JUST SHORT
“Nobody said it would be easy. Nobody was right.”
-George Bush
April 22, 1980
Hampton Inn — Philadelphia, PA
Two days before Carter’s announcement that the United States would mine the ports around Iran, Republican voters in Pennsylvania were tasked with making their choice for the presidential nominee who’d face Carter in the general election. Bush had all of the momentum. He’d won in Illinois, Connecticut, and Wisconsin, and Connally had edged out Reagan in Louisiana.
The Gipper’s campaign was in trouble. Since his departure from the campaign, John Sears painted a portrait of a lazy and ineffectual campaigner who was beyond his prime. Reagan wanted none of it and rather than get bogged down by the successive losses, he redoubled his efforts and campaigned hard in Pennsylvania. The same competitive schedule that had him shaking hands well into the morning of the primary in New Hampshire was replicated for the Keystone State. Unfortunately for Reagan, Bush wasn’t going to give up that easily.
Bush campaigned across the state at a series of well-financed rallies aimed at introducing himself to voters. His stump speech carried a new edge to it. Connally was besting Reagan from the right, Bush was doing so from the left. Bush saw his chance to knock Reagan out of the race for good in Pennsylvania.
Introduced by William Scranton, the state’s lieutenant governor, Bush tore in to the Reagan platform. “These are serious times,” Bush warned, “and we can’t afford someone who walks around making jingoistic comments about Castro and Cuba! Any serious diplomat knows that words can be the difference between war and peace. It matters what the president says. You know it, and I know it, so why doesn’t Ronald Reagan?” [1]
Bush was leaning in to a growing sense from the electorate that Ronald Reagan was a little too off-the-cuff, and after a series of gaffes in the days leading up to the Pennsylvania primary, many voters wondered if Reagan really was too old to make a good president. But Reagan remained even with him in the polls, and Bush was growing increasingly frustrated.
Early on in the fight for Pennsylvania, Bush and his advisers were sitting around reviewing the schedule for the next three days. When they were done, the candidate tossed down his papers and leaned back in his chairs. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. He was tired, and he was frustrated. It seemed that no matter what he did, Reagan kept apace. He was particularly annoyed that voters were buying Reagan’s tax cut platform. Bush was a traditional Republican, in the mold of Bob Dole and others, who believed in emphasizing a balanced budget over lower taxes. This new supply-side economics that Reagan espoused was bullshit, and Bush didn’t understand why other voters didn’t see it.
“A 30-percent tax cut?” Bush bemoaned. “It’s irresponsible.”
“He won’t be able to pass it, and nobody will ever see that money,” a Bush aide said.
“You’ve got to take it on, boss,” another said. “He’s lying to people.”
“The math doesn’t add up,” Bush agreed, “but I can’t sit there and take out a calculator for the voters.”
Peter Teeley, the campaign press secretary, bolted upright. “I’ve got it,” he said. And a new attack line was born.
The next day, Bush debuted the hit at his first appearance of the day at Carnegie Mellon University. He started off by accusing Reagan of making “phony promises,” and then he went in for the punch: “Governor Reagan is running on a platform of voodoo economics,” he cried. The crowd laughed with delight. He followed it quickly: “And you deserve better!”
Every day, Bush sounded more like the man who could beat Jimmy Carter — and more like a president. He promised not to conform to the “popular appeal,” and he kept hitting Reagan for making promises he couldn’t keep. “That’s how we got into this mess,” he told his audiences. His strategy focused on the Philadelphia suburbs, while Reagan tried to win over voters in the more rural towns.
