THE STAR SHAKES UP THE PARTY

"I finally figured out this politics," Ronald Reagan once confided to an associate. "It's like show business. You start with a big opening act, coast, and close with a great crescendo." For the conservative Republican star, the opening act is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. this Thursday in the barnlike ballroom of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., with a four-minute announcement of his candidacy for President. He plans to say that the country has lost its direction and the people sense a need for fundamental changes. Next, the script calls for Reagan and Wife Nancy to make quick campaign visits to four cities in states that have crucially important early primaries--Miami, Manchester, N.H., Charlotte, N.C., and Chicago--before returning on Friday to Burbank, Calif., where advance men will have mobilized a large welcoming crowd. Then Reagan will ease up on his public politicking and coast a bit until January, when he intends to begin an all-out campaign in hopes of knocking President Gerald Ford out of the race by late spring.

In another election year, an insurgent's challenge to his party's incumbent President would be politically suicidal, or at best quixotic. But 1976 will be anything but a typical political year. Disturbed by inflation, unemployment, crime and the sprawl of Big Government, Americans seem to be growing more conservative. Much of their dissatisfaction is focused on the politicians in Washington. Ford has been weakened further by his bumbling Cabinet shake-up of two weeks ago, his fumbling performance on the hustings and the disarray in his campaign organization. The beneficiary is Reagan, who, despite his years in the public eye as a Hollywood actor and California Governor, is viewed as a fresh face in presidential politics because he cannot be identified with the problems in Washington. Professionals in both parties give him an outside chance of carrying off the nomination at the G.O.P.'s convention in Kansas City, Mo., in August.

The Californian held off on his campaign announcement for months. He did a lot of relaxing at his 620-acre ranch near Santa Barbara, grooming his two thoroughbred horses, remodeling his adobe ranch house and acting the part of a disinterested citizen awaiting a summons to national service. The stance was half performance, half genuine, but it also served the practical purposes of generating drama and allowing him to earn money. Since leaving the Governor's office in January, he has written a weekly column published in more than 200 newspapers, recorded daily five-minute radio talks broadcast by about 200 stations, and made more than a hundred speeches to Republican audiences for fees of up to $5,000 plus expenses. In all, he grossed about $1 million from those activities, a nice raise from his $49,100 salary as Governor.

At 64, Reagan is remarkably youthful, though his age might be a minor campaign issue (Ford is 62), and some associates question whether he has the endurance to campaign full tilt for months on end (see box page 20). But the famous Reagan grin remains boyish. The voice is strong, the delivery is sincere, fluid and as effortlessly polished as the apples habitually ordered for his hotel suites. The aura of glamour and the ability to command attention never fail. When he spoke recently at Islip, L.I., says Suffolk County Republican Chairman Ed Schwenk, "we had a tremendous turnout, and after the speech people hung around just watching him. It was a bigger reaction than Nixon or Agnew ever got here."

First the veteran stage and stump performer warms up an audience by slipping into a slight brogue to tell some Pat and Mike stories. Then he brings home his message: lower taxes, less government and a return to old-fashioned self-reliance--what Reagan calls "a program of creative federalism for America's third century." The rhetoric is often bombastic. Sample: "Today the Gordian knot is in Washington. But this is a republic, and we have no king to cut it, only we the people, and our sword has been beaten into ballot boxes."

His chief asset is the diehard backing of a solid core of dedicated conservative loyalists. Whereas Ford's support in the party is often called broad but shallow, Reagan's is narrow but deep. His strategy is to mobilize his supporters in two early primary states where his appeal is strong: New Hampshire (Feb. 24) and Florida (March 9). He hopes that an impressive showing in either state will create enough momentum to carry him to victory in some of the other early primaries: Illinois (March 16), North Carolina (March 23) and New York and Wisconsin (both on April 6). At that point, explains Campaign Director John Sears, "we would expect to start cutting heavily into Ford's support. We think that a lot of those people would be persuaded to vote for Reagan in the later primaries." Among them: Michigan (May 18) and Oregon (May 25).

In New Hampshire, the Reagan team by January 1974 had won the expectable support of conservative Governor Meldrim Thomson and far-right Newspaper Publisher William Loeb, so it then signed on a moderate, former Governor Hugh Gregg, as campaign manager. Political analysts believe that about 40% of the state's Republicans, most of them conservatives, now back Reagan. Even so, the plodding Ford organization has yet to show any sense of urgency: Congressman James Cleveland will not return until this week from a five-week vacation trip to the Far East to assume his duties as Ford's campaign chairman.

