tide. But Reagan polls indicated he had arrested a Carter surge a day or two before the debate. And last night Richard Wirthlin, Reagan's pollster, said that in subsequent tracking polls "we saw this vote building for us over the last four or five days."
What the debate did, Wirthlin said, was condition voters' acceptance of Reagan for a final-week media blitz - what Wirthlin called "peak week" in the Reagan campaign: Until the very end of the campaign, the national polls had indicated the race to be very close, with a considerable undecided vote. But if that was the case, the undecideds obviously swarmed to Reagan's side.
Also smothered by the scope of the Reagan landslide was concern and speculation of what the impact would be of the 11th-hour indications that the year-long ordeal of 52 Americans held hostage in Iran might be near an end. The Reagan camp had feared that what they called "an October surprise" such as the election-eve release of the hostages might salvage the election for Carter. But the dimensions of the Reagan rout reduced that concern to a footnote.
Former President Ford, in a television interview, said he believes "the hostage problem is now out of the political arena completely," and that Carter should bring in Reagan and his advisors, and the congressional leadership of both parties, "to try to have a united front ... to recover the hostages." In the inevitable post-mortems over Carter's massive failure to convince voters to give him a second term, a major bit of second-guessing is likely to center on his own conduct on the stump. His decision to attack Reagan personally, implying that he was a dangerous, reckless man whose election could mean war, appeared to backfire badly.
Going into the campaign, polls showed that Carter continued to be regarded as an honest and likeable man. His slashing performance did nothing to sustain that one major strength, and probably fueled sympathy for Reagan as well, particularly among moderate Republicans who didn't care for the conservative Californian.
In Michigan, for example, considered a must state for the president, middle-road Republicans unhappy with Reagan for his perceived failure to campaign hard for native-son Jerry Ford in 1976 flocked into the undecided category. But joint campaigning of Ford and Reagan, with the "meanness" issue as a backdrop, helped deliver this key state to the Republican column.
On a personal level, it appeared in the whole Carter campaign and in the debate especially, the Demo-cratic candidate repeated the mistake all of Reagan's past foes have made - to underestimate him because of his movie-actor background and penchant for generalities.
Carter paid, too, for a four-year neglect of his own party. For three years, Democratic politicians around the country constantly griped about his aloof attitude. In the end, his appeal to Democrats to "come home" to their traditional party roots fell on deaf ears.
The most disappointed candidates last night were, of course, Carter and Mondale. But the results also were a disappointment to independent candidate Anderson, who at least managed to, exceed the 5 percent of the total popular vote he needed to qualify for federal campaign funds. Under the law, they are paid retroactively according to the percentage of vote received, with 5 percent as a required floor. Anderson's campaign deficit is reported to be about $5 million.
Few predicted before last night that Reagan would win a landslide victory. Part of the reason was that the major public-opinion polls focused on the popular vote and tended to blur the fact that on a state-by-state basis, Reagan was building a solid lead that Carter never could crack.
The tipoff on the desperate nature of the Carter bid came in the final days when the president was obliged to go to Columbia, S.C., to shore up his Southern base and when on the final day he abandoned a stop in California for one final stop in Detroit to try to bail out Michigan.
Source: The Washington Star - Wednesday November 5, 1980. Pages A1,A9.
The now defunct Washington Star also had the following syndicated column printed in the editorial page section of the paper. I have included this most wrong-headed prediction on the future course of Ronald Reagan's Presidency written the night of his electoral victory - November 5th, 1980. The author was a well-known journalist by the name of James "Scotty" Reston with the New York Times, who at that time had a nationally syndicated opinion column . A liberal icon whose predictive abilities failed because his bias would not allow him see the possibility of a triumph in both foreign affairs and domestic economic policy by a conservative Republican President.
JAMES "Scotty" RESTON
Syndicated Columnist
New York Times
Wednesday November 5th, 1980
After Reagan's Victory: A Time for Cooperation
After the celebrations over Ronald Reagan's spectacular victory, come the hangovers. It would be pleasant to think that everybody would now close ranks and get on with the nation's business. But the sad thing about this election is that it has not clarified the nation's problems, but deepened them; not unified the people but divided them.At the presidential level, it was too personal and negative. Despite the long months of fierce campaigning and Reagan's sweep of the major states all across the Union, it has not produced any general agreement, even within his own party, about the policies that should guide the American people through the first half of the 1980s.
There are some consolations despite these gloomy reflections. The campaign, with its preposterous assumption that somehow Carter or Reagan would personally determine the future of the Republic, is finally over.
So we will now have a one-term president, without fear that Reagan, at his age, will try for a second term. And this campaign has been such a disappointment, not only to the American people but to the leaders of both parties, that there is now a chance for a reappraisal of our political life, and particularly for reform of the election process.
When this campaign started - if you can remember that far back - there was considerable anxiety in both parties about the rise of special interest politics, and the loss of national purpose. Abroad, the economic competition among the industrial nations was changing, to the detriment of the United States, adding to the unemployment and inflation. And the military challenge of the Soviet Union and its threat to the essential oil supplies of the Middle East created a host of intricate problems within the free world.
A Campaign of Slogans
It was hoped that maybe one of the justifications of a long presidential campaign was that it would make clear this revolution in the economic and military balance of power in the world, and help the parties and the people adjust to the dangers of economic anarchy and the threat of nuclear weapons. Despite Reagan's victory, the campaign did no such thing. In general it was fought out by slogans, personal attacks, and appeals to special interest groups of the right and left. Roosevelt complained 50 years ago about the Forgotten Man. The problem now is the Forgotten Nation.It will take some time even to think about all this. Reagan is undoubtedly exhausted and stunned by the struggle and magnitude of his victory and will need time to rest and reflect on the consequences of the vote, and the implications his promises.
