Creating a Foreign Policy Constituency

After Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned on October 10, 1973, Richard Nixon appointed Michigan Representative Gerald Ford as his replacement. Nixon’s own resignation in August 1974 then left the presidency to Ford, who became the first unelected executive in the nation’s history. Ford was also the fourth president to inherit the war in Vietnam, which would end in April 1975, but not before an acrimonious debate with Congress over funding of the South Vietnamese regime. In terms of dealing with American’s chief rival, the Soviet Union, Ford vowed to continue Nixon’s policy of détente and leaned on Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger for guidance in managing foreign affairs.^{Footnote 8} Once in office, however, Ford found that in a post-Vietnam, post-Watergate America, détente had difficulty withstanding attacks on its legitimacy. Détente had its detractors for years, but now those critiques resonated with a wider audience. After 1974, Ford and Kissinger confronted charges from the Left and the Right that détente neglected human rights and appeased communism. The passage of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment and the fall of South Vietnam made Americans question whether the means of détente served appropriate ends. Détente also seemed to be tainted with the politics of Watergate. The secretive nature of Kissinger’s diplomacy, his backdoor channels and negotiations with foreign leaders, made Americans wonder what Kissinger was up to and whether he had the U.S.’s best interests at heart. No longer was Kissinger “Super K,” but instead was a cagey and devious diplomat whose policies would lead to Soviet hegemony. Kissinger tried to dismiss the vitriol, but détente continued to unravel during the second half of the 1970s.^{Footnote 9}

One of the first domestic challenges to détente involved the visit to the United States by the writer and Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In his book The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn chronicled his eight-year detention in a Soviet labor camp, and after its publication in 1973, he was deported from the Soviet Union. The book was well received in the United States, and the Right (and Cold War liberals) lauded Solzhenitsyn for his outspoken criticism of the Soviet regime. Senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) hoped to bring Solzhenitsyn to the United States in March 1974, after he wrote to the author that he was a “citizen of the world” who was poised “on the threshold of a new phase in your struggle for truth and freedom in your own native land and in the entire world.”^{Footnote 10} Solzhenitsyn declined the offer in 1974, but he did make a visit to the United States in June 1975. After his arrival, Solzhenitsyn met with his most ardent admirers in Congress, including Helms, Republican senator Strom Thurmond, and Democratic senator Henry Jackson. Solzhenitsyn then spoke to members of the American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) on June 30, where he demanded a “true détente” between the United States and the Soviet Union that was not “based on smiles, not on verbal concessions, but . . . based on a firm foundation.” Détente, as enacted by Kissinger, was leading the United States “down a false road,” Solzhenitsyn said, that would inevitably lead to American weakness in the eyes of the world. He urged America to “try to slow down the process of concessions and help the process of liberation,” of those suffering under communism.^{Footnote 11}

Helms and Thurmond requested that Ford meet with Solzhenitsyn, but Ford refused. Kissinger discouraged Ford from meeting with the recent Nobel Prize winner, believing it would imperil détente. Other prominent members of Ford’s staff disagreed; Deputy Chief of Staff Richard Cheney fired off a memo on July 8, 1975, to Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld expressing his anger over Ford’s refusal to meet with Solzhenitsyn. Détente could not conceal the fact that the United States and the Soviet Union still perceived each other as enemies, Cheney wrote, and it was “important that we not contribute any more to the illusion that all of a sudden we’re bosom buddies with the Russians.”^{Footnote 12} On July 7, 1975, Helms declared on the floor of the Senate that Ford’s decision not to meet with such a “dedicated exponent of freedom” was a shameful moment for the nation. The rebuff of Solzhenitsyn proved that détente was a “deceitful device” that would allow the Soviets to continue to “throttle and enslave countless millions of people all over the world.”^{Footnote 13} The Solzhenitsyn affair also angered his admirers among the activist Right. William F. Buckley, writing in the National Review, commented that “the conservative Right has embraced” Solzhenitsyn for “his tactical and strategic intuitions about the futility of the policy of détente” and even felt compelled to “salute the leaders of the AFL-CIO” for inviting him to speak. Ford’s staff also received complaints from voters for his handling of Solzhenitsyn. One letter writer, Carol Hummel, said she was “deeply disappointed in the treatment that Ford and the Congress gave to one great Russian citizen, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn.”^{Footnote 14}

