Lyn Nofziger: An Appreciation By Nicholas Thimmesch
Source:
https://spectator.org/47213_lyn-nofziger-appreciation/
March 29, 2006, 4:07 AM
Lyn Nofziger, who passed away from cancer Monday at his longtime home in the Washington suburb of Falls Church, Virginia, was the epitome of the cliche, “Salt of the earth.” Rumpled, cantankerous, outspoken, and yet sublime, Nofziger was a witness with a front row seat to both Reagan Revolutions, the first one that took place in the 1960s and ’70s on Lyn’s native soil, California, and the second one that took place on the national and then international stage in the 1980s.
It was Nofziger who fielded reporters’ frantic questions about a gravely wounded Reagan after John Hinckley nearly took his life shortly after becoming president. It was Nofziger who knew enough about Reagan’s Rock of Gibraltar, Nancy, to never cross her. And it was Nofziger who, in his latter years, never shied away from challenging a conservative movement that had lost its Reagan values to return to those rock bed principles.
Late last year, Nofziger took President Bush to task in his highly amusing “Musings” blog: “I am one of thousands of Americans who is on what used to be called the president’s Christmas card list. As a result, a card from George and Laura arrived in my mail today. Needles to say, I was pleased and honored. After opening it, I was and am, needless to say, also disappointed. The card was not a Christmas card; it was a holiday card.”
A confounded Nofziger continued: “Inside there was no mention of Christmas. Instead, it says, ‘With best wishes for a holiday season of hope and happiness in 2005.’
“What a shame,” Nofziger mused, “that, apparently for political reasons, a president who professes to be a strong Christian turns his back on the celebration of his Savior’s birth because he doesn’t wish to offend anyone — except maybe his fellow Christians.”
Right up to the end, when Lyn was dying of the very disease that had consumed his 38-year-old daughter, he was willing, despite his condition, to tell me the story of that revolution and how it has been derailed. Lyn Nofziger, the professional spokesman, right to the very end.
NOFZIGER CAME TO REAGAN as so many have, by circumstance and happenstance, but like many who followed one of our nation’s greatest leaders, he was not just a conservative, he was a “Reagan conservative.”
As a national political reporter for Copley News Service in the 1960s, Nofziger was even then a rare commodity: a Republican reporter. When owner Jim Copley approached and finally convinced Nofziger after failed attempts to get him on board the Reagan mule train, Nofziger thought the former actor turned political activist would lose California’s Republican gubernatorial primary in 1966 and be done with it: he was wrong. Reagan went on to win the nomination and then the governorship. Whether Nofziger knew it or not then, he was going to become a Reaganite for life and be a critical part of one of the most successful political careers in American politics.
Nofziger stayed with Reagan, through the “Kitchen Cabinet” days, through the Citizens for the Republic days, through the landslide presidential victory in 1980 and the resulting administration. Nofziger, unlike so many Republicans of late, stayed with Reagan beyond his death in 2004 by staying true to the conservative principles that made both Reagan and America great in the 1980s.
Reagan’s affection for Lyn Nofziger might best be found in his use of the name “Lynwood” for him. Nofziger told interviewers Stephen Knott and Russell Riley in their brilliant 2003 interview for the Miller Center for Public Affairs — which I highly recommend Reaganites and Lynites read — it was just something Reagan did:
“You’ve mentioned the fact that he always called you Lynwood. What was that? Did you ever attempt to straighten him out on that front?” asked Knott and Riley.
Nofziger replied: “No, he called me Lynwood. He did it time after time after time. My name is Franklyn, which I hate, and I’ve never gone by it. I know that when someone calls me Franklin, that they don’t know me. I don’t know. I guess it was kind of a term of affection.”
Nofziger also spoke to the notion that there was a “veil” that surrounded Ronald Reagan:
“There was, I always felt — less as I got used to it — but I always felt that no matter how cordial he was, how congenial he was, and how well you got along, there was always something there between him and you. I couldn’t put a finger on it, but you just never felt that you got really next to him. I would talk to other people who felt the same way, and Nancy never said this to me, but I’m told Nancy said the same thing.”
Many accounts of Nancy Reagan’s — some even attributed, perhaps falsely, to Nofziger — overbearing protectiveness of her husband portray a woman who viewed people around Reagan as either helping or hurting him. But it was an often misunderstood Nancy Reagan who afforded Nofziger what was perhaps his best moment before the press, when she passed along to him Reagan’s quip after the Hinckley shooting, “Honey, I forgot to duck.” Nofziger’s conveyance of that anecdote to the media helped bring humor and hope to a shocked American public: it was why he was perhaps the finest spokesman a political figure could ever want to have.
