Nazi Space Spy
Banned
August 1976
President Ford & Governor Reagan - the leaders of the opposing wings of the GOP.
The Republican National Convention in Kansas City loomed near, and the uncertainty was stronger than at any point in the campaign. Unlike the Democratic Party’s primary, which was swept by Jimmy Carter after his emergence from obscurity, the Republican Party’s primary battle was a much more divisive and fractious affair. President Ford, having overcome the lingering legacy of Watergate which had scuttled the previous administration, two separate assassination attempts, the final whimpering conclusion of the war in Vietnam, and rapidly worsening inflation, could not seem to keep down the discontent broiling on the right. Former California Governor Ronald Reagan became the champion of the conservative wing of the party, eliciting an impassioned variety of support and enthusiasm that had not been witnessed since Goldwater. Announcing his candidacy for the Presidency at the climax of 1975, the actor turned politician was a strong and credible challenger to the incumbent Commander-in-Chief. Indeed, Reagan was perhaps the most serious primary challenger to a sitting President since Eugene McCarthy’s candidacy in 1968. Similarly to McCarthy (who, coincidentally, was seeking the Presidency as an independent), Reagan’s challenge saw stumbles early on. Ford defeated Reagan narrowly in Iowa and New Hampshire before a string of wider defeats in other states, such as Massachusetts, Florida, and Illinois. But with the help of the archconservative Jesse Helms, Reagan won a stunning comeback in North Carolina that breathed new life into his dying candidacy. Crisscrossing the country, Reagan was able to survive what commentators predicted would be fatal defeats in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and went on to win a crucial victory in Texas which kept his campaign afloat through the convention. With the primaries wrapping up in the south and west, which fattened Reagan’s delegate count, it became increasingly apparent that neither candidate had a clear majority of the votes that would soon be cast in Kansas City.
President Ford & Governor Reagan - the leaders of the opposing wings of the GOP.
The two opposing camps in the Republican Party meanwhile found themselves locked in a new battle as part of a post-primary cold war of sorts; with neither Ford nor Reagan certain to win a majority on the first ballot, their supporters entered into a game of cat and mouse as the convention approached. As warring groups of delegates prepared to stall their rivals at platform hearings and credentialing committees, the two campaigns found themselves in the awkward position of balancing the ticket. In the wake of Watergate, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller was the only potential candidate for the Vice Presidency who would clearly clear Congress. Now, only two years later, he had gone from asset to liability. The conservative discontent with Ford had grown so rapidly that Rockefeller took himself out of the running in the fall of the previous year, giving the President ample time to name a new Vice Presidential candidate. Now, with the primaries over, it appeared that the time had finally come. Yet no announcement was made, even with the convention just days away.
Reagan considered forcing Ford, who was typically cautious to a reasonable degree, to name a running mate early. But in order to do so, he’d first have to name a running mate himself. This was not initially a problem for the Gipper; though the party establishment rallied around Ford, he knew that finding a moderate to balance the ticket was still well within the realm of possibility. His ideal choice was Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania, a reliably pro-labor vote in the body who had a reputation as a liberal Republican maverick. Though Schweiker was surprised to be approached by Reagan, as the two had not personally known one another, he none the less agreed to join the ticket after a personal meeting between the two. Reagan was ready to announce the decision as early as possible, and even asked his top campaign aides to call a press conference the following day. Though campaign manager John Sears was in favor, Reagan’s longtime aides Mike Deaver, Ed Meese, and Lynn Nofzinger pushed back at the idea and urged restraint. After consulting with leading Senate conservatives including James Buckley and Jesse Helms as well as commentator and former Nixon speechwriter Patrick Buchanan, the former Governor reluctantly agreed to pick a different Vice Presidential candidate. Though disappointed and feeling somewhat betrayed by his Senate colleagues, Schweiker understood and withdrew from the vetting process. Reagan, in respect to Schweiker, decided to hold off on naming a Vice Presidential selection until after the nomination was settled. Both Ford and Reagan would enter the convention without having formed a ticket.
The convention opened on Monday, August 16th, with delegates flooding into Kemper Arena for the first day of proceedings. Reagan supporters were able to rally enough Ford delegates under their banner to pass a platform plank in opposition to Roe vs. Wade and also instituted a call for a “moral foreign policy,” which while not implicitly a dig at the President’s policy of detente, none the less called for a much firmer approach to the Soviet Union. These early defeats were a worrying sign for Ford, and the President’s campaign manager Stu Spencer became alarmed that Reagan’s convention floor operation was more advanced than expected. It was true that elements of the Texas delegation known as “Reagan’s Raiders” led by Galveston Congressman Ron Paul, Odessa Mayor Jim Reese, and Midland Mayor Ernest Angelo were aggressively courting delegates. Though not panicked, Ford decided to act. It would prove to be a fateful decision politically.
