8 

The Reagan Shadow

MEETING WITH THE PRESIDENT

March 7, 1975

5:00 to 6:20 p.m.

Oval Office

Rumsfeld (Walker was there for most of it and Cheney for part of it)

We talked about Secretary of Commerce. The President instructed me to give Reagan a call and visit with him personally indicating that he would be excellent—that we don’t want to put him [Ford] in an embarrassing position by posing it to him. DR has the action and will do on Monday, March 10.¹

The Washington Hilton Hotel is a massive building that curves in the middle as it faces our capital city’s bustling Connecticut Avenue. Boasting one of the city’s largest ballrooms, the Hilton has played host to everything from presidential inaugural parties to the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. It has even hosted charity boxing events. But in early March of 1975, it became the scene of another kind of contest: a proxy battle between two of the most prominent names in the Republican Party. One was the sitting President of the United States.

From practically the start of his presidency, Gerald Ford had received periodic warnings from political advisors and outside observers about Governor Ronald Reagan and his rumored ambitions. When Ford became President, Reagan, tellingly to some, had not offered unqualified support. He said that his support of President Ford in 1976 would be contingent on the outcome of various appointments.² One of Ford’s first considered appointments, as it happens, was Reagan himself.

“You ought to start thinking of a job for Reagan,” advised Dean Burch, then the Chairman of the Republican National Committee. We were seated next to each other at a dinner. It was early October 1974; I hadn’t been Chief of Staff for a full two weeks. Burch, a talented and experienced political operative looking forward to the 1976 election and a personal friend, was making the point that it wasn’t good for Ford to have the Governor of California, a man who had been a candidate for President before and, rumor had it, still had higher aspirations, “milling around the country.”³

In the months that followed, taking that advice, members of the Ford administration repeatedly discussed if there might be a way to convince Reagan to take a senior position in the Ford administration. “If they are out, they can make mischief,” I said to the President about his potential rivals, “and if they’re in, they’re in the same rowboat we are.”⁴ By December 1974, Reagan’s name had been floated internally in the White House for Ambassador to Spain, Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Transportation, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare.⁵ Ford recognized the challenge Reagan could pose him, though he didn’t acknowledge it publicly. In an effort to make Reagan feel more of an investment in the administration, the President had indirectly and quietly run some potential administration appointees by Reagan, if not for his approval, then to at least see if Reagan had strong opposition to any of them.⁶ Now President Ford had a specific proposal for Reagan. At the President’s direction, I was asked to extend the California Governor an offer—that to paraphrase the popular Godfather film released the previous year—the President hoped he couldn’t refuse.

*  *  *

The energy around a Reagan challenge of President Ford was a symptom of a growing gulf within the Republican Party between a powerful establishment, long dominated by so-called moderate Republicans, and an emerging conservative movement coming into its own. Giving that movement additional oxygen was a President who, at least early on, seemed not to be focused on whether or not he would run for election to the presidency on his own as well as his decision to select the leading liberal, Nelson Rockefeller, as his Vice President.

Having just assumed the presidency, a position he had never sought, it struck Gerald Ford as discordant, even unseemly, for him to immediately start actively planning for the coming presidential election. Since I had assumed the role of Chief of Staff, it fell to me, repeatedly, to field the growing concerns of his many friends and advisors about the urgent need for him to select the key people to develop a campaign organization.

On February 3, 1975, for example, I showed the President an article by the well-known Washington Post columnist David Broder speculating on a one-term Ford presidency. There was another article titled, “A Ford Presidency—less than a sure bet,” and still another discussing the possible presidential candidacy of Senator Howard Baker, and one speculating that Vice President Rockefeller was aiming for “a major role” in the administration. “Mr. President, these all spell trouble,” I told him. “It may be that you’re making progress on a presidential campaign structure but you may be making progress slower than the waves leaping around you.”

He said, “Well, what do you propose?”

And I said, “Well I’m going to take just a couple of days and just think it through and I’ll be back to you.”⁷

A few days later, on February 6, I arranged a meeting with the President and Cliff White, the key Republican strategist who had worked for Goldwater’s campaign in 1964 and who understood well the conservative support for Reagan. White talked to the President about the frustrations of voters of recent years. “Lack of trust in politicians” was a major problem, White observed. “What moves people is either personality or a banner—an idea or an ideal.”

