The Magic and the Message

By KURT ANDERSEN

The script is plotted down to the hour, computers are spinning out electoral-vote permutations, in-house pollsters are tracking every nuance of the electorate's mood. Yet for all the number crunching and tactical machinations, the Republicans' re-election strategy is not conceptually elaborate: in essence, it consists of two words--Ronald Reagan. The President's men have good reason to believe they can win simply by flying him to the right places at the right times and letting him wow the voters.

The candidate is game. As he is nominated this week in Dallas, and then embarks on the final campaign of his 20-year political career, it should again become clear just how deeply he relishes the public flash, the roar of the crowd, the visceral approbation. After the official Labor Day kickoff deep in Reagan's home territory, near Disneyland in ultraconservative Anaheim, Calif., he will be on the road three days a week at first, more later.

The candidate positively twitches for this last national battle to begin. Indeed, to Reagan, the acts of campaigning for President and being President tend to merge and become one seamless public performance. His presidency has been loaded with theatricality; if all goes according to plan, his campaign will be full of presidential grandeur. Reagan just may be the most naturally and skillfully exuberant presidential campaigner of this century. When he addressed 20,000 red-hot devotees in Austin a few weeks ago, the audience hollered and clapped; Reagan's energy level rose in response; the crowd grew more frenzied in turn. "He loved it,"says one campaign aide. "Absolutely loved it."

By usual standards of presidential performance, Reagan might be judged a failure. He regularly loses track of his facts, or gets them wrong, and he follows his ideology no matter where it leads. Several of his subordinates have shown egregious lapses in judgment. Many others are mediocre. His budget is preposterously out of balance, and generally his programs have tended to hurt the poor. For these reasons, a large minority of Americans are neither charmed nor disarmed by the easy Reagan smile, the low-key Reagan warmth and the relentless Reagan sincerity.

But with most citizens, he seems to have established an uncanny rapport, beyond political agreement or disagreement, as if he were a favorite twinkly uncle who happened to make it to the Oval Office. Not since Dwight Eisenhower has the U.S. public felt such fondness for its leader, and not since Franklin Roosevelt has any President seemed quite so relaxed about the job. Reagan's political adversaries concede his special knack for coming across as both engagingly human and larger than life. Says Robert Lent, a regional director of the United Auto Workers: "He looks good and he's an actor. He's the kind of guy you could strike up a conversation with if he lived in the neighborhood."

Why have Americans seemed so generous toward Reagan? Pundits resort to a kind of mystical non-analysis: some unprecedented "Teflon factor," they say, has permitted him to escape public blame; no failure sticks. Walter Mondale's hope is that before Americans step into the polling booths, they will come to see that the Teflon is just a thin coating, that the President beneath is oblivious and misguided. "Mondale and Ferraro are putting up warning signs," notes a White House strategist. "They are saying the next four years will be dangerous if Reagan is reelected. We will have to respond to that." The wishful Democratic scenario has the electorate looking toward a problematic future and deciding that one term of the Reagan regimen has been O.K., but that one term was enough.

Indeed, zigzags in support for Reagan indicate that voters are ambivalent, fond of him personally but uneasy about many of his policies. In a recent Harris poll, for instance, he gets an overall positive rating of 55%, while 63% disapprove of his Central American and arms-control policies. Generally, however, the numbers are discouraging to Democrats. In a new Yankelovich, Skelly & White survey conducted for TIME, 45% of respondents say they would vote for Reagan, 31% for Mondale (see following story). Interestingly, all the national polls found Mondale's postnomination surge to be short-lived. Pollster Lou Harris believes that the hoopla surrounding the Olympics "totally wiped the memory of the Democratic Convention away." Political professionals regard summer surveys as rough sketches of attitudes, however, believing that voters do not focus on the campaign until after Labor Day. Reagan's analysts say they expect the President's lead to shrink, but even the rare White House pessimists count on staying ahead by at least four points.

