1980 Republican National Convention
Following the Moscow Olympics, the Republicans would come to gather in Detroit, Michigan, for their 1980 convention, where Ronald Reagan was to receive the coronation he had hoped for four years earlier during his insurgency against Gerald Ford. The site of Detroit, in Ford's home state and heartland of the embattled and struggling US automotive sector, played to Reagan's themes of looking to America's recent past for its future resurgence, but like the structural upheavals that ailed the car industry of the Motor City, turbulence and change lay ahead for the GOP.
The convention occurred a little less than a month after the Democrats had nominated the Carey-Askew ticket in New York, which had given both the Reagan team and the establishment-flavored strategists who had skeptically come around to him at the RNC time to observe Carey's general election campaign and start to plan for how to counter it. The headwinds were bad, with the deep recession, twelve years of GOP control of the White House and a polarizing nominee, and so the choice of Vice President began to consume the convention. Even in the days ahead of the convention, in a hotel room at the Renaissance Center's Detroit Plaza Hotel near the Joe Louis Arena, Reagan and his chief aides were still at loggerheads over who to pick. Reagan himself was fairly agnostic but felt burned by his attempt in the past few weeks to mend fences with John Connally, who had brusquely rejected overtures to serve as ticket-mate due to his hard feelings over the harsh attacks regarding his corruption trial the Reagan camp had used to put him away in the home stretch of the primary. This led to a situation where Reagan was open to his advisers' suggestions but also felt compelled to shoot holes in them, always fidgety and anxious that he was making the wrong move.
The establishment side was not particularly helpful in that regard. Ford decidedly disliked Reagan, with considerable sour grapes over 1976, and his opposition to Reaganism was more personal than political. Indeed, Ford's preferred choice for Vice President was a Michigander - Guy Vander Jagt, a conservative Congressman from the western part of the state who gave the convention's keynote speech without notes and led Reagan to quip, "How do I follow that?" RNC Chairman Bill Brock, however, was a fierce partisan of his fellow Tennessean, Senate Minority Leader Howard Baker, whom he believed could give a potential Reagan administration a leg up on Capitol Hill with his deep connections and also appeal to the "alienated South," coining the term "Southern alienation" for the first time, a concept that would come to define the next two decades of Southern politics.
Reagan was intrigued by Baker, but waffled on the pick. His personal preference as a backup to Connally, New York Congressman Jack Kemp, was a rock-ribbed conservative whom he had a deep personal relationship with and who would strike at the heart of Carey's home state, in the same way Nixon had picked Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. in 1960 to go on offense in New England. Kemp, however, brought little ideological balance to the ticket, had been subject for close to a decade to a whisper campaign about his alleged secret homosexual predilections and did little to boost Reagan's foreign policy credibility, which was seen as a bigger Achilles heel for him than his right-wing domestic prescriptions
and an opportunity to go on offense against the two Governors Carey-Askew. With Carey riding high in the polls - one post-DNC poll had Carey winning by close to 20 points, a number that was sure to come back to Earth but still highly alarming - Reagan's handlers declared to the candidate on the third day of the convention that what they needed was a "game changer" who could buff up his international credentials and also appeal to moderates, particularly women, who were leery of what exactly a President Reagan might entail. Baker was a safe but uninspired choice, Vander Jagt a solid man but too obscure, and Kemp too risky. With the challenge ahead, it was time to go for broke with a candidate who brought nothing but regional, ideological, demographic and credential upside - Ed Rollins pitched Reagan on his suggestion, and after a few hours Reagan came around to it and made the call.
Anne Armstrong, the Ford administration's UN Ambassador and longstanding diplomat and Presidential advisor, had been in Detroit for the convention but had not even had a speaking slot scheduled. However, she had been the keynote speaker at the 1972 Convention and had been part of a small draft effort to be put on the ticket with Ford four years later before Dole won out, and Ford himself later expressed that she'd have been a better choice than the dour and dull Dole. When Ford heard from Rollins and other RNC operatives that Armstrong was Reagan's choice, he himself felt relieved, and when he gave his brief address to the convention pledging his support for Reagan and working to mend the broken fences within the party, he blurted out "I look forward to campaigning for the Reagan-Armstrong ticket this fall!"
The inadvertent scoop annoyed Reagan but he had made his choice, and Armstrong came up to the podium with Reagan as the nominee made his acceptance speech. The former Governor of California made a deliberate effort to pivot from his hard-edged primary rhetoric, speaking of "a land of opportunity for all," a "shining city on a hill," and "a new morning for America." Nancy Reagan, not known for her public displays of emotion, eagerly hugged Armstrong and history was made - for the first time in history, a woman would stand on a major national ticket. The delegates buzzed with excitement as Reagan winked at the end of the speech and bellowed, "Now, let's go win just one for the Gipper!"
Outside the convention, the reaction was different. The media was abuzz with the choice of Armstrong but the narrative had been set at the start of the convention with Ted Koppel's famous "the GOP limping into Detroit" remark, and some pondered whether Armstrong's selection was a sign of desperation by the Reagan campaign, despite the considerable and substantive resume she brought, and if the Reagan campaign would be hamstrung by sexism in the electorate that would be concerned by a woman potentially being President, particularly with the reality that a victorious Reagan would be the oldest President on inauguration day in history. Other themes from the convention were unhelpful, too - Congressman Phil Crane had given an invective-laden speech denouncing social liberalism generally and the ERA specifically to great controversy, and Vice President Dole's speech had been gruff and described Carey as "the nominee of crime-ridden, decaying Democrat cities," calling back to his unpopular remarks in the 1976 debates about "Democrat wars" that had nearly cost Ford the election.
Nonetheless, despite the mixed reaction to the GOP pageantry in Detroit, the Republicans had their man - and their woman - for what promised to be an unforgettable fall campaign ahead...