In Florida, Ford's campaign, headed by Congressman Lou Frey, is somewhat better organized than Reagan's. Still, Reagan stands a good chance in the primary; his workers, led by former State G.O.P. Chairman Luther E. Thomas, a wealthy auto dealer from Panama City, talk of winning 65% of the vote.

Reagan has budding campaign organizations in the other early-primary states, like Illinois and North Carolina, and a big effort back home in California (where the vote will be on June 8, last day of the primary campaign). In a majority of the other states, however, organizing has not yet begun. At this early stage, most experts rate Ford ahead in all states but those with large concentrations of conservative voters, notably Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Nevada and Oklahoma. Nationwide, a Gallup poll of 339 Republicans found Ford ahead of Reagan, 58% to 36%. But that poll was taken just before Ford's Cabinet shakeup, and the situation could easily change. Indeed, an NBC telephone poll of 245 Republicans just after the shake-up gave Reagan 44%, Ford 43%. Says a top Midwestern Republican who backs Ford: "Reagan's attracting the same crowd that backed Barry Goldwater. The minute he announces, they're going to pop out of the woodwork. They run for delegate slots, are very vocal and will churn everything up."

With Reagan on the offensive, Ford has thus far failed to develop a successful counterstrategy. He has veered to the right, including vetoing the school-lunch bill and calling for cutbacks in a variety of social programs, only to disenchant moderate Republicans. He has campaigned across the country, championing the themes of fiscal integrity, a strong national defense and the evils of Big Government, yet has not excited the public. He permitted, and probably encouraged, Nelson Rockefeller to withdraw in 1976, but still did not appease conservatives. Says one of his political advisers: "The people in the Ford campaign seem reasonably confident. But I sense panic on the part of Ford's supporters on Capitol Hill. They're very discouraged and depressed. They're afraid that Reagan at the head of the ticket would take them all down to defeat, and they think it may already be too late for Ford to recover."

Ford's advisers are counting on Stuart Spencer, who recently signed on as the campaign's political director, to build up some steam. Spencer was largely responsible for putting together Reagan's successful gubernatorial campaign in 1966, and he plans to use similar techniques for Ford. To help develop ideas for the President's State of the Union message in January, which will amount to his campaign platform, Spencer has hired Market Opinion Research of Detroit to identify Ford's constituency and define the issues that appeal to it.

I hat seems to be the President's [chief difficulty, however, is the blandness of his personality and campaigning style, a serious handicap in a race with Reagan, who provokes an emotional reaction that probably wins him as many converts as do his views. Indeed, both candidates share similar basic philosophies, though Ford has more freedom to maneuver; he can broaden his appeal to moderates if he chooses. Says former Minnesota Governor Harold LeVander: "Reagan and Ford are like two peas in a pod. They may see themselves differently, but here in Minnesota, we see them both as rock-ribbed Republicans."

Ronald Wilson Reagan's conservatism reflects his Main Street origins. Son of a shoe salesman, he was reared in a succession of small Illinois towns: Tampico, where he was born on Feb. 6,1911, Galesburg, Monmouth and Dixon. As a freshman at 250-student Eureka College, a Disciples of Christ school, he was one of the leaders of a week-long student strike that forced college officials to rescind cuts in the educational program and loosen puritanical rules that forbade smoking, drinking and dancing. An indifferent student, he concentrated on debating, dramatics and football.

Says a teammate: "He got his face shoved in the mud and got pushed around, but he seemed to like it."

After graduating in 1932, he took a series of jobs, eventually becoming a sportscaster at radio station WHO in Des Moines. He was a superb announcer of major league baseball games. Guided by only the sketchy summaries from ballparks, Reagan would fashion a gripping and imaginative narrative for his listeners. But his goal was always Hollywood. In 1937, while accompanying the Chicago Cubs to spring training in California, he wangled a screen test at Warner Bros, and landed a $200-a-week contract. His good looks and fine physique also led University of Southern California art students to select him as a "20th Century Adonis," and he posed for the school's sculpture class in 1940.

He made 50 movies and his salary reached $3,500 a week, but Reagan never achieved first rank as an actor or star. "I became the Errol Flynn of the B's," he says. He also appeared in several A-quality productions, though never in a lead part. Some typical roles: admirer of a dying Bette Davis in Dark Victory (1939), suitor to Shirley Temple in That Hagan Girl (1947) and a scientist who played second banana to a chimpanzee in Bedtime for Bonzo (1951). Two roles won him acclaim: George Gipp, the doomed halfback of Knute Rockne, All American (1940), and Drake McHugh, the playboy whose legs are amputated needlessly by a sadistic doctor in King's Row (1941). As McHugh wakes from anesthesia, he speaks the line that became the title of Reagan's 1965 autobiography, Where's the Rest of Me?