The Reaganites do not seriously consider the possibility of losing. Although the campaign's success will hinge to an unusual degree on the candidate's personal magic, he is more than just a jolly master of ceremonies: Reagan goes to the voters with a message and a record in office. "I see him running on the same broad principles he ran on in 1980," says James Baker, his chief of staff. Reagan remains devoted to cutting back social programs (although he declines to be specific), to increasing the Pentagon budget further, to hanging tough with the Soviet Union and to preaching the New Right line on social issues. Moreover, the President is still trying to pitch himself as a crusading outsider, even after a term in the White House. "He thinks Congress and the bureaucracy are the Government," explains an aide.

Although his ideological bent is virtually unchanged since 1980, Reagan has accommodated himself to the political exigencies of governing. He adheres to the terms of the unratified SALT II nuclear arms treaty that he condemned as a candidate four years ago. Lately he has offered to meet with the Soviets. He has not abolished the Departments of Energy and Education, as promised. In all, the Democrats will find it harder to portray Reagan as a radical. Indeed, the G.O.P. platform, its language on taxes and classroom prayer sessions toughened up last week by the party's dominant right wing, puts Reagan in the remarkable position of running a bit to the left of his party's positions.

"It's a lot easier to be a Reagan Republican today than it was in 1982," says Connecticut G.O.P. Chairman Thomas D'Amore. Since then Reagan has diluted his anti-Soviet rhetoric and, at least as significant for his re-election prospects, the grim recession has ended. Inflation is at a twelve-year low, unemployment is no worse than when Reagan took office, interest rates have fallen nine points from their peak in 1980. "The perceived well-being of the economy is very good," says Southern Pollster Claibourne Darden. "Whether Reagan is responsible for it or not is [politically] immaterial." A line Reagan used with great effect in his campaign against Jimmy Carter is, in 1984, a reverse showstopper. "Tell me," he asked in Austin last month, "are you better off today than you were four years ago?" "Yes!" they screamed. His advisers are determined to make the economic recovery the campaign issue, and believe the President must insistently take credit for it. "He's not going to be a Rose Garden President and sit on a lead," says an adviser. "Ronald Reagan is at his best when he's on the offensive."

Reagan was definitely on the offensive when, in a recent speech stuffed with the land of provocative language he calls "raw meat," he slashed at the Democrats. "Those responsible for punishing America with record inflation, record interest rates, record tax increases ... farm embargoes, gas lines ... weakness abroad and phony excuses about malaise," Reagan declared, "are the last people who should give sermonettes about misery, unfairness and compassion. Don't let them bury the American dream in their graveyard of gloom and envy."

From the podium this week in the Dallas Convention Center, the President's tone will surely be more generous and magisterial. That is all according to plan. During the campaign, explains a political adviser, "you'll see aggressive speeches alternating in phases with 'statesmanlike' material." In his statesman mode, the President will let his optimism gush, encouraging voters to attribute the upbeat national mood to the presence of Ronald Reagan in the White House. Given the Democrats' recent flag-waving, middle-class tilt, he will work hard to protect his motherhood-and-apple-pie franchise.

The Republican political machine looks powerful, its nuts and bolts in place. The mistrust between moderates and conservatives continues, but in most states the re-election campaigns seem not to be suffering much from the rift. The G.O.P. is exceptionally well funded. During January, February and March, the National Committee and its two congressional adjuncts raised $42 million; the Democrat counterparts could collect just $7.3 million. The Republicans will spend $10 million trying to register 2 million new voters, and as much as $15 million more to mobilize Reagan supporters on Nov. 6. The net is rather finely woven to let in only conservatives: the vestibules of many fundamentalist churches have stacks of registration forms, and high-income suburban zip codes are targeted for canvassing.