Ford was in trouble again only weeks after the Solzhenitsyn incident, when he signed the Helsinki Accords on August 1, 1975. When Ford approved the accords at the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), he thought the domestic reaction would be mild at best. The accords represented the stated goals of détente: freer trade relations, concern for human rights, and recognition of sovereign countries to regulate domestic affairs. To certain people in Eastern Europe, and the United States, this last provision amounted to the United States accepting past and possibly future Soviet intervention in Eastern Europe. Kissinger, never enthusiastic about the Helsinki Accords, failed to understand this argument and was baffled by the subsequent controversy over Helsinki.^{Footnote 15} The agreements did not endorse the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe but codified the boundaries of the Soviet Union that existed since the 1940s, Kissinger argued. He told Ford to disregard criticism of his participation in the negotiations because the accords were favorable to “the interests of the Baltic-American community.” Ford did not intend to surrender Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union, and any suggestion otherwise was absurd.^{Footnote 16}

Americans of Eastern European descent felt differently. The Polish-American Congress warned Ford that he confronted a growing number of “meetings, demonstrations and petitions” among Eastern European immigrants in opposition to the Helsinki Conference. One protest was held in Ford’s home city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, in July 1975. Western Michigan University student Silins Gunlis led two hundred Baltic Americans in a demonstration against the Helsinki Accords in Grand Rapids. Gunlis said that he and those in attendance were “asking people to stand up and say that the Helsinki Pact is morally wrong.” Protesters carried signs with slogans such as “There Are No Small Countries,” and after the protest disbanded, activists went around the city with a petition seeking “U.S. recognition of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania,” which WMU student Ruta Ozols said she had no trouble getting people to sign. With seemingly no end in sight to the protests, national and local politicians tried to convince Ford to rethink his commitment to the treaty.^{Footnote 17} Democratic congressman Charles Bennett told Ford that he was approached by a number of constituents on the “proposed agreement to recognize the boundaries of Russian domination in Europe” and felt that the treaty was “not an asset” for the United States. A local Republican leader from Tulsa, Frank A. Wallace, wrote to Ford that he was “getting weary of trying to defend your administration and its actions” to local residents and wondered how the president could champion the “aspirations of all peoples for self-determination and liberty” and at the same time authorize the Helsinki pact.^{Footnote 18}

To some Americans, the conduct of the United States abroad was evidence of the overreach of the federal government at home. In the South, U.S. policy toward Rhodesia was compared to desegregated busing in public schools. Occupied by white minority rule since 1965, Rhodesia exhibited the dying gasps of Western colonialism in Africa. As a bloody civil war raged between the ruling whites and black nationalists in the early 1970s, President Nixon remained unconcerned with the status of Rhodesia. Nixon’s indifference to Rhodesia angered southern Democrats in Congress, who sympathized with the white regime led by Ian Smith and worked to gain international recognition of the country. Southern Democrats rallied to obtain passage of the Byrd Amendment in 1971 (sponsored by Virginia segregationist Harry Byrd), which allowed shipments of chrome ore to the United States from Rhodesia, defying UN sanctions against trading with the white minority government. But after the collapse of Portuguese control over Mozambique and Angola between 1974 and 1975, Kissinger recognized that white rule in Rhodesia was untenable. Touring the country in 1976, Kissinger said that U.S. sponsorship of the black nationalists in Rhodesia was in the interest of “racial justice.”^{Footnote 19} White southerners were incensed over the change in relations to the white Rhodesian regime. Memphis resident Leslie Birchfield wrote to Ford that he would not vote for the president unless he “fires Henry Kissinger” over his policy toward Rhodesia. “The way I see it,” said Birchfield, “our role in southern Africa duplicates the role of the Federal Government in bludgeoning of the Southern people into accepting School Integration against its will. The same evil effects will come in southern Africa as has already come to our public school system.”^{Footnote 20}

Workers in the Cold War economy also situated domestic issues within the context of American foreign policy. As they did in the 1960s, defense workers ridiculed cuts in the defense budget as signs of military weakness. When the economy worsened in the 1970s, these workers held steadfast to their jobs—and the foreign policy that employed them. Californians dependent on the defense industry complained to their senators and representatives in 1975 about the lagging aerospace industry, as California congressman William Ketchum wrote to Ford that “if the Nation is to benefit from a broad mobilization base” and raise employment levels, then more contracts were needed. Those affected by cuts felt betrayed by the federal government. As the government spent less on defense following the Vietnam War, the impact was felt broadly among suburban communities buttressed by federal defense dollars. Trimming the military budget hurt not only builders of missiles but also textile companies that relied on selling material to the military, as well as the restaurants and coffee shops that served lunch to suburban defense workers.^{Footnote 21}