One idea the President mentioned wasn’t quite what White had in mind, but it did speak to Ford’s determination to build support across the aisle and his consistent focus on his role as President, rather than the task of running for the presidency. He wondered about having all presidential candidates from both major parties meet at Camp David sometime to discuss how to achieve bipartisanship in foreign policy.⁸

A few weeks later, on February 18, 1975, White attended a meeting of conservatives that had been held over the past weekend—noting that attendance had doubled from an expected 250 to about 500. Support for Reagan, or even third-party alternatives, was discussed. I made a note that Cliff White had mentioned to me a Carl [sic] Rove, who was then a young Republican who had defended the party brilliantly.⁹

Around that same time, I met alone with the President in the Oval Office to inform him again that various outsiders were questioning whether Ford really was going to run for election in his own right. “I am going to run,” Ford told me. But he said, “Rummy, let’s talk a minute. I hate campaign organizations.” He said he never formed one when he ran for Congress and added, rather quaintly considering the endless political campaigning and strategizing of the day, “I’ve always run on the basis of the job I’ve performed.”¹⁰ Ford seemed to be operating in the mind-set of a Republican Congressman accustomed to seeking re-election in a friendly environment. Grand Rapids, Michigan, was a Republican district, and the Democrats there rarely fielded candidates against him who posed much of a challenge. In any event, he added, “I don’t want to worry about it. I don’t enjoy it, I don’t like it.”

But then Ford continued on the subject and clarified for me what was troubling him about the push to get him to commit to a presidential campaign: Watergate. “Nixon had that great big organization and they did everything wrong,” he said. He noted that Nixon’s big landslide in 1972 may have encouraged aides to engage in activities they should better have avoided, including the bugging of the Democratic Party headquarters.

“Well, you could make the reverse case,” I countered to the President. “Nixon, with the smallest percentage of people in the Republican Party in history, got the second-biggest landslide in history because he did everything right except a few bad errors involving Watergate and various things in the White House.” My point to the President was that in terms of the organization, you could make the case that Nixon’s campaign was a very successful effort.

The President was not persuaded. “Well, we are going to have to think about whether or not we can find some outside vehicle to take care of it because I’m going to be spending my time doing my job [as President] and not the other,” he replied.¹¹

Even many months since the pardon, and even as the shadow of Ronald Reagan began to form over the Ford presidency, another shadow had never completely receded. Invariably, it seemed, there was always something new popping up about Richard Nixon that posed new difficulties for Ford. In October 1974, for example, when Mr. Nixon was admitted to the hospital to deal with a clot in his thigh, there was a discussion as to what the President should do. Some of Ford’s advisors recommended against his even making a phone call. The question of whether flowers should be sent was discussed and left open.¹² A few months later, there was discussion about what the proper etiquette was when Ford visited California, with the President ultimately deciding that his inclination was not to feel he had to go see him each time he went out there.¹³ In April 1975, Nixon’s new Chief of Staff, Jack Brennan, told me that the former President was having about seven or eight appointments a week, that they were saying they were favorable to what Henry Kissinger and the President were doing. He then raised the question of the movement of some private belongings of Pat’s and Tricia’s and Julie’s to California and was upset by the White House’s rebuff of the request. I said, “Well the President [Ford] didn’t know about it, and I didn’t know about it, but had it been brought to me, I certainly would have said no, in terms of using military aircraft, that I was sure that Jack [Marsh] had made the decision, but it was the correct decision.” In my view, there was no reason on earth why the United States taxpayers should pay for the movement of private personal belongings of the Nixon family. “It would just raise sixteen kinds of hell,” I said.¹⁴

Once again the aftereffects of Watergate—and Ford’s strongly felt and understandable reluctance to be associated with anything that smacked of an overzealous political organization—quickly resulted in speculation that he might not seek the White House, which in turn encouraged Reagan supporters, who feared the alternative: a run by their liberal nemesis Vice President Nelson Rockefeller.

