Ronnie and Nancy_ Their Path to the White House - Bob Colacello [309]
Reagan immediately ordered Deaver to get Kissinger on the phone, saying, “This has gone too far.” On Reagan’s behalf, Deaver told Kissinger that it was time for Ford to put up or shut up. At the same time, Reagan dispatched Casey to Ford’s suite with the message that if the former president accepted his offer, it “had to be based on faith and understanding; it could not be a written compact.”127 Shortly after eleven o’clock, Ford appeared at Reagan’s suite and gracefully withdrew. “Then [Reagan] picked up the phone and said, to the amazement of everyone in the room, ‘I’m calling George Bush. I want to get this settled. Anyone have any objections?’”128
“Out of a clear blue sky, Governor Reagan called me up and asked if I would be willing to run with him on the ticket,” an elated Bush told reporters the next day. “I was surprised, of course, and I was very, very pleased. I feel honored. . . . I told him I would work, work, work.”129 It is clear from Barbara Bush’s memoir that she wanted her husband to be on the ticket. George Bush had addressed the convention earlier that evening, assuming, as the rumor mill had it, that Ford had already been chosen.
“We went right back to the Pontchartrain Hotel and our whole floor was filled with many close friends and family,” Mrs. Bush wrote. “It was like a funeral. George found Jeb [Bush] in our bedroom really upset. ‘It’s not fair, it’s not fair,’ he said. George and I put on old clothes, and I urged him to let us pack up and get out of there. George gave both Jeb and me a Reagan vs. Carter: 1977–1980
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talking-to: ‘We came to this convention to leave politics with style and we are going to do it.’ Almost immediately, the phone call came to our room from Ronald Reagan and the rest is history.”130
Nancy had been in the convention hall for three hours by then. After watching the Ford-Cronkite interview, she had taken Patti, Ron and his girlfriend Doria, and Michael and Colleen to the Joe Louis Arena.
Maureen, who was a delegate from California, had been there all day.
Several of Nancy’s friends were also with her that night, including Betty Wilson, Norma Redo, and Betty Adams, who remembered how surprised Nancy was when “she was called out of the box and told that they chose Bush.”131
“On ‘decision night,’ I went to the convention hall totally in the dark,”
Paul Laxalt recalled. “Before long, I had an urgent call from Ron, which I took in a trailer outside the arena. ‘Paul,’ Ron said, ‘I’ve decided to go [with]
George Bush. I know that many of the delegates will be unhappy, so George and I are coming to the arena together. Will you please join us?’ In a few minutes, George and Barbara Bush and Ron and Nancy Reagan arrived.
Nancy rushed to me and took my hand. ‘I’m so sorry, Paul. I wish it had been you.’”132
Nancy grudgingly came to see things Mike Deaver’s way. As he wrote,
“You could not have invented a more balanced ticket than Ronald Reagan and George Bush. One, a Midwesterner, up from poverty, a performer, out-doorsman, and regular guy, strong in the West. The other, a child of wealth, of prep schools, a war hero—a commissioned navy pilot at eighteen—captain of the Yale baseball team, now a transplanted Texas oilman. Bush had credentials where Reagan needed them most. He had served in Congress, as ambassador to the United Nations, as chairman of the Republican National Committee, as director of the CIA, as envoy to China. He was a professional who came across as earnest, well-bred, squeaky-clean.”133
But, Nancy Reynolds told me, “I don’t think Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush ever developed a great, warm, cozy relationship.”134 Although both women went to Smith, and Barbara was only four years younger than Nancy, their backgrounds, styles, and personalities contrasted sharply.
Even in Detroit, the buzz was that the two women didn’t get along. “Why that’s silly,” Barbara Bush told Los Angeles Times reporter