ALSO TO BE FOUND AMONG Lyn Nofziger’s “Musings” was something that related to another one of my greatest admirations for Lyn: his common sense sensibility, even if it was contraire to the current conventional conservatism. As I mentioned, Lyn’s daughter died a painful death from cancer, one in which she found little relief from mainstream medicine’s traditional medication. In a Washington Post in the late 1990s, Nofziger wrote about something that did work:
When our daughter was undergoing chemotherapy for lymph cancer, she was sick and vomiting constantly as a result of her treatments. No legal drugs, including Marinol, helped her.
We finally turned to marijuana. With it, she kept her food down, was comfortable and even gained weight. Those who say Marinol and other drugs are satisfactory substitutes for marijuana may be right in some cases but certainly not in all cases. If doctors can prescribe morphine and other addictive medicines, it makes no sense to deny marijuana to sick and dying patients when it can be provided on a carefully controlled, prescription basis.
Nofziger, who valiantly agreed to participate in a 2002 Capitol Hill news conference in support of Congressman Barney Frank’s “State’s Rights to Medical Marijuana Act” legislation, took to task a “compassionate conservative” Bush over the issue:
“Next week I will participate in a news conference that calls for an end to federal persecution of persons using or supplying marijuana for medicinal purposes in states where law permits it.”
Addressing the president, who as a candidate, seemingly supported states’ rights when it came to medical marijuana, Nofziger wrote:
“It seems to me that the very definition of compassionate conservatism should convince President Bush to support legislation that would allow states to legalize the use of marijuana for medical purposes. In fact, if the president understands the meaning of those two words (‘compassionate conservative’) not to support Frank is to reject the philosophy for which he says he stands and on which he ran for president.”
Lyn Nofziger: a conservative, a true conservative, a Reagan conservative to the very end.
Lyn was a stand up guy in a town full of men who sit down when they urinate: he will be sorely missed.
Michael Deaver, Reagan’s master image-maker, dies at 69 By Douglass K. Daniel
Source:
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/michael-deaver-reagans-master-image-maker-dies-at-69/
August 19, 2007
WASHINGTON — Michael Deaver, a close adviser to Ronald Reagan who directed the president’s picturesque and symbolic public appearances, died Saturday. He was 69.
Mr. Deaver, who had pancreatic cancer, died at his home in Bethesda, Md., according to a statement from the Deaver family that was issued by Edelman, the public-relations firm he served as vice chairman.
Mr. Deaver was celebrated and scorned as an expert at media manipulation for focusing on how the president looked as much as what the president said. Reagan’s chief choreographer for public events, Mr. Deaver protected the commander in chief’s image and enhanced it with a flair for choosing just the right settings, poses and camera angles.
“I’ve always said the only thing I did is light him well,” Mr. Deaver told the Los Angeles Times in 2001. “My job was filling up the space around the head. I didn’t make Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan made me.”
Mr. Deaver’s image suffered a setback in 1987. He was convicted on three of five counts of perjury stemming from statements to a congressional subcommittee and a federal grand jury investigating his lobbying activities with administration officials.
He blamed alcoholism for lapses in memory and judgment. He was sentenced to three years’ probation and fined $100,000 as well as ordered to perform 1,500 hours of public service.
When the subject of a pardon surfaced in Reagan’s final days in office in 1989, the president noted that Mr. Deaver had indicated he would not accept one, according to Reagan’s diary.
Mr. Deaver’s family said in the statement Saturday that he fought his cancer “with the courage, grace and good spirit that he carried throughout his life. … In the end, he stood as the model of a man who not only loved life, but lived life right, one day at a time.”
Former first lady Nancy Reagan said in a statement that Mr. Deaver “was the closest of friends to both Ronnie and me in many ways, and he was like a son to Ronnie.” She added, “We met great challenges together. … I will miss Mike terribly.”
Mr. Deaver brought a public-relations background and a long association with Reagan to his work as White House deputy chief of staff from 1981-85. He and top Reagan advisers Edwin Meese and James Baker were known as “the troika” that, in effect, managed the presidency.
Mr. Deaver, however, was concerned more with Reagan’s image than his policies. He also was responsible for the president’s schedule and security, and he served as a liaison for family matters.
To exert as much control as possible, Mr. Deaver steered the president away from reporters when he could, instead arranging Reagan in poses and settings that conveyed visually the message of the moment. Presidential news conferences were a rarity, which suited an actor-turned-politician who was at his best when using a script.
Meese said Mr. Deaver “had great imagination, great innovation.”
A spokesman for President Bush, Gordon Johndroe, said Mr. Deaver “knew the importance in our democracy of communicating with the American people, and he will be missed.”