Reagan always had a casual interest in politics, but he did not become actively involved until his film career began declining after World War II. He regards himself as a reformed "hemophiliac liberal." Indeed as late as 1950 he campaigned for Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas against Richard Nixon in their bitter Senate race. It seems likely, however, that in Reagan's early years, his political opinions were less his own than a reflection of those held by the people around him: his father, who was a New Deal Democrat, and the liberal men and women of Hollywood.

After World War II, Reagan evolved into a conservative. By his own account, the change was triggered by his wartime contacts with self-serving Government bureaucrats and the postwar activities of Communists and fellow travelers in Hollywood. Elected in 1947 to the first of six terms as president of the Screen Actors Guild, he blocked attempts by suspected Communists to take over other film-industry unions. Later he testified willingly during the widely publicized House Committee on Un-American Activities investigation of Hollywood. His testimony was rather evenhanded: he argued that the Communist Party should not be outlawed unless it was proved to be "an agent of a foreign power or in any way not a legitimate political party"; but he supported the studios' blacklist of supposed Communists and sympathizers.

This absorption in politics was one reason for the breakup of his eight-year marriage to Jane Wyman. As the story goes, she was so turned off by his pedantic political analyses at the breakfast table that she walked out in 1948 with their two children, Maureen, now 34, and Michael, 30. Four years later he married a former starlet who shared his political convictions: Nancy Davis, daughter of a wealthy Chicago neurosurgeon. They have two children, Patricia, 22, an aspiring singer, and Ronald Prescott, 17, a student at a private boys' school.

His movie career almost at an end, Reagan turned to TV in 1954 and became host for the weekly General Electric Theater. He also toured the country as G.E.'s representative, spreading management's good will to employees at each of the company's 135 plants. He soon became a favorite speaker at Republican dinners and rallies and in 1964 was named co-chairman of California Citizens for Barry Goldwater.

During that campaign, Reagan made an emotional TV speech denouncing Big Government, foreign aid, welfare, urban renewal and taxes. He electrified conservative Republicans; after Goldwater's defeat, many looked on Reagan as their spiritual leader. Three California millionaires--Auto Dealer Holmes Tuttle, Industrialist Henry Salvatori and the late Oilman A.C. Rubel --persuaded Reagan to run for Governor in 1966. (Tuttle remains a close friend and adviser; Salvatori went over to Ford last summer.)

In that first election, Reagan beat Incumbent Edmund G. ("Pat") Brown with nearly 57% of the 6.5 million votes cast and won a surprisingly high one-fourth of the Democratic vote. Declaring that "there are simple answers," he took office in 1967 with a promise to reduce state spending by 10%, cut welfare, curtail the growth of state government and crack down on student protesters. He turned out to be more pragmatic than his rhetoric suggested, in part because he had to compromise with a Democratic legislature. He managed to limit, but not reverse, the growth of state government; he boasts of vetoing 194 items of legislation that would have cost Californians billions of dollars. But many liberals share the view of Dean McHenry, chancellor emeritus of the University of California at Santa Cruz, that "his bark proved worse than his bite." Even Jesse ("Big Daddy") Unruh, a longtime foe who was the defeated Democratic candidate for Governor in 1970, grudgingly admits, "As a Governor, Reagan was better than most Democrats would concede, though not nearly as good as most Republicans like to think."

Partly because of inflation during Reagan's eight-year administration, state spending doubled, to $9.3 billion, and state taxes per capita jumped to $768 from $426; both increases were at about the same rate as those during Democrat Pat Brown's eight-year administration, which Reagan had attacked as spendthrift. Still, Reagan held state employment to about 116,000, an increase of less than 10%, compared with the 75% increase of Brown's years. Moreover, Reagan substantially raised state aid to schools and other local services. Unquestionably, he left California's state government on a sounder fiscal footing than he found it when he came to office. In contrast to the $194 million deficit he inherited from Edmund G. Brown Sr., Reagan bequeathed a $500 million surplus to his successor, Edmund G. Brown Jr.

Reagan's most notable success was a 70-point welfare reform program adopted in 1971. Among other things, eligibility rules were tightened, benefits for people with jobs were reduced, and fraud was prosecuted more vigorously. In addition, able-bodied recipients were required to take job training courses or work without pay at least four hours a day for their communities--cleaning up parks, directing traffic near schools and the like. To make the reforms more palatable to Democrats, Reagan agreed to increase benefits for those still on welfare by an average of 15%. In the first two years, the reforms cut the welfare rolls by about 220,000, to 2.1 million people; costs were cut by about $1 billion.

