By Peter Hannaford on 9.29.08 @ 12:08AM
Do not compare Reagan and Ford in 1976 to Clinton and Obama in 2008.
Old political canards never die, and never seem to fade away.
Take "He didn't do enough," a vintage 1976 charge that Ronald
Reagan didn't give enough support to then-President Gerald Ford in
his fall campaign against Jimmy Carter.
On Fox's "The Beltway Boys" recently, Fred Barnes and Morton
Kondracke were amusing themselves over Bill Clinton's "campaigning"
for Barack Obama. They cited Clinton's statement to the press when
Obama visited him for lunch: "He's going to win handily" (thereby
raising the bar when Obama's poll numbers were dropping). They also
chuckled over Clinton's public utterances of admiration about Sarah
Palin.
Kondracke then spoke about the principle of "teamwork" in which
all party leaders are expected to work together for their ticket.
The implication was that Clinton was honoring this in the breach
and cited as a historical example, "Remember Reagan in 1976." Thus,
he renewed a canard cooked up by some of Ford's aides that Ronald
Reagan "hadn't done enough" to help the GOP ticket that
November.
When, on August 20, Michael Deaver and I returned with the
Reagans from the Republican National Convention in Kansas City, we
went to work on setting up Mr. Reagan's fall schedule (he was a
client of our firm and his office was inside our suite). Mike said
he had asked the Ford campaign to give him their Reagan requests
within three weeks because our office was being deluged with
requests for appearances and television spots from Republican
candidates for Congress and other offices.
Mike said, "I'm worried that the Ford people won't get their
requests in on time, that we'll have to go ahead with our
scheduling, and that they'll come to us at the last minute with a
handful of emergencies." He was right as it turned out.
Reagan campaigned in 25 states for the Republican ticket, but
the Ford campaign made few specific requests until near the end of
the campaign when they wanted him in a place he could not get to
one day without scrubbing several long-promised campaign
appearances for other candidates.
At the request of the Republican National Committee, Reagan
taped a number of television appearances on behalf of the Ford-Dole
ticket: a half-hour speech, a five-minute speech and several spots.
He also did, in one session, television spots for several dozen
Republican candidates, several of whom came to the studio that day
to appear on camera with Reagan.
About two weeks before the end of the campaign I was surprised
to see a newspaper story in which a Ford campaign aide was quoted
as saying Reagan hadn't "done enough" for the Ford-Dole ticket and
strongly implying that if Ford lost it would be Reagan's fault.
Mike called Stu Spencer on the Ford campaign to ask him to stop
aides from spreading such stories, but the damage had been done.
The canard was been metabolized by the media.
History will decide whether Bill Clinton's various statements
and actions will have added up to counter-campaigning for Barack
Obama. One thing I know for sure: Back in 1976, Ronald Reagan did
plenty for his party's ticket and he did it willingly and with the
earnestness for which he was famous.
topics:
Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Television
