Stories about Politics
My memoir – The Trail of the Serpent – is going to be published next Tuesday, on October 22nd. The title comes from a line by Irish poet Thomas Moore: “Some flow’rets of Eden ye still inherit, but the trail of the Serpent is over them all.” Telling stories I follow the trail of the serpent, twisting and turning, through fifty years of politics – from Reagan to Trump.
In 1975 Jesse Helms was struggling to pay his huge campaign debt. Reagan came to Raleigh, spoke at a fundraising dinner, met Tom Ellis – who later saved his campaign.
Here’s one story:
The night Jesse endorsed Reagan he told a story: “I flew to California to visit Ron and Nancy in their home – the first thing I saw when I walked through the door, sitting open on a table in the hall, was a family bible. I knew right then and there this was the man I wanted to be President.”
Jesse’s story held a seed of truth wrapped in a cocoon.
There was a family bible on the table but that wasn’t the reason Jesse endorsed Reagan.
It’s hard to remember today the fear people felt back in the 1970’s as they watched Russian tanks roll into Saigon, refugees flee Vietnam clinging to helicopter skids, boat people adrift on the South China Sea when the Soviet Union defeated us in the Vietnam War; when a World War II veteran like Tom Ellis stared at that defeat a cold hard truth stared back at him: Our enemy was stronger than we were – we were losing the Cold War. After that when he heard the President say the word ‘détente’ the word ‘appeasement’ echoed in his ears.
Tom Ellis sent Jesse to California to find out whether Reagan was going to run for president – but Jesse had a reason of his own. When Jesse came home Tom Ellis asked, “What did he say?” Jesse grinned, “Ask him yourself – he’s coming to Raleigh for a fundraising dinner to pay the debt.”
Before the dinner Tom Ellis led Reagan and Jesse into a room behind the stage, closed the door, nodded toward the banquet hall filling up with people.
“There are going to be a lot of disappointed people here tonight if you don’t run for president.”
Reagan said Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada was setting up his campaign.
Tom Ellis told Reagan he’d support him, turned to Jesse. “I can’t speak for you but no one else has helped you raise two-hundred-and-fifty thousand dollars” – which meant: If you have one shred of decency in you, you’ll support him.
Jesse’s radar twitched – he glanced at Reagan, looked down at the cement floor, shuffled his feet, said paying that debt took a big load off his shoulders, stopped hoping Reagan wouldn’t ask the next question.
Reagan didn’t have to ask it – Tom Ellis did.
“Does that mean you’re going to sit on your thumbs being grateful or are you going to endorse him?”
Jesse didn’t like being railroaded but couldn’t see a graceful way out of the trap – Tom Ellis read ‘the bans,’ when Jesse walked out of the room he and Reagan were married.
That night was the first time I met Reagan.
He’d been born above a saloon in a small town on the wide flat plains of western Illinois; poor, his family moved from town to town, never owning a home; his father was an alcoholic – when Reagan was ten, coming home from the YMCA, he found his father sprawled on his back in the snow on the front porch, passed out. He dragged him into the house, put him in bed, never told his mother.
His mother, Nelle, took in sewing, washing, to make ends meet; she never finished grade school; a child of faith, in her church she led prayer meetings, nursed the sick, cared for prisoners in jail.
Growing up in his mother’s church, blessed with a gift for storytelling, at fifteen, Reagan taught Sunday School. He got a football scholarship, waited on tables working his way through college, graduated, worked for a small radio station in Iowa. The small station was bought by a bigger station which broadcast his voice across the Great Plains announcing Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox baseball games. He took a train to California for the Cubs spring training, asked a girl, the lead singer in a dance band, to dinner, told her he wanted to try his hand at acting – she gave him an agent’s name.
The next morning facing the agent he asked, “Should I go back to Des Moines and forget this?” He took a screen test, took a train back to Iowa, got a telegram: Warner Brothers offers contract. One year option starting at $200 a week. What shall I do?
Reagan wired the agent back: Sign before they change their mind.
He was twenty-six years old. Two years later his father had a heart attack; Reagan moved his parents to California, bought them a small brick house.
After he became President a secret service agent, stepping between Reagan and an assassin, was shot in the chest; another agent shoved Reagan into a limousine, pinning him to the floor. Reagan felt a stab of pain in his ribs, sat up, coughed, bubbly blood on his lips, collapsed walking into the hospital. The doctors couldn’t find a bullet wound.
Body signs sinking, lungs filling with blood, unable to breathe, laying on a gurney staring up at the ceiling he prayed, heard a voice say Jim Brady, who’d been shot in the head, was dying. Reagan said a prayer for Brady, another voice said the man who’d shot him had been captured – and was crazy. Faith whispered he couldn’t pray for God to save him while hating another man – Reagan prayed for the man who’d shot him. The doctors found a tear in his coat jacket, found a tiny slit under his right arm; the bullet had ricocheted off the limousine, flattened, sliced into his body, sealing the wound behind it, stopped an inch from his heart.