Mr. Deaver was born April 11, 1938, in Bakersfield, Calif., the son of a Shell Oil distributor. He played piano in bars while studying political science at San Jose State College. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1960.
He worked for IBM and served in the Air Force. An interest in politics later led him to the Santa Clara County Republican Party. Hired as its executive director, he soon was organizing political campaigns for GOP candidates.
Mr. Deaver’s work on behalf of the Reagans began when he joined the gubernatorial staff in Sacramento after Reagan’s election in 1966. He became a detail-oriented aide focused on helping the governor run a smooth day-to-day schedule.
Mr. Deaver formed a company after Reagan left the state capital — the former governor and presidential aspirant was his chief client — and then joined Reagan in Washington after his 1980 election.
Among the president’s advisers, Mr. Deaver was the closest to Nancy Reagan. But their relationship suffered after his 1987 convictions and criticism that he was “cashing in” on his ties to the White House. “Somewhere along the line in Washington, Mike Deaver went off track and caught a bad case of Potomac fever,” she wrote.
Time eventually repaired their friendship, and Mr. Deaver spoke with the former first lady nearly every week for years.
He wrote four books touching on his White House years and his relationship with the Reagans.
Survivors include his wife, Carolyn, whom he met while they were staffers for the Reagan administration in Sacramento. They had two children, Amanda Deaver, of Washington, and Blair Deaver of Bend, Ore.
Martin Anderson: Reagan Adviser and Man for Many Seasons By Lou Cannon
Source:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/01/06/martin_anderson_reagan_adviser_and_man_for_many_seasons_125148.html
January 06, 2015
Martin Anderson, an economist and adviser to three presidents who helped explain economic policy to Ronald Reagan and Reagan to the world, died last week at his home in Portola Valley, Calif., after an influential career. He was 78.
As a special assistant to President Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1971, Anderson is credited with drawing up the proposal that led to the end of military conscription in the United States. He also brought into government economist Alan Greenspan, who, like Anderson, was an adherent of iconoclastic free-market philosopher Ayn Rand.
Anderson left the Nixon administration to become a fellow at the Hoover Institution, a prominent conservative think tank at Stanford University. He took periodic leaves to help Reagan in his 1976 and 1980 presidential campaigns and served as White House director of policy development in the first year of the Reagan presidency. Anderson wrote about Reagan’s first term in a 1988 book, “Revolution: The Reagan Legacy.”
Together with his wife and fellow economist Annelise Graebner Anderson and Kiron K. Skinner, Martin Anderson made an important historical contribution in editing collections of Reagan’s writings and voluminous correspondence with ordinary Americans: “Reagan, In His Own Hand” (2001) and “Reagan: A Life in Letters” (2003). These books demonstrated Reagan’s pithy insights and sense of country better than any political argument ever did.
The Andersons in 2009 wrote “Reagan’s Secret War: The Untold Story of His Fight to Save the World from Nuclear Disaster,” which focused on Reagan’s efforts to develop a missile shield to protect the nation from nuclear attack and ultimately to abolish nuclear weapons.
Martin Anderson was present at the incident that led to Reagan’s epiphany on missile defense. The two men toured the headquarters of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) at Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado on July 31, 1979. Reagan was shown how radar could track an incoming missile but not stop it. “We have spent all that money and have all that equipment, and there is nothing we can do to prevent a nuclear missile from hitting us,” Reagan said on their flight home to Los Angeles, Anderson recounted in “Revolution.”
Although the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) that Reagan proposed as president was derided by many scientists as unworkable, it helped bring the Soviets to the bargaining table, where Reagan and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev agreed on the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty of 1987 that became the template for future arms agreements between the United States and Russia.
Anderson continued to the end of his days to advocate U.S. missile defense, now focused on intercepting nuclear warheads launched by terrorists or a rogue nation.
During the Reagan presidency, Anderson served as an effective go-between for Reagan and Paul Volcker, the blunt-spoken chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Volcker, appointed by President Jimmy Carter, was distrusted by many Republicans and had been bureaucratically denied a White House pass. He wrote Anderson in complaint. Anderson took the letter to Reagan, who saw to it that Volcker got his pass.
More important, Reagan and Volcker became allies in the Fed chairman’s efforts to curb runaway inflation. The policy worked, leading to a record 90 consecutive months of economic growth after a brief but deep recession.
During the 1980 presidential campaign, which I covered for The Washington Post, Anderson played a constructive role. Reagan had loads of economic advice in this campaign, but it went off in different directions. Greenspan and Anderson helped Reagan formulate a coherent policy from conflicting advice given by traditional and supply-side economists. Reagan shortened it into a punchy narration: “Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.”