Some of Ford’s top lieutenants openly, and unhelpfully, scoffed at the notion that conservatives could mount a credible challenge to the President. Adding to conservatives’ sense of grievance, Bob Hartmann had publicly rejected the idea of Republicans leaving Ford for Reagan or any alternative candidate. “Where can they go?” he said to The New York Times, which noted in the article that he “laughed harshly.”¹⁵

Hartmann wasn’t the only one who saw Reagan as a less than formidable threat. Later that fall, for example, I received a memo that reported on a conversation someone had had with President Nixon. “RN feels that Ronald Reagan is a lightweight and not someone to be considered seriously or feared in terms of a challenge for the nomination,” the memo said. “He (Nixon) further feels that we are building Reagan into a more formidable opponent than would be the case otherwise by responding to him in terms of our trip schedule and how we talk about Reagan’s entering the race.”¹⁶ I, however, did not dismiss Reagan’s possible candidacy as easily. I didn’t know him well, but from what little I had heard and seen, his communication skills were second to none.

Ronald Reagan was born in 1911 in Tampico, Illinois, about 110 miles west of Chicago. His family was poor. The Reagans had lived in a number of rural towns in the northern part of the state until they settled in Dixon, Illinois. As a young man, he showed the rare mix of characteristics that can support stellar political careers. He was bright and ambitious, yet easygoing. In high school, he won the student body presidency, acted in drama productions, played football and basketball, and ran track. He worked as a lifeguard for seven summers, during which time he was credited with saving seventy-seven lives. Reagan attended Eureka College, a small liberal arts institution in Illinois and, after graduation in 1932, became a sports announcer on radio. While serving in the U.S. Army, he was discovered by a Warner Brothers agent who offered him a multiyear Hollywood contract. Over the next two decades, he would appear in fifty-three films.

During the peak of the Communist scare in the post–World War II period, Reagan had been elected President of the Screen Actors Guild, the union for actors, a role in which he took leadership in exposing pro-Communist influences in the film industry. In the 1950s, he toured the country as a television host and motivational speaker for the General Electric Company, thoughtfully promoting the relationship between prosperity, capitalism, and classical virtues. Reagan had been a lifelong Democrat, but over time found himself moving toward the right. He admired FDR’s rhetorical style and had backed President Harry Truman in 1948, but he campaigned for General Eisenhower in 1952 and in 1956 and for Vice President Nixon in 1960. He officially switched to the Republican Party in 1962 and planted his flag on the national stage two years later with an excellent television address in support of Barry Goldwater, famously titled, “A Time for Choosing.” Riding a surge of support from California businessmen and the public, Reagan was elected Governor of the state in 1966.

Reagan, his star steadily rising, was beloved by the Goldwater wing of the Republican Party. The GOP Establishment, largely in the Northeast Corridor, considered him a threat and berated him as uninformed and out of touch. The feeling was mutual. Reagan blasted Washington, D.C., as “the seat of a ‘buddy’ system” devoted to “the Congress, the bureaucracy, the lobbyists, big business and big labor.”¹⁷

The concern in the Ford camp, of course, was that Reagan was setting his sights on something much higher. Playing the long game, Reagan strategically avoided praising Ford or in any way improving the President’s standing. Reagan’s case against Ford, which up through the spring of 1975 had remained largely under the radar, was straightforward. Like most if not all conservatives and a great many moderates, he saw Ford’s choice of the liberal Nelson Rockefeller as disastrous. And Rockefeller had not helped matters. Within weeks, the new Vice President began actively antagonizing Reagan allies on Capitol Hill. Vice President Rockefeller had gotten into a nasty fight with the post-Watergate Congress about Senate procedure, as well as on the number of Senate votes needed to invoke cloture and end a filibuster. Heightening the controversy, one of Rockefeller’s key legislative aides, a twenty-six-year-old lawyer, reportedly refused to even meet with conservatives on Capitol Hill.¹⁸

But Ford’s other sin, in the eyes of Governor Reagan and many of his strongest supporters in the new conservative movement, was his continuation and support of the Nixon-Kissinger policy of détente with the Soviet Union. For some in the anti-Communist conservative movement, who knew well the damage authoritarianism does to all but the elites, détente seemed like an accommodation with totalitarianism. They believed the Soviet Union did not have to be a permanent fixture in the international landscape, and that the free world needed to be more energetic in efforts to resist it.

In March 1975, those two competing visions for the party and for the country were on display at the annual Republican National Leadership Conference. Both President Ford and Governor Reagan were invited to address that year’s gathering of party faithful, Ford speaking at the beginning of the conference, on March 7, and Reagan at its conclusion. The tension of this arrangement was lost on no one.

