Ford Beats Reagan! (How conservatism won in 1980 by losing in 1976)

Reagan's Revolution
The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All
by Craig Shirley
Nelson Current, 417 pp., $25.99

LATE ON THE EVENING OF August 19, 1976, at the Kemper Arena in Kansas City, prospects looked bleak for the Republican party and even bleaker for the conservative movement. Gerald R. Ford had just barely survived a fierce challenge for the party's presidential nomination by Ronald Reagan. The Republican establishment at every level was furious, contending that Reagan's challenge had made it much less likely that President Ford could be elected. Not even Reagan's champions imagined that his failed campaign would be the salvation of the party and of the nation.

In Reagan's Revolution, the first book-length account of the only campaign Reagan ever lost, Republican activist Craig Shirley describes the state of the GOP at the moment of Ford's nomination in the opening paragraph of his first chapter: "By the late summer of 1974, the Republican party was in its death throes. Bereft, bedraggled, unloved, and unwanted, it stood for nothing and antagonized everyone. If the GOP had been a stray cat, it would have been hauled away to the animal shelter and immediately euthanized."

That graphic description is no exaggeration. As Shirley relates it, a sixty-five-year-old former governor of California who had spent most of his life as a B-movie actor nearly ousted an incumbent president. If Reagan had not challenged the president and had not come so close to succeeding, the subsequent history of the United States and of the world would have been quite different.

The Republican party indeed seemed to be dying after the 1974 election, in the wake of Richard Nixon's disgrace and resignation. The Democratic margin in Congress was staggering, 147 seats in the House of Representatives and 22 in the Senate. Only 13 governors were Republicans. As gloomy party members assembled in Kansas City, polls showed Ford trailing Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter by more than 30 percentage points.

Reagan's challenge was greeted by the party leadership as a stab in the back of a gravely ill person. That last night of the 1976 convention at Kemper Arena was not a happy occasion. Reagan had to be coaxed by Ford from his skybox to stand next to Ford on the podium after the president delivered his acceptance speech. Reagan said he did it because he didn't want to disappoint the cheering delegates. His impromptu remarks, eliciting a greater response than Ford's did, did not mention the president by name and praised only the conservative platform forced by the Reagan rebels on the party leadership. He had no plans to campaign for Ford, and it would be weeks before he did.

Considering the nation's veneration of Reagan at the time of his death, it is difficult to imagine the low assessment of him that prevailed in elite opinion thirty years ago. The New York Times's James Reston, the model for journalists across the country, wrote that Reagan's challenge was "patently ridiculous," an "amusing but frivolous fantasy," and an event that "makes no sense." When Theodore Roosevelt launched the last previous intraparty challenge against a Republican president by opposing William Howard Taft in 1912, he was the most popular living American. Ronald Reagan was hardly known outside California in 1976.

THE FAILURE of the Ford presidency was the reason Reagan became the first challenger since Roosevelt to threaten seriously the renomination of an incumbent Republican. His pardon of Richard Nixon is usually cited as the reason for Ford's unpopularity, but it went much deeper. He seemed to have no public purpose, and his presidency revealed no philosophy. A Republican president whose hero was Harry Truman has perception problems from the beginning. A career politician from Grand Rapids, Michigan, he appeared to share Henry Kissinger's belief that the declining West could not successfully compete with the Soviet bloc and an accommodation had to be found.

Reagan's grassroots popularity grew as the public perceived he would take a harder position against the Kremlin than the Republican president who declined to see Russian dissenter Alexander Solzhenitsyn because it might offend Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and undermine détente. But Reagan's clever and manipulative campaign manager John Sears pulled him away from such divisive issues in the interest of seeing him nominated by a united party. In the meantime, the Ford campaign pounded mercilessly against Reagan as unfit for the presidency. Ford disdained Reagan, and his attitude was spread throughout the president's campaign. The contempt for Reagan was palpable.

Stu Spencer, the feisty Los Angeles political consultant, was at Reagan's side in his first run for governor in 1966 and again when he was elected president in 1980. But in 1976, Spencer was directing the assault against Reagan and asserting he was not fit to be president.

THE SEARS APPROACH very nearly resulted in the early suffocation of Reagan's candidacy, when Ford won the first five primaries against Reagan. It was certainly no centrist but the right-wing senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina and his campaign manager, Tom Ellis, who circumvented Sears and on their own waged an active campaign in their state. Had it not been for this North Carolina upset, Reagan would have dropped out of the 1976 race and never been seen in 1980. It was that close.

Even so, nobody thought of 1976 as preparation for 1980. "Virtually everybody who left Kansas City," Shirley writes, "was convinced that Reagan's political future was over--his senior aides, maybe he himself, and certainly the political elites and the national media." Even Reagan was not aware that American politics in 1976 was in the midst of a realignment that Republicans had been too obtuse to understand, much less to exploit.