By late 1975, Ford’s staff feared that defense cuts and foreign policy crises collectively jeopardized his support from ethnic groups and Sunbelt suburbanites who were pivotal to his reelection in 1976. Grassroots leaders thought Ford was now undoing Nixon’s efforts, as they had “worked very hard during the last decade to cement the allegiance of many East European ethnic groups to the Republican Party,” and feared that Ford might lose these voters due to “negative coverage in the American ethnic press for his participation in the [Helsinki] conference.” Ford had not done enough to reach out to various ethnic groups “who feel no identity” with the president and his policies.^{Footnote 22} Internal polling by Ford’s staff showed that the public had shifted rightward on foreign policy after 1975, as Americans professed to be more conservative on foreign policy than Ford or Congress and were less inclined to favor future diplomatic consultation with the Soviet Union.^{Footnote 23} Heading into an election year, Americans wanted a new direction in foreign policy, and Ronald Reagan wanted to be at its helm.

Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the 1976 Republican Primary

Reagan contemplated running for president even before his second term as governor of California expired in 1975. In the days after Nixon’s resignation, Reagan met with a cadre of political operatives, including former Nixon staff member John Sears and Reagan’s press secretary Lyn Nofziger, to determine the viability of a presidential run. They told Reagan that Ford was unpopular and vulnerable. He was an unelected, moderate president, marred by the legacy of Watergate and an economic recession, and would have difficulty maintaining credibility within the Republican Party. Reagan agreed, whereupon his advisers soon formed the committee Citizens for Reagan, headed by Senator Paul Laxalt (R-Nev.). While Citizens for Reagan began to raise money and coordinate an infrastructure for a Reagan presidential campaign, Reagan made sure to keep himself in the public eye, waiting to see if a primary candidacy was still in the works. Reagan wrote a syndicated newspaper column, gave a regular radio address, and made speeches across the country touting his philosophies on government spending, taxes, and foreign affairs.

Ford’s advisers knew there were rumblings over a Reagan campaign in 1975 but were unconcerned. Internal polling showed voters believed Ford to be the better person to tackle inflation and the economy. Reagan’s strength was in foreign policy, but the Ford campaign predicted that foreign affairs would not be a factor. “Only in some areas of foreign policy does Reagan beat Ford, and foreign policy is a distant fourth among voter concerns this year,” they wrote. They saw no scenario where Reagan would defeat Ford.^{Footnote 24} Members of Reagan’s staff realized too that Ford had the upper hand. Political history and the incumbency were on Ford’s side. “No one since the Civil War has successfully challenged an incumbent president for the nomination and gone on to win the general election,” wrote Reagan fund-raiser Jaquelin H. Hume in an internal memorandum. If Reagan lost, he “and all his supporters will be persona non grata with the [Ford] administration. Since this will include most conservatives, this can seriously reduce conservative influence.”^{Footnote 25}

On November 20, 1975, Reagan officially announced his candidacy, much to the delight of his conservative backers and to the dismay of the Ford administration. Dennis Dunn, chairman of the King County Republican Central Committee in Seattle, typified conservative thinking in his hope that the primary campaign would revolve around foreign policy. “It may well prove to be that Ford’s most serious blunder was the inexcusably crude fashion (and politically dumb) in which he treated Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. I doubt that anything in recent years has enraged the true American conservative anymore than this most recent display of the Rockefeller-Kissinger type of mindless gaucherie.”^{Footnote 26} But Reagan largely ignored the sentiments of individuals like Dunn. He had discussed foreign policy issues repeatedly in his radio addresses and in speeches to groups such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars, where in August he called the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam a tragedy and claimed the Ford administration had not done enough to confront the threat of communism.^{Footnote 27} But in the early days of the campaign, Reagan largely ran on a platform of reducing the size of the federal government, not foreign affairs. While the Ford campaign believed foreign policy was Reagan’s strength, big government appeared to be the most salient issue to Reagan’s more ideologically conservative advisers such as the American Conservative Union’s Jeffrey Bell. In his first speech as a presidential candidate, Reagan said he was running to change the corruption and cronyism in Washington that originated from the “root” of America’s problems: government largesse.^{Footnote 28} The economy was also an overriding concern for Reagan. In the summer and fall of 1975, polls showed that Americans were overwhelmingly distraught by rising taxes, inflation, and unemployment. In states like Wisconsin, Reagan was told by advisers that domestic issues and anxiety over high taxes were of the utmost interest to voters: “Taxpayer groups have been springing up like weeds,” while “national security and the social issues are less important” than the economy.^{Footnote 29}

In September 1975, Reagan put forward a specific plan to stimulate the economy by reducing government spending. In a speech in Chicago, Reagan proposed to transfer federal expenditures for areas such as housing, health care, public education, welfare, and transportation to state governments, while most areas of defense spending, the second largest budget item behind entitlements, would be untouched.^{Footnote 30} Reagan claimed his program would ultimately reduce the federal budget by $90 billion, giving local governments more control and streamlining government services to Americans who deserved them. Once Reagan announced his candidacy, however, his redistribution plan did not stand up to scrutiny. An analyst at the Office of Management and Budget, James T. Lynn, wrote that it “would, by necessity, result either in a significant increase in the tax burden on the American people, or in a radical reduction in the transferred programs which would leave recipient groups worse off than they are now.”^{Footnote 31} A preponderant number of first-in-the-nation-primary New Hampshire voters relied on government benefits and worried about insinuations that local taxes needed to be raised and government benefits slashed to pay for Reagan’s program.^{Footnote 32} Reagan tried to distance himself from the $90 billion program after losing the Iowa primary in February. In press conferences, Reagan avoided discussion of the plan’s details, albeit unsuccessfully. When questioned by reporters about how he chose the government programs to cut, Reagan said he “never did pay any attention to that list. That was just some stuff the economists gave me.”^{Footnote 33} The “ninety billion dollar gaffe” plagued Reagan’s campaign in New Hampshire, where he lost to Ford. Moreover, the American economy began to recover in late January after a prolonged recession. Increases in consumer spending and stock market prices discredited Reagan’s claim that Ford had mismanaged the economy and made domestic issues less resilient as the weeks went on.^{Footnote 34}

After falling in Iowa and New Hampshire, Reagan lost the next four primaries: Massachusetts, Vermont, Florida, and Illinois. After Illinois went to Ford, journalists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak felt the president had all but sealed the nomination.^{Footnote 35} Even Reagan’s advisers, groping for a coherent campaign strategy, cautiously urged the former governor to reconsider continuing in the race after May.^{Footnote 36} If Reagan did not win the next primary in North Carolina, his quest for the White House was over. David Keene, in a memorandum to Reagan, noted that building a coalition in North Carolina meant attracting white-collar suburbanites from urban areas in the Piedmont region, “disaffected Wallacite Democrats” from the eastern part of the state, and voters in the western mountains who occupied the base of the Party since the Civil War. Keene recommended to Reagan that they put a campaign together that wedded the “sectional and social” factions within the North Carolina Republican Party between the metropolitan suburbs and the rural areas of the state. In 1968, Nixon captured a significant portion of the vote in Raleigh (from which Jesse Helms emerged as a senatorial candidate) and dominated in the surrounding suburbs of Charlotte. Reagan had to repeat Nixon’s performance and court conservative voters in the counties that elected Helms.^{Footnote 37}

In North Carolina, Reagan received much needed help by well-coordinated, well-funded grassroots activists hoping to revive his chances of victory. One resident of Charlotte wrote to Paul Laxalt—even before Reagan announced his candidacy—that she was eager to volunteer for the governor, as she “will work day and night for Regan [sic]. I can type, answer the phone, get out mail or whatever I can do to help,” because Ronald Reagan was “the only one I think could help the U.S. now.”^{Footnote 38} Financially backing these grassroots activists was the political machine that elected Helms to the Senate in 1972. Helms defeated the Democratic nominee, Representative Nick Galifianakis, by uniting the western base of the Republican Party with the traditionally Democratic eastern part of the state, where he attracted former followers of Democratic presidential candidate George Wallace, known for linking his sympathies for racial segregation with hostility toward the federal government. Helms’s election in 1972 led to the creation of the North Carolina Congressional Club, an organization that wielded money and influence on behalf of Helms and the collection of right-wing groups and individuals that backed his Senate campaign. Helms’s close adviser and avid Reagan enthusiast, Tom Ellis, ensured that the Reagan campaign had the full patronage of the North Carolina Congressional Club, which used its money and members to mobilize campaign workers, gather crowds for Reagan’s speeches, and assemble a media presence for Reagan on local television stations throughout the state.^{Footnote 39}

The issue North Carolinians most gravitated toward was not big government or the economy, but national defense. National defense issues enticed defense workers near Greensboro who were employed by Western Electric to build the antiballistic missile system (ABM). They also attracted voters in the eastern part of the state, which since 1969 “produced a larger percentage of volunteers for the Army and other military services than any other part of the country.” National defense also interested voters near Camp Lejeune and Fort Bragg Army base in the southern part of the state, which voted overwhelmingly for Nixon in 1972 because of George McGovern’s proposals to cut military spending. National defense in North Carolina, as in many Sunbelt states, was intrinsically connected to other economic and social issues that were dependent upon military spending. American military superiority, the Panama Canal Treaty, and the inadequacies of détente were issues that voters throughout the state were vested in for ideological, personal, and material reasons.^{Footnote 40}

Sunbelt voters’ interest in Cold War politics was first recognized by the Reagan campaign during the Florida primary. On March 4, Reagan gave his first major speech on national defense, sounding like Solzhenitsyn when he said that “all our smiles, concessions, and toasts of détente have not brought genuine peace any closer,” and that Ford had “shown neither the vision nor the leadership necessary to halt and reverse the diplomatic and military decline of the United States.” Requests for the text of the Florida speech poured into Citizens for Reagan. Unemployed aerospace workers and Cuban Americans angry over the president’s policies toward Castro liked the speech. Out of fifty Republicans polled by the Reagan campaign, twenty-eight supported Reagan, and of that number, twenty said they liked Reagan for his opposition to Castro and his call for a stronger defense. After the Florida primary, David Keene geared the campaign toward an “attack strategy” against Ford, believing that the “Reagan attacks on détente” helped the campaign to build energy with the Republican electorate.^{Footnote 41}

The response to Reagan’s address on national defense in Florida came as a shock to campaign manager John Sears and the rest of his staff. The Reagan campaign’s polling company, Decision Making Information (DMI), had not extensively polled voters on foreign affairs in early primary states such as New Hampshire and Illinois.^{Footnote 42} Reagan was also cautious on foreign policy in New Hampshire. He claimed he was not opposed to détente entirely, but to a détente that failed to take into account the history of Soviet aggression toward the United States. Détente established a foundation to pursue peace with the Soviet Union, and the United States “should continue to do so,” Reagan said, while remaining skeptical of Soviet intentions.^{Footnote 43} In a February speech at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, Reagan was sufficiently critical of détente but not dogmatic. “We are told that Détente is our best hope for a lasting peace. Hope it may offer, but only so long as we have no illusions about it,” Reagan told the audience. He went on to claim that “détente, if it is a one-way street, will fail. As a two-way street it may succeed.”^{Footnote 44}

Reagan also glossed over his background as a proponent of détente during the Nixon administration. Hoping to bolster his image among conservative Republicans, Nixon sent Reagan on a tour of Southeast Asian nations in October 1971, where Reagan offered “very helpful explanations of the Nixon Doctrine” to Southeast Asian leaders skeptical of the president’s efforts toward “opening” China to the United States.^{Footnote 45} Eight months later, Reagan was sent as an envoy to Europe—after Nixon and Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev signed the SALT treaty—to assure Western European leaders that the United States would continue working to reduce tensions with the East through negotiation and diplomacy.^{Footnote 46} Together with his muddled positions on foreign affairs during the beginning of the primary, Reagan’s role within the Nixon administration indicates that he lacked a grand strategy before 1976, and was unprepared to respond to voters’ concerns with national defense and American foreign policy.^{Footnote 47}

Various independent right-wing groups also helped the campaign’s shift to national defense. Reagan received much-needed help from the Supreme Court with its January 1976 ruling in Buckley v. Valeo, which allowed unlimited contributions to independent organizations that lobbied on behalf of political candidates. The court’s decision gave rise to the proliferation of Political Action Committees (PACs) that supplemented funds from Citizens for Reagan, which often had trouble paying its creditors.^{Footnote 48} With money flowing from independent groups such as the ACU and the Conservative Victory Fund, movement conservatives bought time on radio and television airwaves emphasizing Reagan’s hard-line stance on national defense. The ACU began with placing ads in approximately ten local newspapers in Florida; by North Carolina, the number had grown to thirty-three. A major focal point of the radio advertisements for Reagan was his opposition to the Panama Canal treaties that ceded control of the waterway to General Omar Torrijos. More than eight hundred radio commercials were sponsored by the ACU that criticized the Panama Canal treaties and blamed Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for coddling the Soviets. The ads also announced that “Ford stands for continued drift with the liberal policies of big government and détente,” while Reagan was the embodiment of “new initiatives in freedom based on limited government, personal liberty, and peace through strength.”^{Footnote 49} The theme of the ACU ads also supplemented the attacks levied on Ford by Helms, who equated federal welfare programs with the Panama Canal treaties, implying that the federal government was transferring its resources to socialistic projects at the expense of national security.^{Footnote 50}