He took the blows from Bush and did little, rhetorically, to fight back. Instead, he kept preaching about his 11th Commandment. He also favored smaller events where he could grip and grin, as opposed to Bush’s more formal rallies. He went to local farms and even participated in a horse auction in Lancaster. His campaign was running out of money, and he needed a win in Pennsylvania to get back in the game. It didn’t help that he had been widely expected to carry Pennsylvania before the last two weeks. [2]
It was not to be for Reagan, and his campaign suffered another devastating loss. Bush’s resounding victory there knocked Reagan further behind, and Bush sounded confident in his victory speech: “Your message has been heard loud and clear, Pennsylvania! The Republican Party can’t nominate someone who overpromises and under-delivers. We need a candidate who is going to tell the truth. This is a time for promising proposals, not phony promises, and that’s exactly what I’m going to say when I accept the Republican nomination for president!”
The loss shocked the Reagan campaign, who quickly tried to re-work their path to the nomination. Privately, Dick Wirthlin considered whether or not Reagan should just get out of the race, but as every actor knew: There’s always a second act.
April 29, 1980
Galleria Shopping Center — Houston, TX
The wisest decision the Reagan campaign made post-New Hampshire was to skip the Texas primary. It was clear that it would be a home state duel between Bush and Connally, and given the fact that both of them needed to win there, it promised to be a bruising and messy race to the bottom. Reagan’s name remained on the ballot, but instead of spending time or money there, he campaigned in Arizona, Goldwater’s home state, which was a winner-take-all primary, and he looked forward to North Carolina, the state that launched his 1976 comeback, Tennessee, California, Mississippi, and Ohio.
Before Texas, Reagan was sitting with 291 delegates, Connally had 149, and Bush led with 324. Texas was rich with delegates, 82 to be exact, but it wasn’t even half as many as California had, and Reagan needed to make sure he had momentum going into his home state so he could run up the score there. So, Bush and Connally were left to duke it out in the Lone Star State.
Connally campaigned ferociously, hoping to take advantage of the lack of a race on the Democratic side so that ancestral Democrats would come home to him. Bush, meanwhile, was campaigning heavily on the fact that Connally could not mathematically win the nomination. It wasn’t exactly true. If Connally won Texas, he’d usurp Reagan as the candidate of the Right and head into Indiana, North Carolina, Mississippi, and West Virginia as the clear front runner, but Bush didn’t need to give the details.
He also ran strong against Connally’s character. The hits were thinly veiled. He talked about needing a president who wouldn’t “say one thing and do another,” and he raised doubts among Republican loyalists, who had spent many years in the Texas political wilderness, that John Connally was a man they could trust.
“I ran for Senate here ten years ago,” Bush said to scattered applause. Many Republicans remembered — it had been the first time they had hope at the federal level. “And while I was out making the case for why Texas should break with its tradition and send a Republican to Washington, John Connally hand-picked the Democrat and helped block us from winning the majority.” Republicans in the room nodded. They remembered.
“Now, if you listen to John, he’ll tell you he’s as Republican as anyone in this race. But how can we believe him? He only became a Republican to take a job in the Nixon White House. How are we supposed to believe he’ll stay a Republican when he gets back there?”
Connally hit Bush just as hard. “Look, George Bush is trying to earn a job that he can’t get appointed to,” he said, “but the hard part about facing voters is they have long memories. And y’all know what I did here as Governor, and that’s why you should trust what I’ll do as president. What did George Bush do in all those fancy appointed jobs that his Daddy got for him? He sat on his butt all day.” [3]
And the next day, like they were two kids on a see-saw, Bush shot back. “I was proud to serve this country, and I did it honestly. I would think that John Connally would appreciate a man who served in government office with integrity, but I suppose its too foreign a concept for him.” His remarks carried a bite — and a little bit of his adopted Texas twang.
Connally’s Texas operation had him going out into rural countries, walking in to general stores, and shaking hands with everyone he could find. He traveled the state tirelessly. This was his real home, not some phony staging ground or adopted residence. Texas was
home, and he’d be damned if he was going to lose it to a Yankee.
