After months of build up and teasing hints, the old actor cannily saved his punch line for the very end: the next to last sentence of his five-minute television speech. At 10:55 p.m. Sunday in Washington, a moment carefully chosen to put him on-screen at the end of prime time in the East and the beginning of it on the Pacific Coast, Ronald Reagan was set to appear live from the Oval Office. His text got swiftly to the point: "I've come to a difficult personal decision as to whether or not I should seek re-election."
That was just to seize the audience's attention, which Reagan hoped to milk for the last drop of suspense. First, of course, he had to explain his reasoning. So his text went over the horrors he had faced on entering the White House: "Our national defenses were dangerously weak.
We had suffered humiliation in Iran . . .
but worst of all, we were on the brink of economic collapse." Then, in his prepared remarks, he proudly ticked off the accomplishments of three years: a stronger mili tary; lower inflation, taxes and interest rates; falling unemployment.
"But our work is not finished. We have more to do in creating jobs, achieving control over Government spending . . . keeping peace in a more settled world." That can only be accomplished if there is a bond between President and people, "the real heroes of American democracy . . . You were magnificent as we pulled the nation through the long night of our national calamity."
At last came the grand finale: "I am therefore announcing that I am a candidate and will seek re-election to the office I presently hold. Thank you for the trust you have placed in me."
Thus did the President answer the political question of questions. Not will he or won't he; that had never been in serious doubt. Rather, the problem was how art fully he would break the news everyone expected. He put on a virtuoso performance, orchestrating a long roll of drums that built skillfully to its preordained climax. By the time Reagan appeared on the screen Sunday night, his re-election campaign was already off to a rousing start.
It began with a State of the Union speech skillfully combining a boast that "America is back—standing tall" with a plea for cooperation to "finish our job."
The 42-minute address, interrupted some three dozen times by applause, was upbeat, inspirational and politically calculating. While emphasizing the need for bipartisanship, it was carefully worded to shore up Reagan's points of vulnerability and pre-empt Democratic issues. In classic campaign style, the speech contained something for everyone: for conservatives, a pitch for school prayer; for liberals, a pledge of stepped-up attempts to fight environmental pollution; for hawks, expressions of pride in strengthened military forces; for doves, a repetition of a standard line, this time ostensibly addressed to the people of the Soviet Union, that "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought." Reagan deftly sidestepped one of his biggest political liabilities, giant budget deficits, by asking congressional leaders, including Democrats, to appoint representatives who would negotiate with the White House on how to reduce them.