Journalists, scholars, and practical politicians all missed the migration of voters who would come to be called "Reagan Democrats" into the Republican party. By any standard, Ford's administration had been a failure. The United States was losing the Cold War, and the economy continued to be sluggish. The consensus in the political community was that a right-wing assault turned what was difficult into something dreadful. Nobody could perceive that the Republican party was about to undergo a profound transformation.

THE CLOSEST I CAME at the time to appreciating what really was going on was when, after Reagan's upset win in North Carolina, I traveled to Texas to report on that state's first Republican presidential primary and attended a Reagan rally in Fort Worth. In eighteen years of covering national politics at that point, I never had seen a Republican audience quite like this one. Shirley has quoted me as writing that the crowd of over three thousand people "lacked the sleek, chic look of Texas Republicans and seemed much more like a typical Wallace rally--women in housedresses, sports-shirted men, lots of small American flags."

I then suggested that the "collapse of [George] Wallace's candidacy is sending right-wing populist Democrats" to vote for Reagan. The phenomenon was widely referred to in political circles as the Wallace "jailbreak." But that implies a temporary quality to the crossover, born of Wallace's failure. In fact, when Reagan won all one hundred delegates in the primary, it manifested the birth of a new kind of Republican in Texas. Within a generation, the party would dominate the state's politics. It was a harbinger for the South and the nation.

THE ONLY STATEWIDE elected Texas Republican official in 1976, Senator John Tower, was Ford's national-convention floor manager. He supported Ford along with nearly everybody in the party establishment nationwide. Among orthodox Republicans, there was emotional conviction that the Reagan campaign was a disreputable distraction that could only worsen the party's grim outlook.

The subplot to the rebellion of conservatives was the struggle between Sears, leading Reagan's campaign team, and the conservative activists headed by Helms and Ellis. Incredibly, Sears was trying in those days to nominate a Ronald Reagan stripped of all ideology, in order to unite, he supposed, the Republican party for the general election and to attract non-conservative voters.

Sears gave away his concept of Reagan in an interview with Shirley for the book. Describing his impression of Reagan after their first meeting, Sears called him "a great piece of horseflesh" that could be "properly trained, properly working." Helms and Ellis, in contrast, saw him as an ideologue who would combat the left. Nobody at that juncture perceived in him the potential for a great leader.

HELMS WAS APPALLED when Sears talked Reagan into selecting as his running mate Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania, who voted the straight labor line and was weak on national security (and was not, as Shirley says, "fairly conservative"). Depressing Reaganite spirits, this daring step did not pry away the forty to sixty delegates from Ford that Sears predicted.

Sears's real choice for vice president, however, is revealed by Shirley for the first time. Sears told the author he wanted Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, who had been purged by Ford from the 1976 ticket to appease conservatives. Sears is quoted as saying Helms and his friends "would have come off the ceiling in a day or two" but that he did not go through with it because he thought Rockefeller would be talked out of it after first accepting. Sears could not have appreciated how much Rockefeller's big-government Republicanism offended the party faithful.

Shirley, well known in the political community as a campaign consultant and public relations practitioner, is not a professional writer but has produced a very readable first book. It is nicely paced, meticulously researched, and packed with anecdotes. He uses both primary and secondary sources, plus interviews with surviving participants to produce an account of events that occurred when he was a junior in college. He is the dispassionate narrator, avoiding use of the first person and seldom presenting his own views.

A writer recording recent history has the problem of what to do about participants' remembering events of thirty years ago in a way that always puts them in the best light. John Sears and Dick Cheney, who was President Ford's chief of staff, were interviewed by Shirley and get generally sympathetic treatment. Shirley did not interview Clarke Reed, the Mississippi Republican leader, or Robert Hartmann, Ford's longtime adviser, and they come off very badly.

SHIRLEY DOES NOT TRY to answer the questions that have been pondered in Republican circles for the past three decades. Could Reagan have defeated Carter had he been nominated? If he had, could a Reagan presidency have succeeded if he were elected before his views on taxes were fully developed? Was it the best of all possible worlds for Reagan to lose the 1976 nomination but to be ready to run in 1980?

Nobody knows. Reagan was indeed more fully prepared for the presidency in 1980 than he was in 1976. But if he somehow could have won that election, he would have saved the country the four years of the Carter presidency--providing a service to all Americans. Shirley's task is not to speculate on what might have been. He tells the story of a losing campaign that may have saved the country, and he does it well.

Robert D. Novak is a syndicated columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and a CNN commentator.

If JFK hadnt been assassinated, could Goldwater have beaten him?? What would have been different had this have happened??

Not likely. Goldwater had many qualities, but he was a very bad at campaigning. He simply didn't have the "fire in his belly" necessary for a national campaign. He couldn't stand the phoniness and theatrics of campaigning. JFK was a 'natural' who lived for the campaign and loved doing it. IMHO, Kennedy would have beaten Goldwater by an even bigger majority than Johnson did.