On March 23, Reagan defeated Ford in North Carolina by six percentage points. In Guilford County, where Greensboro and hundreds of defense workers were located, Reagan won by 418 votes. In Onslow County, home of Camp Lejeune, Reagan beat Ford by a two-to-one margin, 640–319. In the four counties that occupied Fort Bragg—Cumberland, Harnett, Hoke, and Moore—Reagan won the first three and lost Moore.^{Footnote 51} Reagan also took the entire eastern coast of North Carolina except for Dare County, where Ford prevailed with merely five votes.^{Footnote 52} Bruce Wagner, in charge of advertising for the Ford campaign, noted that national defense had won the election for Reagan, lamenting “this effective change in campaign tactic” that allowed Reagan “to seize the campaign momentum that had previously belonged to President Ford.” Wagner wrote to Ford campaign manager Rogers Morton that Reagan’s use of media to promote his ideas on national defense was the reason for Ford’s defeat. Wagner argued that “Ronald Reagan has demonstrated his ability to revitalize his campaign with a series of highly personalized half-hour television addresses,” which highlighted Reagan’s differences with Ford on national defense policy. Campaign worker Peter Kaye was also upset that Ford had not used television effectively as Reagan. He believed the campaign should have made an extended television commercial before the North Carolina primary to counter Reagan’s assertions. Reagan now had the upper hand as “the issue is defense and détente,” wrote Kaye.^{Footnote 53}

After North Carolina, Reagan became more hawkish in his foreign policy. The challenge for Reagan’s advisers was to avoid comparisons to Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign in 1964, when Goldwater was portrayed as irresponsible and reckless in his foreign policy to the extent that it would imperil global security. In selling Reagan’s image abroad as a diplomat and statesman, the campaign had to confront the “notion spawned by some in [the] U.S. press that RR is a warmonger, bomb–thrower and recklessly belligerent,” impressions that marred Goldwater in 1964.^{Footnote 54} Goldwater’s endorsement of Ford exacerbated the perception of Reagan as an extremist on foreign policy. In explaining his decision to support Ford, Goldwater said he saw little difference between Ford and Reagan on substantive issues and believed a change in leadership would delay austerity reforms and hurt the Republican Party in the long term. He thought it unnecessary to “finally come so close to achieving what we set out to achieve three elections ago [in 1964] and risk it all now over a hair-splitting debate within the party about which of two genuine and bona fide conservative candidates is the more conservative.”^{Footnote 55}

While careful to avoid a repeat of 1964, the campaign pressed on with Reagan’s focus on national defense, as North Carolinians made debates over the direction of national defense and U.S. foreign policy the core issue in the primary. Seeing the success national defense played in turning North Carolina to Reagan, his supporters replicated the strategy in the next major primary state, Texas. Before the Texas primary, Citizens for Reagan enlisted the Houston-based advertising and public relations firm Chamberlain-Frandolig Inc. for its help in assessing a profile of the typical Texas voter. The report claimed there was no other state “more critical to the Reagan campaign than Texas,” where Reagan had the potential to extract “latent conservative support” from voters who “can be generated through effective utilization of key issues and organization to give the Governor a resounding victory.” But Reagan first had to overcome Texans’ suspicions toward Reagan’s Social Security policy following the catastrophe of the $90 billion redistribution plan. The “misinterpretation” of Reagan’s policy on Social Security was “continuing to erode his support among the generally conservative senior citizens, where his appeal could be the strongest.” Reagan had to clarify his commitment to Social Security but also draw attention to other issues affecting Texans and Americans nationwide. Among these were national defense. The report recommended that Reagan gear his message on national defense to workers in Houston, San Antonio, and Corpus Christi, who had lost their jobs to base closures and military cuts. Moreover, a “major policy address on national defense posture/local base closures should be in San Antonio before as many retired officers as can be brought in and aired Statewide.” The agency also suggested Reagan promote his opposition to the Panama Canal Treaty in the Gulf Port, which presumably would suffer economically if the United States renounced its oversight of the canal.^{Footnote 56}

