At the time, an allegation surfaced from Hamilton Long, an unsavory conservative lawyer in Philadelphia, that Rockefeller had financed a dirty tricks operation aimed at the Democratic Convention in Miami Beach in 1972. Long’s claim, which he relayed to the new Ford legal counsel, Phil Buchen, was that Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt had not destroyed all of his files and had the goods on Rockefeller in a bank vault. Although it was second-hand information, Long had enough specific details to force the Ford White House to turn over the mat- ter to Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski. Meanwhile, the allegation surfaced in muckraker Jack Anderson’s syndicated column.
42
At the same time, a leak to
Newsweek
alleged that George Bush, in his failed Texas Senate campaign in 1970, had accepted over $100,000 from a secret fund controlled by Nixon called “Townhouse Operation.”
Both allegations were disproven. Rockefeller had made a $250,000 contribution to the Nixon re-election campaign, but it was entirely above board and legal at the time. Bush was also completely exonerated, but the damage had been done to his desire to become Ford’s Vice President.
43
Meanwhile, the media was engaged in a full-throated, Washington-style guessing game as to whom Ford would select. The
New York Times
suggested that Governor Dan Evans of Washington State, Elliot Richardson, Nixon’s former Attorney General, Mel Laird, a former Congressman from Wisconsin, and Rumsfeld all had the inside track.
It was instructive to conservatives at the time that few on any public or private list for the Vice President slot, save possibly George Bush, were conservative— though several were certainly available. “Reagan did not figure in the discussion,” Cheney said.
44
According to biographer Lee Edwards, Goldwater was asked if he would accept the veep slot, should Ford offer it. But Goldwater turned Ford down, citing his age and that he “carried too many scars.”
45
Ford announced his selection of former New York Governor Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, age sixty-six, to fill the vacant Vice President slot on August 20, 1974, in a live 10:04 A.M. speech from the Oval Office. His wife, Betty, who had been lobbying for a female Vice President, and, of course, Rockefeller, accompanied Ford. Rockefeller’s wife, Margaretta, known to all as “Happy,” was not present.
“He decided to go with Rockefeller because Rockefeller had international stature, everybody knew who he was and Ford felt that he personally needed, in effect as an unknown President, someone of that stature to give weight and heft to his Administration . . . it didn’t have much to do with philosophy,” Cheney later recalled.
46
Reagan learned of the news from a White House staffer, instead of the obligatory courtesy call the Governor of California might have expected from the President of the United States. Once again, the Ford people not only misplayed Reagan, they had insulted him. “Reagan got the call at 6 A.M. no less,” recalled Jim Lake. “He was furious. All of the Ford White House treated Ronald Reagan badly.” In fact, “had Ford and his people treated Reagan better, he might not have run in 1976.”
47
Betraying his own disdain for Reagan, Ford later wrote in his auto- biography about “Reagan’s superficial remedies for all the ills that afflicted America.”
48
George Bush was also mighty angry, but at least he received a phone call from President Ford while vacationing at his summer home in Maine. Bush was serving as the Chairman of the Republican National Committee at the time. He was convinced that Ford would choose him as Vice President, especially since he had the public backing of Goldwater. Bush believed deep down that he was qualified, had earned it, and deserved it. But when Ford passed over Bush and chose Rockefeller, Bush quit as RNC Chairman. “He was pissed,” recalled Eddie Mahe, then-Political Director at the Republican National Committee. “It was the second time he had been passed over for veep.”
49
Bush later met with Ford, who offered him a number of Administration posts, which Bush rejected, but he was intrigued by the position of Envoy to China. The Bushes, who had always been popular on the Washington social circuit, found their invitations dwindling as the country and the party sank deeper and deeper into the Watergate morass. Barbara Bush was deeply unhappy and voiced her opinion that her husband should take the China post and get out of town.