After long days of shaking hands, Connally would ask his staff how it was going. He and Bush were about even on money — and both of them had more funds than Reagan. For every 30-second spot for Bush, there was a 30-second spot for Connally. The candidate demanded they outspend Bush. “I’m not losing this goddamn state!” he barked.
Connally held rallies in the lead-up to the voting, and at one of them he decried the “Democrat-controlled” Congress and their efforts to undermine America’s energy production. He said, “The Democrat-controlled Congress has not done anything except make it harder to mine and burn coal, harder to drill for oil, harder to build nuclear power plants!” The line drew in enough applause, and Connally rode the energy straight into an attack on Bush. He was angry that Bush had come here and started tarnishing his name.
“The press likes to tell ya this is an excitin’ race because it’s between two Texans,” he said with a laugh. “That’s the honest to God truth — that’s what they’re saying. The other day a reporter asked me, they said, ‘Governor, what do you make of the fact there are two Texans competing for votes here?’ I looked that young man straight in the eye and I said, ‘Two Texans? Who’s the other one?’” The line drew laughs. “I don’t know about y’all, but I don’t know too many Texans who did their learnin’ up in New Haven.
“My Daddy wasn’t a United States Senator. I suppose if he had been, I could’ve moved down here to Texas and started buying up oil fields, too, but I had to work hard for my money. I had to work hard to become Governor of this state. I had to work hard to represent us in Washington in the cabinet. So don’t tell me there are two Texans in this race. When I was walking to school every morning at sunrise, George Bush had some chauffeur picking him up and driving him to whatever prep school it was he went to.
“The press’ll do whatever they need to do to make it look like there’s a real race here, and it’s gonna be close — I know that — but make no mistake: There aren’t two Texans running here. There’s a Texan, and there’s a pampered prep schooler who’s hot as hell he can’t just get appointed to this job like he did the last four or five he had.” His supporters were on their feet cheering him on.
This was the Connally they’d remembered.
When Bush read what Connally had said in the paper the next morning, he decided to hit harder. They could keep going back-and-forth with speeches and comments to the press, but Bush decided to film a straight-to-camera appeal. It was him walking outside in a Texas oilfield, and he was going to finish this debate once and for all.
“You’ve heard what John Connally’s said about me — that I’m not a real Texan.” The wind was blowing in his hair while a jacket-less Bush walked through the field, his tie waving in the breeze like a flag. “All I know is I was proud to move my family here because Texas offered us a shot at the American dream. Like so many of you, I got my start in the oil business. What did John Connally do? He got in bed with the Arabs and helped them rack up their oil profits at the expense of Texan oil producers.
“And now, John Connally is running against a Democrat-controlled Congress. Well, when I ran for the United States Senate as a Republican, it was John Connally who hand-picked the Democrat in the race and ensured Democrats kept their Senate majority.
“Like you, I’m tired of politicians who say one thing and then do another. America needs a president. Not a chameleon. I hope I can count on your vote on May 3rd.”
Connally was irate when he saw the ad, but the campaign had little time to respond. He watched in disbelief as George Bush edged him out. Reagan carried 19% of the vote, enough to rob Chameleon Connally of his first-place finish. The press coverage of the primary was devastating to Connally, and the
National Review spelled it out for conservatives in the remaining primary states: “If George Bush is going to be stopped by a conservative, it must be Ronald Reagan. He is the only one left with a path to the Republican nomination.”
While Bush and Connally dragged each other through the nastiest primary Texas Republicans had ever seen, Ronald Reagan was carefully building up his campaign apparatus in the remaining primary states. He felt rejuvenated without Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum (as some in the Reagan camp had taken to calling them) nipping at his heels, and the more relaxed Reagan performed well on the stump.