At the dinner in Raleigh Tom Ellis waited until three men set up an old-fashioned TV camera on a three-legged tripod, led Reagan and Jesse onto the head table.
When Jesse gave his speech his voice soared from tearful to scornful, deep and throbbing, laced with ridicule.
What I remember about Reagan that night is his voice – mellow, soothing, humble. He told a story about the ‘Welfare Queen’ who’d collected a hundred-thousand dollars in welfare checks in Chicago but told it without rancor – Jesse’s voice left you angry; Reagan’s voice wrapped you in a cocoon of warmth, saying, Look at this, why do we do these foolish things? His voice became not quieter but softer, so you had to lean forward in your seat to hear. The room hushed.
His speech wasn’t a history lesson it was a reminiscence, a man telling a story he’d watched, lived through, remembering storm troopers goose-stepping into Vienna, the ‘tap, tap, tapping’ of Neville Chamberlain’s umbrella on the cobblestones of Munich in the darkness.
The room fell silent people remembering walking through the same dark times then Reagan said it was as foolish to appease the communists as it was to appease Hitler.
Jesse’s speeches grasped a welter of issues; Reagan came back to one issue over and over: Win the Cold War. That doesn’t sound shocking today but, in 1975, Reagan was the only man running for President who believed it.
You can pre-order the book from the publisher here – or from Amazon, here. Share this story with your friends.
Endorsements:
“Reagan lost the first five primaries to Gerald Ford in 1976—then upset Ford in North Carolina. Carter Wrenn ran Reagan’s North Carolina campaign. He tells a compelling story about American politics, from Reagan to Trump.”
—New York Times bestselling author
John Bolton
“Our generation is awash in a sea of thin analysis and easy opinion about the role of religion in American politics. What we need are the stories told by those who were there, who were in the moment, who smelled the sweat and the fear and felt the hot breath of passion full in their faces. Carter Wrenn gives us such stories and so makes a raucous era of American faith-based politics live again.”
—New York Times bestselling author
Stephen Mansfield
“Carter and I have fought on different sides of the political wars, but we’ve remained friends for twenty years. He has seen politics up close in North Carolina and the nation, and he writes about it with the touch of an old-fashioned Southern storyteller.”
—Gary Pearce, Democrat political strategist
Stories about Politics
My memoir – The Trail of the Serpent – is going to be published next Tuesday, on October 22nd. The title comes from a line by Irish poet Thomas Moore: “Some flow’rets of Eden ye still inherit, but the trail of the Serpent is over them all.” Telling stories I follow the trail of the serpent, twisting and turning, through fifty years of politics – from Reagan to Trump.
In 1975 Jesse Helms was struggling to pay his huge campaign debt. Reagan came to Raleigh, spoke at a fundraising dinner, met Tom Ellis – who later saved his campaign.
Here’s one story:
The night Jesse endorsed Reagan he told a story: “I flew to California to visit Ron and Nancy in their home – the first thing I saw when I walked through the door, sitting open on a table in the hall, was a family bible. I knew right then and there this was the man I wanted to be President.”
Jesse’s story held a seed of truth wrapped in a cocoon.
There was a family bible on the table but that wasn’t the reason Jesse endorsed Reagan.
It’s hard to remember today the fear people felt back in the 1970’s as they watched Russian tanks roll into Saigon, refugees flee Vietnam clinging to helicopter skids, boat people adrift on the South China Sea when the Soviet Union defeated us in the Vietnam War; when a World War II veteran like Tom Ellis stared at that defeat a cold hard truth stared back at him: Our enemy was stronger than we were – we were losing the Cold War. After that when he heard the President say the word ‘détente’ the word ‘appeasement’ echoed in his ears.
Tom Ellis sent Jesse to California to find out whether Reagan was going to run for president – but Jesse had a reason of his own. When Jesse came home Tom Ellis asked, “What did he say?” Jesse grinned, “Ask him yourself – he’s coming to Raleigh for a fundraising dinner to pay the debt.”
Before the dinner Tom Ellis led Reagan and Jesse into a room behind the stage, closed the door, nodded toward the banquet hall filling up with people.
“There are going to be a lot of disappointed people here tonight if you don’t run for president.”
Reagan said Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada was setting up his campaign.
Tom Ellis told Reagan he’d support him, turned to Jesse. “I can’t speak for you but no one else has helped you raise two-hundred-and-fifty thousand dollars” – which meant: If you have one shred of decency in you, you’ll support him.
Jesse’s radar twitched – he glanced at Reagan, looked down at the cement floor, shuffled his feet, said paying that debt took a big load off his shoulders, stopped hoping Reagan wouldn’t ask the next question.
