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To win or keep the White House, a G.O.P. candidate generally must garner the votes of 80% of all Republicans, half of all independents and even a quarter of all Democrats. That might be difficult against Mondale, who is the least divisive potential Democratic candidate in many years. The former Vice President may not excite many voters, but he is at least acceptable to all the blocs that have been alienated by one or another of Reagan's right-wing policies. And they represent a lot of votes: Pollster Louis Harris figures that "hardcore" anti-Reaganites, who would vote for almost anyone against the President, constitute 38% of all potential voters, vs. only 35% hard-core supporters who would vote for Reagan against any foreseeable opponent. "Unions, teachers, environmentalists, feminists, those are all groups that are anti-Reagan more than pro-Mondale," says one Republican campaigner who fears their ability to organize and get out the vote.
For all that, a Reagan re-election campaign looks eminently winnable, and that is a major reason why the President has determined to run again. Almost from the moment he entered the White House his aides assumed, and believe he assumed, that he would try for a second term. He might have changed his mind, they think, only if he had seemed sure to be defeated or if his health had failed, and nothing of the sort happened. The President, who will celebrate his 73rd birthday next Monday, gives every appearance of being in better physical condition now than he was on Inauguration Day.
Reagan's advisers insist that he never bothered to discuss with them whether he should run; their talks involved only strategy and timing. The President debated his choice only with his wife Nancy. The First Lady has become much more comfortable with her own role in the public eye than she was at first. Though she is still haunted by the assassination attempt against her husband, she encouraged him to do what he wanted.
Essentially, say friends and advisers, Reagan is running again for the simplest of reasons: he believes in what he is doing, he likes his job, and he does not see anything else he could do that would be remotely as interesting. The President often seems surprisingly uninformed about the details of policy and content to follow the consensus of his staff (see following story). Nonetheless, he is dedicated to his conservative principles and feels personal as well as ideological satisfaction in putting them into effect. "Here's a guy who for 25 years has been fighting the Communists with words," says one adviser. "Now he can take action. Grenada is a good example of that."
Reagan does not display the towering ego or consuming ambition that has driven other Presidents. But the White House does fill a personal need of another sort:
he has been performing before audiences all his adult life, and he is now playing to the biggest audience on earth. Much as he delights in riding horses on vacations at his ranch near Santa Barbara, he has confessed to friends that he would be bored living there full time—and that goes double for Nancy. Finally, his ego is at least big enough to make him doubt whether any other G.O.P. candidate could carry out his conservative mission equally well, or perhaps even win.