“I don’t know if any of you have read what’s happening in Texas,” he told one crowd. “The way George Bush is telling it, John Connally’s a good-for-nothing-Texan-liar, and the way John Connally tells it, George Bush is a good-for-nothing-Yankee liar!” There was light laughter, and then Reagan hit them both: “Bush has taken to reminding voters that John Connally was once a liberal Democrat. That’s true, ya know,” Reagan said, “but my staff and I have been having this debate, and I’m hoping maybe you fine people can help us settle the question of what’s worse: The fact that John Connally was a liberal Democrat, or the fact that George Bush wants to govern like one.” It was almost like Reagan forgot that he, too, had been a Democrat. The voters in the room didn’t care. They loved it.
After his loss in Texas, John Connally considered ending his campaign, but he did the math out and realized there was a decent chance that they wouldn’t head into the Convention with a clear nominee. If he could keep siphoning delegates from Reagan, he could take the fight to Bush at the Convention and win. And so, after a humiliating loss in Texas, John Connally packed his bags and went to North Carolina.
Reagan’s head start and Connally’s Texas-sized loss altered the dynamics of the state, however, and Reagan, energized by the fact the nomination had come back into view, kept up a frenetic schedule. Connally’s heart was out of it, and he chose instead to plaster the state with ads instead of any serious retail politicking.
The result was exactly as Reagan hoped: On May 6th, Reagan scored big victories in Indiana, North Carolina, and Tennessee. He now led Bush 469-399. Connally trailed behind at 216. The next big prize would be Michigan, and then it came down to California, where Reagan was confident he’d put any question of who the nominee would be to rest.
June 3, 1980
Century Plaza Hotel — Los Angeles, CA
Ronald Reagan loved coming home. There were 452 delegates at stake in the June 3rd primaries, and if Ronald Reagan could win 348 of them, he would become the Republican nominee for president. It sounded harder than it would be. California, his home state, had 171 delegates. Mississippi, where he was expected to win comfortably, was winner-take-all, and it had 25. The other delegate-rich states were New Jersey and Ohio, and Reagan was leading in the polls in both states.
The results started to come in from the East Coast when the sun was still up in the West. And the early returns provided reason to worry.
Dick Wirthlin came in to Reagan’s suite in the Century Plaza Hotel to give him a sense of what they were seeing. Rhode Island was breaking overwhelmingly for Bush. That had been expected. But New Jersey was another story. Reagan had led in all of the polls there, but it looked like he and Bush were running dead-even. Connally was siphoning off some of Reagan’s votes on the right, and it looked like he might deny Reagan a victory. With its 70 delegates, New Jersey had been crucial to the night’s strategy.
Stu Spencer asked Wirthlin to breakdown the delegate math for them. What happened if Reagan lost New Jersey?
Wirthlin didn’t know. If Reagan’s loss in New Jersey was indicative of an underperformance in Ohio and California, then it meant that they were going to go to a brokered convention — just like they had in 1976. If it was a fluke, and Reagan held up impressive margins in California and in Ohio, then he could probably find the delegates he needed to become the Republican nominee outright. It was too early to say.
Reagan looked nervously at Spencer.
Am I going to lose this? his eyes seemed to ask.
“Hold off on telling Nancy,” the candidate said, and he rose to go to the restroom. He couldn’t believe it was happening again. This was exactly how Jerry Ford must’ve felt when Reagan had cobbled together enough victories and close-seconds to deny Ford the nomination going into the Convention. Now, the unholy alliance of Bush and Connally had conspired against him, and if past conventions were any indication, the powers that be would have their last laugh when the party met in Detroit.
Reagan cleared the room of everyone except Spencer when he emerged. He wanted to be alone. It had been a long campaign, and he was exhausted. He second-guessed every strategy decision he’d made. Should he have just kept Sears? Should he have dumped Sears sooner? Why hadn’t he been more careful on the campaign trail to avoid the gaffes that had embarrassed him and raised enough doubts among the Right about his ability to beat Carter? Should he have even run in the first place?
The networks quickly called Mississippi for him, but it was hardly comforting. He
had to win Mississippi. A short while later, they also called Ohio for him, but it wasn’t immediately clear how many of the state’s 79 delegates he’d take. He needed sixty.
