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been elected to that office or to the vice presidency. This precedent would subtly undermine Ford’s legitimacy and provide justification for Reagan’s challenge, but for the moment the entire nation was relieved to have a “regular guy” from Grand Rapids, Michigan, replacing the dour, paranoid, and downright weird Richard Milhous Nixon. Betty Ford, a former modern dancer who still liked to kick up her heels on the dance floor, was also a breath of fresh air in contrast to the sad, uptight, isolated Pat Nixon. And the four Ford children, all in their early twenties and late teens, were athletic and outgoing, not prim and prissy like the Nixon girls. That fall, after the new First Lady underwent a radical mastectomy, she spoke openly about the previously taboo subject of breast cancer and earned the respect of the country for her honesty and bravery.

By then her husband’s popularity had been severely damaged by his unconditional pardon of Nixon, and there was audible grumbling on the right about his selection of Rockefeller for vice president, his offer of amnesty to Vietnam War evaders, and his proposed deficit to stimulate the lagging economy. In the November 1974 midterm elections, the Democrats picked up forty-nine House seats, five Senate seats, and four gover-Reagan vs. Ford: 1975–1976

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norships. Reagan, winding down in Sacramento and wanting to be seen as giving Ford a chance, remained temporarily above the fray, though he publicly supported the pardon, saying Nixon had “suffered as much as any man should.”44

In December, Tuttle, Dart, and Jack Wrather hosted a lunch at the Downtown Los Angeles Club for Senator Lloyd Bentsen, a conservative Texas Democrat who was thinking of running for president. The lunch was widely seen as a warning signal to Ford, and The New York Times quoted unnamed guests as saying that the Kitchen Cabinet big shots would never have given the lunch without Reagan’s prior knowledge.45 Meanwhile, John Sears was letting it drop that he had been offered a job in the Ford White House, and pressuring Deaver to get Reagan to announce as soon as possible in the new year.46

That would have to wait, since Reagan was just embarking on the radio, newspaper, and speaking schedule put together by Deaver and Hannaford. In February 1975, “immaculate in a carefully pressed blue suit and highly polished loafers,” he was the star speaker at a conference sponsored by the Young Americans for Freedom and the American Conservative Union to explore the possibility of forming a third party. Introduced by Bill Buckley’s brother, Senator James Buckley of New York, as “the Rem-brandt of American conservatism,” Reagan brought the crowd to its feet.

“Is it a third party we need?” he bellowed. “Or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all the issues troubling the people?”47

In early March, at a Republican leadership conference in Washington, Reagan rejected appeals by Ford and Rockefeller to broaden the party base by asserting, “A political party cannot be all things to all people. . . . It is not a social club or fraternity engaged in intramural contests to accumu-late trophies on the mantel over the fireplace.”48 A Newsweek cover story later that month, titled “Ready on the Right,” called him “the most kinetic single presence in American political life.”49 Ford’s chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld, contacted Reagan and offered him the post of secretary of commerce, which Reagan politely turned down. On March 30, an increasingly edgy President Ford invited the Reagans for dinner at the Palm Springs house he and Betty were renting from one of his golfing partners.

If his purpose was to dissuade Reagan from running, he obviously didn’t succeed. Betty Ford later said of Nancy, “She’s a cold fish. . . . Nancy could 4 4 0

Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House not have been colder. Then the flashbulbs went off, and she smiled and kissed me—suddenly an old friend. I couldn’t get over that. Off camera—

ice.