Reagan didn’t have to ask it – Tom Ellis did.
“Does that mean you’re going to sit on your thumbs being grateful or are you going to endorse him?”
Jesse didn’t like being railroaded but couldn’t see a graceful way out of the trap – Tom Ellis read ‘the bans,’ when Jesse walked out of the room he and Reagan were married.
That night was the first time I met Reagan.
He’d been born above a saloon in a small town on the wide flat plains of western Illinois; poor, his family moved from town to town, never owning a home; his father was an alcoholic – when Reagan was ten, coming home from the YMCA, he found his father sprawled on his back in the snow on the front porch, passed out. He dragged him into the house, put him in bed, never told his mother.
His mother, Nelle, took in sewing, washing, to make ends meet; she never finished grade school; a child of faith, in her church she led prayer meetings, nursed the sick, cared for prisoners in jail.
Growing up in his mother’s church, blessed with a gift for storytelling, at fifteen, Reagan taught Sunday School. He got a football scholarship, waited on tables working his way through college, graduated, worked for a small radio station in Iowa. The small station was bought by a bigger station which broadcast his voice across the Great Plains announcing Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox baseball games. He took a train to California for the Cubs spring training, asked a girl, the lead singer in a dance band, to dinner, told her he wanted to try his hand at acting – she gave him an agent’s name.
The next morning facing the agent he asked, “Should I go back to Des Moines and forget this?” He took a screen test, took a train back to Iowa, got a telegram: Warner Brothers offers contract. One year option starting at $200 a week. What shall I do?
Reagan wired the agent back: Sign before they change their mind.
He was twenty-six years old. Two years later his father had a heart attack; Reagan moved his parents to California, bought them a small brick house.
After he became President a secret service agent, stepping between Reagan and an assassin, was shot in the chest; another agent shoved Reagan into a limousine, pinning him to the floor. Reagan felt a stab of pain in his ribs, sat up, coughed, bubbly blood on his lips, collapsed walking into the hospital. The doctors couldn’t find a bullet wound.
Body signs sinking, lungs filling with blood, unable to breathe, laying on a gurney staring up at the ceiling he prayed, heard a voice say Jim Brady, who’d been shot in the head, was dying. Reagan said a prayer for Brady, another voice said the man who’d shot him had been captured – and was crazy. Faith whispered he couldn’t pray for God to save him while hating another man – Reagan prayed for the man who’d shot him. The doctors found a tear in his coat jacket, found a tiny slit under his right arm; the bullet had ricocheted off the limousine, flattened, sliced into his body, sealing the wound behind it, stopped an inch from his heart.
At the dinner in Raleigh Tom Ellis waited until three men set up an old-fashioned TV camera on a three-legged tripod, led Reagan and Jesse onto the head table.
When Jesse gave his speech his voice soared from tearful to scornful, deep and throbbing, laced with ridicule.
What I remember about Reagan that night is his voice – mellow, soothing, humble. He told a story about the ‘Welfare Queen’ who’d collected a hundred-thousand dollars in welfare checks in Chicago but told it without rancor – Jesse’s voice left you angry; Reagan’s voice wrapped you in a cocoon of warmth, saying, Look at this, why do we do these foolish things? His voice became not quieter but softer, so you had to lean forward in your seat to hear. The room hushed.
His speech wasn’t a history lesson it was a reminiscence, a man telling a story he’d watched, lived through, remembering storm troopers goose-stepping into Vienna, the ‘tap, tap, tapping’ of Neville Chamberlain’s umbrella on the cobblestones of Munich in the darkness.
The room fell silent people remembering walking through the same dark times then Reagan said it was as foolish to appease the communists as it was to appease Hitler.
Jesse’s speeches grasped a welter of issues; Reagan came back to one issue over and over: Win the Cold War. That doesn’t sound shocking today but, in 1975, Reagan was the only man running for President who believed it.
You can pre-order the book from the publisher here – or from Amazon, here. Share this story with your friends.
Endorsements:
“Reagan lost the first five primaries to Gerald Ford in 1976—then upset Ford in North Carolina. Carter Wrenn ran Reagan’s North Carolina campaign. He tells a compelling story about American politics, from Reagan to Trump.”
—New York Times bestselling author
John Bolton
“Our generation is awash in a sea of thin analysis and easy opinion about the role of religion in American politics. What we need are the stories told by those who were there, who were in the moment, who smelled the sweat and the fear and felt the hot breath of passion full in their faces. Carter Wrenn gives us such stories and so makes a raucous era of American faith-based politics live again.”
—New York Times bestselling author
Stephen Mansfield
“Carter and I have fought on different sides of the political wars, but we’ve remained friends for twenty years. He has seen politics up close in North Carolina and the nation, and he writes about it with the touch of an old-fashioned Southern storyteller.”
—Gary Pearce, Democrat political strategist