In My Time (18 page)

Political historians still speak of the Schweiker move as a fatal miscalculation, although in retrospect, it’s probably closer to the truth that Reagan by then had already lost his chance at the nomination. The early announcement of a running mate merely showed a realistic understanding that desperate measures were in order. After that failed, the only options the Reagan people had left were more in the nature of throwing roadblocks in Ford’s path than actually adding to their own delegate total. Having made some serious mistakes going into the convention, the best they could hope for was to force us into committing some calamitous error of our own.

THE CONVENTION AT KEMPER ARENA in downtown Kansas City was the last one ever to begin in a state of genuine uncertainty about who would leave town with the nomination. Even the glossy programs hedged their bets, with pictures of both Ford and Reagan as the party’s “standard bearers,” to allow for either outcome. The numbers were holding for Ford, but at conventions back then you never knew what might happen on the floor before delegates finally got around to casting their votes on the third night. The Reagan camp was determined to stir up some last-minute drama, and their chosen vehicle was Rule 16-C.

Apparently dreamed up by Reagan’s campaign manager, John Sears, a bright guy who had kept us on our toes all year, 16-C would have required that before the balloting began, each candidate must declare whom he would choose as his running mate. On Ford’s team, we called this the “misery loves company” rule because the sole purpose was to drag Ford into the same no-win situation Reagan had created for himself by choosing Schweiker. No matter whom Ford chose for the ticket, it was bound to annoy at least some of our delegates, and if the choice
turned out to be really controversial or unpopular, it might even inspire enough eleventh-hour conversions to tilt the convention toward Reagan.

The floor fight over 16-C created a real moment of exposure for us, and we treated the vote on it as a proxy battle for the nomination itself. When we prevailed on Tuesday night, everybody knew Ford would be the nominee.

There was one last obstacle thrown in our path that night, and here we decided that the best course was just to take the hit and move on. It made things a little easier that the actual target was not so much Ford as Kissinger, who at the time was not a beloved figure among conservatives.

With Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft in Vail, Colorado in the summer of 1976. (Official White House Photo/David Kennerly)

After the vote on Rule 16-C, the convention turned to a debate over the party platform, with special attention to a plank on “Morality in Foreign Policy” drawn up by Senator Jesse Helms. It was a thing of beauty, in its own way, a ringing affirmation of all that was good and pure in American foreign policy, mixed in with expressions of disdain for those connivers and compromisers who had given us détente. The draft language didn’t mention anyone by name, but everyone knew who the target was.

Naturally, Kissinger was livid. He assumed that we all shared his indignation, which was mostly true. But he also assumed that we would fight this affront at all costs, which was definitely not true. With the exception of Henry’s old friend and mentor Vice President Rockefeller, the consensus in the Ford high command was to let it go. We had won the important battle. Why make a big fuss over some little passage in a platform that nobody was going to read anyway?

This gave no comfort to Henry, and he and Rockefeller were still fired up for battle when we all gathered in Ford’s suite at the Crowne Plaza Hotel to make a final decision. This was an outrage, they said, a deep insult that must not be allowed to pass. Ford heard them out and then went around the room for advice from the rest—Stu Spencer, aides Bill Timmons and Tom Korologos, and me. None of us saw the point in fighting. Our view was, look, we just had a big win on Rule 16-C, it’s late at night, and our people are in bars all over Kansas City; if we go to
a vote on this we could actually lose, and that would reverse the whole dynamic of the convention. If we just let it pass, nobody will even remember it a week from now.

Not acceptable, said Henry. If we didn’t wage a fight to keep that insulting language out of the platform, then he would have no choice but to resign. For a moment after this threat, nothing was said. Then Tom Korologos piped up with a wisecrack that quickly settled the entire matter and left even Kissinger laughing. “Henry,” he said, “if you’re going to quit, do it now. We need the votes.”

The next night, August 18, I sat with President Ford and his family as they watched television coverage of his victory on the first ballot, scraping by in a vote of 1,187 to 1,070. It was one more moment in their lives that they could scarcely have imagined just a few years earlier, and I felt as happy for Betty and the kids as I did for my boss.

As they celebrated, I attended to the matter of bringing Ford and Reagan together for the traditional laying-down-of-arms meeting, and placed a call to John Sears. We had already agreed that the winner would visit the loser’s hotel suite; they would then appear before the press in a show of unity. In the planning stage and again that night on the phone, Sears set down just one condition for the encounter: Under no circumstances, he made clear, was the president to ask Reagan to be his running mate.

At the time I really regretted this, and on my own had put out some feelers to make absolutely certain that the firm “no” we were hearing from Sears and others reflected Reagan’s own wishes. By all indications, it was so.

A Ford-Reagan ticket made obvious sense to me. I’d started to think about the possibilities even before our victory in Kansas City and a few times tried to turn the president’s own thoughts in the same direction. I had to be rather careful in bringing it up because I knew Ford was cold to the idea, and under the circumstances he was becoming more and more immune to the charms of Ronald Reagan. What I needed was hard evidence that Reagan would help us, regardless of personal feelings. So in the early summer of ’76 I asked Bob Teeter to poll it: As
discreetly as possible, ask a sampling of voters how they would respond to a Ford-Reagan ticket in the general election.

Not long afterward, Bob returned with some favorable numbers, and I wanted Ford to hear the case directly from him. On Friday, August 6, we sat down at Camp David and Bob laid it out for the president, demonstrating beyond any doubt that Reagan would add more support than any other potential running mate. As a purely political proposition, it was a winner. Ford listened patiently, and I don’t remember him disputing anything we said. Even so, our pitch went nowhere. He just didn’t want to hear it.

