November 6, 1984: President Ronald Reagan Is Re-Elected

November 6, 1984: President Ronald Reagan is overwhelmingly re-elected, defeating Walter Mondale, who had been Vice President under Reagan's predecessor as President, Jimmy Carter. Reagan nearly becomes the 1st candidate to pull off a 50-State sweep, coming closer than Richard Nixon did in 1972, as Mondale wins his home State of Minnesota by just 2,996 votes.

Reagan thus breaks Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 1936 record of 523 Electoral Votes, with 525, although it's not quite a higher percentage: FDR got 523 of 531 for 98.5 percent of the EVs, while Reagan got 525 of 538 for 97.6.

Mondale also won the mostly-black District of Columbia, for 3 EVs, but until about 12:00 Midnight, Eastern Time, Minnesota still couldn't be called for him. Or, as comedian Jay Leno put it, "When I went to bed, I only had 3 fewer Electoral Votes than Mondale, and I wasn't even running!"

Mondale also got at least 48 percent of the vote in Massachusetts and Rhode Island; 47 percent in Maryland; and 45 percent in Pennsylvania, Iowa, New York and Wisconsin. Had he won those, instead of losing 525 Electoral Votes to 13, he would have lost 398 to 140, and it wouldn't have looked so bad. But the popular vote was still bad: Reagan won 58.7 percent, Mondale 40.6.

Unemployment was 7.5 percent, higher than the 7.1 percent that it was 4 years earlier when Reagan knocked Carter out of the White House. And there was the Beirut barracks debacle just a year before this election, killing 241 U.S. Marines -- to put it into recent context, 60 "Benghazis" all at once.

And, less than 4 months earlier, Reagan had joked about starting World War III: "We begin bombing in 5 minutes." As a 14-year-old boy, let me tell you: That was terrifying. And, especially in the 2nd debate, Reagan looked like he was already affected by Alzheimer's disease.

So how did Reagan win? By lying: By saying that it was "Morning Again In America," by saying that America was stronger than ever thanks to his defense buildup, by saying that the Communists were in retreat (they weren't), and that he wasn't going to raise taxes but Mondale was. (As Mondale pointed out, Reagan had already raised taxes twice, and would have to do so again -- and, in fact, did.)

But the Republicans ran against "The Carter-Mondale Administration." To this day, they compare every Democratic President, and every Democratic nominee for President, to Carter, even after we've had successful Democratic Presidencies under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and Republican Presidents who were much more damaging than Carter in the two George Bushes and Donald Trump -- and, as it turned out, Reagan himself.

Mondale also hurt himself with his selection of a running mate. It is easy to understand his desire to choose the 1st female Vice Presidential nominee: He thought he could take the women's vote away from Reagan. That was probably a bad guess, no matter who he would have chosen. 

But Ferraro, then a Congresswoman from Queens, was the wrong woman for the job. The traditional running-mate role, that of the "attack dog" who says things the Presidential nominee shouldn't, worked against her, especially with her N'Yawk accent. The fact that her husband, Brooklyn real-estate developer John Zaccaro, was viewed ethically compromised (even if he really wasn't, and she wasn't, either) didn't help.

But there was nothing Mondale could have done. Reagan was able to have it both ways. He was able to accentuate the positive: The "Morning In America" ad suggested, with much justification, that things were better than they had been 4 years earlier.

It was something that Americans, besieged by a quarter of a century of Cold War, civil rights struggles, race riots, assassinations, war, recession and terrorism desperately wanted to believe. And Reagan and his packagers were able to convince them it was true. This was all part of the Actor's show. He never played any part as well as he played "President Reagan." In short, to adapt a famous line from a TV commercial: Ronald Reagan wasn't a great President, but he played one on TV.

One thing that helped was the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Granted, the hockey Gold Medal, including the upset of the vastly more talented Soviet team, at the 1980 Winter Olympics didn't help Carter (or Mondale, who was actually at the game with the Soviets and the Gold Medal game with Finland, as several players were from Minnesota). But the boycott of the Summer Olympics, in Moscow, sure hurt Carter – even though it did more to expose the Soviets as "an evil empire" than anything Reagan ever did.

When the Soviets and the East Germans boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, it left the American team almost free rein to win as many medals as it wanted. It became 16 days of unbridled, safe patriotism, a call of, "You're all welcome to visit our country, but our country is the greatest!" It was right up Reagan's alley, and it was right in his Southern California backyard. As the host nation's head of state, he even got to officially declare the Games open. He was great at ceremonial stuff like that, and he reveled in it.

But Reagan and his team were equally good at selling the Cold War. In spite of the sunny image he projected for both himself and America, Reagan was able to make Americans so frightened of the Soviet Union that they'd rather have a senile, lying Republican as President than an honest Democrat of sound mind.

There was nothing Mondale could have done. The only way he could have won would have been if Reagan's Alzheimer's disease had made him look obviously impaired during their debates. People who heard his closing statement in the 2nd debate wondered, but it wasn't obvious enough to swing the election.

