Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America

by Shirley, Craig

  More worrisome for Reagan than the schedule changes was the incessant prattling about a Dream Ticket, with Gerald Ford starring as Reagan's sidekick. In the movies, Reagan had often been the classic sidekick who critics said never got the girl—although the Gipper sometimes complained that this characterization wasn't true: he almost always got the girl. Now some, including Reagan, thought that he ought to try to get the former president.

  Yet what would start out in Detroit as a “dream” would end up very quickly as a nightmare for Dutch Reagan. Reagan was about to be reminded of the old saw “Be careful what you wish for.”

  24

  MOTOWN MADNESS

  “We heard from Senator Schweiker that Senator Laxalt told someone else who then told Senator Schweiker that it would be Gerald Ford.”

  After the 1924 Democratic convention, which notoriously went to 103 ballots over sixteen days before choosing John W. Davis of West Virginia, satirist H. L. Mencken had had enough and wrote, “There is something about a national convention that makes it as fascinating as a revival or a hanging. It is vulgar, it is ugly, it is stupid, it is tedious, it's hard upon both the higher cerebral centers and the gluteus maximus, and yet it is somehow charming. One sits through long sessions wishing heartily that all the delegates were dead and in hell—and then suddenly there comes a show so gaudy and hilarious, so melodramatic and obscene, so unimaginably exhilarating and preposterous that one lives a gorgeous year in an hour.”1

  On Wednesday, July 16, 1980, the Republican National Convention put Mencken's disparagement of conventions to shame, though no one would be sitting on his keister this day. You couldn't gossip sitting down.

  The grand old man of the Wall Street Journal, the wonderfully named Vermont Connecticut Royster, reflected the widespread sentiment that the GOP convention had so far been a dull affair. There were no fights like in the old days over rules or platforms or “over the vice-presidential choice,” he wrote. But Royster, a perceptive political observer who had won two Pulitzer Prizes, noted toward the end of his column that it was possible Reagan “could shoot himself in the foot with his vice-presidential nominee.”2

  AS THE SUN ROSE over Detroit's boarded-up slums and shuttered factories on July 16, the buzz was growing about the Dream Ticket of Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford. The gossip had been stoked by a Bill Plante report on CBS several nights earlier. Plante ran through the list of prospective running mates and concluded, “Everyone does agree … around here, that the Dream Ticket would have been Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford. And that rumor surfaced again today.”3 A pretty young Reagan aide, Michele Davis, wrote in her diary, “We are all abuzz about the Ford rumors.… I think it's nuts.” As it turned out, she was way ahead of the gray heads at the convention. (She also had strong opinions about the “fatcats” she had to babysit there, calling them “obnoxious, boorish assholes.”)4

  The Reagan team let it leak that morning that Howard Baker could help Reagan more by staying in the Senate. Loosely translated, it meant Baker had been officially dumped from consideration. Actually, Baker had appeared on Face the Nation several weeks earlier and disavowed any interest in the job. Within the Reagan campaign, Senator Baker already had his opponents, notably including Paul Laxalt; it was rumored that the two senators did not get along. After the Face the Nation appearance, Reagan called his old friend Baker to tell him he was taking him at his word, and Baker assured Reagan that if he was asked, he'd join the ticket, but otherwise, he wasn't interested. Baker had begun to gently close the door and Reagan helped him do so. Word never leaked out—astonishing in politics—until the convention.5

  Throwing Baker over the side was a tactical mistake by the Reagan forces. With Howard Baker out, conservatives such as Jesse Helms could concentrate their fire on George Bush. Even Helms now said—amazingly—he could “live with a Reagan-Ford ticket.”6 Helms went even further, saying he preferred that pairing to a “Reagan-Helms” ticket.7

  That was it. Reagan's men got the ideological cover they needed to seriously negotiate with Ford. Reagan was seeking “a good reason to pick somebody else,” not Bush, according to the Washington Star, and that somebody else was starting to look like it could be Ford.8 Among Reagan's men, there had been no consensus candidate save maybe Jack Kemp, and this vacuum also sucked people in toward Ford.

