Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (70 page)

Lynn Sherr of ABC—one of those “floor reporters”—took to the airwaves to announce excitedly, “We heard from Senator Schweiker that Senator Laxalt told someone else who then told Senator Schweiker that it would be Gerald Ford!”
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Sherr was not alone in such schoolyard journalism that night. Besides Tom Brokaw of NBC, about the only network journalist who was keeping his wits about him was Frank Reynolds of ABC. On air, he speculated that the deal could be “ephemeral.”
⁶⁵
Then again, Reynolds knew Reagan better than anyone else in the electronic media did; though he was a liberal, the Reagans adored him and he returned the affection. Reynolds knew, or should have known, Reagan would never go along with a deal that would undercut his own authority or majesty. For Reagan, it was never just about the art of the deal—any deal—but the deal itself.

A
FTER
F
ORD'S INTERVIEWS, REPORTS
began leaking out that Reagan's staff was angrily fighting among themselves, frustrated with the corner they had apparently painted themselves into.
⁶⁶
Some conservatives were frustrated also, including Reagan's longtime friend and supporter Tom Winter, co-owner and co-publisher, along with Allan Ryskind, of
Human Events
. Reagan had been a faithful subscriber for years, corresponded with the two men, had dinner with them—and in turn the publication was devoted to Reagan. On the other hand, they reviled Ford. When Winter heard about the Dream Ticket he went off and got so sullenly drunk that he was later found by his friends slumped in a chair, babbling incoherently.
⁶⁷

Jimmy Lyons, another old Reagan friend, stopped by Reagan's suite to throw in his two cents that he thought the Ford idea was “insane.” Lyons could talk to Reagan like that.
⁶⁸
First, he was a Texan, and second, his bank, River Oaks, had made an unsecured $100,000 loan to Reagan's campaign at a critical point in 1976.
⁶⁹

Shortly after the Cronkite bombshell, Reagan and Allen were alone in the suite. Allen pressed Reagan to think about Bush, but Reagan balked, citing abortion and “voodoo” economics. Allen pressed him, asking whether the governor would reconsider Bush if he pledged to support the entire platform. Reagan saw an out: “Well, if you put it that way, I would agree to reconsider.” Stef Halper, having handled his side of the agreement, later called Allen to tell him Bush would agree to support the platform if picked by Reagan.
⁷⁰

T
HE CONVENTION'S SCHEDULED AFFAIRS
were almost an afterthought amid all the Dream Ticket excitement. The roll call of state delegations confirming their selections for the party's nominee would only officially pronounce what everyone already knew: that Reagan would be the GOP's standard bearer. The drama involving Reagan's running mate was much more exciting.

There were only three principal convention speakers on the list that night: Bush, Brock, and Guy Vander Jagt, who would finally get to give his keynote speech. Vander Jagt asked and had been assured by the Reagan camp that no final decision would be made on the vice presidency until he spoke.

Bush's self-deprecating if somewhat brief remarks that night were a good, solid effort—better than the “gentleman's C” he had often earned at Yale—and he was warmly received by the delegates. “If anyone wants to know why Ronald Reagan is a winner, you can refer him to me,” Bush said. “I'm an expert on the subject. He's a winner because he's our leader, because he has traveled this country and understands its people. His message is clear. His message is understood.”
⁷¹

With nothing to lose now that Ford apparently was getting the VP spot, Bush was publicly relaxed, calm, and effective.
⁷²
Privately, he seethed. While Bush
waited underneath the stage to give his remarks, a convention aide said, “I'm sorry, Mr. Bush, really sorry. I was pulling for you.” Bush curtly replied, “Sorry about what?” “You mean you haven't heard? It's all over. Reagan's picked Ford as his running mate.”
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Bush snapped, “Well thanks a lot!”
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After his speech, as Bush headed to his car to take him back to his hotel, Stef Halper tried to tell Bush that it was not over, that he'd been in back-channel conversations with Dick Allen. Halper had never seen Bush rage like this. “Don't you get it? It's over!” Bush slammed the car door in Halper's face, leaving him standing there sheepishly on the curb.
⁷⁵
ABC's Jim Wooten caught the private George Bush and reported that the Houstonian was “shaken … bitter.”
⁷⁶

