The Reagans and the Fords had spent dinner together over the Easter holidays when the Fords were in California. Ford wrote Reagan warmly and personally. But by the spring of 1975, the handwriting was starting to appear on the wall for a Reagan challenge.
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As Cannon wrote, “Ford had even less respect for Reagan than Reagan had for Ford. The President dismissed warnings from advisers that Reagan would present a difficult challenge.”
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Meanwhile, both camps were growing in their agitation. It seemed as if Ford was determined to write the playbook to force Reagan into the campaign.
Reagan was unafraid to let the President of the United States know of his concerns. Late in 1974, Reagan fired off a telegram to Ford, stating, “Dear Mr. President, I am concerned that press reports indicate you will propose tax increases tomorrow in an effort to curb inflation. The 1972 election mandate was clear: no new taxes for four years, and reduce the size and cost of the federal government. That mandate remains intact today. Any tax increase would be contrary to it.” He concluded his telegram by expressing concerns about cuts in the defense budget and advocating cuts in non-defense spending.
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Ford had a somewhat different message for the American people and the Republican Party as he delivered his first State of the Union address on January 15, 1975: “The state of the Union is not good.” Many of the editorial writers of America agreed with Ford. From the insider’s perspective, Casserly wrote, “Gone was the Nixon rhetoric that the American people were the greatest and that the United States was the most powerful. Mr. Ford simply said we were in trouble. Some historians say it was the most downbeat State of the Union message in our two centuries. If only they had seen it in the raw.”
65
Reagan was no Pollyanna but he knew this was exactly what the American people didn’t need to hear. He knew the American people realized there were problems, but Reagan would have reminded them that the American experiment had faced many tests in the past two hundred years and had not come up wanting. Nothing illustrated the difference between the two men better than this speech by Ford and any State of the Union speech later given by Reagan after 1980.
While Reagan weighed his options, Ford seemed to have only problems. He was months into his Administration and the wheels were falling off. As a career mem- ber of the House of Representatives, Ford was accustomed to and more comfortable with consensus than leadership. He was used to trying to get along, in the admonition made by Tip O’Neill to a young backbencher in the Democratic Party. Through no fault of his own, Ford was not ready to exert leadership, even with his own staff.
The Ford Administration was besieged by leaks to the media, public and private staff infighting, and endless meetings and indecision that seemed to paralyze the Executive Branch. Alan Greenspan, who served Ford as Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, recounted to a speechwriter that he had been to seventeen meetings in just one day.
66
Washington observers truly needed a playbook to figure out the factions and players in the Ford Administration. Rumsfeld feuded with Hartmann and had Hartmann’s initial office, adjacent to the Oval Office, taken away. Rumsfeld also feuded with Henry Kissinger. Meanwhile, the White House photographer, David Hume Kennerly, by virtue of his close friendship with the Ford children, exerted power and opinion out of proportion for a guy who lugged around a 35mm camera. Foul-mouthed Kennerly was also verbose—as evidenced by a comment Ford once made before the White House News Photographers Association: “There’s an old saying that one picture is worth a thousand words. In David Hume Kennerly, I get both.”
67
Another staffer who came with baggage to the Ford White House was Hartmann. Ford depended perilously on him for advice and counsel. He was captured by Casserly as a man “without major ideological or philosophical hang-ups.” He then sourced another opinion of Hartmann: “He’s a guy who throws a lot of bulls—, but likes little in return.”
68
Fred Barnes, a young reporter for the
Washington Star
, who was assigned by his editor Jack Germond to cover the Ford White House, said, “Hartmann wasn’t much use after lunch.”
69
Ford was touring California in April of 1974, the day Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski issued subpoenas for sixty-four White House tapes and files. As Richard Reeves wrote acidly of Hartmann, Ford was conducting local television interviews and “at times, while the lights and cameras were being adjusted, the only sound in the huge chilly room was the light snoring of Robert T. Hartmann. . . . It was usually that way in the afternoon after Hartmann had begun drinking.”