Nancy got to the suite in time to be there for Ronnie when they called New Jersey for Bush. It had been an upset, and it had dramatically altered the dynamics of the race. Once again, the Republican candidates were left to wonder what lay next for them. Was it going to be an open convention? Or could Reagan sew it up with California?
There were other contests that night, and Reagan took them: Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia. Bush had locked him out of New Mexico, though, and the path to the nomination came down to the allocation of delegates in Ohio and California.
Around 8:00pm on the West Coast, Wirthlin came in to explain the math to Reagan and Spencer. “It looks like we’re somewhere between 50 and 60 delegates in Ohio,” he said, “and it’s too early to know what it’ll look like in California, but if we’re on the low-end of that in Ohio — if we get 50 in Ohio, that means we need 180 delegates out of California.”
Reagan looked puzzled and glanced at Spencer and then back to Wirthlin. “I thought California had 171?” [4]
“It does.”
“So, you’re saying we can’t win?”
“Not if we only get 50 in Ohio. If we get 60 there, then we need 170 out of California.”
Reagan rolled his eyes. “Damnit, Dick, give it to me straight. What’s the math here? Are we going to end this thing tonight or not?”
“Governor, it looks to me like we’re going to be just short tonight.”
Reagan couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He paced around the room haphazardly. “Alright,” he said. “Alright. We’ve done this before. We know what we’ve got to do at the Convention, but I don’t want to say that tonight. I want to go out there, and I want to project confidence. Even if tonight goes as well as it could for him, Bush is going to be some 300 delegates away. He doesn’t have a chance.”
“I think that’s right,” Wirthlin confirmed. “I want to go out there, and I want to declare victory.” And so, Reagan gave the ballroom a ten-minute warning. He was coming.
The networks called California for Reagan quickly, but they rushed to remind viewers that the size of Reagan’s victory there would determine whether or not he sewed up the Republican nomination that night. It was too early to say. Too early for them, but not for Reagan.
Barbara Walters was in the middle of explaining the math when she was interrupted. “I’m sorry, Barbara, but we’ve got to go to the Century Plaza Hotel where Governor Reagan is about to address his supporters.”
The screen cut to Ronald Reagan, beaming, with his wife Nancy’s eyes locked in a gaze behind him. Ron Jr., Patti, Michael, and Maureen were behind him, too.
“Thank you,” he said. “What a night!” The supporters cheered.
Reagan thanked his family, the volunteers, and the voters. He thanked George Bush and John Connally for “making this race with [him]” as if they’d merely been the supporting cast in his production. He sounded off on his familiar talking points about values and tax cuts, and then he delivered the line that was meant to end any doubt about who would be facing Jimmy Carter that November: “We don’t know exactly how tonight’s going to shake out,” he said, “but we do know this: When all the votes are cast, when all the delegates are allocated, there will only be one campaign with any viable mathematical path to the Republican nomination, and that is our campaign —” Here he was drowned out by supporters, but he pushed forward, “ — and we are going to go to Detroit organized and ready to prevail against the smoke-filled rooms and secret handshakes that would seek to deny the Republican voters their choice of a nominee!”
Watching from their suite in Biloxi, where they’d failed to deny Reagan a Southern victory, Haley Barbour turned to his candidate, John Connally, and asked what he made of Reagan’s speech.
Connally grinned. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said in a slow drawl, “but I think it’s bedtime for Bonzo.”
June 20, 1980
The Monocle — Washington, DC
It was hard to imagine a scenario in which Ronald Reagan did not emerge from the Convention as the Republican nominee for president. Bush and Connally fell significantly behind in the final stretch of the campaign, and Reagan’s resounding win in California had put him within thirty-two delegates of the nomination. Neither George Bush nor John Connally were willing to go down without a fight, but not everyone in their inner circles felt similarly.