On Election Day the selective G.O.P. registration drives look to get a lot of bang for the buck. The higher a citizen's income, the more likely he is to vote, and Reagan's greatest support is among high-income people. But just the rich, or even just Republicans, cannot carry the election for Reagan. To do well, he must rack up more decisive victories in the South than he did in 1980 and pull nearly half the votes of manual workers. Says a Reagan aide: "We need to get a coalition of rednecks, white collars and blue collars."

Geraldine Ferraro is a new variable in this political calculus. While it is unlikely that she will provide the Democrats with millions of converts, she may help limit Reagan's inroads into traditionally Democratic voters who share her background--blue-collar Roman Catholics generally, Italian Americans in particular. She also seems certain to consolidate the Democratic ticket's support among women, especially younger women.

Voters constitute ethnic, class and cultural constituencies, but they live in states: victory comes from winning individual states and thus a majority of U.S. electoral votes, at least 270 of 538. The Democrats, for starters, concede about 20 states and at least 120 electoral votes to Reagan. They claim an edge in nine states (and Washington, D.C.), with 90 electoral votes. By the Democrats' optimistic reckoning, that leaves 20 states up for grabs.

The outlook in each region: The West. This vast territory has been a breeze for G.O.P. presidential candidates since 1948, and Reagan-style Republicanism--sinewy self-reliance, plain and simple--is a Western strain. The Republicans will probably lose Hawaii, as in 1980, but intend to win all twelve remaining states. California, with 47 electoral votes, is the mother lode. In a state that prizes novelty and pizazz, Ferraro could conceivably spur a Democratic upset. But probably not. "Maybe Mrs. Ferraro will make it possible for Walter Mondale to have a respectable loss," gibes Ted Hicks, the Los Angeles County G.O.P. chairman. Ronald Reagan has won California every time out (twice for Governor, four G.O.P. presidential primaries, the 1980 election); Walter Mondale lost big in last June's Democratic primary. Says Mickey Kantor, Mondale's California campaign manager: "There is always a first time."

Reagan won Oregon and Washington in 1980, but Jimmy Carter and Independent John Anderson together received nearly as many votes. The Democrats have a good chance in Oregon and plan a serious campaign in Washington.

The South. Texas is a hybrid of the Republican West and conservative South, but the G.O.P. has not had anything like a lock on the Lone Star State: Democrats won Texas in four of the past six presidential elections. Still, the polls and almost all the local hunches give the state and its 29 electoral votes to Reagan. For one thing, although the Hispanic vote is significant (17.7%) and overwhehningly Democratic, macho Mexican-American men may resist the prospect of a female Vice President. For another, Reagan's happy-go-lucky cowboy style and his free-market economics seem to suit Texans.

Of the other Southern states, which among them have 109 electoral votes, the President has a decent chance to win all ten. The Democrats, however, write off only Florida and Virginia. Mondale Campaign Chairman James Johnson says that "Tennessee is close" and that Georgia, Alabama and "maybe even Mississippi" are winnable. Right now, however, the region is Reagan's to lose. The most recent Darden poll showed Reagan with an enormous 26% regional lead. White Southerners tend to share his extreme hawkishness and his distaste for civil rights schemes like affirmative action. "I think Reagan can just sleep late," says John Havick, a Georgia Tech political scientist. "He's got these people."

The Democrats' tenuous Southern hopes rest on the black vote. A University of Alabama poll found that Reagan is leading in the state just 46% to 40%. If the party is able to generate huge black turnouts in Alabama (where 23% of the electorate is black), South Carolina (28% black), Georgia (22%), Mississippi (26%) and Louisiana (25%), and capture at least a third of the white vote in each state, the

President could be denied Dixie. The recent trend in voter registration worries the G.O.P.: according to the American Political Report, a Republican-run newsletter, black registration in the region increased by about 700,000 since 1980, while white registration declined by more than 200,000.