The subject of national defense, more than other policy issues, overcame Texans’ anxieties that Reagan would eliminate federal programs like Social Security. Indeed, Reagan’s national defense policy appealed to residents of a state who received eight percent of total federal defense expenditures. Texans were a product of the Sunbelt South: a population that “generally opposes high federal spending on domestic programs and supports generous outlays for military and space spending.”^{Footnote 57} Where Reagan began his speeches in the early primaries by focusing on government bureaucracy, he now made “the decline in U.S. military power” his opening concern in Texas.^{Footnote 58} Reagan continued to give half-hour televised addresses on national defense that were financed by individual donors who purchased airtime for the campaign. A sole donor, “Mr. McAllister,” gave enough money to buy a “1/2 hour of TV time to show Reagan’s stock 1/2 hour talk.”^{Footnote 59}

Reagan’s national defense policies united voters throughout the state. In cities on the Gulf of Mexico, Reagan played up his message that the Panama Canal treaties were a giveaway to the communists, which ACU chairman M. Stanton Evans said was treated as a “local issue there.”^{Footnote 60} Reagan criticized Kissinger’s tour of Rhodesia in San Antonio, a city that had the “heaviest concentration of active & retired military,” and confirmed his approval for the Byrd Amendment. In doing so, the New York Times noted that Reagan was addressing “George Wallace Democrats, whose support he has actively sought.”^{Footnote 61} In April 1976, just as the election between Reagan and Ford grew heated, Ford was accused of transferring military installations to Texas in order to win votes in the Lone Star State. Moreover, less than two weeks away from the primary, rumors also surfaced that Ford had decided to wait after the Texas primary to decide on whether to announce a plan to increase the size of the Navy by six hundred ships. If Reagan won Texas based upon his criticism of U.S. military weakness, the Department of Defense would then announce the rebuilding and expansion of the naval fleet.^{Footnote 62} Ford tried to refute Reagan’s charges that he allowed the deterioration of the United States to “a position of military inferiority” as “preposterous” and said Reagan had zealously resorted to focusing on national defense “because a grab bag of other issues has been tried and failed.” Ford’s attempts to defend his record on foreign policy demonstrated to the Times that “Mr. Reagan had turned it [national defense] into the focal point of the May 1 Republican primary in Texas.” As Ford crisscrossed the state of Texas, “from Central to West Texas to the Panhandle,” the president was met with voters’ questions “about national defense, the Panama Canal, and détente.”^{Footnote 63}

On May 1, Texas Republicans voted for Reagan over Ford nearly two to one. After Reagan won Texas, major media outlets reported on how foreign policy issues such as the “arms race” engendered success for conservative Republicans like Reagan. The New York Times noted that the focus in the Republican primary after May 1976 was on “whether the United States is No. 1 in military power.” The Times compared Reagan’s comments on the supposed weakness of the United States to John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign where he blamed President Dwight D. Eisenhower for a “missile gap” between the United States and the Soviet Union.^{Footnote 64} Time magazine too observed that “national security was one of Reagan’s big winners” in Texas, where “Reagan attacked Ford for cutting back on military bases . . . while continuing to subsidize the United Nations.” Reagan’s win on national defense issues, the magazine posited, would force Ford to modify his positions on U.S. foreign policy and possibly even “dump Kissinger.”^{Footnote 65} That same month, Ford received returned donation letters with the words “I will not support you in any way until you get rid of Henry Kissenger [sic],” scrawled on them. Other critics of Ford asked the president to “kick Kissinger out on his Dead End.” In response, Ford’s campaign staff felt they were “in trouble,” as Ford had lost “what has traditionally been the exclusive province of an incumbent president . . . foreign policy.”^{Footnote 66} Barry Goldwater wrote to Ford on May 7, six days after his loss in Texas, advising him “to be more punchy” in his speeches but not to get into a sparring match with Reagan over the issues, telling him outright that he was “not going to get the Reagan vote. These are the same people who got me the nomination [in 1964] and they will never swerve.” Rather than trying to convert Reagan voters, Ford should target “middle America.” Goldwater concluded by telling Ford to “get off Panama” and focus on other issues.^{Footnote 67}

