Rockefeller was especially angry with Cheney. “Rockefeller had spoken to the convention. And in the middle of the speech, the sound system went dead, and he accused me of pulling the plug. It was that kind of relationship,” Cheney said.
88
Baker and Cheney won the argument, and Ford grudgingly decided not to fight the Helms foreign policy plank. Witcover wrote,
Jim Baker never was able to understand why Reagan’s foreign-policy plank was written in language that was so easy to swallow. “I could see a two-word plank: ‘Fire Kissinger,’” he said later, “and we would have had to fight it. And if we had been beaten, we could have lost the whole thing. We had eleven hundred and forty-five commitments and they were as strong as we could make them. But until that first vote was taken, how could we know we had them? Minds change. If there was going to be some ballot momentum for Reagan, it would have had to come on some emotional issue.” But Sears insisted such heavy-handedness would never have worked. “If we had won on 16-C,” he said afterward, “we would have moved immediately to have both tickets come before the convention and address the convention. That would have passed easily, and it would have raised the anxiety level on the other side. They were always afraid that if Reagan got before the convention, all hell would break loose.”
89
Baker also speculated to the author that had Ford selected a running mate at that point, some delegates would have withdrawn their support.
As the bitter loss over 16-C settled in among Reagan’s team, Ellis was on the floor desperately trying to get the attention of the permanent Convention Chairman, Congressman John Rhodes, in order to force a roll call vote on the foreign policy plank in a last ditch effort to embarrass Ford and possibly stop his nomination. Pat Nolan, a Reagan aide from California, had assured Ellis that his state would support a roll call vote, as did Governor Mills Godwin of Virginia. Along with these and several others, Ellis had more than enough required states needed to force a roll call vote on Helms’s tough denunciation of Henry Kissinger and Ford’s foreign policy, but Rhodes ignored him. Ellis needed to be recognized by Rhodes in order to force the vote. Hoarse from long days and nights for Reagan, Ellis croaked, “Railroad! Railroad! You have broken the rules!” to Rhodes.
90
Hannaford quickly consulted with Ellis on the floor and called Sears in the trailer to propose the last-gasp maneuver. Sears okayed it, but Hannaford could tell the fire had gone out of Reagan’s Campaign Manager.
91
Mysteriously, Ellis’s microphone went dead, ensuring that Rhodes could not recognize him even had he wanted to do so. Hannaford remembered speaking later with a friend who was in the trailer with Sears. The friend recounted that over the direct phone line from the trailer to the podium, someone had told Rhodes to “shut him off”—referring to Ellis’s microphone. Rhodes declared that the convention had approved the platform, without discussion, including Helms’s plank, and gaveled the evening proceedings over. Ellis thereafter believed that Sears had ordered his microphone to be turned off.
92
Wednesday morning and afternoon, Reagan and Schweiker put up a brave front and met with numerous delegations, but their hearts were not in it. It was evident to all now that Reagan’s long quest for the Presidency was nearing its end. Sears and other staffers from Citizens for Reagan also spoke, usually in desultory terms, to the media and delegations. But they too were just going through the motions. An eleventh hour effort was orchestrated by Lyn Nofziger to oust Sears as Campaign Manager, but most felt that there would be no point.
By now, Sears was number one on Nofziger’s enemies list. “Sears always thought he was the smartest guy in the world . . . and didn’t know why he was stuck with this dumb actor.”
93
The day was filled with bitter second guessing and recriminations by Reagan supporters over Sears’s 16-C scheme as well as his earlier decisions to pick Schweiker, bypass the Wisconsin primary, and pull out of New Hampshire the weekend before the critical votes, among other transgressions. Sears was angry too, but at Clarke Reed. As he told reporters, “When Mississippi bailed on us, most of the others did, too.”
94
Some Reagan supporters were mounting a campaign to persuade Ford to add Reagan to the ticket. But Reagan himself had made clear that he was not interested. When delegates he met with raised the issue, Reagan reiterated that the differences between the two men were too stark.