For the next two months, the critical thrust of both parties' Southern campaigns may be their respective registration efforts. No doubt the G.O.P. enterprise has in many places been able to benefit from racial fears and thus transform white nonvoters and Democrats into registered Republicans. In North Carolina (19% black electorate), says Elections Director Alex Brock, "Jesse Jackson began registration in the churches. But the Moral Majority picked up on it and may have surpassed him." In six months, G.O.P. registrations in rural Scotland County, N.C., increased from about 1,000 to almost 2,300. Lamarr Mooneyham, a Moral Majority official, says he has indeed been "fishing for conservatives in church waters." The white vote, however, is no solid bloc of fundamentalists, and some backlash seems possible. The Darden poll asked about a hypothetical endorsement by Moral Majority Founder Jerry Falwell, who is campaigning for Reagan. By a ratio of 3 to 1, Southerners said they would be less likely to support a candidate endorsed by Falwell.

The East. This region is the stickiest for Reagan. He has little chance in Maryland, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

Although he won every Northeastern state except Rhode Island in 1980, including Pennsylvania and New York, only New Hampshire actually gave him a majority. Yankee prudence might be especially offended by Reagan's profligate budget deficits.

In every New England state, Anderson attracted between 10% and 15% of the 1980 vote. This fall, a majority of the 5.7 million Anderson voters is expected to go to the Democrats. Many of them are members of The Big Chill generation, who tend to be cool on Reagan. Says a White House strategist: "We have problems among those who were of college age during the Viet Nam War."

The crucial states in the East are New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, with 77 electoral votes among them. Reagan is probably slightly behind in the first two. John Sears, who managed Reagan's 1980 primary campaign, has intriguing advice for his former boss: he would press hard in New York, drawing the Democrat's money and attention. Thus Mondale, Sears suggests, "would have to say things that turn off the South and West. That way Reagan shores up his base while attacking Mondale's." The G.O.P. believes that the anti-Semitic flickers in Jesse Jackson's campaign have made it possible to attract Democratic Jewish voters, who make up a fifth of the New York electorate.

New Jersey has gone for every Republican since 1968. The recession was mild and the recovery robust. Even Gerald McCann, the Democratic chairman in thickly Democratic Hudson County, will probably support Reagan. His blunt reasoning: "I'll go with the winner." Across the Delaware River, in Pennsylvania, circumstances are different. The recession was unusually severe; thousands of steelworkers are still jobless and angry. "There's a real group of people out there who think [Reagan] is the worst thing that ever sat in that chair," says Edward Stevens, Democratic chairman in Allegheny County. "Maybe they don't blame him for it all. But he hasn't done anything to help them, to give them hope."

The Midwest. The President fares better in Detroit than Pittsburgh. "Reagan is a mystery to a lot of us," says former United Auto Workers President Douglas Fraser, "but he is nevertheless very, very effective with the American worker." In Michigan, the auto industry's renaissance seems to have cheered up the working class and increased support for Reagan. Elsewhere around the Great Lakes, Republican prospects look somewhat iffier. Ferraro may be a potent force in Cleveland and industrial northeastern Ohio, and the state G.O.P. seems too sickly and complacent to do much about it. A party drive to register 100,000 voters has signed up 3,200. "People think Reagan has got it won," says Ohio Republican Leader Thomas Van

Meter. "That makes me nervous."

Reagan will win Illinois if its downstate towns, where he grew up, overcome Chicago's Democratic vote.

But this year, says Republican Governor James Thompson, "our Republican blue-collar towns are catching the brunt of the recession. So they tend to blame the incumbent." All over the / Midwest, farmers are burdened by falling land prices, mammoth interest payments and declining export income. "If my farmers were traditional Democrats," says Kansas Governor John Carlin, "they'd be organizing lynch mobs." That is a fantastic if: except for the 1964 anti-Goldwater landslide, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas and Indiana have not gone Democratic since 1936.

To the White House, the state-by-state electoral arithmetic is a pleasure to figure and refigure. Reagan has a plausible base of 200 electoral votes, including those of California, Texas and Florida. With the addition of New Jersey or Michigan, plus a few states of the Deep South, and one small state (Washington? Kentucky?) for good measure, he will be reelected.

