Authors: Bob Colacello
Over the next three months the new campaign team “let Reagan be Reagan” once again—attacking Carter for his feeble response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, criticizing him for not doing enough to free the fifty-two American hostages seized at the American embassy in Tehran, railing against the Panama Canal Treaty, even after it had been ratified by the Senate. Turning to the economy, a rejuvenated Reagan said, “I suggest that when one administration can give us the highest inflation since 1946, the highest interest rates since the Civil War, and the worst drop in value of the dollar against gold in history, it’s time that administration was turned out of office and a new administration elected to repair the damage done.”93
Meanwhile, no detail was too small for Nancy to notice. When French Smith told her about an article in the Republican National Committee’s March newsletter about Ford addressing a group of party fund-raisers, she asked him to send it to her. She then passed it along to Meese with a cover note saying, “Before your meeting with Bill Brock—Bill Smith sent this—
no mention of RR in this at all—you wouldn’t even know he was run-Reagan vs. Carter: 1977–1980
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ning.”94 Brock, the RNC chairman, had been installed by Ford, and some of Reagan’s advisers, particularly Paul Laxalt, who was close to Nancy, thought he should be replaced.
That month Reagan took Vermont, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, and most of New York, leaving Bush only Massachusetts, the state he was born in, and Connecticut, the state where he went to school. Howard Baker dropped out of the race, Gerald Ford got cold feet about a last-minute entry, and Henry Kissinger, who had been pushing Ford the hardest, announced that he would have no problem supporting Reagan against Carter. In April, Reagan won Wisconsin and Kansas, but Bush scored an upset in Pennsylvania and prevailed in Maine, the state where he summered. On May 3, however, Bush lost his home state of Texas, and Reagan then went on to sweep North Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee, Maryland, and Nebraska. Bush had one more important win, in Michigan, on May 20, but Reagan’s victory in Oregon that same day left him only six delegates short of the 998 required for nomination, and California, the biggest prize and a sure thing for its golden boy, was still to come. On May 26, George Bush announced that he was giving up and would ask his 202 delegates to vote for Reagan at the convention. When a reporter asked Reagan how he felt, he replied, “I don’t think it’s quite sunk in yet. Maybe someplace along the line later today I’ll go home by myself and let out a loud yell.”95
The only remaining question was who Reagan’s running mate would be.
The two leading contenders were his strongest primary opponents, George Bush and Howard Baker, who as moderates would balance the ticket ideologically. However, Reagan told confidants that he would not feel personally comfortable with Bush, and Nancy was still smarting from his voodoo economics line. The Reagans liked Howard Baker—in 1976 he and his wife, Joy, had invited them to stay at their home in Tennessee even though he was Ford’s state campaign chairman—but the Republican right wing was still fuming at Baker for voting for the Panama Canal Treaty. Then there was Paul Laxalt, whom Nancy favored, but who as a fellow conservative from a small Western state would do little to broaden Reagan’s appeal. On July 1, five more individuals were asked by Bill Casey to submit financial and health information for screening—Jack Kemp, Bill Simon, Donald Rumsfeld, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, and Representative Guy Vander Jagt of Michigan. A few days later, after it was decided that a woman should be considered, former ambassador Anne Armstrong was added to the list. But, 4 8 8
Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House amazingly, the name that drew the highest numbers in the polls was former president Gerald Ford.