In spite of his tremendous victory, it was a personal landslide, a.k.a. a "lonely landslide." The Republicans gained 16 seats in the House of Representatives, hardly what one would expect when the President won by such a wide margin. And the Democrats actually gained 2 seats in the Senate. Notable newly-elected Senators included Republicans Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Phil Gramm of Texas; and Democrats Al Gore of Tennessee, John Kerry of Massachusetts, Paul Simon of Illinois, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia.

Reagan died in 2004, Ferraro in 2011, Bush in 2018, Mondale in 2021.

*

November 6, 1984, like all modern U.S. Election Days, was a Tuesday. The baseball season was over. Football was in midweek. These 5 NBA games were played on the day:

* The New York Knicks lost to the Dallas Mavericks, 107-104 at the Reunion Arena in Dallas. The Knickerbockers got 31 points from Bernard King, who had been the best player in the world over the last year or so. Yes, better than Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Julius Erving, Moses Malone, and -- don't forget, he was just an overmatched professional rookie at this point -- Michael Jordan.

But Jay Vincent -- a decent but not great player, probably best known today for having several nicknames, the best of which was "The Midnight Creeper" -- led all scorers with 33.

* The Houston Rockets beat the Kansas City Kings, 108-94 at The Summit in Houston. (The arena has since been converted into the Lakewood Church Central Campus, the "megachurch" run by Dr. Joel Osteen, infamously closed off to refugees during Hurricane Harvey in 2017 until he was publicly shamed into opening it.)

* The San Antonio Spurs beat the Seattle SuperSonics, 99-91 at the HemisFair Arena in San Antonio.

* The Denver Nuggets beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 146-130 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California. Despite all the talent on the floor, especially with this being the Lakers' "Showtime" period, the leading scorer in this game scored just 28: Alex English of the Nuggets.

* And the Portland Trail Blazers beat the Phoenix Suns, 116-99 at the Portland Memorial Coliseum.

And 4 games were played in the NHL:

* The New York Islanders beat the St. Louis Blues, 6-3 at the Nassau Coliseum.

* The Quebec Nordiques beat the Winnipeg Jets, 5-3 at the Colisee de Quebec.

* The Pittsburgh Penguins, a terrible team with a rookie named Mario Lemieux, played the defending Stanley Cup Champions, the Edmonton Oilers, to a tie, 3-3 at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh.

* And in an "Original Six" matchup, the Detroit Red Wings beat the Montreal Canadiens, 4-2 at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit. 

November 2, 1976: Jimmy Carter Is Elected President

Note the 2nd line of the headline:
Gotta get that local angle in.

November 2, 1976: Former Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia edges incumbent President Gerald Ford, to reclaim the White House for the Democratic Party.

Ford had been Vice President when President Richard Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974. He was left with a recession he struggled to get under control, and the aftermath of the Watergate scandal that brought Nixon down. A month later, Ford pardoned Nixon for all crimes he committed, or may have committed, as President. That infuriated people who wanted to believe that Ford would be the honest man that Nixon wasn't.

Carter capitalized on that, telling voters, "I will never lie to you." It seemed to work: That statement, and the fact that he wasn't a "Washington insider" like so many other candidates for the Democratic nomination, made Carter stand out from the pack. At the Democratic Convention at Madison Square Garden, he took one of those insiders, Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota, as his Vice Presidential nominee. The Carter-Mondale ticket left New York with a 33-point lead in the polls.

It didn't help Ford that he had waffled on a federal bailout for New York City's government, which was close to bankruptcy. At first, he refused, leading to the famous Daily News headline: "FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD." That scared New York State officials, so they stepped in and helped the City get its house a little closer to being in order. That convinced Ford that a smaller bailout was okay.

So now, Ford had ticked off people in the City who thought he didn't care, and he'd ticked off conservatives in the Republican Party who didn't want any bailout for the city they hated the most. (Yes, conservatives hate New York more than they hate Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago or Boston.) To try to win the conservatives back, Ford announced that his original choice for Vice President, Nelson Rockefeller, himself a former Governor of New York, would not be the Party's nominee for the office in 1976.

That wasn't good enough. Ronald Reagan, who had been an actor and then Governor of California, was the darling of the conservative movement, and he challenged Ford in the Republican Primaries, and got almost enough Delegates to dethrone him at the Republican Convention at the Kemper Arena in Kansas City. (The building is now named the Hy-Vee Arena.) Ford chose Senator Bob Dole of Kansas as his new running mate.

Twenty years later, himself nominated for President, Dole would seem too moderate for current Republicans. But in 1976, he was considered acceptable by the Reagan wing of the Party. Which shows just how far to the right the Party had shifted, even by 1996.

Before the Republican Convention, Carter led Ford in the polls by a whopping 33 points. But things began to turn Ford's way. He went on a railroad "whistle-stop tour" like Harry Truman in 1948, because his "Rose Garden strategy" of staying in the White House and "acting Presidential" wasn't working.