But he is not a shoo-in. He has profound weaknesses, which have been highlighted during his August holiday. The budget deficit problem looms bigger and bigger, yet Reagan seems blithe about it and unready to prescribe bitter medicine. The economy is rollicking along, but troublesome news could come before the election: the rates of interest and unemployment have recently risen.

The fairness issue is real. "The Reagan Administration hasn't allowed itself to be identified with populist trends," says Kevin Phillips, a Republican theorist. "It has allowed itself to be cast as the party of Learjets and mink coats." Even Americans who approve of Reagan, according to the new Yankelovich survey conducted for TIME, believe that his policies favor the rich.

When voters contemplate the prospect of necessary, painful reductions in entitlement programs, will they decide that Reagan is the wisest judge of what to cut? Other Reagan positions--his advocacy of environmental laissez-faire and opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment--have made enemies. Those antagonists, says an adviser, "will pop up all over the place on Election Day." For all his good will, Reagan is a polarizing leader. When Gerald Ford was President, the Gallup poll found he was opposed by equal proportions of whites and nonwhites, rich and poor. Toward Reagan, however, the antagonism runs starkly along racial and class lines.

His inept bomb-the-Russians joke last week may help the Democrats remind voters that the Administration's foreign policy has been long on tough talk and dangerously short on subtle maneuvering.

Admits a G.O.P. tactician: "All we need is a quip every couple of weeks, and people will begin wondering."Says another adviser: "The main thing to worry about is a foreign crisis in which we don't respond well." Although Americans often rally round a President at moments of international stress, a conspicuous foreign policy misstep abroad during the next two months could by itself cost Reagan the election.

His handlers will try to keep Reagan away from journalistic free-fire zones during the campaign, but he will inevitably have more impromptu encounters with the press--and thus more chances for signals to get crossed, to goof up. The staff is worried that the public will see Reagan as disengaged, unknowing, even a bit dotty. When he was asked a touchy question last month as he posed for pictures by a wildlife refuge, White House Spokesman Larry Speakes stepped in front of the President to prevent him from answering, and Speakes' underlings pulled the plugs on TV lights. Earlier this month, when the President seemed stumped by an arms control question, Nancy Reagan fed him an all-purpose answer. Says a top aide: "Larry won't be doing that again. Mrs. Reagan won't do that again. It makes people think the old fellow ain't up to it."

Reagan will surely debate Mondale at least once (the Democrat has requested six encounters), and the elderly President cannot afford to seem out to lunch. His advisers are confident he will perform well, that his command of the issues is greater than it was when he outshone Carter in 1980. But Mondale's thrust and parry have been sharpened by a long primary campaign. Bush will probably be drawn into a debate too. If he declines, he looks silly and defensive; yet if he accepts, he stands a good chance of losing, since Ferraro, the underdog, merely has to hold her own to win.

Reagan is the oldest President ever, and his age, 73, may finally prove the greatest threat to his reelection. "I do think his hearing has gotten worse,"says an adviser. Reagan occasionally nods off during Cabinet meetings, and his press conference hesitations seem longer. In public he usually appears ruddy and chipper enough. But one serious health scare could make the electorate radically reconsider Reagan's fitness to be President.

For now, however, the path to a second term looks well marked and clear.

The candidate strides along, jaunty as ever. "We can bumble all day and all night on the tax and deficit issue and still come out all right," says one cocky adviser. "Why? Because the economy is strong, and right now our vulnerability on foreign affairs isn't obvious. The world looks pretty calm." Among the aides, election bets concern only the size of the victory margin. "A landslide," says Richard Wirthlin, the President's pollster, is not a high-probability event." At the White House these days, that is about as cautious as they get. --By Kurt Andersen. Reported by Laurence L. Barrett, with Reagan, and Joseph N. Boyce/Atlanta

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett, Joseph N. Boyce