Deadlines Past by Walter R. Mears

Author:Walter R. Mears [Mears, Walter R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0-7407-3852-6
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC
Published: 2002-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

It was Carter’s primary anyway. He won easily, in a state where a year before there had been opinion polls suggesting that Kennedy was popular enough to beat the president on write-in votes without entering the campaign. After the season in which it had seemed nothing could go right for the president, everything was breaking his way. He kept winning.

By late March, Kennedy was a primary away from having to quit the challenge, and he was behind in the polls in New York. But in that primary, Kennedy upset Carter, in part because Jewish voters were angry at the administration over a United Nations resolution offensive to Israel, although Carter tried to avoid the blame by saying his ambassador had voted for it by mistake. By then, the mood of rallying to the president was wearing thin with the American hostages still captive, daily reminders on the network television news, and no sign Carter had any way out for them. As that happened, the sagging economy that had been Carter’s weak point in the first place gained impact as an issue. Now Kennedy was back, the winner in New York and Connecticut, and it was Carter’s turn to counterpunch.

That led to one of the strangest primary election performances I ever saw. I was in Milwaukee, sleeping in as the Wisconsin primary election polls opened. I’d left no wakeup call, but I got one. Carter was having a press conference in Washington, and I’d better get to work, now. Fortunately, the AP bureau wasn’t far and I got there, unshaven and unkempt, as Carter went on television at 7:13 A.M. to report a “positive step” in U.S. efforts to get the hostages out. He didn’t quite say they were coming home. “I presume that we will know more about that as the circumstances develop,” Carter said. “We do not know the exact time schedule at this moment.” Carter’s people always insisted that the poll-opening press conference was not a politically calculated move but an honest effort to keep America informed. Misinformed, it turned out, since the optimism was unfounded, and the hostages remained captive. I did get back to shave and shower before the polls closed. Carter swamped Kennedy in the Wisconsin primary. He would have won without the hostage announcement, but it probably inflated his margin. There was something of a replay just before the November election when the Iranian parliament set terms, unacceptable but potentially negotiable, for release of the Americans. Carter, campaigning in Chicago that weekend, flew home to the White House at dawn. No go. “I wish I could predict when our hostages will return,” he said that Sunday night. “I cannot.” They returned only when Reagan was inaugurated president.

To keep going, Kennedy had to win the next major primary, in Pennsylvania. He did, barely. I never had a more difficult night as an election writer. In the AP system, the bureau chief in the election state makes the decision on when to declare the outcome in

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