He shored up support in the South, the Midwest and the West, leading conservative New York Times columnist William Safire, who had been a speechwriter for Nixon, to coin the phrase "The Winning West," saying that it had become more important than "The Solid South." Dole brought some supporters back. The economy finally began to improve, after the 1st-ever combination of unemployment and inflation, a.k.a. "stagflation," in American history in 1973, '74 and '75.

And the Carter campaign made enough minor mis-steps that Carter's drop in the polls mirrored what might have happened if he'd had one major mis-step. Indeed, it could be argued that, despite winning the Presidency, Carter's political stock was never higher than during the 1976 Democratic Convention.

And while he was pro-civil rights, there was still a stigma: No Southerner had been elected President without first being the Vice President since Zachary Taylor in 1848. (Woodrow Wilson had been born in Virginia, but was a New Jersey-based politician. And he was the only Southern-born politician even nominated between 1848 and 1976.)

There were some zingers, but nothing really nasty. Ford questioned Carter's experience, and Carter responded by saying that, if experience were the deciding factor, "we would have kept Richard Nixon." There was a brief question about Ford's taxes, and the special counsel investigating decided there was not enough evidence to recommend charges. But before that decision, Carter addressed it very deftly: "I don't know what the facts are about Mr. Ford and his income tax. He does!" The implication being, "What's he hiding? Haven't we had enough of that?"

Ford attacked what he perceived to be Carter's weakness and indecisiveness: "He wanders, he wavers, he waffles, and he wiggles!" He also said, "There was a great, great President, many years ago, named Teddy Roosevelt, who said, 'Speak softly and carry a big stick.' Jimmy Carter speaks loudly, and carries a fly swatter!" One day, he delivered his stump speech 10 times. By the 9th time, he was so tired, it came out "fly swapper"; on the 10th try, "fly spotter." Still, each man seemed to be enjoying himself on the campaign trail.

But the debates doomed Ford. In one, he was asked about Soviet influence in Eastern Europe, and said, "There is no Soviet domination in Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford Administration." This statement was meant to suggest that he wouldn't let it happen. But most people knew that it had already happened, long before he took office, and it fed into the idea that Ford -- a graduate of the University of Michigan and Yale Law School, 2 of America's finest institutions of higher learning -- was dumb.

And in the Vice Presidential debate, Dole attacked the Democrats by saying that World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War were "all Democrat wars." This was completely stupid: The Vietnam War started under Dole's idol, fellow Kansan Dwight D. Eisenhower; and the others, once Democratic Presidents got America involved, Republicans in Congress wholeheartedly supported the war efforts. Indeed, with World War I, Republicans wanted it more than Democrats; and in World War II, Republicans didn't want to get involved at first, because they supported the fascist Axis against the Soviet Union.

On Election Day, November 2, the race was a virtual dead heat in the final poll. When the votes were tallied, it was definitive, but just barely. Carter got 40.8 million votes, Ford 39.1 million; Carter got 50.1 percent of the popular vote, Ford 48.0; Carter won only 23 States, to Ford's 27; but Carter's States added up to 297 Electoral Votes, Ford's to 240.

How close was it? Carter won Mississippi's 7 EVs by 15,000 votes, Wisconsin's 11 by 36,000, and Missouri's 12 by 61,000. Shift those 122,000 votes to Ford, and the EV count would have been Ford 271, Carter 267.

Carter won Pennsylvania by 123,000 votes. But shifting that 1 State, with 27 EVs, wouldn't have been enough to swing the election to Ford. Shifting New York would have been: Carter won it by 288,767 votes. Shift its 41 EVs, and it would have been Ford 281, Carter 256.

Ford's supporters were left to wonder. If only:

* Nixon had resigned a little sooner, giving Ford more time to turn things around.

* Ford hadn't pardoned Nixon, killing off some of the massive goodwill with which he began his Administration.

* Ford had given New York City the bailout at first, he could have won New York -- but he might not have won close States like Oregon, Maine, Virginia, and, most notably, Reagan's home State of California with its 45 EVs.

* Reagan had dropped out of the Primaries after losing Illinois, where he was born and raised, to Ford, allowing Ford to consolidate his intraparty support sooner.

* The economy had begun to improve, even a little bit sooner.

* Ford had come up with a better debate answer on Eastern Europe.

* Dole had come up with a better debate answer on foreign policy.

Had any one of those things happened, instead of what did happen, Ford could well have won, and continued as President all the way until January 20, 1981.

Already having big majorities in both houses of Congress, there wasn't much for the Democratic Party to gain there: They added just 1 seat in the House, giving them 292 seats; and 1 in the Senate, giving them 61. Neither major party has had that many since.

Among the new Senators elected were Democrats Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio (who beat Bob Taft Jr., son of a Senate Majority Leader and grandson of a President), Daniel Patrick "Pat" Moynihan of New York; and Republicans Richard Lugar of Indiana, Orrin Hatch of Utah, John Heinz of Pennsylvania (of the Pittsburgh condiment-making family), and Harrison Schmitt of New Mexico (who walked on the Moon on the Apollo 17 mission).