Two days after Reagan clinched the nomination, at the end of May, Ford had publicly endorsed him, though he categorically ruled out becoming his running mate.96 On June 5, Ford invited Reagan to his house near Palm Springs. At the end of their ninety-minute meeting, Ford reiterated that he had taken himself out of consideration because he and Reagan were both residents of California, and the Constitution prohibits electors from voting for both a presidential and a vice presidential candidate from their own state. Still, the idea of a Reagan-Ford “dream ticket” hung in the air right up to the convention, kept aloft by senior Republican senators and mutual friends of both men within the Kitchen Cabinet.97
June was a month for reconciliation. Henry Salvatori was welcomed back into the Kitchen Cabinet at a dinner Holmes and Virginia Tuttle gave at their Hancock Park home the night of the California primary.98
On June 13, Reagan held a joint news conference with Bill Brock and announced that the moderate RNC chairman would be staying on. That evening, 1,100 of the party faithful paid $500 a plate for a “unity dinner”
organized by the Wicks to help pay off the campaign debts of Bush, Baker, Connally, Dole, and Crane, all of whom made speeches extolling the victor. Ford repeated his pledge of support via speakerphone. Efrem Zimbal-ist Jr. was the emcee, and Jimmy Stewart, Irene Dunne, Robert Stack, and Joseph Cotten lent a dash of Old Hollywood glamour.99
On June 20 the EAC gathered at the Palmer House in Chicago. “The meeting began with Bill Casey’s update on the campaign,” Arthur Laffer’s minutes read. “In an upbeat discussion, President Ford’s total support of the Reagan candidacy after a meeting in Palm Springs was described, as well as a successful Unity Dinner.” The Kitchen Cabinet and their new corporate allies were so sure of a Reagan victory in the fall, it seems, that a large portion of the meeting was taken up by Ed Meese’s discussion of plans for “the Transition to a Reagan Presidency.” One member, New York businessman George Champion, even proposed having Reagan publicly designate George Shultz and Bill Simon as his choices for secretary of state and secretary of the treasury, respectively. “This would have substantial beneficial effects on Eastern attitudes toward Reagan, as well as being exceptionally good appointments,” Champion argued. But John Connally, who had been added to the EAC roster, worried that anyone named so prematurely might become a campaign issue, and he was backed up by Casey and others.100
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In early July the Reagans spent five days at the Wilsons’ new ranch in northern Mexico, resting up for the convention. (The Wilsons owned the ranch in partnership with Diego Redo, a hotel tycoon from one of the oldest Mexican families, and his wife, Norma.) Only Earle and Marion Jorgensen and Bob and Betty Adams were invited along. “Ronnie brought three acceptance speeches written for him by three different people,” Bill Wilson told me. “I remember him sitting out on the front porch of our house reading those three speeches, and he finally put them all back in his briefcase and took out the yellow pad and started writing his own. How much he kept of each one of the three, I have no idea, but he wrote his own from scratch.”
Wilson also told me, “Earle and Ronnie and I were on horses, riding around the ranch, when Ronnie asked each of us who we thought he should pick for vice president. The interesting thing about that was that Betty had anticipated that this might happen, and she said, ‘Don’t suggest George Bush’—though he was the one I would have suggested, and I actually did, but I had to wait. I said, ‘Ronnie, wait until this evening at cocktails and I’ll tell you who I think.’ But I had to go back to the house and tell Betty, ‘Yes, it did happen, and I honestly think George Bush would be the person. Even though he may have made some adverse comments during the campaign, between the two of them they have the chance of getting the most electoral votes—and that’s the name of the game right now.’”101
According to Wilson, Earle Jorgensen recommended Jack Kemp—
Marion, along with Betty and Nancy, was still mad at Bush for his disparaging remarks about Ronnie. “I don’t know whether our suggestions had any effect on him or not,” Wilson concluded. “I think by the time they got to the convention, there was so much politics and so much backroom maneuvering that I’m sure he didn’t remember what we had said.”102
The day after they returned from Mexico, Marion and Betty hosted Nancy’s birthday party at Chasen’s. It was the biggest one yet, with everyone from the Annenbergs to the Sinatras crammed into the private room upstairs. Sinatra had done a benefit concert for the campaign in Boston in late 1979, when its coffers were nearly empty. In early 1980, however, the press had reported that he was under investigation for alleged Mafia associations in Nevada, where he had applied for a gambling license using Reagan as a reference, so on Ed Meese’s advice the singer’s role in the campaign was played down.103 The only photographer at Chasen’s was the Bloomingdales’
son Robert, who had been hired by Marion so that she would have a record 4 9 0
Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House of the night. In his pictures, Nancy, who had just turned fifty-nine, is wearing a sexy, low-cut dress and glowing with happiness. Not known for long speeches, she did what for her was a rare thing; after cutting the cake and making a wish, she gave an extended toast thanking all of the Reagans’
friends for always being there for them. Bandleader Joe Moshay, who played at most of the Group’s parties, was so touched that he wrote Nancy a note.