The Republican Party, however, had bigger problems than who would become Ford’s Vice President. Many of the headaches fell on Mahe. He had been a fixture in New Mexico politics where he gained a reputation as an unassuming, but tough operative, winning local and statewide elections. He caught the attention of national party officials in the early seventies and came to Washington, where he eventually became a trusted aide to Chairman Bush.
In 1974, Mahe had the arduous job of trying to hold together a party to which only 22 percent of the American people claimed allegiance. He had to referee intra-party squabbles and ideological battles between the moderates and the conservatives while also trying to keep the RNC open and functioning. Mahe recalled:
Money, big money, just dried up. In 1972, Maurice Stans [Nixon’s Campaign Finance Director] had vacuumed up every big check for CREEP (the horrible acronym of the Committee to Re-Elect the President) with little left for party operations, party building, candidate donations, etc. . . . We had enough to keep the doors open and finance the convention, but there was little left after that. . . . Rod [Smith] was able to get one piece of direct mail out, but we had to let go 70 employees in December of 1974 and then closed the building for three weeks to save on electricity. The rest of the staff went off payroll for that time too.
50
There were serious discussions in GOP circles about changing the name of the party, believing it had been so sullied by Nixon, Agnew, and Watergate that the damage was permanent. By the time Watergate began to unfold in the spring of 1973, large “fat cat” contributors and corporations, who had routinely given to the party, had deserted it. The national party limped along on meager contributions and bank loans. In December of 1974, banks were prepared to foreclose on the Capitol Hill Club, the eating, meeting and drinking salon of the national Republican Party and its attendant hangers-on.
It’s easy to see why the banks were worried about getting their money back. Republicans, deeply depressed in the fall of 1974, simply decided not to vote. As iconoclastic conservative pollster Arthur Finkelstein pointed out,
Democratic turnout did not exceed the normal pattern for an off-year election, but Republican turnout was off by ten percent. That was disastrous for the Republicans. In fact, the only two challengers running for U.S. Senate who won that fall as Republicans were Jake Garn of Utah and Paul Laxalt of Nevada.
51
Republicans in the Senate had fallen below the threshold of forty Senators needed to stop the Democrats from ramming through legislation.
But while the GOP was sinking into oblivion, conservatives were anything but obsequious. They were not going to take from Gerald Ford what they had put up with from Richard Nixon. “Back in August, conservatives, predictably, went ballistic over Ford’s choice of Rockefeller,” said Stan Evans, then Chairman of the American Conservative Union.
52
In addition to the Rockefeller selection, conservatives became even more angered with Ford when he, only days into his Administration, offered amnesty for Vietnam draft dodgers. In the fall of 1974, he announced he would meet with Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev at the Russian port city of Vladivostok, further incensing the Right.
At the time, Washington observers were giving Ford a grace period. If things were a bit bungled or confused, it was argued he had just taken office and deserved a break. But in his first major decision as President, he picked probably the one man who would generate angst, anger, and possibly a primary challenge from within his own party. Rockefeller was the Right’s poster child for everything that was wrong with the party.
Further mystifying to conservatives was that Ford had tried to position himself to be Barry Goldwater’s running mate in 1964. He was in San Francisco and should have understood what this East Coast liberal meant to the base of the Republican Party.
Richard Viguerie, the well-established “Godfather of the New Right,” convened a dinner of leading conservatives the night of the Rockefeller announcement to determine if it was possible to mount a campaign in the Congress to stop the confirmation of Rockefeller. However, the group soon realized they had little influence over the nomination process and their “Stop Rockefeller” effort died a still birth.
At the American Conservative Union board meeting in September of 1974, Phyllis Schlafly, the author of the hugely successful book,
A Choice, Not an Echo,
suggested that since Ford “has no bedrock support which we might offend, we should start speaking out and criticizing him.”
53
The organization outlined plans for opposing Rockefeller’s confirmation. The ACU had conducted a poll of its membership and it came back showing wide opposition to Rockefeller. The members agreed to form an “ad hoc committee to discredit Rockefeller and show the rank and file Republicans that Rockefeller and Ford are not conservatives.” Finally, the idea evolved into a “National Committee Against Rockefeller.”