Or was he interested? In 1982,White House Chief of Staff Jim Baker was in the Oval Office with President Reagan. While reminiscing about the 1976 campaign, Baker asked Reagan if he would have accepted the offer, if it had come from Ford. Seconds passed, and Reagan finally said, “Yes, Jim, I probably would have.”
95
Between meetings on Wednesday, Hannaford was buttonholed by Jude Wanniski, who told him that if Reagan embraced a plan of tax cuts—what would later be known as “supply side economics”—they might be able to persuade Congressman Jack Kemp, a Ford delegate from Buffalo, to switch to Reagan. But Hannaford looked at him dismissively and then brushed him off.
96
Early in the Ford Administration, Arthur Laffer, the father of “supply side economics,” and Wanniski had met with Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld at the Two Continents Bar to urge the Ford White House to embrace the radical notion that cutting taxes would increase government revenue. “This was the first time he’d [Laffer] ever drawn the curve. With a magic marker, he drew the first version of the ‘Laffer Curve,’” Cheney recounted.
97
Both camps rejected this policy—which was to become the fundamental basis of Reaganomics—after 1976.
Once again, an effort was made by some conservatives to oust Schweiker from the ticket, thinking this might free up some delegates for the nomination vote that evening. When Schweiker learned this news, he met with Reagan to make an offer to withdraw his name. Without a pause, Reagan told the Senator, “Dick, we came to Kansas City together and we’re going to leave together.”
98
Around 5:00 Wednesday morning, “some of us went to see Reagan to see if he’d dump Schweiker. We met at the Reagans’ suite. Governor Reagan came out and before we could even get started, he shut us down real quick. ‘If you could . . . guarantee me the nomination, I still wouldn’t do it,’” Ernie Angelo recalled. “And that made us all feel really small for even suggesting it.”
99
Meanwhile, Ford was keeping a close counsel on who his choice would be, and the
New York Times
speculated that the list had narrowed to Senator Baker and William D. Ruckelshaus.
100
Wednesday evening, Paul Laxalt spoke to the convention and placed Reagan’s name in nomination. Governor Bill Milliken of Michigan, Ford’s friend, did likewise for the President. Reagan’s supporters launched a prolonged demonstration for their man. When the demonstration would begin to fade out, the California and Texas delegates would revive the cheers by chanting “Viva!” to which the other would reply “Ole!” Ford’s Floor Manager, Senator Bob Griffin, and his staff were helpless to stop the fracas that lasted almost an hour and it pushed the balloting out of prime time for television viewers across much of the country. The din was so loud that their walkie-talkies were ineffectual.
101
Reagan asked Chuck Tyson to make the demonstrators stop, but Tyson replied that there was nothing he could do. “Again and again, they blew on two-foot-long plastic horns, filling the hall with a sound uncannily reminiscent of the ululations of Arab women,” reported the
New York Times
about the Reaganites.
102
The band played “California Here I Come” again and added “The Pennsylvania Polka” for Schweiker. “The floor, as usual, was a madding, milling jumble of bodies, posters, banners, standards, flags, and delegates,” the paper reported.
103
One sign read, “Send Ford to Helsinki, Send Reagan to Washington.” Some Ford supporters in the balcony dumped trash on the Texas delegation.
104
The nomination voting finally got underway, but it was not until West Virginia cast twenty votes for Ford that he passed the magic number of 1,130 delegates and won his party’s nomination.
Washington state delegates, who had cast most of their votes for Reagan just a few moments before the West Virginia delegates clinched the nomination for Ford, went through a minor flap when Reagan’s figurehead Chairman, Warren McPhearson, offered his delegates the opportunity to switch their votes to Ford. This way they, rather than the West Virginia delegates, could be seen on national television putting Ford over the top. The real power for Reagan in the state, Dale Duvall, was appalled and disappointed in McPhearson. Apparently, so was the rest of the delegation. They were polled, and not one wanted to switch to Ford. As Duvall expected, Reagan kept thirty-one of the thirty-eight delegates.
105
The final tally was 1,187 for Ford and 1,070 for Reagan. One delegate from Illinois abstained, and one delegate was unaccounted for.
