Ronnie and Nancy_ Their Path to the White House - Bob Colacello [273]
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candidate’s delaying tactics were based on calculation rather than doubt—
Reagan wanted to keep making money for as long as possible before he formally declared, when federal law would require him to give up his lucrative radio commentaries. As usual, the first strategy meeting, in May 1974, took place in Pacific Palisades, with Nancy present. The cast included Deaver, Hannaford, Meese, and Nofziger, as well as Holmes Tuttle and Justin Dart, who was eclipsing Henry Salvatori as the co-leader of the Kitchen Cabinet. There were also some new faces, including David Packard, the billionaire founder of the Hewlett-Packard computer company; Clarke Reed, the chairman of the Republican Party in Mississippi; and, most importantly, John P. Sears III, a well-connected Washington lawyer and the wunderkind tactician of Nixon’s 1968 campaign.39
The shadow of Watergate, which was still three months from resolution, hung over the gathering. According to Jules Witcover in Marathon: The Pursuit of the Presidency, 1972–1976, “Meese summarized the morning’s discussion and the general agreement that Reagan should run, but that the effort would have to be contingent on Nixon’s remaining as President through 1976.” When Reagan asked if anyone disagreed, only Sears contradicted the consensus. “I think it can be done, I think it should be done; the party needs it, the country needs it; but I disagree that Nixon has to stay as President,”
Sears asserted. “In fact, Nixon will be gone in six months.” Furthermore, Sears told Reagan, “Jerry Ford can’t cut the mustard, he’s not perceived as a leader; he can’t lead the Congress or the country. He will be vulnerable and we can beat him. He will not be seen as a true incumbent; you have as much support around the country as he has.”40
The thirty-four-year-old Sears had studied chemistry at Notre Dame, in hopes of pursuing a career in psychiatry, but he wound up at Georgetown Law School. “He’s cool and unflappable and has a great capacity to size other people up,” a friend once described him. “In that way he’s never really abandoned his wish to be a psychiatrist.”41 Sears had been recruited for the 1976 effort by the Governor’s top political aide, Bob Walker, who had worked for Nixon in 1968 before defecting to Reagan and heading his delegate hunt in the South, where he found himself outsmarted at almost every turn by Sears. Nixon had taken the cunning young lawyer to the White House with him, but he was quickly forced out by John Mitchell.
The attorney general “neither liked nor trusted him,” said Nofziger, who had also worked in the Nixon White House, “feelings I grew to understand and appreciate.” As Nofziger tells it, Walker “persuaded Deaver to invite 4 3 8
Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House
[Sears] to some early organizational meetings. Deaver became enamored of Sears, whose line of political chatter impressed almost all of us, including the Reagans.”42
“John Sears was urbane and articulate,” Nancy recalled in My Turn.
“And he knew as much about politics as anyone I had ever met. I loved having lunch with him because he was bright, knowledgeable, and fascinating to listen to. John was not a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, and some of Ronnie’s supporters didn’t trust him. His mission was to bring home a winner, and he would do everything possible to make that happen.” She added, “He also had excellent contacts with the Washington press corps, which would be very important if Ronnie entered the race.”43 In fact, a decade after Nancy penned those words, Nixon’s lawyer Leonard Garment published In Search of Deep Throat, in which he came to the well-considered conclusion that John Sears had been Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s infamous secret source.
In the event, Nixon resigned three months earlier than Sears had predicted, but that still made Sears something of a prophet for Ronnie, Nancy, and Mike Deaver. “Our long national nightmare is over,” declared Gerald Ford on August 10, 1974, after being sworn in as the first man to assume the presidency without having