Three old posts of mine on why I think this unlikely (sorry for links that may no longer work):
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Even leaving aside the greater confirmation difficulties Reagan would have compared with Ford, Nixon just didn't like Reagan, saying that "Reagan on a personal basis is terrible", and calling him "strange" and not "pleasant to be around" (Yeah, I know--pot, kettle...)
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3678121/#.VFe51MJ0yJA
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President Nixon: What’s your evaluation or Reagan after meeting him several times now.
Kissinger: Well, I think he’s a—actually I think he’s a pretty decent guy.
President Nixon: Oh, decent, no question, but his brains?
Kissinger: Well, his brains, are negligible. I—
President Nixon: He’s really pretty shallow, Henry.
President Nixon: Back to Reagan though. It shows you how a man of limited mental capacity simply doesn’t know what the Christ is going on in the foreign area. He’s got to know that on defense—doesn’t he know these battles we fight and fight and fight? Goddamn it, Henry, we’ve been at—
Kissinger: And I told him—he said, “Why don’t you fire the bureaucracy?” I said, “Because there are only so many battles we can fight. We take on the bureaucracy now, they’re going to leak us to death. Name me one thing that we have done that the bureaucracy made us do.”
President Nixon: The bureaucracy has had nothing to do with anything.
Kissinger: No, no. They’ve made our lives harder. They’ve driven us crazy. But that doesn’t affect him.
http://whitehousetapes.net/transcript/nixon/620-008
So Nixon regarded Reagan as "pretty shallow," lacking "brains," and with "limited mental capacity." In a previous post, I noted that Nixon said that "Reagan on a personal basis is terrible", and called him "strange" and not "pleasant to be around." Is it too much to suggest that maybe Nixon's actual opinion of Reagan should be taken into account in considering how likely he was to name him as vice-president?
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Stolengood said: ↑
...and, yet, there's that draft letter, up there. Take that into account, why don't you?
It is hardly unknown for presidents to pretend to be considering more than one applicant for a job when they have actually settled on one. And especially not unknown for Nixon. Ford himself said "Making up his mind and then pretending that his options were still open--that was a Nixon trait that I'd have occasion to witness again." (referring to 1960 when Nixon had already decided on Henry Cabot Lodge but pretended to be considering Ford--just as he was to do in 1968)
http://books.google.com/books?id=AaJQJ1BLQ2MC&pg=PT341 Conservatives were lobbying for Reagan as Agnew's successor, and Nixon wanted to give them the impression he might choose him. But the fact is that Nixon really wanted Connally as his successor, but knew that Congress would not confirm Connally. If he couldn't get Connally, he wanted someone who he thought would not be a candidate in 1976, so that Connally might still have a chance then. Ford seemed to fit that bill; Reagan, like Rockefeller, obviously did not. As I already noted, in 1972 Nixon wanted Agnew to resign so that Nixon could appoint Connally as vice-president under the newly ratified 25th Amendment. He thought that it would not be enough for Agnew to simply announce he would not be a candidate again, precisely because that might lead to the GOP convention turning to Reagan for vice-president, which Nixon did not want.
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1994-05-18/news/1994138132_1_agnew-nixon-haldeman
Incidentally, years later, after Reagan had become above criticism to most Republicans, Nixon was still not exactly a fan: "Later, Nixon said Reagan’s economic policies were unduly harsh and cautioned against giving him too much credit for winning the Cold War. 'Communism would have collapsed anyway,' he told Monica Crowley, a Nixon aide in his last years, according to her 1996 book, 'Nixon Off the Record.'"
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3678121/ns/politics/t/nixonthought-reagan-wasstrange/#.VFyXJMJ0yJB