106
Ford received just fifty-seven votes more than the minimum number required to win the nomination. It was over.
Mississippi’s delegation, barely on speaking terms with each other, cast sixteen of its thirty votes for Ford. John Hart of NBC described the delegation as being in “intensive care.”
107
They had finally dissolved their unit rule, but Mounger wanted everybody’s apostasy on record as having voted against Reagan so they could face the music when they went home. He was exhausted and only acquiesced when Pickering and Keene asked him to do so.
Later, after the vote that made Ford’s nomination official, Claire Schweiker tearfully told Reagan in his suite at the Alameda Plaza Hotel, “Oh Governor, I’m so sorry!” Reagan immediately embraced her and said, “Claire, you really shouldn’t be upset about the outcome because it wasn’t part of God’s plan.”
108
Mike Reagan remembered his father telling him, “God chooses his own time.”
109
The Schweikers and the Reagans had become close, and the Schweikers later remembered Reagan’s many kindnesses, such as when one of their daughters was elected class President. She got a note telling her “at least one of us will get to be President.”
Late in the evening, the family dined together, and Nancy Reagan lifted a glass, her eyes glistening and “in her toast she apologized to him for the loss.”
110
In accordance with the prior agreement, the winner would call upon the loser. So Ford arrived at Reagan’s suite in the Alameda Plaza Hotel around 1:30 in the morning. It was reported that the two met alone. But unbeknownst to anybody, Nancy Reynolds and Reagan’s son Ron, in the hubbub, got stuck in a small kitchenette in the suite, where they could overhear the conversation between the two. They debated whether or not to excuse themselves politely but decided to simply wait unobtrusively. Reynolds said years later there was no animosity between Ford and Reagan and that they talked politely.
111
Ford had a short list of choices for Vice President and asked Reagan’s opinion. Reagan’s name was not on the list despite heavy lobbying of Ford by the Californian’s staff. “A couple of weeks before the convention, we went up to Camp David to try to persuade him [Ford] that the right answer for a running mate was Reagan. . . . He really didn’t want to hear it. It had been by that time a pretty bitter, knock-down drag out between the two of them,” Cheney remembered.
112
At their meeting, Reagan spoke favorably to the President about Bob Dole, whom he admired.
113
Ford also asked Reagan if he would like to take part in the Thursday night proceeding, and Reagan declined. Earlier in the day, Dole had asked Nofziger, who was an old friend, to put in a good word for him with Reagan if Ford was to ask the Governor his opinion about the war hero.
114
Nofziger had worked for Dole at the Republican National Committee, and they shared a ribald sense of humor. Furthermore, as two veterans of World War II, there was a special sense of fraternity between the two men.
On Thursday morning, Reagan met with his campaign staff one last time to thank them and spoke to them movingly about their commitment. He started with a joke: “Backstage politics is like looking at civilization with its pants down.”
The networks televised the remarks live, and Mrs. Reagan, with tears in her eyes, had to turn her back to the cameras. Reagan told his mostly young and utterly devoted followers, “The cause goes on. . . . Nancy and I aren’t going back to sit on a rocking chair and say that’s all there is for us. . . . We’re going to stay in there and you stay in there with me. . . . The cause is still there. Don’t give up your ideals, don’t compromise, don’t turn to expediency, don’t get cynical. It’s just one battle in a long war. The cause will prevail because it is right.” Of course, he then reminded them of “the shining city on a hill.”
And then Reagan himself wiped a tear away. The
Times
speculated that “At 65 years of age,” Reagan was “too old to consider seriously another run at the Presidency.” This opinion was nearly universal among the media and indeed the political world.
115
About 200 crying staffers filled the room, including Neal Peden, who had worked so long and so hard for Reagan at the campaign. The Schweikers joined Governor and Mrs. Reagan on stage, and Mounger recalled that he has never cried as hard as he did then.
Along with Mrs. Reagan, everybody else in the room was now crying including Clarke Reed, who audaciously joined the gathering, though he was greeted with icy glares and cold shoulders from all—including Reagan himself.