“In all honesty, I feel that you could never give a more sincere and from the heart speech to your close friends as you did that night. you were precious!!!”104
On the afternoon of July 14, 1980, Ronnie and Nancy made a triumphal entrance into Detroit for what some commentators were calling a corona-tion. They were both wearing white—he a tropical linen jacket, she a trim Adolfo suit—as they stepped out of their limousine at the Detroit Plaza Hotel in the Renaissance Center, a soaring downtown redevelopment project completed in 1977. When they entered the lobby, a modernistic five-story atrium, several hundred delegates and supporters on the balconies started chanting, “Reagan! Reagan! Reagan!” while showering them with ticker tape and confetti.
After being escorted to their sixty-ninth-floor suite, the Reagans proceeded directly to the suite of Gerald and Betty Ford, one floor up. The convention city was abuzz with rumors of a Reagan-Ford ticket, even though the former president had declared upon arriving two days earlier,
“Under no circumstances would I be the candidate for the Vice Presidency.”105 But Wirthlin’s polls still showed that Ford was the only prospect who boosted Reagan’s numbers, and Reagan agreed to try to persuade Ford to change his mind. It was Ford’s sixty-seventh birthday, and as he later recalled, “Ron presented me with an Indian peace pipe. He was making amends for running against me in 1976. Following the presentation, Ron said that he and Nancy wanted me to be his running mate in 1980! I was overwhelmed and flattered. In deference to his request, I said I would think about it and talk to Betty.”106
According to Bill Wilson, Reagan’s offer was not entirely sincere. “There was some thought that maybe you could get him to consider it—not accept it—and get his support in the campaign,” Wilson told me.107 Meese called Reagan’s offer “pro forma” and said Reagan “was surprised when Ford in essence said he would think about it.”108 There was another surprise that evening—causing delight among the press, who were desperate for some-Reagan vs. Carter: 1977–1980
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thing to dramatize what promised to be an unsuspenseful convention—
when Ford quipped in his opening-night remarks, “I am not ready to quit yet. . . . Count me in.”109 Thus began one of the most bizarre episodes in modern political history, which nearly resulted in Reagan’s decapitating himself before he was crowned.
Ford went to Reagan’s suite the following day for an hour-long meeting about the vice presidency. Although a still reluctant Ford reportedly recommended Bush, Reagan sources let it leak that he was definitely the first choice of an increasingly enthusiastic Reagan. Reagan also met with Henry Kissinger, who told reporters as he left the suite that he was
not
seeking a position in a Reagan administration. He would nevertheless take a leading role in the events of the next forty-eight hours, in what his enemies saw as a bold-faced attempt to assure just the opposite. The man who invented détente was anything but beloved by right-wing Republicans, and many in the Kitchen Cabinet viewed him with suspicion. A notation from the minutes of an April 4 EAC meeting says it all: “discussion was centered on the potential role of ex-Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger.
Consensus did not result.”110 Kissinger’s most vociferous enemy within Reagan’s inner circle was foreign policy adviser Richard Allen, who had been an unhappy subordinate of his in the Nixon White House.111
Conservatives had attempted to bar Kissinger from addressing the convention, but in the speech he gave that evening he tore into Carter’s foreign policy and came out sounding like Reagan at his most apocalyptic.
“The Carter Administration has managed the extraordinary feat,” he intoned in his heavy German accent, “of having at one and the same time the worst relations with our allies, the worst relations with our adversaries and the most serious upheavals in the developing world since the end of the Second World War. We can assert that these multiplying crises are the natural result of a naïve philosophy, which, since 1977, has recoiled from our power and fled from our responsibilities. Sooner or later our weakness will produce a catastrophe.”112
At midnight Kissinger proceeded to Ford’s suite and made what several sources have called an “impassioned plea” for the former president to consider Reagan’s offer in light of the dire international situation. After forty-five minutes, Alan Greenspan, who had served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Ford, joined the discussion. According to Theodore White, over the next two hours Kissinger and Greenspan developed the concept that “the President would be the Chief Policymaker, but 4 9 2
Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House the Vice-President would be the Chief Operator.” In this proposed scheme of things, Ford would oversee the Office of Management and Budget as well as the National Security Council. “All agreed,” White writes, “that the next morning Ford’s councillors would meet with Reagan’s and see if a new definition of the roles of President and Vice-President could be worked out.”113