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Ford, determined not to follow in the footsteps of Nixon, decided not to have a Chief of Staff. Although this management model had worked for thousands of businesses and organizations, as well as countless elected officials, Ford confused the title with the character of the person holding that important position. The result was that while Rumsfeld, whom Ford had known from his days in the House, was nominally in charge, it seemed almost anybody had access to the Oval Office.
Rumsfeld, at age forty-two, had an impressive résumé, which included flying for the Navy and serving as Congressman from Illinois before joining the Nixon Administration, where he served as head of the Office of Economic Opportunity. Later he served as Ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). As John J. Casserly described Rumsfeld in his book
The Ford White
House
, “Rumsfeld is articulate, decisive, and handsome. Most who know him well describe Rumsfeld as very ambitious.”
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Adding to President Ford’s misfortunes was the fall of Saigon and South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. Americans and the world saw the sorry spectacle of fleeing Americans and South Vietnamese atop the U.S. Embassy, hanging from U.S. military helicopters in a desperate attempt to escape the Communist onslaught. America’s mood sank. Ford attempted to introduce emergency military aid for the South Vietnamese, but the Democratic-controlled Congress would hear none of it, choosing to focus their arguments on the corrupt but pro-Western South Vietnamese regime instead of the brutality of the killing machine of the North Vietnamese.
For the first time, the United States had lost a war, and the failure cut deeply into the psyche of the American people. America had become, as Nixon had warned in a speech several days before the shooting at Kent State, “a pitiful, helpless giant.”
While many were counseling Republicans to hide their conservatives in a closet, William Rusher, one of the most astute and respected conservative journalists in America at the time, was urging conservatives to “come out” in his landmark book,
The Making of the New Majority Party
. The book gave aid and comfort to those who were agitating for a new political party.
Citing Ford’s policies in making the case, Rusher wrote, “In his proposal for a case-by-case review of the offenses of Vietnam draft-dodgers and deserters, Ford exhibited near-perfect pitch for antagonizing just about everyone; first affronting the Veterans of Foreign Wars before whose convention he called for what must have sounded like ‘amnesty’ and outraging conservatives generally by designating the ultra-liberal ‘dove’, Charles Goodell, to administer a part of the new program. . . .” Goodell was a former Republican member of Congress from New York and a close ally of Nelson Rockefeller.
In reviewing the state of the GOP, Rusher observed that while few Americans identified with Republicanism, a large plurality of Americans identified with con- servatism over liberalism. The problem was that both parties contained their share of liberals, moderates, and conservatives. Yet the popularity of the Democratic Party had persisted since the New Deal. They continued to have it all over their tired and run-down counterparts. By the 1970s, the iconic John Kennedy was seen as having been the savior of America from Richard Nixon. Rusher also wrote,
Both major parties have been around so long that they exude the seedy, unmistakable odor of entrenched and callous old age. But in the eye (or nose) of public opinion, thanks to Watergate and various other recent disasters, the GOP has unquestionably forged into a commanding lead in this unhappy respect. No other party in our history has ever had a Vice President resign after pleading
nolo contendere
to a charge of tax evasion— or any other charge. No other party in our history has ever had a President resign to avoid certain impeachment and removal for conspiring to obstruct justice—or any other conspiracy. These disasters may, even will, be forgotten or mossed over in time; but how much time do conservatives—does America—have?
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Rusher and others reasoned that a new, vibrant third party built around conservative values and principles would eventually become the new alternative to the Democrats, replacing the Republican Party, which would then be left to wither and die on the vine. He identified four conditions that made the creation of this new conservative party possible. In his fourth point, he cited the cultural differences between the two wings of the party: “The Eastern liberal wing of the Republican Party, drawn from the ranks of upper class WASPs and their fellow-travelers, finds itself acutely uncomfortable . . . under the domination of the GOP by its conservative majority.”