When Ford spoke to the group, he made clear his determination to seek election to the presidency in his own right. “I can tell you without equivocation tonight that I fully intend to seek the nomination of the Republican Party as its candidate for President in 1976,” Ford declared. “There is nothing iffy about that statement. I intend to seek the nomination. I intend to win. I intend to run for President. And I intend to win that too.”

In keeping with his approach to governance, President Ford made the case for a GOP that broadened its appeal across the nation, to groups that long had not identified with the party, such as African Americans and Latinos. In his remarks, Governor Reagan seemed to challenge that approach. “A political party cannot be all things to all people,” Reagan contended in his speech. “It cannot compromise its fundamental beliefs for political expediency, or simply to swell numbers.”

The Californian’s remarks antagonized party liberals, including Senator Charles Percy of Illinois, who had long sought to reach out to independents and minority groups. “There’s nothing like a former Democrat telling a lifelong Republican where he should take his party affiliation,” Percy shot at Reagan—who had indeed been a Democrat until the early 1960s.

The press, too, picked up the marked differences in tone between the two approaches. The New York Times even called Reagan’s remarks a “rebuttal” to President Ford’s earlier speech. The scope of the potential challenge Reagan represented to Ford was also becoming clearer. Though Ford was received warmly by the assembled Republican leaders, Reagan received cheers usually reserved for rock stars. The Ford White House could sense a powerful political wind rising. If Ford was going to prevail in 1976, while keeping the Republican Party together, he would have to work quickly.

Ford requested that I make my unpublicized mission to Reagan with a long-shot goal: to persuade him to join the Ford administration, thus short-circuiting Reagan’s presidential bid before it even formally began. Offering a senior administration position to a Governor who was being urged to seek the Oval Office was, from the beginning, a tough, if not impossible, sell. But I thought it was wise of Ford to pursue it and that it was at least worth a try. Even if Reagan didn’t accept, the hope was that he would at least appreciate the offer.

When I arrived at the Governor’s hotel suite, the tall former movie star flashed his famous smile and greeted me warmly. After some pleasantries, I came to the point.

“You know Fred Dent is leaving the Commerce Department to become the new U.S. Trade Rep,” I said to the Governor.

Reagan nodded.

“Well, the President was talking about who might be the best bet to replace him in the Cabinet. And a lot of people have suggested that that person should be you.”

I outlined the importance of the Commerce Secretary in managing various economic and commercial issues, many of which Reagan had been discussing so effectively in his lectures for General Electric. The Cabinet post, I stressed, would involve the important task of convincing the business community to help improve job growth and economic activity. The post should also be used to educate the public about what set us apart from our Communist rivals in the Soviet Union.

Reagan listened politely, but showed no outward sign of interest. “Well, Don, please tell the President I’m very honored and flattered,” he finally responded. “I understand what you are saying completely about the importance of that assignment.”

I sensed a “but” coming. It arrived swiftly.

“But I feel kind of like a guy who is getting ready to get out of the service.”

He explained that after eight years in the governorship, he was not ready for another job in the public sector. He said he was already committed to his newly launched radio program and his syndicated newspaper column, which he said he was writing himself. He was looking forward, he said, to going out on “the mashed potato circuit” across the country to deliver speeches and attend dinners. That, of course, was exactly what a candidate for the presidency would need to be doing, though neither of us broached that sensitive topic in our discussion.

“I understand that,” I replied. “And the President will, too. Although I must say I’m personally disappointed you won’t be tackling this assignment for the President. I feel you would be an excellent addition to the administration. There are, in fact, a great many people around the country, and certainly in the Ford administration, who think highly of you.”

He thanked me for the kind words, but didn’t soften. Not a bit. He had delivered a calm, quiet, and firm “no.” His rationale—being ready to leave the political fray—was plausible, as he was just leaving the governorship of an important state. But it was contrary to what many of Ford’s closest advisors believed to be Reagan’s true aims.

Since I was already there, I thought I would take the opportunity to feel him out about his attitude toward the Ford administration in general. Perhaps I could get a sense of how likely a Reagan challenge to Ford might actually be.

“You know, I was on Meet the Press the other day,” I told him. “And I was told by the press there was some big conflict between Reagan and the President.”

He looked at me carefully, waiting to see where I was going.

“I dismissed that,” I added quickly. “And said my impression was that there wasn’t.”

