In My Time - Dick Cheney [53]
There was one last obstacle thrown in our path that night, and here we decided that the best course was just to take the hit and move on. It made things a little easier that the actual target was not so much Ford as Kissinger, who at the time was not a beloved figure among conservatives.
With Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft in Vail, Colorado in the summer of 1976. (Official White House Photo/David Kennerly)
After the vote on Rule 16-C, the convention turned to a debate over the party platform, with special attention to a plank on “Morality in Foreign Policy” drawn up by Senator Jesse Helms. It was a thing of beauty, in its own way, a ringing affirmation of all that was good and pure in American foreign policy, mixed in with expressions of disdain for those connivers and compromisers who had given us détente. The draft language didn’t mention anyone by name, but everyone knew who the target was.
Naturally, Kissinger was livid. He assumed that we all shared his indignation, which was mostly true. But he also assumed that we would fight this affront at all costs, which was definitely not true. With the exception of Henry’s old friend and mentor Vice President Rockefeller, the consensus in the Ford high command was to let it go. We had won the important battle. Why make a big fuss over some little passage in a platform that nobody was going to read anyway?
This gave no comfort to Henry, and he and Rockefeller were still fired up for battle when we all gathered in Ford’s suite at the Crowne Plaza Hotel to make a final decision. This was an outrage, they said, a deep insult that must not be allowed to pass. Ford heard them out and then went around the room for advice from the rest—Stu Spencer, aides Bill Timmons and Tom Korologos, and me. None of us saw the point in fighting. Our view was, look, we just had a big win on Rule 16-C, it’s late at night, and our people are in bars all over Kansas City; if we go to a vote on this we could actually lose, and that would reverse the whole dynamic of the convention. If we just let it pass, nobody will even remember it a week from now.
Not acceptable, said Henry. If we didn’t wage a fight to keep that insulting language out of the platform, then he would have no choice but to resign. For a moment after this threat, nothing was said. Then Tom Korologos piped up with a wisecrack that quickly settled the entire matter and left even Kissinger laughing. “Henry,” he said, “if you’re going to quit, do it now. We need the votes.”
The next night, August 18, I sat with President Ford and his family as they watched television coverage of his victory on the first ballot, scraping by in a vote of 1,187 to 1,070. It was one more moment in their lives that they could scarcely have imagined just a few years earlier, and I felt as happy for Betty and the kids as I did for my boss.
As they celebrated, I attended to the matter of bringing Ford and Reagan together for the traditional laying-down-of-arms meeting, and placed a call to John Sears. We had already agreed that the winner would visit the loser’s hotel suite; they would then appear before the press in a show of unity. In the planning stage and again that night on the phone, Sears set down just one condition for the encounter: Under no circumstances, he made clear, was the president to ask Reagan to be his running mate.
At the time I really regretted this, and on my own had put out some feelers to make absolutely certain that the firm “no” we were hearing from Sears and others reflected Reagan’s own wishes. By all indications, it was so.
A Ford-Reagan ticket made obvious sense to me. I’d started to think about the possibilities even before our victory in Kansas City and a few times tried to turn the president’s own thoughts in the same direction. I had to be rather careful in bringing it up because I knew Ford was cold to the idea, and under the circumstances he was becoming more and more immune to the charms of Ronald Reagan. What I needed was hard evidence that Reagan would help us, regardless