Maybe Ford was better off for having lost: Carter was left with the energy crisis, a hard situation in Iran, and a new round of recession and inflation. If Ford had what amounted to a 2nd term, he might have struggled just as much (if not with exactly the same attempted solutions), and he might now be considered one of the country's worst Presidents, if a well-meaning one.

Time magazine named Carter their Man of the Yar for 1976. He started his Inaugural Address by thanking "my predecessor, for all he has done to heal our land." That healed some of the bitterness that had come up between them during the campaign, and the two men remained on friendly terms for the rest of Ford's life, which came to a close in 2006, at the age of 93. At the time, Ford was the longest-lived President in American history. At 98, and still alive at this writing, Carter now holds that title. (UPDATE: Carter became the 1st President to live to reach a 100th birthday, dying shortly after it.)

The 1976 campaign remains the last one to date that was relatively civil. In 1980, Reagan and the Republicans ran a campaign that terribly mocked Carter, and it worked. As time has gone by, Presidential elections gotten nastier and nastier. The zingers that Ford and Carter traded in the Bicentennial Year now seem rather quaint by comparison.

Also on Election Day 1976, New Jersey voters approved casino gambling in Atlantic City. This would one day have repercussions in another Presidential race, as Donald Trump ran in 2016 despite building 3 casino-hotels in A.C., and having them all go bankrupt. Some businessman he turned out to be.

There's a Jimmy Carter Presidential Parkway and a Jimmy Carter Boulevard in his home State of Georgia. A statue of him stands outside the State Capitol in Atlanta. The city is also home to his Presidential Library, and the Carter Center, an institute dedicated to peaceful change all over the world. They opened on October 1, 1986, his 62nd birthday. Given his U.S. Navy experience, it was appropriate that a nuclear-powered submarine was named the USS Jimmy Carter, SSN-23, in service since 2004.

While he was born and raised in Los Angeles, actor Richard Paul had become known for his impressions, and his impression of Carter led to him being cast as Mayor Teddy Burnside in the sitcom Carter Country, which aired on ABC in the 1977-78 and 1978-79 TV seasons. In a retroactive irony -- Bill Clinton was first elected Governor of Arkansas in 1978 -- the name of the fictional Georgia town on the show was Clinton Corners. The TV show The Dukes of Hazzard, based in a fictional Georgia County, also debuted during Carter's Presidency. While it was filmed in 1976, the Georgia-based movie Smokey & the Bandit premiered in 1977.

Statue, State House, Atlanta, Georgia

Carter remains the only President born in, or representing, Georgia.

Carter has been played by Dan Aykroyd on Saturday Night Live, Ed Beheler in Sextette in 1978 and Hot Shots! Part Deux in 1993, and Brad Maynard in the pilot of the 1st live-action TV version of the superhero comedy The Tick in 2001. (A Soviet robot had been programmed specifically to kill Carter, not whoever was currently President, and was revived in what was then the present day.)

UPDATE: Carter became the 1st President to live to be 100 years old, on October 1, 2024. He had said he wanted to live long enough to vote for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump in the election on November 5. He did. He died on December 29.

*

November 2, 1976, like all Election Days in modern American history, was a Tuesday. The baseball season was over. The football season was in midweek. There were 4 games played in the NBA that day:

* The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Seattle SuperSonics, 125-113 at the Milwaukee Exposition, Convention Center and Arena, or "The MECCA." Since 2014, it has been named the UW-Panther Arena. Bod Dandridge scored 37 points.

* The New Orleans Jazz beat the Boston Celtics, 115-97 at the Superdome in New Orleans. "Pistol Pete" Maravich scored 43 for the Jazz, who moved to Utah in 1979.

* The Golden State Warriors beat the Detroit Pistons, 111-98 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.

* And the Portland Trail Blazers beat the Atlanta Hawks, 129-116 at the Portland Memorial Coliseum.

There were 2 games in the NHL:

* The New York Islanders beat the Colorado Rockies, 5-1 at the McNichols Arena in Denver. This was the Rockies' 1st season in Denver. They would play 6 there, making the Playoffs only in 1978, before moving to become the New Jersey Devils in 1982.

* And the Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Los Angeles Kings, 7-1 at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh.

In the World Hockey Association:

* The Phoenix Roadrunners beat the Quebec Nordiques, 5-3 at the Colisee de Quebec.

* The San Diego Mariners beat the Birmingham Bulls, 4-3 at the Jefferson County Civic Center in Birmingham, Alabama, now known as the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex.

* The Houston Aeros beat the Winnipeg Jets, 3-1 at the Winnipeg Arena.

* And the Calgary Cowboys beat the Minnesota Fighting Saints, 4-3 at the Stampede Corral in Calgary. 

October 6, 1976: President Ford's Eastern European Debate Gaffe

October 6, 1976: A Presidential debate is held. It includes a mistake that may have cost one of the candidates the election.

The 4 debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960 were considered an overwhelming success. But in 1964, Lyndon Johnson had a big lead over Barry Goldwater, and thus no need to risk anything through a debate. He won in a landslide. In 1968, Richard Nixon had a big lead over Hubert Humphrey, and also saw no reason to risk it, even though Humphrey nearly caught him, and Nixon's win was a squeaker. In 1972, Nixon had a big lead over George McGovern, and didn't risk it, and won in a landslide.

But in 1976, President Gerald Ford was running as a Republican Party nominee who had been elected neither President nor Vice President. Running for a term in his own right, he badly trailed the Democratic Party nominee, former Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia, due to the lingering feeling over the Watergate scandal that forced Nixon to resign, Ford's pardon of Nixon, the economic recession that Nixon left Ford and Ford was still struggling to end, and a general feeling of listlessness in the country. Ford needed something, and so he challenged Carter to a series of debates. Carter, wanting to prove himself against the incumbent, accepted.

On September 23, the 1st of 3 debates was held. Since this was the year of America's Bicentennial, celebrating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776, many major events had been held in Philadelphia that year. So it made sense to hold one of the debates there. It was held at what was, and remains, America's oldest continuously operating entertainment venue, the Walnut Street Theatre.

This debate, focusing on domestic policy, is remembered not for what was said, but for what couldn't be said. An hour and 21 minutes in, almost to the point where the closing arguments would have to be given, Carter was answering a question, and the sound cut out. And Ford and Carter just stood at their podiums, not saying a word, for 27 minutes, until the sound was fixed, and they were able to complete the debate.

Most observers thought the debate was inconclusive. But, in a way, that helped both men: Ford needed a good result to help his comeback, and Carter needed to appear "Presidential" alongside the incumbent.

*

The 2nd Presidential debate was held on October 6, at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, focusing on foreign policy. Max Frankel, foreign affairs correspondent for The New York Times, asked Ford about the Helsinki Accords, negotiated the previous year. Conservatives alleged that the Accords conceded too much to the Soviet Union.

Ford pointed out that Pope Paul VI had endorsed the Accords, the implication being that the head of the Roman Catholic Church had anti-Communist credentials that could not be questioned. Ford suggested that the rest of the leaders of the NATO countries had endorsed the Accords. He made it sound like opposing the Accords was tantamount to disagreeing with all of these men who, presumably, knew what they were doing.

Had Ford stopped there, it would have been a great answer. Long accused of being dumb -- and, as a graduate of the University of Michigan and Yale University School of Law, he most certainly was not -- he had given a very thoughtful answer, which should have shored up his support among conservatives in general, Catholics, and people of Eastern European descent.

He did not stop there. He followed this with these words, making a downward slash with his hand to make his point: "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford Administration."

This statement was meant to suggest that it hadn't happened yet, and that he wouldn't let it happen. But most people knew that it had already happened, long before he took office, even before he first took office in Congress in 1948.

Everybody watching was shocked. The whole point of the Warsaw Pact, the Soviets' organizational response to NATO, was to dominate Eastern Europe. As Winston Churchill put it in his 1946 speech that put a phrase into the world's lexicon, "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the Continent." With this statement, Ford seemed to be suggesting that the Warsaw Pact did not involve Soviet-influenced military enforcement of Communist law, and sometimes direct Soviet military enforcement.

Frankel threw Ford a potential lifeline. "Did I understand you to say, sir, that the Russians are not using Eastern Europe as their own sphere of influence in occupying most of the countries there?"

Ford answered: "I don't believe that the Yugoslavs consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Romanians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union."

He was right about the Yugoslavs, whose dictator Josip Broz Tito had famously resisted Joseph Stalin, and was still in power (he died in 1980), so the Soviets considered interference to be not worth the effort. He was right about the Romanians, whom the Soviets saw as being properly allied, so they new that interference wasn't necessary. But the Poles? That was too far.

Ford had badly blundered, and, given the chance to redeem himself, he had deepened the hole he had dug for himself. It made him look like he had no idea of what was going on. It infuriated key voters in places filled with Europeans whose families had fled Soviet brutality.

With only a few seconds' worth of notice, Carter came up with the perfect response: "I'd like to see Mr. Ford convince Polish-Americans, and Czech-Americans, and Hungarian-Americans that those countries don't live under the supervision and control of the Soviet Union behind the Iron Curtain."

Carter had figured out the right countries to mention, in addition to Poland: It had been only 8 years since the Soviets had crushed the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, and 20 years since they had crushed the Hungarian Revolution. This would have been like a candidate from 2008 onward saying that the destruction of the World Trade Center was an accident.

Ford's chief pollster, Bob Teeter, later said, "The controversy used up valuable campaign days when there were all too few left, when a steady climb had to be sustained." In other words, the Republicans had to spend time dealing with this gaffe when they would rather have spent time on issues that favored them and put the Democrats on the defensive.

*

On October 15, for the 1st time, the major-party nominees for Vice President had a televised debate. It was held at the Alley Theatre in Houston. The Democratic nominee, Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota, was calm. The Republican nominee, Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, was less so, and may have been another factor that cost Ford the election.