54
Jim Linen, a young board member, made the motion, and the board approved the break with Rockefeller and Ford unanimously. Chairman Stan Evans and other board members present included Keene, author John Chamberlain, Dan Oliver, and
Human Events
editor Tom Winter.
Reagan said nothing publicly about the Rockefeller selection, but he was probably the only conservative in America who did keep his mouth shut. Machiavellians like Pat Buchanan and Keene did believe that a conservative primary challenger to Ford in 1976, such as Ronald Reagan, stood a better chance against a Ford-Rockefeller ticket than a Ford-Bush ticket. Or, if Ford did not run and Rockefeller did, Reaganites saw “Rocky’s” selection as getting a head start on their man for 1976.
“In 1974, the prevailing view among the Reagan entourage was that the Rockefeller nomination was designed to stop Reagan. As far back as December 1973, Rockefeller’s decision to resign as Governor of New York had been interpreted in Sacramento as an attempt to gain a head start over Reagan in the race for the 1976 Presidential nomination,” wrote Lou Cannon in
Governor Reagan
.
55
Despite the selection of Rockefeller, Ford and his White House made no attempt to reach out to the base of the GOP. This was duly noted as another black mark against his Presidency. Of Ford’s own ideology, Cheney would later recall, “Ford was right smack dab in the middle of the pack . . . the Goldwater wing . . . didn’t dominate the House the way they came to dominate it in the eighties.”
56
Relations between Ford and Reagan at this point took on a sometimes cool, sometimes cold “sitzkrieg.” But it was more complicated than that, as each man had mixed emotions about the other. It was clear, nonetheless, that Reagan was far less hostile towards Ford than the President was towards Governor Reagan.
Upon Ford becoming President, Reagan sent a letter of support congratulating Ford and received a response on August 21, the day after Rockefeller was announced as Vice President. The letter of course made no mention of Rockefeller and certainly not of Reagan having been deceived by Hartmann. The letter was cordial enough, but it could have been written to any one of the thousands of people who sent letters to the White House each day.
57
When Reagan visited Washington, Ford would complain that Reagan didn’t call upon him in the White House. But his complaints just showed how little Ford and his staff understood Ronald Reagan. Reagan would never have the temerity to simply ask to “drop by” and see the President unless he had important business to confer with him. As Hartmann wrote in
Palace Politics
,
As early as August 24, 1974, a curious comedy of errors occurred in Washington. Reagan, still Governor of California, had come to a meeting with some conservative crusaders in nearby Maryland but stayed a country mile away from the new President’s much-touted “open door” at the White House.
Ford felt that Reagan, who’d always found time to call on President Nixon, was showing discourtesy. Reagan, I’m told, was equally miffed that the President didn’t invite him over. You don’t just barge in on a President as you would a Congressman. Nixon’s staff would have set it up before he ever left Sacramento.
58
In his speculation, Hartmann unknowingly answered his own question. Reagan did not go where he was not invited, and the Nixon people always invited Reagan to the White House.
Reagan received another impersonal letter on September 20, 1974, from Ford. It simply thanked Reagan for a certificate a group of Republican Governors had sent to the President and only stated what Ford intended to do in working with the Governors.
59
Yet another letter from Ford showed up on Reagan’s desk in early December of 1974, but this was again a form letter, probably sent out to thousands, which asked for Reagan’s support in the President’s “Whip Inflation Now!” program.
60
With few exceptions, Presidents do not draft their own letters. They have staff to handle most of the less important correspondence. But this was sensitive communication with the Governor of the largest state in the Union and a member of his own party. Reagan was also one of the most popular figures in the Republican Party. That should have made such correspondence important to Ford. It wasn’t until May of 1975 that Reagan received a letter from Ford that was actually written by Ford and not by a staffer.
61