After a series of meetings with several state delegations throughout the evening, President Ford emerged from the arena to an avalanche of media to announce he had asked Senator Robert Dole to join the Republican ticket. It was entirely truthful – he had asked Dole to run for the Vice Presidency, but the Senator had not given an affirmative answer and asked to be given a night to sleep on it. Having gone to bed early in his hotel suite with his wife Elizabeth after a long day on the convention floor, Senator Dole was stunned when reporters began to pound at his door in the early morning hours. Dole confirmed he had been approached, and unaware of the President’s announcement, claimed only that he was “thinking about it” before closing the door. The following morning, he awoke to headlines which threw the Ford campaign into chaos.
While the media meanwhile squared their attention on the Ford-Dole debacle (which was cleared by noon, when Dole announced that he would, in fact, join the ticket) Reagan’s top henchmen set to work winning over delegates. Tensions ran high on the convention floor as they courted wavering Ford supporters, many of whom were troubled by the botched Vice Presidential role out. States like Mississippi and Illinois, both of whom had large swathes of undecided delegates between them, were magnets for prominent supporters of both candidates. The atmosphere was so rife with tension that the Vice President himself found himself in a standoff with opposing delegates after a Reagan supporter ripped out a telephone used by the New York delegation from the wall. Only the intervention of the Secret Service kept Rockefeller from physically attacking the perpetrator, and CBS cameras captured the entire exchange on camera that night. With the first ballot approaching in less than twenty four hours, the convention was shaping up to be the most acrimonious in recent memory.
Vice President Rockefeller displays the broken phone.
With Ford and Dole having made their intentions clear, it was now time for Reagan. The pickings were slim for the former Governor. Of all the Republicans, only two had sided with the Governor over Ford. But both Senators Buckley (C-NY) and Laxalt (R-NV) were considered too conservative for the role of Reagan’s Vice President, which made them unattractive candidates for the job. Others, like CIA Director George Bush (R-TX) and Senator Howard Baker (R-TN), were simply written off as being too unlikely to side against the President so late in the campaign. Sears even floated naming incumbent Vice President Rockefeller, but this idea was immediately shot down by Deaver, Meese, and Nofzinger – the men who would become known within Reagan’s orbit as “the troika.” Another New Yorker’s name was then raised – that of Jack Kemp. A former NFL football player turned three term Congressman, Kemp quickly earned a national reputation for his fiscally conservative ideals and social liberalism. Somewhat of a libertarian in some people’s eyes, Kemp was someone who could fit in comfortably with both the moderate and conservative wings of the party. With just three hours to the first ballot, and with pressure mounting, the Governor reached out to Kemp in his hotel room via telephone. After a short conversation, the two agreed to meet immediately. It took the charismatic former screen star only forty minutes to win the Congressman over. President Ford and Senator Dole were informed through the grape vine only moments ahead of Reagan taking to the cameras alongside Congressman Kemp to announce the formation of their ticket. The battle lines had been drawn; it was now the hour of decision.
The last minute announcement of a Reagan-Kemp ticket immediately threw the convention into chaos; the lateness of the decision ensured that many delegates only heard of Reagan’s announcement as they returned to the convention hall for the first ballot. The Governor had thrusted the ball into their court, and they as a result had no time to think. They’d have to go with their gut; as the President watched on, he couldn’t help but admire the ruthlessness of it. The roll call began, and state after state delegation rattled off their votes. Both the Fords and Reagans watched from opposite sides of the arena as the vote proceeded; by both their estimations, the fight wasn’t over. The final tally, read aloud to the convention hall and to millions of live viewers in homes across the country, reflected this.
A second ballot was scheduled, and the two campaigns went into overdrive to rally undecided delegates. Ford attempted to charm delegates with the grandeur of his office, promising personal White House tours and Oval Office visits, playing the good cop to Deputy Chief of Staff Cheney’s bad cop. In the background, Reagan and Kemp projected the promise of a great Republican revival in the face of a resurgent Democratic Party enthused by Watergate. Indeed, Nixon’s shadow hung over the race, and Reagan masterfully disassociated himself from the former President he had once so strongly supported. Ford meanwhile faced a second battle should he win the nomination – one which force him to reconcile his controversial pardon for President Nixon in the face of a seemingly incorruptible challenger. A sense of apprehension filled the hall, with the reality sinking in that the party could fracture apart if a third or fourth round of balloting was necessary. When the second roll call ballot began within a short amount of time, Ford was convinced he had done his best to demonstrate the benefits of continuity. But it turned out the delegates were not impressed
Watching in shock and horror as delegation after delegation reported their results, Ford counted the number of broken promises of support play out before him. In total, the President’s team managed to lose eleven delegates from their cause. Ronald Reagan, the former Governor of California, had defeated an incumbent President for renomination for the first time since Chester Arthur had been upended by James Blaine in 1884. The hall erupted into thunderous applause and angry jeers as a beaming Governor, accompanied by his beloved wife Nancy, walked upon the convention floor. Hailed by conservative delegates as their champion, the President watched shocked and stone-faced as he grappled with the reality of his defeat. A brass band struck up an upbeat tune as the Republican Party reconciled the fact that the grassroots had dealt a serious defeat to the establishment, and seeing no other choice, President Ford worked his way down to the floor where he personally went with the First Lady to offer his congratulations to the new nominee. After a hearty handshake with the Governor, which was watched by millions of television viewers, the two men went onstage to publicly display their newfound unity in an effort to unite the party. After brief remarks in which he thanked his family and defended his tenure as President, Ford did the unexpected and urged voters to come together in support of the Reagan-Kemp ticket. After Dole graciously withdrew his name from consideration, Kemp was placed on the ticket by acclamation. The bleeding had stopped, the wounds had been bandaged, but only time would tell if they would heal.
Mr. President, the kindness and generosity you have shown Nancy and I on the campaign trail and the determined leadership you have shown in the White House as President have inspired us and the nation, and we owe an incalculable debt to you as a nation because of your selfless actions and honorable conduct in office. History will judge Gerald Ford as the President who restored America’s sense of purpose in a time when cynicism threatened to reign supreme.
We as Republicans offer something that the people of this country are crying out for: they are crying out for leadership. Leadership that will restore our economy. Leadership that will restore the soundness of our currency. Leadership that will restore honor and integrity to government. Leadership that will say to all nations of the world that “yes, we want peace, but we will maintain the strength required that we have peace.” Leadership that will stand up for liberty and freedom around the globe. Leadership that will stand toe to toe with the red menace that enslaves people across Eurasia. But most importantly, we offer leadership to restore hope in America.
If I could just take a moment, I had an assignment the other day. Someone asked me to write a letter for a time capsule that is going to be opened in Los Angeles a hundred years from now, on our nation’s Tricentennial. It sounded like an easy assignment. They suggested I write about the problems and issues of the day. And I set out to do so, riding down the coast in an automobile, looking at the blue Pacific out on one side and the Santa Ynez Mountains on the other, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was going to be that beautiful a hundred years from now as it was on that summer day.
And then as I tried to write-let your own minds turn to that task. You’re going to write for people a hundred years from now who know all about us, we know nothing about them. We don’t know what kind of world they’ll be living in. And suddenly I thought to myself, “If I write of the problems, they’ll be the domestic problems of which the campaign has largely been centered around; the challenges confronting us, the erosion of freedom taken place under Democratic rule in this country, the invasion of private rights, the controls and restrictions on the vitality of the great free economy that we enjoy.”
These are the challenges that we must meet, and then again there is that challenge of the world we live in. We live in a world in which the great powers have aimed and poised at each other horrible missiles of destruction, nuclear weapons that can in a matter of minutes arrive at each other’s country and destroy virtually the entire civilized world we live in. We have a duty-for our children and our grandchildren and our grandchildren’s grandchildren-to stop these missiles from ever being launched. One hundred years from now, somewhere in the United States, perhaps even this convention center in this city, our party will be scheduled to convene again to select a presidential nominee. And they shall know whether those missiles were fired.
Whether they will have the freedom that we have known up until now will depend on what we do here. Will they look back with appreciation and say, “Thank God for those people in 1976 who headed off that loss of freedom? Who kept us now a hundred years later free? Who kept our world from nuclear destruction? And if we fail they probably won’t get to read or hear of this speech at all because it spoke of individual freedom and they won’t be allowed to talk of that or read of it.
This is our challenge and this is why we’re here in this hall tonight. Better than we’ve ever done before, we’ve got to quit talking to each other and about each other and past each other go out and start communicating to the world that we may be fewer in numbers than we’ve ever been but we carry the message they’re waiting for. We must go forth from here united, determined and what a great general said a few years ago is true: “There is no substitute for victory.”
Thank you my friends, thank you! God Bless you, God bless President Ford, and God bless America!”