Don't Call It a Rematch: President Carter vs. Former President Ford 1980

Not sure if this idea has been discussed in any kind of depth before, but I've heard it mentioned around the margins here, and a new article in Salon has piqued my interest. In that article, and in other threads on this site, the possibility, however remote, of a renomination for Gerald Ford in 1980 has been mentioned. Now renominating a President who has already lost a reelection bid, is a difficult prospect at best. But Gerald Ford is arguably the most likely President in the modern era to have pulled this off. So let's say that prior to the real opening phases of the campaign, meaning when the staffs are comi, ng together etc, something happens to Reagan that denies him the opportunity to seek the nomination, be it a car crash, a heart attack, lightning strike, whatever it happens to be, point is, even before the Republican nomination in 1980 even begins to be contested, Reagan is removed from the equation. Without Reagan, Ford steps into the void, and he wins the nomination instead of the perhaps more natural victor George Bush. Yes I know, this is probably horribly implausible, but this is for the sake of argument then anything. Anyway after a four year hiatus, Gerald Ford is back, at least as the Republican nominee. Who would be Ford's running mate here? Bush? Dole again? Jack Kemp? Paul Laxalt? Andersen was apparently mentioned as a possibility in a contemporary speculative article in the Christian Science Monitor in 1980. But Vice Presidential nominees are neither here nor there. What would a Carter vs. Ford match in 1980 have actually looked like? Given that Carter can't use his strategy against Reagan against Ford, what does the Carter reelection strategy look like? My guess is that he tries to blame all the problems of the then present on the failures of Ford's administration, and the Nixon administration before him. But I don't think that would work. Fundamentally the 1980 election seems to have been more a referendum on Carter than on Ronald Reagan. It's a small semantic point, but my sense is that Reagan did not win, Jimmy Carter lost, and there's a difference between the two.

Namely, Reagan's victory had more to do with a combination of outright hostility and at best ambivalence towards President Carter, rather than voters embracing Reagan or the conservative movement. Indeed, I think Reagan won in good part because he demonstrated, or seemed to demonstrate through his amiable temperament, that he wasn't a deranged extremist, a mere ideologue who could never be trusted with the Presidency. Reagan did not have to prove he would be a great President, he had to prove he would be competent, or at least not worse than the incumbent.

Perhaps my sense of 1980 is radically wrong, or mere liberal wishful thinking. But if I'm right, that would mean that Carter is in serious trouble almost regardless of who the Republican Party nominates, which means that ITTL Gerald Ford has a fighting chance. So what does this election look like? Who do you think the victor would be? (My money's on Ford, but again my prediction may be based on a fundamental misreading of 1980, or at best, a overly simplistic view of that race). And what would the next four years look like?
 
Not sure if this idea has been discussed in any kind of depth before, but I've heard it mentioned around the margins here, and a new article in Salon has piqued my interest. In that article, and in other threads on this site, the possibility, however remote, of a renomination for Gerald Ford in 1980 has been mentioned. Now renominating a President who has already lost a reelection bid, is a difficult prospect at best. But Gerald Ford is arguably the most likely President in the modern era to have pulled this off. So let's say that prior to the real opening phases of the campaign, meaning when the staffs are comi, ng together etc, something happens to Reagan that denies him the opportunity to seek the nomination, be it a car crash, a heart attack, lightning strike, whatever it happens to be, point is, even before the Republican nomination in 1980 even begins to be contested, Reagan is removed from the equation. Without Reagan, Ford steps into the void, and he wins the nomination instead of the perhaps more natural victor George Bush. Yes I know, this is probably horribly implausible, but this is for the sake of argument then anything. Anyway after a four year hiatus, Gerald Ford is back, at least as the Republican nominee. Who would be Ford's running mate here? Bush? Dole again? Jack Kemp? Paul Laxalt? Andersen was apparently mentioned as a possibility in a contemporary speculative article in the Christian Science Monitor in 1980. But Vice Presidential nominees are neither here nor there. What would a Carter vs. Ford match in 1980 have actually looked like? Given that Carter can't use his strategy against Reagan against Ford, what does the Carter reelection strategy look like? My guess is that he tries to blame all the problems of the then present on the failures of Ford's administration, and the Nixon administration before him. But I don't think that would work. Fundamentally the 1980 election seems to have been more a referendum on Carter than on Ronald Reagan. It's a small semantic point, but my sense is that Reagan did not win, Jimmy Carter lost, and there's a difference between the two.