I had many dealings with Anderson during the campaign, when he was in the White House and when I was writing my biographies of Reagan, and much respected him for his insights and honesty. When he had complaints about something I had written, he typically registered them with courtly good humor. More than once, he helped me understand an economic issue with which I was struggling. He was alert for verbal missteps by Reagan, of which there were several in both the 1976 and 1980 campaigns. In 1980 Anderson came up with an inventive explanation to a New York Times reporter who had pointed out various Reagan errors. The problem, Anderson explained blithely, was that Reagan used hundreds of examples in his speeches. “Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, things checked out, but sometimes the source was wrong,” Anderson said.
Overall, Anderson was more adept at policy advice than political in-fighting. After internal disputes in 1982, he left the Reagan administration, where he had been a success as policy development director, and returned to Hoover, where in 1998 he was named the Keith and Jan Hurlbut senior fellow. In my view the White House never did find an adequate replacement for Anderson as domestic policy chief.
Anderson continued an active life after leaving the administration. One of his projects was a book, “Imposters in the Temple,” drawing from his early experience as a 28-year-old tenured professor of finance at Columbia University to explore what he saw as left-leaning instruction in higher education.
He was a member of the President’s General Advisory Committee on Arms Control from 1987 to 1992, beginning under Reagan and continuing into the presidency of George H.W. Bush. He was also for five years a trustee of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.
Citing his service, Nancy Reagan issued a statement lauding him and his wife, which concluded: “Loyal men like Martin Anderson come along very rarely in one’s life, and I will miss him terribly.”
For all the good he did as a presidential adviser, it was as writer and editor that Anderson most made his mark.
The Hoover Institution Press will next month publish Anderson’s final book, co-authored with Annelise Anderson, “Ronald Reagan: Decisions of Greatness.” I’ll be at the front of the line to read it.
Funeral services are pending at Alta Mesa Funeral Home in Palo Alto.
Lou Cannon worked 26 years for The Washington Post and is the author of “President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime.”
Peter Hannaford -- Reagan Aide and Fast Friend By Craig Shirley
Source:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/09/11/peter_hannaford--reagan_aide_and_fast_friend.html#!
September 11, 2015
It is a truism of American politics—and American life—that like-minded individuals tend to find one another. It wasn’t an accident that George Washington attracted smart and fearless men such as Alexander Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette because George Washington was smart and fearless. Franklin Roosevelt attracted politically passionate and civic-minded individuals because he was one himself. John Kennedy was drawn to intellectually curious individuals, and in turn drew them to himself, where they became part of Camelot.
So it’s no surprise that Ronald Reagan brought many good men and women, including speechwriters, to him before and during his presidency because he himself was a man of superior character who also happened to be a good writer. That description also fits long-time Reagan aide Peter Hannaford, who passed away several days ago at the age of 82.
Peter died after he finished doing what he loved to do, which was sign books and give a talk about a new book he’d just edited, “Washington Merry-Go-Round: The Drew Pearson Diaries, 1960-1969.” Over the course of his life, he wrote six books on Ronald and Nancy Reagan. But he did more, much more, than that.
Going back to the early 1970’s, Peter became an invaluable aide and confidant to both Nancy and Ronald Reagan, a rare status he occupied with only a few others, including Michael Deaver and Edwin Meese. After Reagan’s governorship ended, Peter and Mike Deaver went into business together, forming a public relations firm, “Deaver and Hannaford,” that used the two syllable-three syllable cadence Peter often used in his writings.
They had many clients, but first among equals was always Ronald Reagan, whose speaking schedule, syndicated column and radio commentaries they handled, making money for themselves and for the Reagans.
It was these columns and radio commentaries, heard by millions from early 1975 to late 1979, which formed the basis of Reagan’s successful 1980 presidential campaign. But Peter did more. He returned early from an African vacation to join the campaign in February of 1980 following the ouster of Deaver and other key aides—John Sears, Charlie Black, and Jim Lake—by Reagan himself. After that, Peter gave both Reagans much-needed peace of mind by staying by Reagan’s side until his historic win in November 1980.
Peter and Reagan drafted the historic acceptance speech at Detroit in 1980, a speech which called for a “community of shared values,” and openly reached out to Democrats to join that coalition. Four months later, they did just that, and by the millions, thereby becoming an integral part of the Reagan Revolution.
Deaver followed Reagan to Washington where he became deputy White House chief of staff. Peter stayed on the outside, remaining a valued friend and confidant to the Reagans.
Late in life, he settled in the Northern California coastal city of Eureka, where he kept writing and became active in a local congregation, the Christ Episcopal Church, which will host a memorial service on Saturday.