Meanwhile, there is much unfinished business that must be faced before the inauguration of President Reagan on Jan. 20. The Congress will have to deal with the appropriations bills it avoided for political reasons before the election. Carter will now have to deal, as a defeated candidate, with the release of the hostages in Tehran.
One thing is fairly clear about all this and has been dramatized by Reagan's victory. None of these problems can be resolved in ideological, personal or partisan terms. Certainly not by the arguments Reagan made in the campaign. Now that the election battle is over, the parties will have to unite to deal with the nation's problems.
Reagan himself put the issue quite starkly at the end of the campaign: He insisted that the nation was in more serious difficulties now, at home and abroad, than it was four years ago, and that the American people had lost confidence in the leadership of the nation.
What Reagan did not agree about however - and this is the critical difference - is that the problems of this revolution in the lives of nations, political parties and alliances could not really be resolved by the victory of one man or one party alone. It is clear that the problems now facing Reagan require a philosophy of cooperation rather than confrontation between the contending forces at home and abroad.
Obviously there has been a conservative sweep of opinion in the nation - not only against Carter but in the Congress with the defeat of such liberals as George McGovern of South Dakota and Birch Bayh of Indiana, but it does not follow from this that a Reagan administration can impose a dramatic conservative set of policies on a Congress still dominated by the Democrats.
Indeed, Reagan and his supporters may be terrified by the promises they have made in this campaign and after they get over their justified jubilation, be looking around for some way to bring the White House, the Congress, and the other separated principalities of the nation into some kind of an agreement on how to cooperate in the coming four years.
Source: The Washington Star - Wednesday, November 5th, 1980 - page A-21.
Below is the biographical information on editorial columnist James "Scotty" Reston:
Reston, James Barrett (Scotty Reston), 1909–95, American journalist, b. Clydebank, Scotland. His family emigrated to the United States in 1920. After working briefly for the Springfield (Ohio) Daily News, he joined the Associated Press in 1934. He moved to the London bureau of the New York Times in 1939, settling in New York in 1940, but taking a leave to establish a U.S. Office of War Information in London in 1942. Rejoining the Times, Reston was assigned to Washington, D.C., as national correspondent (1945), then diplomatic correspondent (1948) and bureau chief and columnist (1953).
Reston subsequently was associate editor of the New York Times (1964–68), executive editor (1968–69), and vice president (1969–74). He wrote a nationally syndicated column from 1974 until 1987, when he became a senior columnist, and retired two years later. Long the most powerful and influential journalist at the nation's most powerful and influential newspaper, Reston interviewed most of the world's leaders and wrote cogently about the leading events and issues of his time. He earned a journalistic reputation for insight, fair-mindedness, balance, humaneness, and wit, twice winning the Pulitzer Prize (1945, 1957) for national reporting. His books include Prelude to Victory (1942), The Artillery of the Press (1967), and Sketches in the Sand (1967). See his memoirs, Deadline (1991); biography by J. F. Stacks (2002).
Source: InfoPlease - James "Scotty" Reston
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Conceit blinds the pundit.
How the mighty did fall.
How wrong was the critic.
How poor the insight.
Such "fair-mindedness" and "balance".
How typical of the New York Times...
May God defend the Republic and her loyal servant - Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th President of the United States of America.
Hail to the Chief...
dvwjr
My how times have changed. Back then, some Democrats could be identified as "Liberals". Nowadays, the party has only Moderates.
I can see why JAMES "Scotty" RESTON is no longer working.
BwwaaaaaaaaHaaaaaaaaa!!! He couldn't have possibly been more wrong.
Why anybody decides to get their news from the NY Times is beyond me.
Actually James Reston is deceased.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/remember/remember_12-7.html
He worked a long time for the NY Slimes...
"James Reston died from cancer yesterday at the age of 86. He had retired from the "New York Times" only six years ago, after 50 years of reporting, writing, and serving as the paper's Washington Bureau Chief and Executive Editor"
Not surprising, when you read his pathetic 1980 election post mortem, that he found a home at the Times.
Notice the Republicans are always accused of bitter divisive politics...They say it so often people come to believe it...Biden did it again today , slamming Bush.
Anyone who watches what the dems, pundits ,lib media are saying know the hatred they exude...Listen to Soros, Hillary, Kennedy, Kerry , Dean, many dems in Congress. They divide.
Great post, thanks.
Curious, where did you find the Washington Star info.?
(As a native Washingtonian I used to deliver that paper waaay back when.)
OHH Man I have hear of Wash Star
BOY if this journalist is pinhead no wonder why he is no longer working as journalist
Here something you didn't know did you know that Wash Star employred future internet journalist named Matt Drudge as 7 year old news boy
Ah yes..."The Afternoon Paper" LOL
I was flinging them when Kennedy died and have the complete paper.....among others. Shows how old I am huh?
Of note.......Barry Goldwater, LBJ and J. Willard Marriott all subscribed to the Star....among others.
I also remember the Times Herald (bought buy the Post) and the Wash. Daily News which just died.
I'm from the Palisades area along MacArthur Blvd. near Arizona ave. if you're familiar with that area?
dvwjr
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