Mondale thought it appropriate to mention the Watergate scandal that forced Nixon from office. It was appropriate not only because Ford had pardoned Nixon, but because, on June 17, 1972, the night that the burglars broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex in Washington, Senator Dole was doing double duty as the Chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Let the record show that Dole was not then, nor has since, been seriously accused of any involvement in the various crimes that have fallen under the umbrella term "Watergate."

Dole, himself a wounded veteran of World War II,  responded by saying, "It is an appropriate topic, I guess, but it's not a very good issue, any more than the war in Vietnam would be, or World War II, or World War I, or the war in Korea, all Democrat wars, all in this century. I figured up the other day, if we added up the killed and wounded in Democrat wars in this century, it would be about 1.6 million Americans, enough to fill the city of Detroit."

Dole was usually smart enough to be a very savvy political operator, gathering or "whipping" votes to pass, or block, legislation as needed. But doing that, behind the scenes, is one thing: Being the spokesperson for your own thoughts and ideas is another.

This answer was completely stupid, and not just because his math was way off. Detroit's population had peaked in 1950, at 1.8 million, and was still about 1.5 million in the 1970 Census. By 1976, though, "white flight" had reduced it to about 1.3 million. It dropped under 1 million in 1994, and it kept declining, all the way to 631,000 by 2022. No U.S. city has had so sharp a decline. (UPDATE: In 2024, the city was believed to have gained about 2,000 residents, its first gain in any calendar year since 1957.)

In World War I, about 117,000 U.S. military personnel died; in World War II, about 405,000; in the Korean War, about 37,000; and in the Vietnam War, about 59,000; for an estimated total of 626,000. Dole had inflated the figure by 2 1/2 times.

Regarding which Party had "started" or was behind the wars: The Vietnam War started under Dole's idol, fellow Kansan Dwight D. Eisenhower; and the others, once Democratic Presidents got America involved, Republicans in Congress wholeheartedly supported the war efforts. Indeed, with World War I, Republicans wanted it more than Democrats; and in World War II, Republicans didn't want to get involved at first, because, being greedy, pro-private property, and thus anti-Communist, they supported the fascist Axis against the Soviet Union.

Mondale and Dole would each later receive his Party's nomination for President -- and lose badly. In neither case was it because he did badly in that election's debates. But, looking back, Dole admitted that his remark had hurt the Ford campaign.

*

On October 22, Ford and Carter had their 3rd and final debate, at Phi Beta Kappa Hall on the campus of the College of William and Mary, in the colonial, and thus Bicentennial-connected, city of Williamsburg, Virginia. This debate was notable partly because it didn't have a gaffe, by either candidate; but also because Carter was asked about an earlier gaffe, an interview he had given to journalist Robert Scheer for Playboy magazine.

Scheer asked Carter, a Southern Baptist and a Sunday school teacher at his church in Plains, Georgia, "Do you feel you've reassured people with this interview, people who are uneasy about your religious beliefs, who wonder if you're going to make a rigid, unbending President?"

Carter cited Matthew 5:28:

I'm not speaking for other people, but it gives me a sense of peace and equanimity and assurance. I try not to commit a deliberate sin. I recognize that I'm going to do it anyhow, because I'm human and I'm tempted. And Christ set some almost impossible standards for us. Christ said, "I tell you that anyone who looks on a woman with lust has in his heart already committed adultery."

I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something that God recognizes I will do, and I have done it, and God forgives me for it. But that doesn't mean that I condemn someone who not only looks on a woman with lust, but who leaves his wife and shacks up with somebody out of wedlock.

Scheer called it a "sensible statement," reflecting Carter's Baptist tradition: "He was saying, look, I'm not going to be some fanatic... I'm not this perfect guy." But the media and the era's comedians began to treat Carter as a leering sex fiend -- when the whole point was that he wasn't: Yes, he had these feelings; but, no, he didn't act on them.

For the record, no one was accusing Ford of acting on such feelings. There was a Special Prosecutor appointed to look at an issue with Ford's taxes. With retroactive irony, that Prosecutor, Charles Ruff, later served as one of President Bill Clinton's lawyers during the 1998-99 Monica Lewinsky scandal. At one point, trying to tie Ford to Watergate, which he had not been involved in, but reminding people that Nixon's taxes had also been investigated, Carter said in his speeches, "I don't know what the facts are about Mr. Ford and his income tax. He does." Ruff closed his investigation a few days before the election, and said he had found no wrongdoing on Ford's part.

In that 3rd debate, Carter admitted that he'd made a mistake in granting the Playboy interview in the first place. The admission did what the interview was supposed to do: It humanized him. But the interview had halted the surge he got after the gaffes of Ford and Dole. Polls began to show the race had become a virtual tie.

On November 2, Carter won in a very close vote. Had either Ford or Dole not blown it in their debates, Ford could well have won.

Of course, given everything that happened from 1977 to 1980, maybe Ford was better off having lost, anyway. What I called "a general feeling of listlessness in the country" that had beset Ford's entire Presidency also beset Carter's. In a 1979 speech, he called it "a crisis of confidence." The next day, his speechwriter Hendrik Hertzberg called it "a malaise," and that became a label that Carter could never shake, just as Ford could never shake his debate gaffe.