“His death was an incredible shock,” church Pastor Susan Armstrong told the Eureka newspaper. She said his faith had become important to him in recent years, and that only last year he went through the formal process of confirmation. “He was constantly sending me newspaper articles about young people in the church and how we could attract young people to the church.”
His widow Irene expressed the hope that a full congregation would be present on Saturday, and I am confident her wishes will be honored. Peter met Irene on a blind date in high school more than 60 years ago. They were married six months later and have two sons. Peter also leaves behind a world of friends and admirers, and I include myself in both categories. He helped me with my own Reagan books, always generous with his time and meticulous in his recounting of facts. The old phrase, “a gentleman and a scholar,” often came to mind when I thought of him.
Peter Hannaford, RIP.
Craig Shirley is the author of two best-selling books about Ronald Reagan, including “Rendezvous With Destiny” and “Reagan’s Revolution.” He is also the author of the best-selling “December 1941; 31 Days That Changed America and Saved the World” and is the president of Shirley & Banister. He is now writing several more books about Reagan, including “Last Act.” He has lectured at the Reagan Library, is the Visiting Reagan Scholar at Eureka College, and is a member of the Board of Governors of the Reagan Ranch.
Paul Laxalt, Reagan’s ‘First Friend’ in U.S. Senate, Dies at 96 By Laurence Arnold
Source:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-07/paul-laxalt-reagan-s-first-friend-in-u-s-senate-dies-at-96
August 6, 2018
Paul Laxalt, the Republican U.S. senator from Nevada who was President Ronald Reagan’s closest friend and confidante in Congress, has died. He was 96.
Laxalt died Monday at a Virginia health care facility, according to the Associated Press, citing The Ferraro Group, a public relations firm. No cause of death was given.
A senator from 1975 to 1987, Laxalt served as campaign chairman of all three Reagan presidential bids -- unsuccessful in 1976, victorious in 1980 and 1984 -- and enjoyed unusual access to the Reagan White House. With the approval of Majority Leader Howard Baker of Tennessee, Laxalt attended top-level meetings even though he held no post in the Republican Senate leadership. He became known as the “First Friend.”
“I had the privilege of serving in a role that caused me to have one foot in the Senate and one foot in the White House,” Laxalt said at a 2000 hearing on legislation that awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to Reagan and his wife, Nancy. “I served, in a sense, as the president’s eyes and ears on Capitol Hill, while also serving as a link to the White House for my colleagues in Congress.”
Reagan, who died in 2004, met Laxalt while both were supporting Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign in 1964. They grew closer during their time as governors of neighboring states, Nevada and California.
“Ronald Reagan valued his counsel, in part because they were both genial conservatives who shared a gift for attracting Democratic and independent voters, as Laxalt had done in campaigns for governor and senator in his home state,” Reagan biographer Lou Cannon wrote in “Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power.”
Point Man
Laxalt, as Reagan’s point man on political matters involving the Interior Department, played a central role in the selection of James Watt as interior secretary, according to Cannon.
After Watt mocked affirmative action in a 1983 speech --“I have a black, I have a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent,” he said, describing the makeup of a commission reviewing Interior’s coal-leasing program -- it was Laxalt who advised Watt “to resign gratefully,” which he did, Cannon wrote.
Paul Dominique Laxalt was born Aug. 2, 1922, in Reno, Nevada, and raised in Carson City, the first of six children of immigrants from the Basque region of southern France. His mother, the former Therese Alpetche, ran the French Hotel in Carson City; his father, Dominique, raised sheep.
Laxalt attended public school in Carson City and then, for three years, Santa Clara University in California. Following his service as a U.S. Army medic during World War II, he completed his undergraduate degree and earned his law degree at the University of Denver in 1949.
Election Bids
He was district attorney of Ormsby County from 1950 to 1954 and city attorney for Carson City from 1951 to 1954, according to his congressional biography. He ran successfully for lieutenant governor in 1962, serving in that role from 1963 to 1967 during the second term of Governor Grant Sawyer, a Democrat.
In 1964, while lieutenant governor, he ran for U.S. Senate against the Democratic incumbent, Howard Cannon, and lost by fewer than 100 votes. He then challenged Sawyer for governor in 1966, and won.
Laxalt took office at the start of 1967, just as Reagan was taking over in California. The two Republican governors worked together on a bi-state agreement that created the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency to oversee development at Lake Tahoe, the resort area that straddles their border.
Also as governor, Laxalt helped Howard Hughes, the billionaire aviator, filmmaker and recluse, obtain the gaming license that enabled him to purchase several Las Vegas casino hotels.
“He was a savior of Las Vegas at a time when it was very close to going into bankruptcy,” Laxalt told Nevada magazine.