Of course, there would be consolations ahead for conservatives, and reading the story backward it’s probably fair to say that Ford and Reagan were both wise to rule out the vice presidential spot, and the governor was lucky that things played out as they did. After all, how do you get a Reagan presidency without a Ford loss in ’76 and four years of Jimmy Carter?

When Ford and Reagan met in Kansas City, in any case, there was no chance the conversation might wander toward talk of joining of forces in the fall. We arrived at the Alameda Plaza Hotel just after 1:00 a.m. and went into Reagan’s suite. The president and the governor then met alone, and as Ford recounted the meeting to me afterward, he moved quickly to the names he was considering for the second spot. Reagan had responded most favorably to the mention of Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, which was a big plus for Dole, but the choice wasn’t settled there and then. Ford left the meeting with Reagan still needing to think it over.

In the way that many past running mates had been settled upon, there was a long, middle-of-the-night meeting, with an announcement due by morning and all the political world waiting on a name. Among those we had tossed around were Dole, Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee, John Connally, the former governor of Texas, and Ambassador Anne Armstrong, who had been a highly regarded figure in the party for years. The idea of a woman on the ticket held a lot of appeal, and Ford that night probably came closer to that choice than any other presidential
nominee had up to then. The problem was that generic polls showed that a female running mate would cost him 12 points. Being way down already, we couldn’t afford to deepen that deficit.

Another name reluctantly crossed off the list was George H. W. Bush, although the reasons for that would need clearing up for years to come. As much as Ford liked Bush and wanted to consider him for the ’76 ticket, he ruled Bush out for one reason alone: When Ford made him director of central intelligence a year earlier, as part of the same shakeup that had removed Rockefeller as a candidate for VP, Democrats on Capitol Hill suspected a fast political move. They wanted assurances that Bush would not simply serve ten months at the agency and then end up as Ford’s running mate. After talking it over with Bush, Ford gave the Democrats their guarantee, and now, in Kansas City, he was bound by that promise.

No decision about a running mate had been reached by the predawn hours when we finally packed it in. From the general feel of that meeting, I left the president in his suite with the strong impression that Howard Baker would be the one. The next morning, Ford called me down to his suite to tell me his choice. Mrs. Ford was in her bathrobe sitting at the vanity when I arrived, and the president was putting on his tie. We had a short discussion about the candidates, in particular Baker and Dole, and then the president told me he had decided to go with Dole. He asked me to get him on the phone.

What strikes me most when I think back on the selection is that right in the middle of our deliberations on the vice presidency was Nelson Rockefeller. Here we were talking about who was best to replace Rockefeller, and there was Rocky himself offering counsel on which of the prospects would help Ford the most. It speaks well of him that he would do that—although I have a feeling that part of his motivation was to make darn sure the second spot didn’t go to Reagan. No doubt the team spirit Nelson showed in Kansas City was one of the reasons why, even decades later, the decision to drop his vice president still gnawed a little at Ford. He felt he had let down a friend, although for my part I never shared his second thoughts. Our goal was to get Gerald
Ford elected, and there was simply no way to do that with Nelson Rockefeller on the ticket.

WE LEFT KANSAS CITY on Friday, August 20, feeling pretty good, although with not much of a postconvention “bounce.” On the strength of his untainted, outsider image—and with Watergate and the Nixon pardon still fresh enough to exploit—Jimmy Carter led in the Gallup poll 50 percent to 37 percent. For us that spread was actually an improvement over what we’d seen following the Democratic convention in mid-July, when Ford trailed Carter by 33 points.

When you’re that far down in the polls, at least you can assume you’ve established a floor. Any movement at all is likely to be in your direction. Being way down can also give a campaign a certain spark and provide the candidate the fighting edge he needs. In this case, the underdog was a fellow who had never ended a competition in any place but first. As friendly and easygoing as Jerry Ford was known to be, on the field of political battle he was focused, intense, and accustomed to winning. Whatever the pollsters had to say about the general election, he had just bested the former governor of California and felt he could handle the former governor of Georgia.

As it turned out, he almost did. In the electoral count, the Carter-Ford election of 1976 ended up closer than any other presidential election since 1916, when Woodrow Wilson edged out Charles Evans Hughes. And America wouldn’t see another contest so tight until the Bush-Gore race in 2000.

Having had a stake in both the Ford and George W. Bush campaigns, I’m struck by how much the map changed in the quarter century between them. For one thing, in ’76 the Democrats counted on and got the entire South, excluding only Virginia. Most of those states have rarely gone Democratic since. It was a race in which the Democrat took Texas and Missouri, the Republican took New Jersey and most of New England, and California was still reasonably solid Republican territory. The layout in 2000, when I found myself on the ticket, presented a different world. The lesson I draw is never to pay much heed to any
talk of a party having a “lock” on one or another state or region. In the space of a generation, a political map can be practically inverted. When you hear any presidential election outcome described as “transformational,” altering the political world forever, you can put that analysis down as true and valid for exactly four years.

In the general election campaign of 1976, of course, our goal wasn’t to “transform” anything except the very depressing poll numbers in front of us. It took everything we had just to stay in the game. Week after week, Ford slogged away, and little by little he closed in on his opponent. We knew we were gaining ground on Carter, who was also in his first national campaign and making a few mistakes of his own. But it was slow going across a big field. My nagging fear throughout was that in the end the clock would beat us.