The phone in the bedroom rang early, just after 6 a.m., and a groggy Ronald Reagan turned over, thinking even then that it must be bad news.
It was. On the other end of the line, national security adviser Robert
”Bud” McFarlane was telling the President that a Soviet guard had shot and killed a U.S. Army major in East Germany.
”When he gets a call real early in the morning, he`s tempted to just turn over and say, `Hello, Bud,` ” one senior White House aide said. ”It`s never good news.”
Monday would be some day. There was this grave international incident with the Soviets, a breakfast with reporters, a hard-line speech about Nicaragua, a private briefing by his chief arms-control negotiator, a Cabinet meeting and a new minimum-wage bill to send to Congress. There was a tasteless joke about farmers to apologize for (”I think we should keep the grain and export the farmers”) and more reporters` questions to answer.
And all along, behind the scenes, Reagan was quietly at work on the real business of the day.
”It`s not every day that he`s working even before breakfast and then all through the day and night,” said the senior White House aide. ”All these other things came up, but really the focus of the whole day was on MX.”
Some time later on, when Reagan looks back, Monday, March 25, 1985, is sure to stand out as one of the busiest days of his presidency. It was the day he made one of the biggest legislative fights of his life, and it paid off. On Tuesday, the House approved the measure authorizing the missile funds by a razor-thin vote of 219 to 213.
There was a series of White House telephone calls to undecided House members, both Sunday night and Monday morning, the beginning of the end of a two-week blitz to get the MX missile off Congress` launching pad.
Some of the calls were made by Vice President George Bush; others were by Secretary of State George Shultz, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger or Max Friedersdorf, the White House`s chief troubleshooter and nose-counter in Congress.
But the personal touches were Reagan`s. On Monday morning, they took the form of short sessions with undecided legislators, sometimes alone, sometimes in twos and threes.
At the end of the day came the coup de grace, the move opponents and supporters alike described as the key to winning the House MX vote. Assembled in the stately East Room of the White House, brought together by a presidential invitation–and military buses sent to bring them–about 120 legislators sat at attention as Reagan made his pitch for the controversial weapons system, then turned the floor over to his arms-control negotiator, Max Kampelman.
Fresh off a flight from Geneva, and hurrying to catch a return flight in time for a meeting Tuesday morning with his Soviet counterpart, Kampelman emphasized that he was himself a Democrat, but ”we can only have one President of the United States at a time.”
Appealing to his ”old friends” on the Democratic side of the aisle, the balding New York attorney and former diplomat called emotionally for support for the MX, saying that rejection of the missile would ”inevitably delay an arms-control agreement.”
Not everyone in the room was swayed, and some resented Reagan`s blatant move to pull out all the stops. But by all accounts, enough minds were changed to ensure Reagan`s victory. By Tuesday morning, House Speaker Thomas O`Neill
(D., Mass.), an outspoken MX opponent, more or less threw in the towel.
”We thought we had it won yesterday,” O`Neill said, ”but I`ve lost six Democrats since then and one or two Republicans. At least six names are kind of doubtful because of pressure from the White House.”
In the West Wing of the White House, where staff members prepare strategies and do the hard in-fighting, Reagan`s move to bring back Kampelman was considered a masterstroke. ”From our readouts we took this morning, it appeared to work,” said one source involved in legislative tactics. ”Several House members told us that Kampelman had persuaded them to back the President.”
Whispers of old-fashioned horse-trading abounded, with some MX opponents charging that the White House sold skeptics by implying administration support for programs in House members` home districts. Asked whether the White House was buying votes, House Majority Leader James Wright (D., Tex.) said Reagan was ”renting them . . . leasing them for a short time.”
O`Neill said Reagan`s talk with reluctant lawmakers ”leaves the feeling that you get economic programs down the road. . . . It leaves the feeling,
`I`m in the inner circle.` ”
But as usual with the man nicknamed ”Teflon Ron,” few of the charges appeared to stick to the President.
Monday was the climax of a four-year-old effort to sell the MX to a skeptical Congress. The key, officials say, was the decision to have Reagan use his position as commander-in-chief to browbeat Congress into thinking it is a no-win matter to deny the President a weapons system he insists is indispensable to the nation`s defense, and to the chances for an agreement to limit nuclear arms.
The plan for the last-minute all-out blitz emerged from a strategy session earlier this month led by Donald Regan, the aggressive new White House chief of staff. It was agreed at that session that Reagan`s best salesman was Reagan. So Reagan whipped up the Senate, going to Capitol Hill to lunch with Republican senators and implore them to back him. As the two votes last week show, it worked.
The Democratic-controlled House was different–and tougher. For one thing, the crusty O`Neill was not about to invite Reagan to the Capitol to use his charmer`s touch there.
So Reagan instead invited the House to come to the White House and see him there–all 435 members. He even ordered military buses up to the Capitol to carry them down Pennsylvania Avenue. Only about 120 came, but it apparently was enough.