Reagan, on the other hand, was becoming more and more pensive. Just before 8
P.M.
, the presumptive nominee was munching his preferred snack of jelly beans and watching Dole on ABC saying, “Ford and Reagan can work it out.” Reagan replied to the television, “No, Bob. I cannot give him what he wants.”
⁷⁷
Yet he did not halt the negotiations. Reagan was invested in his own proposal and wasn't about to quit now, since he was, as Mike Deaver once said, “the most competitive son of a bitch who ever lived.”
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F
INALLY AT THE CONVENTION
podium, Vander Jagt did not disappoint. In a thirty-five-minute address, he wowed the delegates, prompting David Brinkley of NBC to comment, “Well I've got to say he turned them on.”
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But some media observers viewed his speech as pompous and overwrought, in the manner of William Jennings Bryan. One hard-bitten reporter turned to another and called it a “goddamn snake-oil speech.”
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Whatever the case, the speech came too late to make a difference for Vander Jagt's cause. Reagan and his men would not pick him for the number-two slot—though exactly who they would pick remained very much in doubt.

E
D
M
EESE WENT BY
Reagan's suite at around 8:30
P.M.
to happily inform his man that Ford had backed off on previous demands to take over the National Security Council. Then, just a few minutes before 9 o'clock, Reagan withdrew to his bedroom to call Ford. When he reemerged, the presumptive nominee announced that Kissinger had taken himself out of contention for the State Department, but no one bought that for a second.
⁸¹

In the background on one of Reagan's three television sets, Frank Reynolds could be heard betraying his own good judgment, telling viewers, “We now have reports that a deal has been made between Governor Reagan and former president Ford and that it has been accepted and agreed to, and that former president Ford
will be Governor Reagan's choice to be the number-two man on the ticket to run for vice president. That is historic. It is unique. It is unprecedented, and we don't know it for sure, but there are reports confirming what our correspondent Jim Wooten told us some time ago, that the deal was under way.”
⁸²

Sam Donaldson, also of ABC, announced at 9:30 that Ford and Reagan would make an appearance in Joe Louis Arena before the night was over. At twenty minutes to ten, Garrick Utley of NBC interviewed former senator Robert Griffin of Michigan, a Ford intimate, who said, “It looks good.” Utley said, “This is practically a confirmation.” Practically.
⁸³

At ten minutes after ten, Walter Cronkite solemnly told his viewers, “CBS has learned there is a definite plan [that] the nominee of this party, Ronald Reagan, [will choose] the former president of the United States, Gerald Ford … as a vice-presidential running mate … an unparalleled, unprecedented situation in American politics. They are going to come to this convention tonight to appear together on this platform to announce that Ford will run with him.”
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That was that. If “Uncle Walter” said it was so, you could bank on it.

Yet all Cronkite had to go on was what his correspondents were telling him. And they were going on what the correspondents for the other networks were reporting, fanned by GOP operatives who had no idea what was really going on. Reporter Dan Rather broke in breathlessly at 9:10
P.M.
to tell the anchor, “Walter, the number of sources on the floor who say a deal has been cut is increasing.”
⁸⁵
Earlier, Cronkite had presciently said to Ford, “Well, we're going to jump to conclusions all over the place tonight.”
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Ted Koppel of ABC seemed about the only sane person now on the tube, as he mused, “I hope we're all not feeding off each other.… The delegates feeding off the television reports and the television reporters feeding off the delegates.”
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J
UST A FEW MINUTES
after 10 o'clock, Reagan's name was placed in nomination—for the third time in twelve years. The delegates went bonkers, cheering, applauding, using the same air horns that had filled Kemper Arena four years earlier, prompting the
New York Times
to compare their noise to the “ululations of Arab women.”
⁸⁸

