Ronnie and Nancy_ Their Path to the White House - Bob Colacello [307]
Consensus did not result.”110 Kissinger’s most vociferous enemy within Reagan’s inner circle was foreign policy adviser Richard Allen, who had been an unhappy subordinate of his in the Nixon White House.111
Conservatives had attempted to bar Kissinger from addressing the convention, but in the speech he gave that evening he tore into Carter’s foreign policy and came out sounding like Reagan at his most apocalyptic.
“The Carter Administration has managed the extraordinary feat,” he intoned in his heavy German accent, “of having at one and the same time the worst relations with our allies, the worst relations with our adversaries and the most serious upheavals in the developing world since the end of the Second World War. We can assert that these multiplying crises are the natural result of a naïve philosophy, which, since 1977, has recoiled from our power and fled from our responsibilities. Sooner or later our weakness will produce a catastrophe.”112
At midnight Kissinger proceeded to Ford’s suite and made what several sources have called an “impassioned plea” for the former president to consider Reagan’s offer in light of the dire international situation. After forty-five minutes, Alan Greenspan, who had served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Ford, joined the discussion. According to Theodore White, over the next two hours Kissinger and Greenspan developed the concept that “the President would be the Chief Policymaker, but 4 9 2
Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House the Vice-President would be the Chief Operator.” In this proposed scheme of things, Ford would oversee the Office of Management and Budget as well as the National Security Council. “All agreed,” White writes, “that the next morning Ford’s councillors would meet with Reagan’s and see if a new definition of the roles of President and Vice-President could be worked out.”113
On Wednesday morning, Kissinger, Greenspan, and Dick Cheney, Ford’s former chief of staff, presented their ideas for a power-sharing arrangement to Casey, Meese, and Wirthlin. As Lyn Nofziger recalled, Meese “wrote down Ford’s demands and showed them to me. Among other things Ford, or at least those negotiating for him, was demanding that the White House staff report to the president through him—Ford would decide who on the staff would and would not see the president. He also wanted to pick the secretary of state and secretary of defense, although he generously offered Reagan a veto. But in turn, he wanted veto rights on Reagan’s other cabinet picks.”114
“From my perspective as negotiator,” Meese later wrote, “this was a complete nonstarter. . . . I had no doubt that, from Kissinger’s standpoint, this meant control over important facets of foreign policy and arms control, in which Kissinger himself, it’s safe to say, would have played a prominent role. . . . I didn’t think that Ronald Reagan had campaigned for president in 1976 and again in 1980 to wind up with others calling the shots on foreign policy—or to barter away any other aspects of the executive authority conferred on the president by the Constitution.”115
Nonetheless, the Reagan and Ford teams continued to negotiate throughout the day, and the principals met again at five that afternoon.
Reagan remained noncommittal, however, when the former president said that if he were to return to Washington, he would need to have some of his key people come back with him, starting with Kissinger and Greenspan.116 Meanwhile, everyone wanted to get their two cents in. As Deaver remembered the scene, it seemed as if the entire Republican Party leadership was in Reagan’s suite at one time or another, including Bill Brock, Bob Dole, Bob Michel, Congressman John Rhodes of Ohio, and Governor Jim Thompson of Illinois—all giving the candidate