Posted on 12/29/2006 1:23:24 AM PST by RWR8189
(Editor's note: The following op-ed essay was published on June 23, 2004.)
Imagine how different history would be if Ronald Reagan had won the 1976 New Hampshire Presidential primary instead of narrowly losing it to incumbent President Gerald Ford by barely 1 percent, as he did.
Ford's candidacy would have collapsed, and Reagan likely would have gone on to win the nomination. But 1976 was the first Presidential election after Watergate, and perhaps no Republican could have won that year. Losing to Jimmy Carter would have ended Reagan's political career, and he'd never have become President.
Reagan's strategy was to knock Ford out of the race by doing well in New Hampshire, just as Estes Kefauver had done to President Truman in 1952 and Gene McCarthy did to Lyndon Johnson in 1968.
Much of the state Republican establishment lined up behind Ford out of duty if not passion, but Reagan had the vocal support of Gov. Meldrim Thomson and The Union Leader Publisher William Loeb. Reagan's handlers counted on getting the votes of Thomson's conservative supporters, but they remembered Barry Goldwater's landslide defeat of just a dozen years before. They wanted Reagan to win the primary in a manner that would prove to the media and to Republicans nationwide that Reagan also appealed to moderates.
To this end, Reagan allowed only a limited role for the outspoken Thomson and tapped the more moderate Hugh Gregg as his state campaign manager. Thomson was permitted to appear with Reagan on only one of the 21 days Reagan campaigned in New Hampshire that primary season, and Thomson was left off Reagan's delegate list.
Meanwhile, Loeb published a staggering 60 pro-Reagan or anti-Ford editorials over the three-month primary season, which surely made it easier for Reagan to maintain fidelity to his 11th Commandment of not speaking ill of the President.
Reagan announced he was running in late November and made his first campaign visit to New Hampshire in early January. That first North Country swing included stops at Kennett High School in Conway and the Moultonborough Lions Club, among other places.
At midnight on primary day, the voters of Dixville Notch gathered to cast the first votes. A longtime Republican hand who worked for Ford that year once told me Dixville had been expected to go for Reagan, but an arrangement involving "a couple cases of booze" tipped the vote to Ford. Reagan carried the rest of Coos County though, and added wins in Belknap, Carroll and Hillsborough counties. He enjoyed a two-to-one victory in Manchester and won the majority of small towns in the state. Ford offset those losses by prevailing in Keene, Lebanon, Nashua, Concord, Portsmouth, Dover, Rochester and Claremont, which was enough to eke out a win by 1,587 votes statewide.
Holding an incumbent President to 50 percent of the vote should have been enough for Reagan to declare victory, but the Reagan campaign lost control of the expectations game. Gregg, who knew the Reagan campaign had a closely held internal poll suggesting Reagan was going to win by eight points, set the bar low by saying he expected Reagan to earn 40-45 percent of the vote. Thomson, who had been briefed on the poll but warned to keep quiet about it, publicly predicted Reagan would win with 55 percent. When Reagan came up short of that figure, he was declared the loser.
"Reagan would have won, I'm sure, if Thomson had kept his mouth shut. That's what killed us," Gregg told me a decade ago.
Others speculated that Gregg made a critical mistake in keeping Reagan out of New Hampshire in the closing days of the primary, giving up the opportunity to persuade late deciding voters. Indeed, a post-primary study conducted by the Ford campaign showed that voters who made up their minds in the last days of the campaign broke for the incumbent. Gregg defended his decision by arguing that hosting the candidate means the campaign organization puts its energy into staging events for the media instead of the more important activity of turning out supporters.
A month after New Hampshire, Reagan regrouped to defeat Ford in the North Carolina primary. It was the first time Ford, who hailed from a safe congressional district in Michigan, had ever lost at the polls. Many victories by Reagan in the South, Midwest, and Rockies followed. Heading into the convention in Kansas City, Reagan had denied Ford enough delegates to ensure a first-ballot nomination, and Reagan needed just 67 more votes to be nominated himself.
Sometimes a politician wins by losing. Reagan's defeat in New Hampshire cost him his momentum, but it also meant he did not become the nominee who lost to Carter that fall. Instead, he survived politically to return to New Hampshire and get it right four years later, and what a difference that made.
-- Fergus Cullen is a Union Leader columnist. He lives in Wolfeboro and can be reached at ferguscullen@aol.com.
If Reagan was never elected, the Soviet Union could still exist today and the genie of Islamofascism would be locked for several more decades.
Great post!
The obvious follow-up question/speculation to this story is: Who would have faced (and likely beaten) Carter in 1980? If not Reagan, then WHO?
If you want a handy tip for causing a liberal to explode, wait until they start talking about "religion in politics," then remind them about how CARTER wore his religion on his sleeve 24/7 throughout that campaign and his presidency...and it was just fine with the libs then, since this "man of God" was the solution to the eeeevil Nixon.
George Bush was still itching to get into politics at the time.
Here is my gift to you. It is one of the coolest sites I ever stumbled onto:
http://livingroomcandidate.movingimage.us/index.php
Choose a year on the left hand side, then click on it and when that year pops up, click on any picture on the right-hand side and watch the corresponding Presidential campaign ad from that year. It is addictive. Windows media player works great.
It would've been Reagan's honor again in 1980, had the race been close in '76. I believe it was inevitable for Reagan to reach the White House, but '76 was simply not the year, especially given the radical Congress that would be in place, one that would've prevented him from being able to enact anything had he won that contest.
GOD works in mysterious and wondrous ways!
Interesting post but I think the premise of the article is wrong.
I remember an article (in Scientific American, no less!) about Arrow's theorem where the line-up Ford/Reagan/Carter was used to illustrate one paradox.
Ford beat Reagan, Carter beat Ford, but according to polls at the time Reagan would have beaten Carter. IIRC this article was published a year or so after Carter's win, thus before Carter's landslide loss to Reagan in -80.
Of course recollections of polls are not the same as real votes, but again as far as I remember the general feeling at the time was that Reagan would have had a much better chance of beating Carter than Ford did.
I liked Ford, but I loved Reagan.
It's a pleasure just to go look at The Gipper's campaign commercials!
Well, for one thing... no Department of Education.
I doubt it. Carter would have had to debate Reagan, probably more than once. This would have hurt him because Carter had a mediocre record as governor. Also, I believe Reagan would have carried Texas and perhaps the Carolina's.
Genie of islamofascism was uncorked by soviet afghan invasion [which Reagan with the Congress of the time would not be able to prevent]. Yes, he could have kept a shah in a bit longer. Thus your guess is pretty iffy.
Wow. Historical political ads online. That's going to eat up major portions of my leisure time. Cool stuff.
Note that they chose the micro-second "RATS" single frame as their screen grab for George W. Bush's 2000 health care ad.
I love the Ads GHWB ran against Dukakis in 1988. Devastating stuff.
I prefer to think about what would have happened if Reagan beat Carter in 1976. Without the Carter downturn in US military capability and the willingness to use force, the Soviets would never have ventured into Afghanistan, the Islamic Revolution in Iran would not have happened, and the Soviets would have gotten their butts kicked in Central America, right out of the gate.
On the downside, without the disasterous invasion of Afghanistan, the Soviet Union might have lasted another 20 years...
Agreed. We were doomed to have a Democrat for at least one term. This may face us again in 2008 because of Iraq. Unless there is an extremely good Republican candidate, we may be doomed again to have a Democrat president for at least one term. Unfortunately Republican presidents must then fix the messes made by Democrat presidents. But then Republicans get blamed for the costs of those repairs or for not making enough repairs.
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