Laxalt left office in 1971 after declining to seek a second term as governor. With his family, he helped build and run a casino hotel, the Ormsby House, in Carson City. His role there led to one of the biggest disputes of his career.
Casino Dispute
The Sacramento Bee and two sister newspapers reported in 1983 that the Internal Revenue Service had suspected that money was “skimmed” from the casino’s profits to avoid payment of taxes. Laxalt sued the publisher, McClatchy Newspapers, for libel. In 1987, as the case was nearing trial, the two sides settled. Without retracting its initial story, McClatchy agreed to a statement saying, “Extensive discovery taken in this libel action has not shown that there was a skim at the Ormsby House.”
In 1974, Laxalt won election to the U.S. Senate, defeating Democrat Harry Reid -- who would succeed him in the Senate 12 years later and rise to leader of Senate Democrats.
When Reagan began his challenge to President Gerald Ford in 1975, Laxalt was his only Senate supporter.
“As a U.S. senator and former governor, Laxalt was the only member of the entourage to approach Reagan as an equal,” Cannon wrote. While other top campaign aides addressed Reagan as “governor,” Laxalt called him “Ron.”
In 1987, as Republicans began jockeying to succeed Reagan, Laxalt made a brief run for the nomination. He never relished the nuts and bolts of campaigning -- or governing, for that matter -- and he called his presidential bid “the four most miserable months of my life.”
He had six children with his first wife, the former Jackalyn Ross. That marriage ended in divorce. He married the former Carol Wilson in 1976.
Remembering a Great Strategist: John Sears By Craig Shirley
Source:
https://www.newsmax.com/craigshirley/schweiker-reagan-ford/2020/03/30/id/960542/
March 30, 2020
The venerable Republican consultant and conservative activist Charlie Black once said, "Ronald Reagan would not have become president had he not hired John Sears in 1976 —and fired John Sears in 1980."
There was great wisdom in this observation.
The Ronald Reagan campaign of 1976 came within an eyelash of defeating the incumbent Gerald Ford for the Republican Party nomination. It was, in essence, a rag tag operation manned by junior varsity operatives and a handful of conservative activists. Nobody in the GOP establishment thought much of Reagan at that time, dismissing him as the "George Wallace of the Republican Party."
The only establishment consultant in 1975 who thought Reagan had what it took to be president was John Patrick Sears. Sears, though a Nixon man, had escaped the Watergate brush.
As of 1976, all of the remaining talent of the GOP — and there wasn’t much — were supporting the moderate Gerald Ford. He was the accidental president by way of Richard Nixon’s resignation. The Watergate scandal took out Nixon and cleared out a whole crop of GOP consultants as a result.
Sears, having joined Team Reagan as campaign manager, gave the Californian immediate credibility with the East Coast political reporters who were drinking buddies and social friends of Sears’. Politics and political geography in 1976 was astonishingly different from today.
While the 1976 campaign was often bumbling and mismanaged, it also had flashes of brilliance, as in the North Carolina and Texas primaries, which Reagan won despite being heavily outspent by the Ford campaign. The choice of Senator Richard Schweiker was also brilliant.
A recent obituary in The New York Times said that Sears’ advice to Reagan to pick respected Senator Dick Schweiker of Pennsylvania as his running mate, prior to the August convention, was "dubious" and "presumptuous."
The Washington Post’s obituary of Sears also got the story wrong, erroneously saying the Schweiker stratagem and the effort to get Ford to name his running mate before the delegates voted "backfired."
This is the problem when liberals record conservative history and don’t bother to talk to the people who were there. First, they have built in biases, and second, they are flying through a cloud of ignorance.
Neither reporter bothered to speak to the people who actually were there working on the 1976 or 1980 campaigns with Sears.
The astute choice of Schweiker as engineered by Sears was in fact two fold; prying loose some delegates was only one potential outcome. The other was to keep Reagan’s hopes alive until the August GOP convention.
In early July of 1976, Sears learned that CBS was working on a story; the network was going to pronounce Ford as the nominee, weeks ahead of the convention. This announcement was coming after an arduous counting of almost 4,500 GOP delegates, including some 200 uncommitted delegates. "The CBS Evening News," as manned by the estimable Walter Cronkite, was a broadcasting juggernaut.
If "Uncle Walter" said something, you could bank on it.
And Reagan’s campaign would have been dead in July of 1976.
The choice of Schweiker was really about buying time for Reagan. When CBS learned that Reagan had made the audacious, revolutionary and creative choice of Schweiker — before the conventionthey killed the story. Picking Schweiker bought three precious weeks for the Reagan campaign.