  According to Dick Wirthlin, the idea of asking Ford was never meant to be a serious proposal. Wirthlin and Bob Teeter cooked it up, he said years later, as a sign of good faith on Reagan's part. Wirthlin and Teeter expected Ford to graciously turn down the offer, and that would be it.9 Among Reaganites, the consensus was definitely against Bush. As Jim Baker saw it, it was “ABB—Anybody But Bush.”10 Reagan's men were narrowing down the list quickly, and it seemed there were no good alternatives to Ford.

  When the name of the arrogant and manifestly ambitious Don Rumsfeld came up in one meeting of Reaganites, Lyn Nofziger bitingly said, “Rummy would be fine, but you realize we'll have to hire a food taster for Reagan!”11 Rumsfeld was winnowed along with Dick Lugar and Bill Simon.

  Laxalt's name kept coming up, because the Reagans wouldn't let the idea go. But even Laxalt was leaning toward the Dream Ticket, telling Mary McGrory of the Washington Star, “I've been nursing this along for months.”12 On Reagan's confidential schedule was an 8 P.M. meeting in his suite Tuesday evening denoted simply as “PRIVATE.”13

  Time was running out for Guy Vander Jagt. He still hadn't given his keynote speech, and as the morning progressed, the networks were breaking into regular programming to speculate about the Dream Ticket.

  Almost everybody who was awake and not too hungover in Detroit was talking about Reagan-Ford now. A mass self-hypnosis—or mass hysteria, depending on your point of view—began to take hold among the Republicans, so caught up were they in the romance of Reagan and Ford bringing the party together and putting Carter away in the fall.

  Around 9:30 the night before, a half dozen prominent Republicans had joined Reagan for yet another private meeting in his suite on the sixty-ninth floor of the Detroit Plaza Hotel. The small group included Reagan's 1976 running mate and friend, Senator Dick Schweiker of Pennsylvania. The conversation turned toward Ford. The “how wonderful it would be” chatter piqued Reagan's interest.14

  Reagan and Ford met later that night, and Reagan made a gracious pitch to Ford to join the ticket. Ford was briefly touched by Reagan's sincerity. The icy relations between the two men seemed to be thawing.15 Ford raised the objection that the Twelfth Amendment might cost such a ticket California's electoral votes because both men lived there. He was dubious that he could simply change his residency back to Michigan, but one report had it that Reagan was willing to make the race with Ford even if it voided the Golden State's forty-five electoral votes.16

  After a boat reception on the Detroit River later that evening, Ford met with a small group of aides to discuss the merits of Reagan's offer. Henry Kissinger, the doctor of hidden agendas, as much as said that for the sake of the country, Ford had to accept. The conversation in Ford's suite did not end until 3 A.M. Ford had to get up in several hours for a live appearance on the Today show.17

  After his television appearance, Ford reluctantly sent his advisers off to negotiate on his behalf. One confidant said that though Ford was still unconvinced, “he was willing to let us talk to the Reagan people to see if we could give some meaning to the definition” of Reagan's offer. They met that morning with Reagan's negotiators—Ed Meese, Dick Wirthlin, and Bill Casey—and were pleased to find that the two sides “very much agreed on the broad conceptual framework. There were no significant differences at all.”18

  The devil, as they would soon learn, was in the details. Reagan's men and Ford's men met again later that afternoon to try to hammer out an agreement about power sharing. Casey and Kissinger did most of the talking. “They discussed which cabinet appointments President Ford would control and what authority he would have,” recalled Casey's secretary, Barbara Hayward. “The more
power Mr. Kissinger expected for Ford, the more annoyed I could see Mr. Casey getting.”19

  Wirthlin was with Reagan for much of the day and later remembered, “There was an assurance and calmness about Reagan that I think added a very sustaining influence to what we were trying to do, tactically, even in spite of the Ford thing.”20

  When Wirthlin's family came by the suite to see the governor, Reagan took them into one of the adjoining bedrooms. He seemed as if he had something he wanted to share with somebody.