73
In the wake of Jim Buckley’s surprising senate win in New York in 1970 running on the conservative ticket and the disastrous condition of the Republican Party, the third party route made sense to a great many people. Rusher gave voice to what many conservatives had speculated about for the previous year or two, and his book sent shockwaves through the Republican Party. Some conservatives had resented the powers-that-be inside the GOP for many years for political and cultural reasons. They weren’t members of the GOP’s “country club.” They were blue collar, Catholic, and they had clear, ideological motives that were unencumbered by the political debate and compromise that represented the shriveled GOP at the time.
Well-liked and respected by conservatives, Reagan would have been a natural to head up a new party. In fact, in October of 1974, the waning months of his Governorship, Ronald Reagan had been asked at a press conference about the formation of a third party. As Steven F. Hayward wrote in
The Age of Reagan
,
Reagan appears to have considered the idea briefly. Caught off guard by a reporter’s question in the fall of 1974, Reagan said of the third party idea: “There could be one of those moments in time, I don’t know. I see statements of disaffection of people in both parties.” But by election day of 1974 Reagan had closed the door: “I am not starting a third party. I do not believe the Republican Party is dead. I believe the Republican Party represents basically the thinking of the people across the country, if we can get that message across to the people. I believe that a third party movement has the effect of dividing the people who share the same philosophy and usually winds up, because of that division, electing those they set out to oppose.”
74
Reagan had previously discussed a third party with members of his “Kitchen Cabinet,” and they reacted negatively to his initial comments the previous October. One of those, Holmes Tuttle, told the Governor in no uncertain terms, “You’re a Republican and you’re going to stay one.”
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Also factoring into Reagan’s backtracking was the fear of ridicule. He had already left one political party and didn’t want to leave another. Nonetheless, he was close to Rusher and respected his thinking.
At the 1975 Conservative Political Action Conference, Stan Evans, Chairman of the American Conservative Union, urged the Republican Party to chart a more conservative course. But he held out the option of a national third party for Presidential campaigns. Reagan also addressed the annual gathering of conservatives at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, which was sponsored by the ACU,
Human Events
,
National Review,
and the Young Americans for Freedom. He poured yet another bucket of cold water on the idea, saying, “Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all the issues troubling the people? Americans are hungry to feel once again a sense of mission and greatness.”
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Despite Reagan’s sobering comments, the convention of conservatives created a “Committee on Conservative Alternatives,” headed by Senator Jesse Helms, “to review and assess the current political situation and to develop future political opportunities.” The organization investigated ballot access in each of the states to determine if a third party challenge was feasible. Conservatives proceeded ever further in their wooing of Reagan for the third party bid. As late as June of 1975, Reagan returned to Washington and attended a private dinner of conservatives at the Madison Hotel to discuss the matter.
Present at the meeting were beer magnate Joseph Coors, Bob Walker, a former Reagan aide who had gone to work for Coors, conservative direct mail fundraiser Richard Viguerie, syndicated columnist Kevin Phillips, Conservative Caucus Chairman and Nixon Administration veteran Howard Phillips, former Nixon speechwriter and syndicated columnist Pat Buchanan, New York newspaper scion Neal Freeman, and two Representatives from the George Wallace camp: Charles Snyder and Bill France. Also attending was Paul Weyrich, a former Senate aide and head of the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress.
77
The organizers were fearful of the influence Mike Deaver, who had accompanied him to Washington, had over Reagan. They knew Reagan’s young but politically attuned media man was violently opposed to Reagan seeking a third party nomination. After physically barring Deaver from the meeting, the conservatives attempted to persuade Reagan to make a third party bid.
78
Reagan listened patiently, but he had already decided that if he were to make another Presidential bid, it would not be through a third party and certainly not on a ticket with George Wallace. Reagan admired the populist vein Wallace and Jimmy Carter were working, but found Wallace’s racial politics beyond distasteful.