Outraged by student protesters and radical movements, Reagan once accused California's public universities of "subsidizing intellectual curiosity." In his first year in office, he cut the university system's proposed budget by 17%. After campus disorders died down, however, Reagan cooled off as well. By the time he left office, the state's higher-education budget had actually increased by 100%. Some educators contend that the quality of the state university system declined somewhat during the Rea gan years. But Brown wants to hold the campuses to "a more austere standard of living" that university officials fear may jeopardize the system. Says McHenry: "In retrospect, a lot of people think that Reagan wasn't so bad. At least he did not question the fundamental role of the university as Brown is doing."

As Governor, Reagan brought a new style to Sacramento, which had grown accustomed to the backslapping ways of politicians like Democrats Pat Brown and Unruh. An intensely private man, Reagan stayed aloof from everyone in the state government except his closest aides. Even they found him to be reserved. Says former Press Secretary Ed Gray: "The staff was never buddy-buddy with him. He always maintained an employer-employee relationship."

While his staff often worked 16-hour days, Reagan usually started work at 9 a.m. and left for home promptly at 5:30 p.m. with a briefcase of homework. Recalls William Clark, who was Reagan's top aide: "He would often break into staff meetings at 5 p.m. and suggest that we all go home to our wives and children. Of course, we couldn't."

Order and brevity became watchwords in his office. His calendar of meetings and appointments was divided into ten-minute segments; only rarely was there any open time. To prepare for meetings, he demanded "mini-memos" that compressed complex problems into four paragraphs. Critics charged that the system was designed for Reagan's brief attention span and gave him a quick but shallow understanding of California's problems. Yet the brief memos were an effective way to sort out and organize the avalanche of information that required his attention. As a rule, Reagan made no important decision without first discussing it at his almost daily cabinet meetings or probing for more facts in lengthy sessions with agency heads and other experts.

During Watergate, aides pressed him to stop defending Richard Nixon. Said one: "It was pointless, and we told him so. He kept jiggling coins in his hands as he listened. Finally, he had enough. 'Goddammit, all right!' he shouted and threw the coins at an aide." But Reagan never disavowed Nixon, and the two still occasionally chat.

In 1968 Reagan made a brief, abortive run for the Republican presidential nomination. Backers got him on the primary ballots in Wisconsin, Nebraska and Oregon, where he won 23% of the vote against Nixon. Afterward Reagan toured several states to drum up support. At the Republican National Convention in Miami, however, he soon realized that his cause was hopeless and withdrew. Two years later he was re-elected Governor but decided that he would not run again; he had long said that no one should serve more than two terms in that office.

The most powerful influence on Reagan is his wife Nancy, 52. Says a former aide: "Nancy is a strong woman with strong opinions. She's the one to talk politics with. She likes it, the details and all, more than he does." She also has more stamina on the stump. Recently she willingly submitted to a grueling round of twelve interviews with reporters in six hours.

Nancy Reagan rarely showed up at the Governor's office, but her touch was often felt. Her sense of femininity led to a decree that the women who worked for the Governor were to wear dresses, not pantsuits. According to some aides, she frequently phoned staffers to talk over her husband's travel plans, his daily appointments and even the qualifications of people who were being considered for high state offices. In 1968 she decided that one of her husband's closest advisers, Communications Director Franklyn Nofziger, talked too much to reporters and persuaded her husband to fire him.

Above all, she takes meticulous care of her husband when he is not campaigning, making certain he does not overwork and gets to bed before 10 p.m. Reagan seems to relish the motherly, don't-forget-your-galoshes attention. With great affection, he calls her "Mommy" and she calls him "Ronnie." Says Nancy Clark Reynolds, Mrs. Reagan's longtime press secretary: "When they hold hands, it's for real."

Their personal fortune is estimated at well over $1 million, but the Reagans live comparatively simply in their five-bedroom house in the Pacific Palisades, a section of Los Angeles. Infrequently, they entertain such old friends as Tuttle, Dart Industries Chairman Justin Dart, Los Angeles Lawyer William French Smith and former Aide Edward Meese, now a vice president of Rohr Industries Inc.