  Wirthlin asked Reagan how he felt, and the governor replied, “Let me tell you, I feel like the man who was walking along the beach and offered a prayer that he might be sustained. And as he walked along the beach, there were really two [sets of] footsteps, his own and that of the Heavenly Father. And as he turned around and looked at where he'd come, he saw just one at a time when he was under terrific stress. And he said, ‘Why did you leave me when I needed you so much?’ And the answer was, ‘I didn't leave you; I was carrying you.'”21

  AT 8 O'CLOCK WEDNESDAY morning, Bill Brock convened a meeting in his suite with some of the “wise men” of the party—Bryce Harlow, Howard Baker, Kissinger, Senator John Tower, Alan Greenspan, several governors, and other luminaries. The purpose of the meeting was to orchestrate a full-scale lobbying campaign for the Dream Ticket. One of the wisest men, Congressman John Rhodes, was the skunk at the party when he pronounced the idea “cockamamie” and stormed out. At 9 P.M., he had a meeting with Reagan, who asked Rhodes who should be on the ticket. Rhodes unhesitatingly told him Bush.22

  By noon on Wednesday, almost all other leaders of the Republican Party were openly advocating the Ford plan, thinking it was brilliant. Brock and Howard Baker met with Ford and urged him to accept Reagan's offer. Then Dole, Governor Jim Thompson, and several others weighed in, telling Ford he needed to go on the ticket. Bob Teeter, even though he was supposedly working for the Bush campaign, urged his former client Ford to do it as well. Congressman Silvio Conte of Massachusetts was dubious. “Ford is not going to give up his gosh-darned golf game,” he said.23

  That morning, a Reagan aide told Al Hunt and Jim Perry of the Wall Street Journal that the deal was “90 percent done.” The story picked up additional momentum when Ford began sending public signals in chats with reporters and politicos that he might, just might, be interested.24

  Betty Ford told Barbara Walters of ABC that the idea was fine with her.25 Ford's extended entourage and sycophants were starting to spread the word that it was nearly a “done deal,” though they had never been given real knowledge or direct authority to do so.

  Reagan was spotted around 2 P.M. heading for a luncheon, accompanied by his protective detail. When Reagan saw two reporters he knew, he walked over to greet them. Naturally, they asked the governor whether the rumors about Ford as his running mate were true, and he replied, “Oh sure. That would be the best.”26

  As the day progressed, a new rumor, that Reagan and Ford would make a joint appearance that night before the delegates, swept the Motor City.27 Two of the few in Detroit who thought the ticket was crazy were Stu Spencer and Dick Cheney, good friends from working together on the 1976 Ford campaign. Both were asked to help in the negotiations, but they made themselves scarce, instead going fishing for the afternoon on the Detroit River.28

  Like Spencer and Cheney, Bill Timmons, one of the keener heads in the GOP, believed the idea was nuts. He was already running everything in Detroit, but he decided he'd better stay close to the situation to see whether he could lend some sanity and keep Kissinger, who was angling for the State Department and God knows what else, from grabbing too much power. Timmons only had a convention to run, a thousand staffers to supervise, eight thousand reporters who all needed babysitting, and more than four thousand delegates and hundreds of high-maintenance politicians to look after. The last thing he needed on his plate was some wacko idea about a co-presidency. He also got pressed into service because, as he later joked, “I was the only one who could type.”29 Paul Russo, the Reagan's campaign's remarkably patient congressional liaison, described Timmons as a “godsend” to the campaign.30

  TIME WAS OF THE essence for the Dream Ticket, which only added insanity to the already hectic convention schedule. As Reagan aide Neal Peden recalled, conventions are always “a blur of faces. People just go ‘vroom’ around you day and night.”31 Now the Reagan and Ford camps worked furiously to come up with a proposal that would be acceptable to both sides.32 Ford's men—Greenspan; Kissinger; John Marsh, a former Ford White House aide; and Bob Barrett, Ford's former military aide, who was in way over his head—aggressively pursued the deal. Reagan's men were more passive. Casey “was insisting it didn't make a difference” who Reagan chose, although at other times he was pushing for Ford. Meese “was prepared to do anything Mr. Reagan wanted.”33

