Ronnie and Nancy_ Their Path to the White House - Bob Colacello [286]
The California delegation would not go along with this customary gesture, and knowing how bad that would look for Reagan, Nofziger called Tuttle and asked him to make them switch. For once, even Tuttle couldn’t deliver, so Nofziger went down onto the convention floor and pleaded with the delegates himself. “We came here to vote for Reagan and we’re going to keep voting for him,” Bill Wilson snapped. The matter was resolved when convention chairman Governor James Rhodes decided the appearance of party unity was more important than the fine points of procedure, pounded his gavel, and declared “The vote is unanimous.”111 “In the heat of the moment I thought this was outrageous,” Nancy said. “But in retrospect, it was probably a wise move.”112
“All at once I began to cry, not just a few tears but real sobs,” Nofziger recalled. “I couldn’t figure it out. In the back of my head I was calm and rational but still, there I was, crying like a girl.”113 Back at the hotel, Helene von Damm was crying “so hard I had to take big gulps of air between sobs.”114 By that time Wilson, Earle Jorgensen, and Alfred Bloomingdale had come to the Reagan suite. “I’ll never forget the sight of those three great big grown-up men crying when Ronnie lost,” Nancy told me.115
Sometime after one in the morning, a victorious Gerald Ford was driven to the Alameda Plaza to meet with his vanquished foe. Sears had agreed to this meeting in advance on the condition that Ford not ask Reagan to be his running mate, so that Reagan would not be put in the awkward position of having to turn the President down.116 Many in Kansas City believed a Ford-Reagan ticket was the Republicans’ best chance of winning against Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale, who had been nominated by a strong and 4 5 8
Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House unified Democratic Party the previous month. According to Nofziger, however, one of Ford’s top aides told him the President “absolutely refused to discuss the possibility of picking Reagan.”117 For his part, Reagan said, “I just wasn’t interested in being vice-president.”118 According to her friends, Nancy was even less interested. During their twenty-seven-minute meeting, Ford did not extend an offer, and Reagan extolled the virtues of Senator Robert Dole of Kansas. Yet at the “unity press conference” that followed, Reagan waffled when asked what he would do if he were drafted at the convention the following night. A smiling Ford then wrapped things up by saying he was sure there would be a place for Reagan in his administration.119
Back at his own hotel, the Crown Plaza, on what was now Thursday morning, Ford and his advisers held two meetings to pick the vice presidential candidate from a list of sixteen names that included one woman, Ambassador Anne Armstrong of Texas (whose strongest advocate among the Ford insiders was Stu Spencer). The first meeting went from 3:15 to 5:00 a.m., the second started at 9:30.
“At seven o’clock there was a knock on the door of my hotel room,” recalled Mike Deaver. “I go to the door bleary-eyed in my pajamas, and there are Jus Dart, Holmes Tuttle, and William French Smith, all in their blue blazers, rep ties, gray slacks, and loafers. ‘We want to see Ron,’ Jus said.
They wanted him to be vice president in the worst way. My room was right next to the Reagans’ suite, so I let them into the living room, got some coffee for them, went into the Reagans’ bedroom—they were sound asleep—
woke them up, and said, ‘I’m sorry, but Jus and Holmes and Bill Smith are out there and want to talk to you about the vice presidency.’ Reagan said,
‘Tell them I don’t want the vice presidency.’ I said, ‘They’re not going to take that from me. You have to tell them.’ The guy was ticked, but he got up and got dressed, and just as he came into the living room the telephone rings. I pick it up and say, ‘Governor, it’s President Ford.’ Reagan takes the phone.