Turning on the TV, watching the first debate in the 2016 Iowa primary, I stared at a row of candidates standing on the stage – they all talked like smooth Washington politicians – except one: Donald Trump.
Trump beat Hillary. Covid struck. Biden beat Trump. Trump ran again. Biden got out. Trump called Harris ‘dumb as a rock.’ She called him ‘a fascist.’ He called her ‘a communist.’
Back in 1975, I met Ronald Reagan at a dinner in Raleigh. That fall he ran for President – I ran his North Carolina campaign, working with Jesse Helms (one of the two U.S. Senators who endorsed Reagan) and Tom Ellis (Reagan’s North Carolina Chairman).
Gerald Ford beat Reagan in the first five primaries – campaign collapsing, Reagan beat Ford in North Carolina. Due to a 30-minute film. And one issue.
Winning more primaries, Reagan closed on Ford. But in the end lost by a hundred votes at the Republican National Convention in Kansas City.
Four years later, before the election, Reagan was running neck ‘n neck with Jimmy Carter – an invisible hand moved, on election night Reagan swept 44 states.
In 1984 Jim Hunt – the only man elected governor four times – ran against Jesse Helms for Senate. Jesse trailed by 25 points – nothing we did for a year worked then, out of a clear blue sky, a gift fell in our lap.
After Reagan was wounded Tip O’Neill went to the hospital, knelt by Reagan’s bed, said a prayer. Reagan and O’Neill fought for years but, at the same time, treated each other with mutual respect.
The Berlin Wall fell. The Cold War ended. An era passed. A new era began – that changed politics. Mutual respect flew out the window. Lies were once taboo in politics – now people cheer lies.
History, once a lodestar, is forgotten today. Hardly a soul remembers the fear felt during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union launching a nuclear missile meant Armageddon.
In my memoir, I tell how that fear gave birth to a river of people that elected Reagan; how, after we won the Cold War a long decline started – led to Trump and Biden; and stories about faith – how Reagan lying on a hospital gurney said a prayer for the man who shot him.
Living in a fallen world we inherit the ‘flow’rets of Eden’ but as poet Thomas Moore added ‘the trail of the serpent is over them all.’
I follow The Trail of the Serpent twisting and turning through politics – from Reagan to Trump.
“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.”
— John Bolton, New York Times bestselling author
“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.”
— Stephen Mansfield, New York Times bestselling author
“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