The new movie called MIDWAY is interesting because of its spectacular pictures of the greatest naval battle of this century and the lessons that can be learned from it. Midway was one of the few occasions in history when the side with superior military strength lost. We were able to defeat the superior Japanese navy because we had broken the Japanese code, we knew where their carriers were headed, and Admiral Nimitz could concentrate our forces and surprise them.
Political campaigns have many elements similar to military campaigns. A candidate with inferior assets can only bridge the gap with a winning strategy. This was the key to Jimmy Carter’s success. As a former one-term governor of a southern state, he had little to start with. But he had a winning strategy: first, to get the liberals to support him as their candidate to knock George Wallace out of the race, then to use that momentum to go into all the primaries and come out first with the most votes.
Ronald Reagan faced an opponent who held the immensely superior asset of White House incumbency. The contrast between Ford’s and Reagan’s political weapons can be compared to two men hiring workers, where one can pay everyone with certified checks, but the other can only pay with I.O.U.s redeemable after January 20, 1977, if at all.
For Reagan to win despite such odds, he needed a winning strategy to outmaneuver the occupant of the White House. Unfortunately, although Reagan is the most attractive and articulate candidate to appear in many years, he did not have a campaign manager equal to the task.
Joto Sears’ original plan was to run Ronald Reagan as a frontrunner candidate with no significant differences from Gerald Ford except charisma, to have Reagan win the New Hampshire and Florida primaries, after which Gerald Ford was supposed to withdraw as a candidate, similar to Lyndon Johnson after his early setback in New Hampshire in 1968. When this plan didn’t materialize, Sears had no alternative strategy.
The only reason Reagan’s campaign picked up momentum after the first disastrous Tuesdays was because local and independent conservative Republicans took the campaign into their own hands, made maximum use of dedicated volunteers, and successfully insisted on Reagan’s taking strong stands on issues like the Panama Canal, Henry Kissinger, detente, and the Human Life Amendment. This enabled Reagan to score brilliant victories in North Carolina, Texas, Indiana, Nebraska, and Missouri.
Unfortunately, the delays and chaos of Sears’ national organization, including mishandling Reagan’s name and delegates on the ballot, proved insurmountable handicaps in Ohio and New Jersey. Illinois was lost by the early failure to appeal to voters to elect a native son as President. Hardly a handful of voters know that Reagan was born and attended school and college in Illinois.
Reagan’s best chance to win the nomination was to lock it up early through victories in the primaries, as Carter did. In the last weeks before the convention, Gerald Ford held all the cards in the game of phoning and meeting with delegates one by one. Reagan couldn’t invite delegates to dinner at the White House to meet the Queen of England, as Ford could and did.
Ford’s campaign was just as lacking a coherent strategy as Reagan’s, but Ford didn’t need a strategy since he could deal from his power base in the White House.
