Reagan just could not stand by and allow any of these kinds of people to run the country into the ground.
I imagine that somewhere, someplace, Ronald Reagan is thinking about it again—and I hope this book can breathe some new life into an ageless debate.
What would Reagan do? Let the campaign begin…
Acknowledgements
While this book is a work of fiction, all quotations attributed to Ronald Reagan are his own, with a few slight modifications to make them fit the narrative. The same goes for the quotations from all other candidates, including those of President Obama. Outside of the quoted material, events are fictionalized according to my predictions, based on past events and future conditions.
I need to give a big shout-out to Craig Shirley, whose remarkable account of Reagan’s 1980 campaign, Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America (Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2009), was integral in the planning of the book. The narrative of the 1980 Reagan-Carter campaign provided an outline for the Reagan-Obama 2012 campaign.
Prologue
September 4, 2008
It was supposed to be the moment that marked the end of the irrepressible Ronald Reagan.
As Senator John McCain stood on the stage of the Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota, ready to accept the Republican Party’s nomination for President of the United States, many in the crowd of GOP faithfuls wondered if this would be the last time they would lay eyes on Reagan. It was an inescapable fact—Father Time was catching up to him. Having lost the Republican primary twice before, Reagan would be sixty-nine years old by the 2012 election. Many in the media already had California’s former governor dead and buried. The Drudge Report had run a typical headline, “Into the Sunset,” below a picture of Reagan galloping off on horseback. Even the right-leaning Wall Street Journal was adding to the discussion, editorializing that Reagan was finished, too old to consider another run.
Reagan’s loss to McCain had demoralized the Conservative base. After having lost the opportunity to retake the Republican Party for the first time since 1964 by only a few dozen votes, they were now forced to suffer the ultimate indignity—a front row seat to a John McCain victory lap:
“I’m going to fight for my cause every day as your president,” McCain said. “I’m going to fight to make sure every American has every reason to thank God, as I thank him, that I’m an American, a proud citizen of the greatest country on Earth. And with hard work—with hard work, strong faith, and a little courage, great things are always within our reach.
“Fight for what’s right for our country. Fight for the ideals and character of a free people,” McCain roared. “Fight! Fight! Fight!” he screamed, mechanically pounding his fist on the podium.
It was the best speech of McCain’s career and he knew it, but throughout the cheers, the soft downpour of red, white, and blue confetti, and the miles and miles of bunting, bitterness clung to the air. After all, it was Reagan, not McCain, who had won the popular vote, 50.7% to 49.3%. The results were an open sore that McCain couldn’t resist scratching.
“Look around. Most of those grinning faces would rather stick their pitchforks in my back than see me become president,” McCain muttered through a terse smile as his wife Cindy greeted him on stage.
After one of the tightest nomination battles in history, McCain had barely managed to run the clock out on Reagan’s furious fourth quarter rally, winning by a meager fifty-seven delegates. Had the battle gone to a second balloting, Reagan would have likely won the GOP nomination, as delegates in states like North Carolina and Kentucky would have been able to vote for Reagan, who was their true preference.
In McCain, the GOP had put forward the centrist, moderate candidate long desired by the Republican establishment, fearing that a Reagan victory would have alienated the Independent and Moderate vote, thus plummeting Republicans back into the post-Nixon dark ages of everlasting minority status. A New York Times editorial captured the party leaders’ mood:
There is one way, it seems to us, that the Republicans could dig their own political grave for 2008 as surely as anything can be done in American politics. That is by capitulating to the far right of the party that forms the core support of Governor Reagan in his quest for the nomination. To put it in the crudest political terms, the far right of the GOP has no place to go; yet the nomination of Governor Reagan to the presidency (or, for that matter, the vice-presidency on a McCain ticket) would surely alienate the most important centrist and liberal segments of the Republican Party, without whose support it could not conceivably achieve national success.
The grueling fight for the hearts and minds of the Republican Party had been as divisive as any in recent memory, splitting the party into two warring factions. McCain and Reagan had publicly laughed off all talk of party dissension, but behind the scenes McCain, “The Maverick,” was furiously scrambling to win over the party’s right wing.
“This is cannibalism,” he had fumed to staffers, following an especially contentious interview on The Laura Ingraham Show after being pressed on the immigration bill he had co-sponsored with Ted Kennedy.
If it wasn’t Laura Ingraham, it was Rush Limbaugh. If it wasn’t Sean Hannity, it was Matt Drudge. To John McCain, it seemed like there was always a conservative boogieman plotting to keep his campaign from honestly connecting with the party’s right flank. It was not just Fox News or talk radio that raised McCain’s ire. Over the course of the campaign he had developed a deeply personal animosity for Reagan, believing that that during the campaign Reagan had intentionally distorted McCain’s record, especially on immigration.
“It’s dishonest and he knows it. I’m not for amnesty now. I’ve never been for amnesty,” McCain had vented to Juan Williams in a National Public Radio interview on August 4. “But what can we expect? My friend from California is a paid actor and knows how to play a role.”
Further escalating tensions, two days before the convention a group of economic conservatives, spearheaded by Reagan, had managed to insert language into the party platform that direct slapped at McCain’s support of big-government bailouts: “We do not support government bailouts of private institutions… Government interference in the markets exacerbates problems in the marketplace and causes the free market to take longer to correct itself.”
Asked about the language, instead of backing down, Reagan had decided to take yet another swipe at McCain and President Bush. “I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as the law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts,” Reagan had told supports outside the convention hall.
McCain was still fuming. He believed Reagan was focused less on what was best for the party and more on settling old scores. McCain’s advisors had pushed hard for a unity ticket, but neither candidate would have it. Both Reagan and, especially, Mrs. Reagan could hardly stand to be in the same room with McCain.
As the turmoil swirled, rumors had persisted that Democratic nominee Barack Obama would attempt to court disaffected Reagan loyalists with his D.C. outsider image, looking to reform the way government worked. As the Republican Party hemorrhaged, McCain knew that any chance of a victory in the general election would rely on his ability to stop the bleeding, and fast.
Thus, the night he received the nod,