Had Reagan’s campaign been proclaimed dead in the water, long before the convention, he would not have had the opportunity to carry the fight to Kansas City in a dramatic vote, which Reagan lost by the narrow margin of 1,180 to 1,069 or to give his extemporaneous speech: the speech which changed the GOP, leading delegates to question their choice of Ford and paving the way for Reagan to run and win in 1980.
The New York Times obituary also completely missed the importance Sears played in the now famous Nashua debate of 1980. Sears, along with Reagan’s New Hampshire chairman, Jerry Carmen, were the architects of the scene where George H. W. Bush froze, while Reagan responded forcefully. Sears once told me, bluntly, "Our job was to show that Bush was not capable of being president."
Charlie Black said, "We knew Bush would choke . . . " Carmen kept sticking it to Bush in the press any chance he got and pressuring Bush to agree to debate with Reagan.
The debate was supposed to be a one-on-one between Reagan and Bush but at the last moment, Sears decided that, under the guise of "fairness," the other candidates including Senators Bob Dole and Howard Baker along with other aspirants should be included. Bush balked but Reagan welcomed them. The moderator, Nashua Telegraph editor Jon Breen, also objected. But to avoid violating campaign rules at the time, the Reagan campaign ponied up the $2,000 to pay for the staging of the debate.
When Breen said the other candidates could not participate, and told the technician to turn off the Gipper’s microphone, Reagan stormed, "I paid for this microphone Mr. Green!!!!" setting him up to win the New Hampshire primary; propelled him to the 1980 nomination, the 1980 general election, and into the history books. The Post simply gave short shrift to the Nashua debate.
All this and more was due to John Sears. Reagan fired Sears on the day of the New Hampshire primary but John was always philosophical about it. He told me he’d accumulated too many enemies and was no longer an asset to Reagan. Sears was never suited to be a campaign manager. The 1976 and 1980 campaigns were sometimes poorly run because it simply wasn’t Sears’ strength. His strength was strategy, not managing people or money.
We got to become friends in later years as I wrote my books on the 1976 and 1980 campaigns and what surprised me about John was how shy he actually was. He enjoyed a drink, a good game of cards and politics, as befitting any good political operative, but there was also a side to him that craved privacy.
And there was never really good chemistry between him and Reagan although Sears and Nancy Reagan got along well. For a time.
Reagan once complained, "John doesn’t look you in the eye, he looks you in the tie."
But after his brilliance of the 1968 Nixon campaign and his sometimes cleverness of the 1976 and 1980 Reagan campaigns, John never worked in national politics again.
He once told me, "it’s nicer on the sidelines."
He also had a wry sense of humor. When the matter of picking a running mate for Reagan came up in 1976, someone floated the idea of picking Jim Rhodes, the odious and curmudgeonly and shady governor of Ohio. Rhodes could have potentially delivered enough delegates to Reagan to win the nomination, but Sears rejected the idea quipping, "You’ve got to have some responsibility in this business."
There are a number of men over the many years who aided Reagan at critical times when he needed it most: Paul Laxalt, Ed Meese, Lyn Nofziger, George Bush, Ken Khachigian, Jim Baker, Mike Deaver, Marty Anderson, Frank Donatelli, Ed Rollins, Fred Ryan, Bob Heckman, Ralph Galliano, Roger Stone, Jim Lake, Stu Spencer, Peter Hannaford, Dick Wirthlin and many others including his White House speechwriters. Each had his own season with Reagan. All were trusted Reaganites and all were trusted by Reagan.
John Sears — as much as any of these aforementioned men — helped Reagan change the world.
RIP John Sears.
Craig Shirley is a Ronald Reagan biographer and presidential historian. His books include, “Reagan’s Revolution, The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started it All,” “Rendezvous with Destiny, Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America,” "Reagan Rising: The Decisive Years," and “ Last Act: The Final Years and Emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan." He is also the author of the New York Times bestseller, “December, 1941” and his new 2019 book, “Mary Ball Washington,” a definitive biography of George Washington’s mother. Shirley lectures frequently at the Reagan Library and the Reagan Ranch. He has been named the First Reagan Scholar at Eureka College, Ronald Reagan’s alma mater and will teach a class this fall at the University of Virginia on Reagan. He appears regularly on Newsmax TV, Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
Top Reagan aide Jim Lake, who grew up in Bakersfield, dies at 82 By Robert Price
Source:
https://www.kget.com/news/local-news/top-reagan-aide-jim-lake-who-grew-up-in-bakersfield-dies-at-82/
Jun 3, 2020
CALLAO, Va. (KGET) — They were sometimes jokingly called the Bakersfield Mafia — three men, all bred in Bakersfield, who rose to prominence in the 1960s and ‘70s as key members of Team Ronald Reagan: Michael Deaver, Lyn Nofziger and Jim Lake.