Namely, Reagan's victory had more to do with a combination of outright hostility and at best ambivalence towards President Carter, rather than voters embracing Reagan or the conservative movement. Indeed, I think Reagan won in good part because he demonstrated, or seemed to demonstrate through his amiable temperament, that he wasn't a deranged extremist, a mere ideologue who could never be trusted with the Presidency. Reagan did not have to prove he would be a great President, he had to prove he would be competent, or at least not worse than the incumbent.

Perhaps my sense of 1980 is radically wrong, or mere liberal wishful thinking. But if I'm right, that would mean that Carter is in serious trouble almost regardless of who the Republican Party nominates, which means that ITTL Gerald Ford has a fighting chance. So what does this election look like? Who do you think the victor would be? (My money's on Ford, but again my prediction may be based on a fundamental misreading of 1980, or at best, a overly simplistic view of that race). And what would the next four years look like?


the 1980 election was a referendum on Carter's incompetence, the hostage crisis, and the economy. Ford would win a re-match comfortably if we're taking the same 1980.

He'd probably picking a VP from the conservative wing, as they were dominant by that time. I agree Carter's strategy would be thrown for a loop. Blaming a guy from four years back wouldn't look too good. My guess is he'd try to paint Ford as more conservative than he really was.


No Reagan victory has huge butterflies for U.S. politics, though. Ford wasn't a hawk on the Cold War or a Supply Sider. Effects on economics and foreign policy are huge.
 
Technically Bob Dole counted a member of the conservative movement then as far as I am aware, so theoretically you might see the same ticket as in 1976, Ford/Dole. However, considering Dole's effect on the campaign, that isn't particularly likely. So perhaps Ford/Kemp?

Ford defeats Carter comfortably, but he cannot run for reelection in 1984. Would President Ford be viewed as a lameduck and if so, what impact would that have on Ford's ability to govern between 1981-1985? Would Ford bring back the same cabinet in 1980 that he had had when he left? Certainly Henry Kissinger may return, but would Rumsfeld and Cheney? (Incidentally, this is precisely the outcome the USSR's leadership at the time would have preferred. They loathed Jimmy Carter, and ironically looked forward to working with the Republican Ronald Reagan, expecting him in practice to have the exact same foreign policy the last Republican President had had. The Soviet leadership circa 1980 didn't have the best understanding of American politics.)
 
It's hardly unlikely. People consistently forget that George H.W. Bush was NOT considered a plausible candidate at the time. Even his family members thought he was nuts to run. How many times has a party nominated a guy who's highest-ranking position was ex-CIA Director?

Bush was very much a longshot candidate. He only came to prominence because he was the last moderate standing against Reagan. Were Ford in the race, he'd probably face a tougher challenge from a conservative - maybe Phil Crane? - and still emerge the nominee.

Maybe he'd pick someone like Jack Kemp or Paul Laxalt as his running mate.
 
Gerald Ford would win by a larger margin than Reagan in the popular vote (Carter would probably carry the South narrowly), but he would lose the nomination to Reagan anyways.
 
Gerald Ford would win by a larger margin than Reagan in the popular vote (Carter would probably carry the South narrowly), but he would lose the nomination to Reagan anyways.

Hence why one of the points of divergence is somehow removing Governor Reagan from the primary.
 
It's hardly unlikely. People consistently forget that George H.W. Bush was NOT considered a plausible candidate at the time. Even his family members thought he was nuts to run. How many times has a party nominated a guy who's highest-ranking position was ex-CIA Director?

Bush was very much a longshot candidate. He only came to prominence because he was the last moderate standing against Reagan. Were Ford in the race, he'd probably face a tougher challenge from a conservative - maybe Phil Crane? - and still emerge the nominee.

Maybe he'd pick someone like Jack Kemp or Paul Laxalt as his running mate.

Is a reverse Andersen possible? You know, a conservative third party spoiler candidate? Incidentally, as a Congressman, from the little I know Andersen was no liberal himself, even in a Republican intraparty sense of the term. If Phil Crane is the voice of the Reaganites, might Ford take a page from Reagan's 1980 playbook? That is, pick Phil Crane to be his running mate? Or were the two men so hostile as to make that an impossibility?

In any case, what does the second Ford term look like? How would Ford be viewed in a historical context here? He's the first person to become President despite not being elected to either the Presidency or Vice Presidency, and he's the second person to be reelected after a four year hiatus, that's at least the answer to a trivia question ITTL
 
Top