“You’re absolutely right, Don,” Reagan said. With The New York Times story about his “rebuttal” speech to Ford’s at the conference clearly in his mind, he said: “I didn’t write my speech in response to the President. I had written it on the plane coming in and it was essentially what I’ve been giving.” He noted that this wasn’t the first time the press had sought to push a story line of rivalry between Reagan and more “established” Republican figures. He reminded me that Richard Nixon had come to him with a similar concern years ago. (Reagan had waged a halfhearted challenge to Nixon for the 1968 nomination, and the two men had been widely viewed as rivals by the media ever since.)

Reagan leaned forward in his chair and looked me in the eye. “One of the problems we’re going to have is to see that the press doesn’t drive a wedge between us,” he said.

“Well, I know that the President feels that way,” I replied. “I know that he feels a great identification with the views you’ve been putting forth.” I added: “I’ll certainly report this to the President.”

Reagan thanked me for taking the time to visit. For many months he did not publicly mention our meeting or President Ford’s offer of a Cabinet post—that is, not until it would make a memorable impact.

Returning to the White House, I relayed my thoughts on our discussion in a meeting to the President. Considering Reagan a friend, Ford was slow to accept the possibility that Reagan would actually challenge him head-on, despite increasingly clear signs that Reagan might well do so. Ford tended to assume most people were like him: essentially open, up front, and without guile or cunning.

Ford, in fact, was determined to make another personal entreaty to Reagan during a visit to Palm Springs near the end of March. There, he and Betty entertained the Governor and his wife, Nancy, at a private dinner. Though talk of Reagan’s potential primary challenge was lurking throughout the polite conversation, it never quite bubbled to the surface.

After the dinner, however, there was news that was unsettling on a number of scores. Two Republican operatives informed the President that Reagan was raising money across the country, as much as $1 million, hardly a sign of a man preparing to leave politics. One of them, Dick Andrews, told us that Reagan’s was “a full-fledged operation” and that “there are as many advance men moving around as when Nixon moved around in the 1972 campaign.” Reagan, they said, controlled the political machinery in California, and if Ford didn’t move quickly, he was going to lose it.

We were also informed that Cliff White, who had helpfully given us advice early in 1975, had been on Reagan’s payroll for some months.

“White is smart,” one of the operatives commented in the meeting. “He is working hard. Unless we get started now we will have to get ready for a very bitter fight.”

President Ford, clearly roused to action by this news, asked for my thoughts.

“They are right,” I told him. “We ought to get moving. The key thing to do is to move fast while Reagan is not an announced candidate.” That, I suggested, would help flush his true intentions out a bit.

The President was informed that Bob Finch, who served as Lieutenant Governor of California under Reagan, urged President Ford to bring back George H. W. Bush, who had been Chairman of the Republican National Committee under Nixon and was currently serving as envoy to China, to run the campaign and get going.

President Ford still seemed to hold out hope that Reagan really wasn’t willing to create a divide in the party by challenging his friend directly. “I have a theory that Reagan doesn’t feel that I am a candidate and he wants to position himself so that he can stop Rocky,” the President said.

“I don’t want to contest your theory, but it doesn’t make an awful lot of difference, Mr. President,” I replied. I explained to him how a political campaign staff can get going, as in the Rockefeller campaign in 1968, and how it ends up taking on a life of its own. The staff people are working for Rockefeller, they go to a politician in a state and say, “I am for this candidate and he is running.” As a result, they have to keep their guy in the race, otherwise they are proven wrong and unreliable to everyone they had talked to to get them to support their man. The thing ends up building muscle around those relationships, and that staff kept pumping up Rockefeller, keeping him in the race long after the thing should have been over.

“Even though your theory might be right on Reagan, which I am not in a position to contest,” I said, “the fact of the matter is that at some point he will end up getting shoved by his people.”¹⁹

Ford understood the situation, even though it was clear he really didn’t want to. He was about to face the fight of his political life.

It was not long, however, before more pressing matters affecting the country intruded, at least for a period. On the way to Palm Springs, Air Force One’s radio operator had handed the President a brown envelope. Inside was a message: The city of Da Nang had fallen to the North Vietnamese. More than 150,000 Communist soldiers were on the march toward the capital of Saigon, and, apparently due to intelligence shortcomings, there was little in their way to stop them. That crisis, and the sad unfortunate fact that the long U.S. role in the Vietnam War was coming to an end, proved to be perhaps the greatest test of Gerald Ford’s leadership.