In post-Texas primaries, Reagan’s attention to Cold War politics generated new public criticism of Ford’s national defense policy. Rather than reacting to preexisting discontents over the direction of American foreign policy, Reagan’s win in Texas allowed him to broaden his grassroots anti-détente coalition. Reagan won the next three primaries: Georgia and Indiana on May 4 and Nebraska on May 11. In Indiana, where Reagan received a third of his votes from Democratic crossovers, the “questions of détente, defense spending, and above all, the role of the United States vis-à-vis the rest of the world were among Reagan’s best levers.”^{Footnote 68} By the time of the California primary in June, more voters admitted to be voting for—or against—Reagan because of his stance on national defense and foreign affairs. Anne Nixon, chairperson of the Monterey Citizens for Reagan chapter, solicited donations for Reagan by touting his stance on national defense and criticizing Ford’s handling of U.S-Soviet relations and American policy in Vietnam, Greece, and Angola. Nixon told Californians that while Ford was a “nice guy” who reduced the tide of Democratic spending in Washington, Reagan was the only man who “understands the national peril from without” and was an “articulate campaigner for Americanism.”^{Footnote 69} Reagan overwhelmingly won his home state, beating Ford by thirty percentage points and setting the stage for a showdown over Republican delegates at the Republican National Convention in Kansas City. In the days leading up to the convention, Reagan’s base reiterated that the way to beat Ford was to maintain his attacks on the president’s national defense and foreign policy. Grassroots activists sent Reagan their advice and checks for donations in small amounts of five, ten, or twenty-five dollars. William Haggerty from Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, a “registered Democrat,” told Reagan that “the way to win the number of needed delegates” was to play up the threat of the Soviet Union. Grace and Lee Wooster were “retired registered Democrats” who found that claims that there was “no difference” between Ford and Reagan were untrue, and enclosed an article from the conservative magazine the Christian Crusade Weekly that suggested Ford and Kissinger had allowed the Soviets to expand their military power. Florence Daige of Attleboro, Massachusetts, told Reagan that he “alone can save our country and Panama Canal. We need [a] leader who will build this country up to Number 1 and say no to the Russians, [and] open our defense plants to give our men work.” One conservative wrote to Reagan’s wife, Nancy, that Reagan should introduce into the Republican platform a demand for the resignation of Henry Kissinger, believing the secretary of state’s conduct to “be enough to defeat Gerald Ford.”^{Footnote 70}

While Reagan had the support of his grassroots base at the outset of the convention, he lost a portion of it after he chose Pennsylvania Senator Richard Schweiker as his vice presidential nominee. Schweiker was a liberal Republican with strong ties to labor, but he fell in line with Reagan’s positions on defense. For many of Reagan’s most dedicated supporters, however, men like Schweiker represented what was wrong with the Northeast wing of the Republican Party. One Reagan voter who professed to be an “independent-leaning-toward-Democrat,” claimed Reagan “blew it” by picking Schweiker, “just like Wallace did when he picked Curtis LeMay.” He was contemplating donating “a few dollars to your campaign till this Schweiker came on” the ticket. Most of Reagan’s top advisers and aids, including Helms and the Representative from Ohio, John Ashbrook, privately disapproved of Reagan’s choice, believing Schweiker to have failed the test of being a true conservative. But others favored the selection of Schweiker. Reverend Salvator Franco from New Hyde Park, New York, praised Reagan’s choice for vice president as “Schweiker is for prayer in school, against busing and gun control, against abortion on demand and thinks détente has been a one-way street.” Franco said the “people in Nassau County [are] anxious to support Reagan Schweiker ticket.”^{Footnote 71} Events on the convention floor also hurt Reagan. The Mississippi delegation made the surprise move of shifting delegates to Ford, despite the state’s having voted for Reagan in its primary. The bleeding of Reagan supporters due to the falling out over Schweiker and the Mississippi delegation meant the end of Reagan’s candidacy. After all the votes were counted, Ford had 1,187 delegates, while Reagan had 1,070. Reagan conceded to Ford, but not before his supporters inserted a “morality in foreign policy plank” into the Republican Party platform. While it did not call for Kissinger’s resignation, it did criticize détente and the Helsinki Accords and praised Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. Furthermore, as historian John Lewis Gaddis argues, Reagan forced Ford “to disassociate himself symbolically, if not in substance, from the entire concept of détente” during the campaign.^{Footnote 72} After the Florida primary, Ford used the term “peace through strength,” rather than détente, a slogan later used in alluding to Reagan’s foreign policy.