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Yet to Reagan the optimist, it was just a matter of patience and marketing. "I believe the Republican Party represents basically the thinking of the people of this country, if we can get that message across to the people," he said. "I am going to try to do that." He began a weekly commentary broadcast on some 200 radio stations and a biweekly column in 175 newspapers. Those efforts, together with his popularity on the mashed-potato circuit, increased his income from a Governor's salary of $49,100 to about $800,000 a year.
He was irked, though, to see Republican leadership after Nixon's resignation fall into the hands of Gerald Ford, who did not represent right-thinking conservatism. It was almost unheard of to challenge an incumbent President from one's own party, but in 1976 Reagan took the risk, losing at the convention, 1,187 delegates to 1,070. When Ford went down to defeat, Reagan was well positioned to claim the right to be the next challenger to President Jimmy Carter in 1980.
Except that he was old. By Inauguration Day 1981, he would be almost 70, older than any man had been when beginning his presidency. Reagan countered with a joke: "Middle age is when you're faced with two temptations, and you choose the one that will get you home at 9 o'clock." Campaign manager John Sears, the Washington lawyer and strategist who had helped Reagan nearly unseat Ford in 1976, believed Reagan should remain aloofly "presidential." The principal result was that he lost the first big contest, the Iowa caucuses, to hard-driving George Bush. With the whole campaign at stake in the upcoming New Hampshire primary, Reagan shifted to the grittier strategy known among aides as "letting Reagan be Reagan." That led to one of the most memorable scenes of the year: the debate in Nashua, at which Bush sat out a procedural argument in frozen silence while someone tried to turn off Reagan's microphone, and Reagan angrily cried out, "I am paying for this microphone!" It also led to a sweeping victory that virtually assured him the nomination.
Carter too was confident that Reagan would be no match. Reagan being Reagan again upset the prognostications. While aides tried to stuff him with facts for his important TV debate against Carter, the challenger practiced one-liners, notably one that he flung at Carter with considerable effect: "There you go again!" Even more stinging was his repeated question to the voters, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" The answer was, 50.7% of the votes for Reagan, with 41% for Carter and 6.6% for independent John Anderson. The electoral votes were even more lopsided: 489 for Reagan, 49 for Carter.