Transcript: Chapter 08

Narrator: In his bid for the 1976 Republican nomination, Reagan faced enormous odds. He was taking on President Gerald Ford, and his own Republican party. He lost to Ford in New Hampshire, and kept on losing.

Martin Anderson: I think that that is a point in time, at least in my ... at least in my mind, when you really saw the essence of Reagan's character in its full flower. At that time if I recall correctly, the campaign was basically considered dead in the water. He had just lost five straight presidential primaries to President Ford. Maybe most importantly we were about two million dollars in debt.

Reporter: Does it change significantly any of the political plans of yours?

Reagan: No, not a bit. I'm going to run as hard as I can and figure I'm behind.

Anderson: And the question was should we quit. And I think the general attitude was, it's not should we? It's do we have any choice? And we had this discussion, and the consensus was, certainly you have to quit. And Reagan was just sitting there listening to this. "And I'm telling you right now," and he was looking at everybody in the room, "that I am going to run in every single primary from here to the convention even if I lose every single one."

Narrator: Reagan searched for an issue to ignite his campaign.

Reagan: Ladies and gentlemen, I'm deeply concerned about our defense posture. Despite the assurances of Dr. Kissinger and Mr. Ford, the United States is no longer the first military power on earth. The Soviet army is now twice the size of ours. Russia's annual investment in weapons, in strategic, strategic, and conventional, now runs some 50 percent ahead of ours. Under Kissinger and Ford, this nation's become number two in military power in a world where it's dangerous, if not fatal, to be second best.

Narrator: Televised repeatedly on the eve of the North Carolina primary, Reagan's warning of a new Communist menace brought him his first victory.

As the primaries moved to the more conservative South and West, the campaign gained momentum.

Reagan: We are ahead of our projections at this time, where we thought we would be. And many people say well you know is that just whistling past the graveyard or something. No, we're ahead to the extent that recently for the first time I said I believe that there was a very great possibility if not probability that I could go to the convention with enough delegates in advance to win on the first ballot.

Michael Deaver: After winning some of those primaries, none of us ever thought that it was out of our reach, something would happen that would turn that convention. And I think Reagan believed that.

Delegate: Madame chairman, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, home of the Phillies and the Pirates, casts ten votes for Governor Reagan and 93 votes for Gerald Ford.

Delegate: Twenty votes for Gerald R. Ford.

Ron Reagan: Ford had given his acceptance speech, um, and he then turned to the sky box where we were, where my father was, and ... and sort of beckoned my father to... to come down. I think he was conscious of the fact that nearly 50 percent of the people in the hall, maybe even more, really would have preferred Ronald Reagan to be the candidate.

Nancy Reagan: The response of those delegates was something unbelievable, just unbelievable. And there we were in this box way back in the back and we stood and he kept doing this to them, to tell them to sit down, they never would sit down. They wouldn't stop yelling and yelling for him and speech, speech. I just hoped that that Ronnie had something that he wanted to say because he said to me, as we were running, we didn't expect to be up in the stage and as we were running to get there, he said, I haven't the foggiest idea of what I'm going to say.

Reagan: If I could just take a moment. I had an assignment the other day. Someone asked me to write a letter for a time capsule that is going to be opened in Los Angeles 100 years from now. We live in a world in which the great powers have poised and aimed at each other horrible missiles of destruction, nuclear weapons that can in a matter of minutes arrive at each other's country and destroy virtually the civilized world we live in.

And suddenly it dawned on me those who would read this letter 100 years from now will know whether those missiles were fired. They will know whether we met our challenge. Whether they have the freedoms that we have known up until now will depend on what we do here ... Mr. President

Morris: The power of that speech was extraordinary. And you can just feel throughout the auditorium the palpable sense amongst the delegates that we've nominated the wrong guy.

Narrator: The next day Reagan bid farewell to his campaign staff.

Reagan: Sure, there's a disappointment in what happened, but the cause, the cause goes on. [Applause] Don't get cynical. Don't get cynical because look at yourselves and what you were willing to do, and recognize that there are millions and millions of Americans out there that want what you want, that want it to be that way, that want it to be a shining city on a hill.

Martin Anderson: On the plane going back, I went over, I had a convention ticket, and I asked him if he'd sign it as a souvenir. And what he wrote was, "We fought, we dreamed, and the dream is still with us." And looking back on it now, he never gave up, just kept right on going. It was, it was, you know, this incredible crushing defeat. And it didn't crush him.

He just came back up shook his head and said, OK, what's next. And that began the campaign for the year 1980.

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