*

October 6, 1976 was a Wednesday. All-Star baseball pitcher Freddy Garcia was born.

Baseball was between the end of its regular season and the start of its Playoffs. Football was in midweek. And it was too early for the basketball and hockey seasons to start. So there were no scores on this historic day.

August 11, 1984: President Ronald Reagan Jokes About Starting World War III

August 11, 1984: President Ronald Reagan is preparing for his weekly Saturday morning radio address, with a remote hookup from his home-away-from-home, his Rancho del Cielo (Ranch in the Sky) in Goleta, California.

He was scheduled, as usual, to go on the air at 12:00 Noon, Eastern Time. Since he was in California, on Pacific Time, this meant the address would begin at 9:00 AM. Usually, since Reagan started the weekly tradition in 1982, it started a few minutes late, to give the national networks time to give a short introduction.

Sure enough, this address began at 9:06. It wasn't especially memorable. It began, "My fellow Americans: I'm pleased to tell you that today I signed legislation that will allow student religious groups to begin enjoying a right they've too long been denied: The freedom to meet in public high schools during nonschool hours, just as other student groups are allowed to do."

It was typical Reagan garbage: Pandering to the religious right with something that was blatantly unconstitutional. After all, the Republican was running for re-election, with the Democratic nominee being former Vice President Walter Mondale.

What was not typical was what happened a few minutes before the broadcast. A live feed was being transmitted to radio stations around the country. Many rebroadcasters were already recording the feed, to be ready for the official transmission. Many in the media heard Reagan's impromptu remarks as he gave them, but they were not broadcast live.

Reagan, known for his sense of humor, decided to have a little fun. He said, "All right. My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."

Laughter could be heard. It's not clear who in the room was laughing. Maybe it was everyone.

Ironic: The 1st former actor to become President, the most media-savvy President ever, failed to notice that this joke was being recorded.

He also failed to notice that it wasn't funny at all. War is not funny. Nuclear destruction is not funny. And this son of a bitch was joking about starting World War III.

It took 2 days for the recording to reach the outside world. Mondale took the high road, saying, "A President has to be very, very careful with his words." He did not suggest that Reagan was mentally unstable, or in the throes of dementia. But Reagan's 1994 admission of Alzheimer's disease seemed to confirm what many people were already suspecting 10 years earlier.

On August 14, the Soviet government announced that Reagan's remarks were "unprecedentedly hostile." Soviet forces were placed on high alert, and it took some very careful words from the U.S. Department of State to calm the Soviets down.

I was 14 years old. I couldn't vote for another 4 years. I was convinced that there might not be an election in 4 years. I was hoping that America would recognize that a 73-year-old man either evil enough, crazy enough, or impaired enough to make just such a joke was unacceptable, and that they would then vote for Mondale.

When I went to bed on November 6, 1984, every State except Minnesota had been called, all for Reagan. Minnesota was Mondale's home State, and it hadn't yet been called for him. Only the majority-black District of Columbia had. Or, as comedian Jay Leno put it, "When I went to bed, Mondale had only 3 more Electoral Votes than I did, and I wasn't even running!" Mondale eventually won the State by just 4,000 votes. I have had a great deal of respect for Minnesota ever since.

But Reagan had won, and I was very, very scared.

As it turned out, Reagan's 2nd term was terrible, full of scandal and a hollow prosperity, but did not include a World War III.

Rancho del Cielo is 124 miles northwest of Los Angeles, 90 miles northwest of Reagan's Presidential Library in Simi Valley, 30 miles northwest of Santa Barbara, and 6 miles north of the Pacific Ocean at Refugio Beach. The house was built in 1871, and Reagan bought the ranch in 1974, as his 2nd term as Governor of California was winding down. (While Governors of California are now limited to 2 terms, that was not the case then, but he didn't run for a 3rd term, anyway.)

Reagan had signed his disastrous 1981 tax cut there, and had also entertained many world leaders there, including Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

Friends would say of Ronald and Nancy Reagan that the ranch was his house, while any home they had near Hollywood was her house. Due to Reagan's advancing Alzheimer's disease, Nancy sold the property in 1998, to the Young America's Foundation, a conservative group, which maintains it and holds conferences there. It is now open by appointment.

After Reagan, both George Bushes, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama continued the weekly radio address. After 9 months in office, Donald Trump stopped doing it. He thought he was too good to speak to us one Noon a week, every week. Joe Biden resumed the tradition.

*

August 11, 1984 was a Saturday. This was also the day of the Mary Decker-Zola Budd confrontation in the 1984 Olympics. I have a separate entry for that event.

These Major League Baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees beat the Cleveland Indians, 10-1 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Mike Pagliarulo and Don Mattingly hit home runs in support of Phil Niekro.

* The New York Mets beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 3-1 at Shea Stadium. George Foster hit a home run, and Rookie of the Year-in-waiting Dwight Gooden struck out 10 batters.