Pete Teeley told Bush that he should approach Reagan and offer to release his delegates in exchange for the vice presidential nomination. It made sense, but it was exactly the kind of backroom dealmaking that would doom a Republican ticket in November. Connally would cry foul and wreak havoc at the Convention. Besides, Bush didn’t want to be Vice President. He believed that he could sew up the Republican nomination on the second ballot.
He seemed to forget that many Reagan Republicans were loathe to consider him for the White House, but he remembered stories of the 1952 Convention, where the Party faithful, locked out of power, had come to their senses and nominated the electable candidate, not the one who stirred their deepest passions. The delegates would turn to him, he assured his team, and to explain why, his campaign unveiled yet another slogan: “Bush Beats Carter.”
“The problem,” Jim Baker reminded Bush, “is that John Connally has enough delegates to sway this thing to Reagan.”
“Hell, Jim, so does Howard Baker.” [5]
“My point is, if we want to ensure this thing goes to the Convention, then we have to make sure Connally is on board.”
Bush leaned back in his chair and rubbed his forehead. “What are you suggesting?”
“I need to talk to Mahe,” Baker said, referring to Connally’s campaign manager, “and make sure that we are both on the same page about this. There’s a real chance we can deny Reagan the nomination, but we’ve got to be coordinated in our approach, and we have to go about it in two ways. First, we go for the unpledged delegates and do whatever we can to convince them Reagan can’t win in November. That’s fine, but there are over a hundred of them, and Reagan only needs thirty-two. It’s anything but guaranteed.
“What we really need to do is open the convention,” Baker explained. He’d been on the president’s team during the 1976 Convention fight with Reagan. He’d learned the rules of the National Convention inside and out, and Bush felt lucky to have Baker on his team in this fight. “So if we go to Connally, and we both do whatever we can to get the Convention open — well, some of Reagan’s delegates from the earlier states might not vote for him on the first ballot. They might be worried that Reagan couldn’t close the deal, and they might turn to us or to Connally.”
“But what if this throws the nomination to Connally?”
“An open convention only helps us,” Baker reasoned. “If the nomination goes to multiple ballots, there’s no telling what will happen. Connally could emerge as a compromise candidate. Hell, Ford might jump in. He thought about running this year. So, we’ve got to try and win early, and the only way to do that is to free Reagan’s delegates so we can tell them what they need to hear so they vote for us.”
Bush nodded. He would do whatever he needed to do. Deep in his stomach a feeling had been growing that he was the man for the moment. He was the man who could beat Carter. He was tired of being mocked by Reagan and by Connally when he was clearly the superior nominee. All of Connally’s talk about his appointments burned in him a desire to win — to prove Connally wrong. He could win a fair fight, and Detroit in the Summer of 1980 would be a fair fight.
• • •
Jim Baker entered the Monocle on D Street on July 20th at 8:48am. He was twelve minutes early. He pulled back his chair, unbuttoned his suit, and took his seat at the table.
George Bush is a good and decent man. It’s why he was here on a July morning to make sure he found the votes to make his friend president. There just weren’t many George Bushes left in politics.
They played golf together and spent more time being friends with one another than they did talking about current affairs. Baker was mostly apolitical, but he considered himself a Democrat if anything at all, and his wife worked in Republican politics, including on George Bush’s Congressional campaigns. That was how the two met. Baker originally thought about running to succeed Bush in Congress when he ran for the Senate in 1970 — that election in which John Connally had conspired against them. But Mary was sick with breast cancer, and she died in February of 1970. Jim Baker didn’t have it in him to run for Congress.
But George Bush knew that his friend needed something to do, and so he tried to put him to work on his Senate campaign. They’d talked it over, and George Bush talked about what it was like to lose Robin, his daughter, and how when that happened he’d put all his time into politics, and how the community inherent in politics had given him a sense of strength. Bush asked Baker to join his campaign, and Baker said yes.
Baker had the tactician mind required to operate a campaign behind the scenes. He worked on Nixon’s campaign, and he managed Gerald Ford’s operation in 1976 — the one that beat Reagan. In between then and now, he’d run for office himself (with Bush as his campaign manager no less), but he was more at home behind the scenes. He was intent on beating Reagan once again — not because he thought Reagan posed some ideological threat to the Republican Party or the country, but because he loved George Herbert Walker Bush.
Mahe was nearly ten minutes late to the meeting, so Baker wasted no time on pleasantries.
“Ed, your guy doesn’t have the votes,” he said as Mahe took his seat. Making a show of it, Baker unfurled his napkin and placed it on his lap.
“And neither does yours, Jim,” Mahe said back.
Baker nodded and grinned. “And that’s why we’re here.” He reached out his hand and Mahe grabbed it. The time had come to make a deal.
Perhaps if Connally had fared a bit better in the primaries, the conversation would have been about how he could take up a role as Secretary of Defense if he threw the nomination to Bush and secured him the nomination, but even combined, Bush and Connally could not have denied Reagan the nomination. Instead, they had to bleed him from both ends until one of them could come out on top. Besides, Mahe couldn’t imagine a scenario in which John Connally played second fiddle to Poppy Bush.
“You and I both know the math,” Baker started. “Reagan needs thirty-two votes. He can probably find ‘em in his sleep. Hell, even Baker’s got more delegates than that. So, the way I see it, we’ve got to open the Convention. If we can get enough Reagan delegates worried that their guy can’t beat Carter, we can get them to vote to change the rules — let them vote for whomever they want on the first ballot. If we do that, and Reagan’s down about a hundred, then we’ve got a fight on our hands. Either of our guys could win.”
“But why should we get involved? John could easily be Reagan’s Secretary of Defense — Hell, he might even be the running mate.”
Baker wasn’t going to indulge in Mahe’s bluff. “Ed, if that’s how you feel, then there’s no point in continuing. If you’re done bullshittin’, I’d appreciate us getting down to business here.”
Mahe glared at Baker. He had half a mind to get up and walk out, but he also knew that there was no real political future for his man. John Connally had underperformed this entire primary campaign. Hell, he’d lost Texas to Bush. If he was going to emerge from Detroit as a relevant figure in the Republican Party, he was going to have to emerge from Detroit as the Republican nominee for president.
Mahe quickly ran the numbers in his head. It was a long shot, but if you polled the Reagan delegates, the majority of them likely preferred Connally to Bush. If Reagan was shaky — denied the nomination on ballots one and two — John Connally was in the prime position to play a compromise candidate. It wouldn’t be fun — or easy — but what was it Bush had said?
Nobody said it would be easy. Nobody was right.
The reality was John Connally had nothing to lose, and that put Ronald Reagan in a very dangerous position.
“Alright,” Mahe confessed. “Tell me what you think we ought to do…”
>>>>>>>>
[1] Two notes here. Scranton stayed neutral IOTL, this time, with Reagan on his heels, he decides to get involved to help Bush. Second, this is not a verbatim quote but it does mirror the attacks Bush made against Reagan IOTL.
[2] Assessment of the Pennsylvania primary is based largely on
Rendezvous with Destiny’s account of it.
[3] Yes, he basically said that.
Reaganland, 625.
[4] There is some question about the California delegate situation. Wikipedia lists its delegate count at 171. The
Washington Post puts it at 168. Contemporary press reports say it was winner-take-all, but the Wikipedia page notes 25 delegates to Anderson from the state. For the sake of consistency, I based numbers off of the Wikipedia delegate counts, and I think it’s plausible in a scenario where Reagan stumbles out of the gate, as he does ITTL, that his campaign could’ve been out-maneuvered on the question of proportional allocation of delegates.
[5] This is not technically true. Baker has 31 delegates going into the convention. Reagan needs 32.