Reagan usually rises by 7:30 a.m. and spends the day at his office near U.C.L.A., where he works on political business, his radio broadcasts and newspaper columns. Lately, he has been out of town making speeches about one week a month. Otherwise he generally returns home to his family by 6, showers, changes into pajamas and eats a simple meal, often his favorite macaroni and cheese. After dinner Reagan munches on jelly beans as he works over his papers and speeches, which he writes in a personal shorthand on 4-in. by 5-in. index cards, or watches television. Favorite programs include The Waltons and reruns of Mission: Impossible. His best-liked authors include William F. Buckley Jr. and Allen Drury.

Besides his wife, Reagan pays close attention to the counsel of a handful of confidants. The most important:

-- John Patrick Sears, 35, an amiable, Georgetown-educated lawyer with a scholarly understanding of the tides that move American politics. Despite his youth at the time, he was a prime strategist of Richard Nixon's 1968 campaign, served briefly as a presidential aide but left after he was frozen out by the jealous H.R. Haldeman. He became a guest lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, then returned to a lucrative Washington law practice. Though the Reagan committee is headed officially by Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada, even he admits that Sears is the master planner and director.

-- Franklyn ("Lyn") Nofziger, 51, a pudgy ex-newspaperman who was press secretary during Reagan's first campaign and his first two years as Governor. After leaving the staff in 1968, he worked successively in public relations, as a White House aide and deputy chairman of the Republican National Committee. He rejoined Reagan last summer as a deputy to Sears, and directs the campaign's West Coast operations from Los Angeles.

By now Reagan has refined his generally predictable views on issues, sometimes reducing them to oversimplified formulas that cause Republican moderates to doubt his grasp of national and world affairs. A sampling of his views:

DETENTE. Using rhetoric with a 1950s, Red-baiting ring, he regards Communism as "a form of insanity [that] is contrary to human nature." He is deeply suspicious of dealing with the Soviet Union. Last week he told TIME Correspondent John Austin: "Detente has been a one-way street that the Soviets have used to continue moving toward the Marxist goal of a socialist, one-world state." He contends that the Russians are trying to achieve nuclear superiority over the U.S. in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks with Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. He adds, "The Soviet Union would have greater respect for us if they knew that we weren't fooled. We must insist that we aren't going to be second to anyone."

INFLATION. Reagan stresses that inflation was caused by excessive Government spending and can be cured only by balancing the federal budget. Says he: "The main cause of this mess is not business or labor but Government-engineered expansion and pre-emption of the nation's money." Reagan would apply the same "cut, squeeze and trim" policy to the federal budget that he boasts of having used in California. He views Ford's call for a $28 billion reduction in next year's budget as not going far enough. Says he: "It has a little bit of the sound of the fellow who advertises a big sale, 20% off, but he raises the prices 40% before he cuts them back." To stimulate the economy, Reagan believes, the Government should eliminate "excessive regulation and injurious taxing policies."

BIG GOVERNMENT. Like Ford, Reagan believes the federal establishment should be reduced. His plan: abolish the federal role in welfare, education, housing, Medicaid and some other services. The savings, he contends, would total $90 billion, permitting a 23% cut in federal personal income taxes and an initial $5 billion payment on the national debt. State and local governments would have to take over many of the programs. But he argues that the savings to taxpayers would still be big because the programs would be run more efficiently --quite a few, indeed, would be dropped --and many jobs would be eliminated.

ENERGY. Both Reagan and Ford would eliminate price controls on domestic gas and oil to encourage industry to discover and develop new wells. Says Reagan: "The problem is not a lack of energy. It is Government regulations which deter, rather than promote, the extraction of it."

WOMEN'S RIGHTS. While Ford supports the Equal Rights Amendment, Reagan opposes it as encouraging "sex and sexual differences [to be] treated as casually and amorally as dogs and other beasts treat them." He also has highly exaggerated fears that the amendment would lead to sexually integrated rest rooms, the drafting of women into Army combat units and wholesale rewriting of the laws on divorce, child support and rape--to the detriment of women's rights. He opposes abortion on demand as "a subtle but nonetheless effective move to dehumanize babies."

GUN CONTROL. He rejects all proposed restrictions on gun ownership, asking rhetorically, "Take away the arms of the citizenry and where is its defense against not only criminals but also its defense against the possible despotism of Government?"

His views are usually expressed in generalities, but they have served Reagan well and won him much attention. As an announced candidate, he will have to be more specific. How would he persuade a Democratic Congress to give up cherished domestic programs and encourage the states and cities to raise taxes enough to take over? Would he abandon detente? And how could he do that without returning to the cold war? His answers will be of great import to Republicans, who now must decide whether he represents a conservative wave of the future or is just another Barry Goldwater calling on the party to mount a hopeless crusade against the 20th century.

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