The third of those three, Reagan campaign press secretary Jim Lake, passed away May 29 at his home in Callao, Virginia. He was 82 and suffered from complications of Alzheimer’s.
Reagan’s star was a good one to cling to.
Nofzinger was Reagan’s press secretary when Reagan was elected governor in 1966. Deaver served as Gov. Reagan’s chief of staff. Lake was press secretary for Reagan’s political campaigns. And when Reagan was elected to the White House in 1980, all three men, in some fashion or form, went with him, and all three became nationally prominent.
Lake also worked for Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush.
Lake’s son James C. Lake of Alexandria, Virginia, got involved in politics with his father and his twin brother Michael B. Lake.
“We’d see them together all the time, either on the campaign trail” or elsewhere, said James C. Lake, a communications consultant. “My brother and I both worked during the (election season) ad campaign. We were on the campaign jet, so we flew everywhere they went. And so we got to see (Reagan), be with him all the time … (as) his campaign went on.
“In the (1976 primary) Ford campaign, we both worked advance so we always saw my dad travel with (Reagan). We talked to my dad while the president was speaking, got to see him, interact with Reagan. My brother and I interacted with Reagan and Mrs. Reagan — we saw them a lot. They knew who we were because they were great friends with my father, but also because we were twins. We kind of stood out.”
It might seem strange or coincidental that three Bakersfield men came to share the stage, to differing extents, with the most powerful man on earth, and arguably the most popular.
Mojave journalist Bill Deaver, Michael Deaver’s brother, had an explanation.
“They all had to be in the right place at the right time with the right kinds of personalities and interests. And that’s what happened” he said.
Jim Lake might have been a Beltway guy but he never forgot where he came from, his son said. Lake was always a Bakersfield Driller with a taste for Dewar’s ice cream that he still occasionally enjoyed with his granddaughter, Megan who still lives in Bakersfield.
“Dewar’s was one of his favorites,” said his son Jim. “It still is whenever we go there. He used to like Sinaloa — it’s closed now — but that Mexican food was his favorite — and Mexicali … He always loved the Wool Growers. That’s where he first introduced us to sliced pickled tongue. I thought it was going to be horrible but it was fantastic.”
So another chapter in the story of Bakersfield’s deep connection to Ronald Reagan comes to an end.
According to Lake’s obituary published in the Washington Post, when Reagan successfully sought the nomination for president in 1980, Lake served as communications director and campaign press secretary until the eve of the New Hampshire primary, when he and other top aides were dismissed because of campaign disagreements with other long-standing Reagan aides. He and others were later reinstated, according to the Post obituary.
During Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign, Lake again served as communications director and campaign press secretary, according to the Post obituary. In the 1988 and 1992 presidential campaigns, Lake advised George H.W. Bush on press and media communications, and served as deputy campaign manager in his ’92 bid for re-election. Lake was a top GOP official at four Republican conventions, according to the Post obituary.
James Howard Lake was born Aug. 16, 1937, in Fresno, and attended Bakersfield High school and Bakersfield College. He received his B.A. degree from the University of California at Los Angeles. After working in the grocery and family businesses, Lake entered California politics in 1966, helping two-time Olympic Decathlon Champion Bob Mathias defeat an incumbent to be elected to the U.S. Congress, according to the Post obituary.
Between presidential campaigns and thereafter, Lake advised agricultural and corporate clients on government relations and strategic corporate communications.
In the early 1980s, he was instrumental at Heron Burchette Ruckert & Rothwell in establishing the practice of law firms accepting non-lawyers as key members of the firm, according to the Post obituary.
He was also a frequent political commentator on CNN and Fox News.
In 1997, Lake married his second wife, Cynthia S. Hudson, and they resided together in Alexandria and Callao, Va. Survivors include his wife; twin sons, James C. Lake (Rhonda) of Alexandria, and Michael B. Lake (Chelsea) of McLean, Va.; a brother, Monte B. Lake (Susan) of Callao, Va.; eight grandchildren; six great grandchildren; many nieces; nephews; grandnephews, and a grandniece.
He was preceded in death by his sister, Joan Madison, son, Garrett D. Lake and niece, Catherine M. Lake. Celebrations of life will be held at later dates. The Lake and Hudson families request that in lieu of flowers, anyone wishing to honor Lake do so by making a donation to the MINDlink Foundation (mindlinkfoundation.org/donate). The foundation was established in Catie Lake’s honor to support the pioneering cerebellum research of Dr. Jeremy Schmahmann’s Laboratory or Neuroanatomy and Cerebellar Neurobiology at Massachusetts General Hospital.