  Peter Hannaford was pulled into the mess, too, even though he was hard at work on Reagan's acceptance speech for the next night. Peter Rusthoven, whose writings in the American Spectator Hannaford had taken note of, had been asked to join the convention writing team to help contribute to the crafting of the speech. Rusthoven was also editing the daily newsletter of the convention.34 The ultracautious Hannaford drafted a statement for Reagan, half announcing, half imploring that Ford should go on the ticket with him.35

  It was unclear whether the swirling rumors were pushing the deal or whether it was the other way around. All anybody talked about at the convention was the Dream Ticket. Reporters chased down gossip from delegates and Reagan and Ford staffers, who in turn passed what they heard from reporters along to other staffers and reporters, which started the whole process over again. It was a gigantic Rashomon effect, where one person might convey only partially correct information to another, who in turn would pass along just a fraction of what he'd really heard but would fill in the details with more speculation. The phrase “Well, I heard …” echoed throughout the convention.

  All the GOP's careful convention preparations were thrown out the window. From the standpoint of convention planners, the day was an utter disaster. Reagan's private schedule said he would call at 9:45 P.M. “1. VP nominee. 2. Former President Ford. 3. Other VP nominee candidates.”36 Then Reagan was to proceed to the hotel of his running mate. That plan had gone all to hell.

  IN THE NOT-SO-SECRET MEETINGS high atop the Detroit Plaza Hotel, variously on the sixty-eighth, sixty-ninth, and seventieth floors, the Ford high command happily and the Reagan high command now less so began to slice up the White House, the cabinet, and apparently the Constitution.

  The proposal as it evolved over just a few short hours called for Ford to act as a super-empowered chief of staff and Reagan as a benign chairman of the board. All information for Reagan would flow through Ford, and Reagan's White House staff would have to go through Ford first. The proposal also gave Ford veto power over Reagan's cabinet choices, The proposal gave Ford the authority over the budget, the Domestic Council, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, and the State Department—where Ford insisted that Kissinger be reinstalled. There would also be a “mutual veto” scheme.37 Left untouched at this point was the White House gardener, but who knew?

  The deal in the works essentially emasculated Reagan and would have made him seem what he wasn't but what his critics charged he was: an empty suit who just sat there while Ford and his cronies really ran the government. A joke was already making the rounds that Reagan would be “acting president” from nine to five and Ford would be president before nine, after five, and on weekends. Jim Baker could only watch the insanity from the sidelines. He mirthfully wondered how Ford would be addressed. Would it be “Mr. President–Vice President” or “Mr. Vice President–President”?38

  As the day wore on, Reagan's men experienced more and more doubts. They began to believe that they were being snookered by Kissinger and Company, and wondered whether Ford really knew what his team was pushing for. Timmons had already typed up several iterations of what later became known as the “Tr
eaty of Detroit,” although at the time the documents were referred to benignly as “talking points.”39

  The first several drafts were quite specific regarding the proposed new duties and power for a Ford vice presidency, but Reagan's men then produced their own, newer scheme, which was far vaguer and spoke only in generalities about the parameters of the agreement. Ford's negotiators pushed for more talks, hoping to wear down their counterparts, and a kind of shuttle diplomacy took place between the various floors of the Detroit Plaza Hotel.

  What had started out as a show of good manners to some and a bad joke to others had evolved into a serious offer by Reagan to Ford. But neither of them knew that their staffs were running amok, especially the Ford staff.

  Ford was physically tired and impatient with the whole nonsense. He pleaded with his staff, “I've done the whole sled run.… I'll campaign for the ticket in the fall. But don't ask me to do this.” Yet he also said that if he was going to do this, it would not be as a regular vice president.40 Ford was giving conflicting signs even to his own team; they decided to interpret only the ones they agreed with, and kept negotiating hard.

  Some of Ford's aides wondered why he kept sending mixed signals. The answer was that Ford was a competitive SOB. Ever since losing to Jimmy Carter in 1976, he had seethed over his defeat. He felt he'd done much to heal the country and the economy, which had been staging a comeback of sorts in 1976, but he'd never gotten a clean shot at his own term of office.