Winning One for the Gipper

Let’s get one thing straight at the start—the Republican race was not “volatile.” This adjective perfectly describes the coverage of the campaign. It was the buzz-word of redfaced pollsters, the cant of two-faced press secretaries, the indispensable crutch of dazed reporters calling in their copy from fetal crouches in the phone booths of a hundred anonymous hotels—all of whom changed their minds, rechanged them, and changed them again. It doesn’t describe the campaign itself, in which Ronald Reagan led from start to finish. He had the principles, the name, the record, the legitimacy. The race was his to lose. He didn’t.

The only other man with a comparably “just” claim on the nomination was former President Ford. Yet Ford shared the same delusion that nourished the word “volatile”—the fantasy that all the announced candidates were somehow equal. Ford accordingly hoped for a deadlocked convention, to which he could then present himself as the King over the Water. But by the time it became obvious that Reagan’s opponents had flagged, it was too late for Ford to challenge Reagan one on one.

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

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Presidential Election

Let’s get one thing straight at the start—the Republican race was not “volatile.” This adjective perfectly describes the coverage of the campaign. It was the buzz-word of redfaced pollsters, the cant of two-faced press secretaries, the indispensable crutch of dazed reporters calling in their copy from fetal crouches in the phone booths of a hundred anonymous hotels—all of whom changed their minds, rechanged them, and changed them again. It doesn’t describe the campaign itself, in which Ronald Reagan led from start to finish. He had the principles, the name, the record, the legitimacy. The race was his to lose. He didn’t.

The only other man with a comparably “just” claim on the nomination was former President Ford. Yet Ford shared the same delusion that nourished the word “volatile”—the fantasy that all the announced candidates were somehow equal. Ford accordingly hoped for a deadlocked convention, to which he could then present himself as the King over the Water. But by the time it became obvious that Reagan’s opponents had flagged, it was too late for Ford to challenge Reagan one on one.