Paul Laxalt fired up the crowd, asking, “Who is this man who will not make any more weak, ill-advised decisions like the Panama Canal giveaway? Who is this man who will stand by our allies and not indulge in any more ‘Taiwan sellout’?” Each time Laxalt asked another question, the delegates would scream in unison, “Reagan!” Laxalt concluded his remarks to warm applause and the hall got down to the actual voting.
⁸⁹

Alabama went first and served up a plate of 27 deep-fried delegates for Reagan. Then the Alaska delegation, recently taken over by the Moral Majority, delivered its 12 votes for the Gipper. California, with its controversial winner-take-all primary, gave all 168 of its votes to its favorite son. Reagan's daughter Maureen made the announcement on national television to the cheers of Joe Louis Arena. Boos were heard when John Anderson received votes from the Illinois and Massachusetts delegates, but the boos were loudest when the band played the Ohio State fight song just as Michigan was getting ready to announce its vote tally.
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A
S THE DELEGATES CONTINUED
their roll call, the Reagan and Ford negotiators frantically held two more meetings high atop the Renaissance Center, one at 9
P.M.
and another at 10
P.M.
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The Ford men kept excusing themselves to go meet with the former president, leading Reagan's negotiators to believe that their counterparts were negotiating power for themselves. The Reaganites whispered that Ford's men were trying to talk Ford even at this late hour into committing completely to their plan. In fact, Ford was telling his aides, “Go back and get more.”
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Bill Simon stopped by the Reagan suite and told the Californian in no uncertain terms that the whole Ford thing was nuts. Simon, though he had been Ford's treasury secretary, made it clear to Reagan that he didn't trust the man.
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Reagan respected Simon and listened to him.

Reagan's men were dismayed. It was now sinking in that they were inadvertently working on “a return of the Ford White House.” They mostly respected their counterparts and believed the ticket would be good for the country, but they also had a nagging suspicion about hidden agendas. Although Kissinger claimed that Meese, Wirthlin, and Casey had asked him to use his influence with Ford to get him to go for it,
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Meese was already having second thoughts. Meese told Reagan, “You know, I don't think this is going anyplace.” Reagan replied, “I don't think it's going to come to any fruition either.”
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Cheney, meanwhile, was astonished at the concessions Casey was making in Reagan's name.
⁹⁶

Reagan's doubts were gnawing at him. He called Stu Spencer and asked, “You still feel the same way about Bush?” Spencer assured him that nothing had changed his opinion that Bush was Reagan's best choice.
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Bill Casey had been invested in the Ford idea ever since he had visited the former president several weeks earlier and come away believing that Ford wanted to go on the ticket. Now he needed to buy time for the negotiators, so he sent word down to the convention floor to “keep the ‘spontaneous’ demonstration marking the end of the roll call and Reagan's nomination going as long as possible,” as the
Washington Post
reported.
⁹⁸

Reagan and Ford talked once again by phone but nothing was resolved. In the 10 o'clock meeting, the Ford people, sensing that they'd tried to grab too much in earlier negotiations, backed off on some of their demands. Meese, at 10:45, briefed Reagan on the new framework: Ford still wanted veto power over Reagan's cabinet selections, and he would also name the head of Office of Management and Budget and the head of the National Security Agency.
⁹⁹

Over at Joe Louis Arena, Reagan's nomination was imminent. David Broder and Lou Cannon filed a story with the headline “Ford Reportedly Accepts No. 2 Spot on GOP Ticket.” The headline reflected the doubts of the two scribes. Cannon once again was proving his perspicacity as a political reporter. All week he had been telling anyone who would listen that it would be Bush, not Ford.
¹⁰⁰

The Reagan-Ford deal was unraveling, but nobody in the hall knew it. Former Michigan governor George Romney was a Bush delegate, but this did not stop him from spreading the word on the floor that Ford would be on the ticket with Reagan. Romney had gone so far as to tell Bush face-to-face that morning that he was dumping him for Ford.
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Bob Dole had been led to believe it was all set. But as the evening went on, he later said, “I got nervous because it was taking too long. Something happened. Maybe we left the wrong people in charge.”
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