In 1976, he was ready. He had another problem, though. He had thought, before Watergate forced Nixon out of office, that the presidency would be an open race in 1976 – that is, there’d be no incumbent running. Now, because of Nixon’s resignation in 1974 and Ford’s accession to the White House, Reagan faced an incumbent president. That meant a much tougher race for the nomination, and charges that his candidacy would divide the Republican party. After listening to his advisors and giving the matter a great deal of thought, he decided to run.

The beginning of the campaign seemed promising. He was ahead in the polls in New Hampshire. And even as Gerald Ford caught up with him, he was confident of a win there. As it turned out, Reagan lost New Hampshire by just a little bit. If he had won, he would have shown that an incumbent president could be beaten. As it was, he still had to prove his own viability.

Defeat followed on defeat. He lost in Florida, and again in his home state of Illinois. He did not come close to 50% of the vote in these two large states. Suddenly reporters everywhere asked him, “When are you going to quit?” His advisors met with him and told him that the campaign was almost out of money, and that it was time to get out.   “Well, no, we’re not going to quit,” Reagan said. “We’re going to run in every state, from here until the end.”

North Carolina was next. Reagan didn’t know it at the time, but this contest proved to be a turning point in his political career. If he had lost in North Carolina, it’s not likely the campaign would have recovered, even if he had stayed in the race. He stumped the state as vigorously as he had ever campaigned in his life, criticizing Ford on détente and the Panama Canal. He gambled his remaining funds on a half-hour television spot that helped raise money and turn out the vote. In the end, he won a convincing victory in North Carolina.

After that, he won in Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, and California. He won delegates all through the South and the West. In the meantime, Ford won important states in the Northeast and the Old Northwest: New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. When the two contestants met at the Republican national convention in Kansas City, Missouri in August, Reagan was just about sixty votes shy of the nomination. 

At the convention, Ford called Ron and Nancy Reagan down to the front of the hall and asked him to say a few words. He agreed, but he leaned over to his wife and whispered, “I don’t know what to say.”

 “Good Lord,” Nancy thought to herself, “I hope he thinks of something.”

Well, Reagan talked about a letter he’d been asked to write for a time capsule to be opened on America’s tricentennial in 2076. He realized as he thought about the letter that people living 100 years hence would know whether we had protected freedom in our time, when both big government and nuclear war threatened to destroy it. They would know whether we had chosen well, whether we had passed on the freedoms we’d been given.

That speech left an impression on the people who heard it. He made a lot of delegates wonder whether they had nominated the wrong guy. Even more important, people who watched the speech on television remembered Reagan when he ran again in 1980. The Republicans nominated him that year, and the voters at large sent him to the White House. If he had dropped out of the race before North Carolina in 1976, it’s a good guess that the Reagan presidency would never have happened, and we wouldn’t be together here so many years later, in this beautiful library.

The 1976 campaign illustrates the three themes I mentioned at the outset: faith, fortitude and Reagan’s belief in freedom.

First, without a doubt, it shows Reagan’s special faith, the faith that he learned from his mother. He believed that God had a plan for his life, that everything happens for a reason, that things work out for the best. He could easily have thought, at age 65, that he had just finished his last campaign. But he didn’t think that. He said that he and Nancy weren’t going to go back home and sit on their rocking chairs: “That’s just not our way.”

Reagan’s fortitude shines just as strongly as his faith. How many people would have shown his resolve when everyone around him told him it was time to quit? Martin Anderson, one of his advisors, said that underneath the pleasant, cordial exterior lay tempered steel. The next day, as Reagan said goodbye to his campaign workers and thanked them for their help, he quoted some lines from a ballad he had memorized as a student: