Ronnie and Nancy_ Their Path to the White House - Bob Colacello [308]
“From the start, I vigorously opposed the Ford gesture. . . . My man was George Bush,” wrote Deaver, who had developed a friendly relationship with Bush’s campaign manager, James Baker. “I saw him as a class person and I thought he would bring the right assets to the ticket. A moderate, with ties to the East (Yale) and the oil fields of Texas. The son of a former sena-Reagan vs. Carter: 1977–1980
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tor, Prescott Bush of Connecticut. Handsome, youthful, sharp.”118 Nancy Reynolds, who had taken time off from Bendix to help Nancy with her press at the convention, told me, “Elizabeth Dole, whom I knew personally, called and wanted to see me right away. She was promoting Bob for vice president. And I was sort of stunned, because we had never thought about it.”119 Jack Kemp, meanwhile, was going ahead with plans to have his name placed in nomination, so there was some apprehension that things could get out of hand on the convention floor.
During most of this back and forth on Tuesday and Wednesday, Nancy Reagan was busy with her own schedule—lunch with Newsweek’s editorial board, an interview for Vogue, meet-and-greets with various state delegations, a photo-op with unemployed automobile workers and their wives.
Accompanied by all four children—even Patti made it—she represented her husband at the Joe Louis Arena Tuesday night while he remained at the hotel, as convention protocol dictated. A rotating cast of Republican leaders’ wives occupied the seat beside her, including Nancy Kissinger, Peggy Goldwater, Nellie Connally, Teresa Heinz (wife of Senator John Heinz, later wife of John Kerry), and an old acquaintance from MGM, Elizabeth Taylor, whose sixth husband was Senator John Warner of Virginia.120
Nancy had to miss another event that evening. As reported by Eugenia Sheppard the previous day in her “Around the Town” column in the New York Post, “Jerome Zipkin will give a dinner for 17 ladies at the London Chop House. He will be the only male present. The ladies he’s invited are Mrs. Alfred Bloomingdale . . . Mrs. William Buckley Jr. . . . Mrs. Guilford Dudley, from Nashville . . . Mrs. Justin Dart, Mrs. Earl [sic] Jorgensen, Mrs. William Wilson . . .”121
Nancy was also enlisted in the effort to make the dream ticket a reality, even though she was still plugging for Laxalt. “I thought the whole idea was ridiculous,” she said of a Reagan-Ford combination. “I didn’t see how a former president— any president—could come back to the White House in the number-two spot. It would be awkward for both men, and impractical, and I couldn’t understand why that wasn’t obvious to everybody. ‘It can’t be done,’ I told Ronnie. . . . But he didn’t see it that way.” Nancy halfheartedly agreed to call Betty Ford and feel her out. “I was relieved to find that Betty felt pretty much as I did,” she later wrote. “‘No,’ she said. ‘As much as we’d like to help, I don’t think it’s a good idea.’”122
Nancy was in the suite with Ronnie at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday when, 4 9 4
Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House to their astonishment, they turned on the CBS Evening News and saw Gerald Ford giving a live interview to Walter Cronkite. “If I go to Washington, and I’m not saying that I’m accepting, I have to go there with the belief that I would play a meaningful role, across the board, in the basic, crucial, tough decisions that have to be made in the four-year period.”
Cronkite asked Ford, “It’s to be something like a co-presidency?” Ford answered, “That’s something that Governor Reagan really ought to consider.
. . . The point you raise is a legitimate one.”123
“As far as Ronnie was concerned,” Nancy said, “that did it.”124
Society columnist Aileen “Suzy” Mehle, who had come to the convention with Zipkin, recalled a conversation she had had with Nancy that evening about Ford and Kissinger’s power play. “‘How dare they,’ she said.
And I said, ‘You’d have to watch them. There wouldn’t be any co-presidency.
They would be president, and maybe they’d let Ronnie be vice president—
let us guide you. Right. ’ Nancy was miffed.