* The Chicago Cubs beat the Montreal Expos, 2-1 at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal. Pete Rose was available for the Expos, but did not play. Five days later, he was traded to the Reds, and named their manager, and his chase for 4,192 career hits was back on.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 6-1 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. Steve Carlton was the winning pitcher. Mike Schmidt was 0-for-3, but had an RBI on a sacrifice fly.

* The San Diego Padres beat the Atlanta Braves, 4-1 at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. Graig Nettles hit a home run, and Tony Gwynn went 1-for-4.

* The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Baltimore Orioles, 3-2 at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto. Eddie Murray went 2-for-3, and Cal Ripken went 3-for-4 with an RBI.

* The Houston Astros beat the Cincinnati Reds, 8-4 at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. 

* The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Chicago White Sox, 10-5 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Robin Yount went 1-for-4, and Paul Molitor was injured and did not play.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Kansas City Royals, 9-5 at Royals Stadium (now Kauffman Stadium) in Kansas City. George Brett went 2-for-4 with a solo home run.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Texas Rangers, 5-4 at Arlington Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, Texas. Wade Boggs went 2-for-5 with an RBI.

* The Oakland Athletics beat the California Angels, 3-2 at Anaheim Stadium (now Angel Stadium of Anaheim). An error by Daryl Sconiers on a Mike Davis grounder gave the A's the winning run in the top of the 10th inning. Neither Reggie Jackson nor Rod Carew entered the game for the Angels. Rickey Henderson went 3-for-6 for the A's.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat their arch-rivals, the San Francisco Giants, 4-2 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

* And the Seattle Mariners beat the Minnesota Twins, 5-4 at the Kingdome in Seattle. Al Cowens singled home the winning run in the bottom of the 10th.

One other item from baseball: Dominican slugger Melky Cabrera was born on this day.

January 9, 1984: Wendy's "Where's the Beef?" Commercial

January 9, 1984: Fast-food chain Wendy's introduces its "Fluffy Bun" commercial. But it gets remembered for Clara Peller's line: "Where's the beef?"

Peller was 81 years old, Jewish, and, record-keeping being what it was where and when she was born, she didn’t know exactly where she was born, only that it was in Imperial Russia. She grew up in Chicago, got married and divorced, and had 2 children. She worked as a manicurist, and was still doing that on the set of a commercial in Chicago in 1982, when the advertising agency hired her to appear in commercials. They included a pair of commercials for Jartran truck rentals: "Ed, it's time to take the rabbits to the pet store!"

In the Wendy's commercial, Peller and 2 other old women walk into a restaurant named Big Bun. The other 2 comment on how the burger has a very big, even fluffy bun. When the bun is lifted, the meat patty is seen, and it's so small (How small is it?), it's nearly covered by a pickle slice. This inspires Peller to ask, "Where's the beef?" As the unseen announcer talks about how some restaurants' burgers are too small, she asks again, louder: "Where's the beef?"

The announcer talks about how Wendy's burgers, famously square, are big enough to extend past the bun. Once more, Peller yells, trying to reach whoever's working in the back of the store: "Hey! Where's the beef?" One of the other women points, and Peller says, "Oh, I don't think there's anybody back there."

The slogan caught on so much, people began walking into McDonald's and Burger King, asking, "Where's the beef?" A sequel commercial was ordered, in which the women call up the CEO of Big Bun. He's seen answering the phone on his yacht, the SS Big Bun: "Hello?" Peller yells into the phone, "Wherrrrrrrre's the beef?" And the CEO's toupee flies off his head.

There would be other commercials, including one with Peller teaming up with football legend Dick Butkus to launch a Wendy's "Where's the Beef?" contest. Butkus said the top prize was $20,000. Peller said, "Boy, that's a lot of money!" Butkus pointed to the camera, and said, "Yup, and somebody out there is gonna win it." Peller said, "Who? That old man behind the camera? What's he gonna do with 20 grand?" The idea being that he'd be too old to spend it before he dies. He was probably younger than she was.

Her distinctive voice was the result of emphysema, which finally killed her in 1987. 

On March 11, 1984, a televised debate was held at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, during the Democratic Party Presidential Primaries. Senator Gary Hart of Colorado, pushing his "New Ideas," had gained on the front-runner, former Vice President Walter Mondale. That night, Mondale suggested that the ideas were too vague for voters to understand, and said, "When I hear your New Ideas, I'm reminded of that ad, 'Where's the beef?'" The theater audience broke out in laughter, Hart's campaign never recovered, and Mondale won the nomination -- for all the good it did him.

*

January 9, 1984 was a Monday. Baseball was out of season. Football was between rounds of its Playoffs. There were 2 games in the NBA, each involving one of the New York Tri-State Area teams. The New York Knicks beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 111-73 at Madison Square Garden. And the New Jersey Nets beat the Washington Bullets, 107-103 at the Brendan Byrne Arena at the Meadowlands.

One game was played in the NHL: The Edmonton Oilers beat the Detroit Red Wings, 7-3 at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit.