Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (71 page)

R
ONALD
W
ILSON
R
EAGAN WAS
finally nominated for president at 11:13
P.M.
, when the Montana delegates put him over the top.
¹⁰³
A prolonged demonstration of almost forty minutes took place. The band played “California, Here I Come,” and 12,000 red, white, and blue balloons fell. Delegates joyously popped them.
¹⁰⁴
For sixteen years, since Reagan's speech for Goldwater, conservatives had waited for this moment. Their man, their leader, had finally won the Republican Party's nomination for president of the United States.

Reagan received 1,939 delegate votes; John Anderson 37; George Bush, 13; and Anne Armstrong, former U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James, 1. Four delegates abstained.
¹⁰⁵

Photographers were invited into Reagan's suite to memorialize the occasion and the nominee looked serene. His family members—Nancy, daughter Patti, sons Mike and Ron, and daughter-in-law Colleen—were smiling brightly. Casey, Wirthlin, and Meese, on the other hand, had no time to savor the nomination they'd worked so hard for. They were up in Ford's suite desperately trying to salvage the Dream Ticket, but it was falling apart.

Allen informed Hannaford, Nofziger, and Marty Anderson of his unauthorized initiative to Bush via Stef Halper and the good news that Bush would support
the platform. Hannaford, with Mike Deaver also present, told the group that it might be best to start arguing for another option for Reagan.
¹⁰⁶

Ford, on the advice of his men, had told Reagan when the Gipper called earlier that he wanted to sleep on the whole matter, but Reagan dug in his heels. He told Ford in no uncertain terms that he needed to have Ford's answer that night. Deaver said Reagan was “not happy.”
¹⁰⁷
Reagan's men later realized that the Ford team wanted to wait another twelve hours so the Dream Ticket would become an unmistakable fact with the world, making it impossible for Reagan to back out without losing face.

Just before 11:30
P.M.
, Meese, Casey, and Wirthlin reported back to the governor that negotiations were not going well.
¹⁰⁸
Deaver warned Hannaford and Nofziger that the convention “is about to go up in smoke, out of control … if we don't give them a decision.” Nofziger proposed that they go upstairs and tell the negotiators. They bounded up the stairs to find Kissinger, Greenspan, and Barrett in the room.
¹⁰⁹
Deaver told them that it was decision time and added, “The governor wants us to see President Ford.”
¹¹⁰
After a brief silence, Barrett excused himself to go into Ford's room. He soon came out and said, “He's going downstairs, and I think the answer is ‘No.’”
¹¹¹

Around 11:30, Ford, with Barrett in tow, arrived at Reagan's suite. Reagan and Ford closed the door and went into the dining room by themselves. Five minutes later they emerged and shook hands, and Ford departed after they bade each other goodnight.

“I have to say the answer is ‘No,’” Reagan told his men. Ford had told Reagan that his “gut reaction” was that it “just wouldn't work.”
¹¹²
Maybe Reagan was acting. No one will ever really know. He had outmaneuvered the fearsome Hollywood moguls as head of the Screen Actors Guild, and it was possible he'd just forced a former president's hand, leading Ford to pull out of the co-presidency concept. Hannaford said years later that it was typical Reagan to let all the “elements play out.”
¹¹³
In any event, Reagan had just dodged a bullet. He was relieved.

The Candidate said, “Well, what do we do now?”
¹¹⁴

After a prolonged silence, Peter Hannaford said, “Governor, maybe it's time to call George Bush.”
¹¹⁵

Seeing no objection from his most trusted advisers, Reagan reluctantly said, “Well, let's get Bush on the phone.”
¹¹⁶

B
USH HAD BEEN IN
the downstairs bar of the hotel with two of his sons, George and Jeb, having a quiet beer. When they got back to the suite, Jeb grabbed his friend David Bates and said, “Let's go drink some scotch,” and they went to
another room to be alone.
¹¹⁷
Bush stayed in the suite with Jim Baker, Vic Gold, and some family and other close aides. Drinking a Heineken, he awaited a courtesy call from a Reagan aide to formally tell him that Ford was going to join the ticket, as if he didn't already know that.

The phone rang, but it wasn't from Reagan. It was the Secret Service, telling Bush that they had taken up a position two floors down. They wanted to know whether Bush needed anything. “Need anything? What the hell's that supposed to mean?”
¹¹⁸
To this day, no one can account for the speedy actions of the Secret Service, although it is plausible that agents assigned to Reagan heard about the movement toward Bush and took action, detailing agents to the soon-to-be running mate even before Reagan had called Bush.

At 11:37, shortly after the mystifying Secret Service call, Bush's phone rang again.
¹¹⁹
This time it was Mr. Reagan calling.

Jim Baker answered, handed the phone to Bush, and then just as quickly cleared the room of nearly everybody except Barbara Bush, their son Marvin, and Dean Burch, the former head of the party. Reagan brightly said, “Hello, George, this is Ron Reagan. George, I would like to go over there and tell them that I am recommending you for vice president. Could I ask you one thing—do I have your permission to make an announcement that you support the platform across the board?”
¹²⁰
Reagan asked specifically about the pro-life plank. Bush, flabbergasted, readily agreed to support the conservative document “across the board” per his testy but productive conversation with Halper.
¹²¹
“I'd be honored, Governor.”
¹²²
And that was that.

Someone knocked on the door of Jeb's room and told him that his father wanted to see him. Jeb, halfway into his cups, went and saw his parents “not looking very happy.” He asked whether Reagan had made a courtesy call and the elder Bush languidly said, “Yes.” After a pause, the father added, “Yeah, he asked me to be his running mate.” Jeb almost fainted. Ambassador Bush pulled the same gag on Vic Gold, but rather than fainting, Gold jumped five feet in the air.
¹²³

A few minutes later a television set in the Bush suite showed a network reporter shouting, “Not Ford! It's Bush!”
¹²⁴
The suite quickly filled with a crush of friends and well-wishers. Bush was absolutely stunned by Reagan's call. Before the phone rang he'd been sitting in his suite, nursing bruised feelings toward Reagan and Ford. Vic Gold had been so angry at Ford for touting Bush, telling everyone he didn't want the vice presidency—and then apparently taking the post—that Bush aides felt compelled to gently escort Gold away from the few reporters who were attending what they thought was Bush's political deathwatch.

Now reporters descended on the suite for the celebration. Bush didn't even have time to put on a suit and tie, so he met with the media wearing a red Polo
shirt. He frankly told them how shocked he was: “Out of a clear blue sky … Governor Reagan called me up and asked if I would be willing to run with him on this ticket. He was most gracious in the invitation and I, of course, was very, very pleased to be invited to do this.… I was surprised.”
¹²⁵

Just as shocked were the media outlets that had breathlessly reported the Dream Ticket story most of the day as if it were a done deal. As Reagan was calling Bush, a network anchor told his audience that “it would be an electrifying moment” when Reagan and Ford appeared together on stage that night.
¹²⁶
The Associated Press and
United Press International
had already moved several stories about the Reagan-Ford tandem, and the
Chicago Sun-Times
and the
Wall Street Journal
had even printed early editions announcing the news of the Dream Ticket.
¹²⁷

R
EAGAN HAD FINALLY MADE
his choice, but he still faced the real danger of a runaway convention. Deaver “had just been down to the convention and he came in and said, ‘Boy, this place is so tense down there it is about to explode,’” recalled Hannaford.
¹²⁸
The situation would become even more disastrous if the delegates retired for the evening thinking that the choice was Ford only to wake up the next morning and find out it was Bush.

It was a taboo in politics for a candidate to appear before he'd actually accepted the nomination. But the normally superstitious Reagan listened to Deaver and recognized that he needed to get the convention under control. If he waited to the make the Bush announcement until the press conference scheduled for the 11 o'clock the next morning, there would be mass confusion—and mass disappointment. Worse, the media would become fixated on picking apart what had happened in the Ford negotiations. The Gipper knew he needed to change the subject quickly, and get people to focus on Bush, not Ford. Consequently, he broke with precedent and went to Joe Louis Arena.
¹²⁹

The networks informed their viewers of the Bush selection before Reagan got the chance to tell his own convention. NBC went first, less than fifteen minutes after Reagan had called Bush. Chris Wallace, the thirty-two-year-old son of television legend Mike Wallace, was covering his first convention, but he got the biggest scoop of the night. Sporting the standard-issue headphones, he was on the floor with the Illinois delegation, which included Reagan's Midwest political director, Frank Donatelli. Reagan operatives had just passed Donatelli the stunning news, but the campaign had given no directives about what to tell the media. Donatelli wasn't sure, but figured what the heck, so he told Wallace, who at 11:55
P.M.
went live with the dramatic news bulletin that Reagan was headed to Joe Louis Arena to announce his surprise choice of Bush.
¹³⁰

CBS went with the story maybe thirty seconds later.
¹³¹
When a stunned Cronkite was told on air by Lesley Stahl that it would be Bush—and not Ford—the newscaster “buried his head in his hands.”
¹³²
Stahl went with the story only because yet another Reagan official was screaming it in her ear.

NBC came in dead last in the announcement. Sanctimoniously, John Chancellor told his audience, “You have just seen an example of politics out of hand in an electronic age,” as if his network had had nothing to do with the “out of hand” quality of the day.
¹³³

By now, all the networks, having been a part of the problem, upbraided Reagan for allowing the situation to get out of control. Hal Bruno of ABC said the fiasco “doesn't show very good judgment” on Reagan's part. David Brinkley complained that the networks had been used as “something of an intercom” by the Ford and Reagan camps and their supporters.
¹³⁴
Only Tom Brokaw at NBC had given the story a wide berth, having been warned by Stu Spencer that it was all nonsense.
¹³⁵

Reagan, accompanied by Nancy to help soften the blow, addressed the hall around 12:15
A.M.
¹³⁶
The place exploded when the Gipper arrived. Everybody was cheering but nobody seemed to know what for: Reagan-Ford, Reagan-Bush, or Reagan-Ford-Kemp, which would have made a pretty good touch-football team.

The hall became hushed as Reagan mounted the podium. Many of the delegates were surprised that Ford was not there with the Gipper, as had been previously billed. Reagan told the audience that he'd come down there to straighten out “the rumors and the gossip.”
¹³⁷
He informed the astonished conventioneers that he and Ford “have gone over this and over this and over this, and he and I have come to the conclusion, and he believes deeply, that he can be of more value as the former president, campaigning his heart out, as he has promised to do, and not as a member of the ticket.”
¹³⁸

The Dream Ticket was dead.

Reagan took four minutes to get to the other subject he wanted to discuss, and he did not seem completely comfortable with the idea yet. He announced the Bush selection “with a taut smile on his face,” as Hedrick Smith reported in the
New York Times
. Reagan called Bush “a man we all know and a man who was a candidate, a man who has great experience in government, and a man who told me that he can enthusiastically support the platform across the board.”
¹³⁹

The hall rang with cheers for Bush, or perhaps because the long night of drama, which had frayed everyone's nerves, was coming to a close.

Reagan's quick announcement of the Bush selection had succeeded in keeping a bad situation from getting worse: reporters were forced to deal with the new story rather than just pick apart what was now an old story.

As for what had scuttled the Reagan-Ford negotiations, both camps stayed tight-lipped. The line coming out of Team Reagan was “The governor finally decided the price they wanted was too high.”
¹⁴⁰
Maybe.

The official line from Team Ford was that the former president had never wanted to do it in the first place and had finally said, “Goddamn it all, it's not going to work. I knew it wouldn't work.” Maybe.
¹⁴¹

W
ITH HIS DRAMATIC POST-MIDNIGHT
announcement of his running mate, Reagan had stanched the wound he and his team had inflicted by getting caught up in the high-profile Dream Ticket negotiations. Had he not moved so quickly, the bloodletting would have been much worse.