Let's fact it. Goldwater didn't really want to be president. He wanted to deliver a message and he did. But in 1964, the people were not quite ready to hear it.

"A B Movie actor is like Long Duck Dong from Sixteen Candles who went on to be in a few more things."

You're saying that the great Gedde Watanabe was a B-movie actor? Not only was he on Volunteers and Gung Ho (both the movie and the TV series), he played Kuni in the Weird Al Yankovic classic UHF. A finer actor our generation has not known.

But seriously, the phrase "B-movie actor" refers not to an actor who was not a star, but to an actor who appeared in "B movies." In the old days, big Hollywood releases were "A movies," and smaller releases were "B movies." It seems to me that Reagan appeared in a lot of A movies, although he certainly appeared in a few B movies as well.

This is great question.

Believe it or not, JFK and Goldwater were friends from serving in the Senate together and were planning to face each other in the '64 election. According to Goldwater, he and JFK were going to have a debate about the role of government in America. Goldwater would take the conservative position and JFK would take the liberal position and they would have a series of debates and let the people decide.

Then JFK was assassinated and LBJ, who Goldwater despised, ran in 1964. Goldwater didn't want to run in 1964 against Johnson but he was committed to running so he went ahead away. By running in 1964, Goldwater started the modern conservative movement.

If Goldwater would have ran against JFK who knows if Goldwater would have won. Liberals in those days weren't loony like they are today. It would have been a great campaign.

This article mentions George Wallace. I am not sure he is given his due in history. Democrats whine about Nader giving Bush the 2000 election. But Wallace had a significant candidacy in 1968 which probably gave the election to Nixon and certainly gave him the road map for his southern strategy in 1972. Wallace was a populist and ahead of his time. He had great stump speeches. He talked about pointy head pseudo intellectuals and talked about the federal government by saying the states throw a tax dollar across the Potomac and the feds throw the states back a nickel. He was a real threat to the Democrat establishment and he had the most popular votes of any Dem presidential candidate when he was shot down on the campaign trail by Arthur Lee Bremer. Reagan would hit the sames themes as Wallace but without the racist baggage and with the class of a movie actor instead of a lifelong pol who lost his first campaign in a race for dogcatcher. Of course Reagan also was shot by the new and improved version of a crazed lone assassin in John Hinckley.

Goldwater couldn't have beaten JFK. Among other things, JFK was always a media darling, and the media was very tightly controlled then.

JFK was the first real media president. He was the first president that had his own photographer. Goldwater had no charisma. Also, the most conservative part of the country then, as now, was the southern United States. Hatred of Yankees and Republicans ran deep in the south, then. There is no way that any Republican could have carried any Confederate state in that era. Ask yourself how much of a chance a conservative would have without Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, or Virginia.

Reagan was a true original. He combined optimism, belief in a strong defense, upholding moral values without demanding that everyone see things his way, belief in a free market system, and respect for the common man all into one package. It's very seldom that his kind comes by. God bless Ronald Reagan.

It's worth remembering that so much of the fuel for the Reagan fire came from conservative reaction against Nixon and Kissinger (and then, of course, Ford). It wasn't just frustration from the middle of the electorate with the economy, or, later, the hostages. (Those explanations get fastened onto to help make Carter look like a victim of circumstances, and not the flag bearer for a losing approach.)

It's amazing to look back and watch Ford suck up to the Soviets. This is an American president? No wonder people like Reagan were so angry. Ford was the president of a defeated nation.

I was just a pup back in the late 70's, but I remember my dad used to take me along when we had to wait for an hour or more to get gas-- gas we could get only every other day. I remember my dad being pissed off about it a lot, but I couldn't understand why at the time.

Gas lines, hostages, Soviets in Afghanistan, double digit inflation, double digit unemployment, the sweater in the Oval Office-- damn, how did anyone in their right mind think that Carter could be re-elected?

How do the Democrats get away with pretending they don't remember ruining the country back then, too?

1976 was the campaign that got me interested in politics. While the author is right about Sears (who was fired after Reagan lost to George the Elder in Iowa, 1980), he is wrong in saying that the "Reagan Democrat" phenomenon was unrecognized. In 1976, Reagan was doing remarkably better in those states (e.g. Indiana) that had cross-over voting. Reagan Democrats were not going to bother with Jerry Brown, Jimmy Carter, Frank Church or Mo Udall. Moreover, many INDEPENDENTS flocked to these primaries because Regan represented them.

I also remember Reagan on either Merv Griffin or Phil Donahue, a couple of years later making it clear that he knew that 59% of the country had to be considered "conservative."

Here's another Novak statement that needs correcting:

When Theodore Roosevelt launched the last previous intraparty challenge against a Republican president by opposing William Howard Taft in 1912...

Actually, Taft's son, Robert, was also involved in a bitter intra-party revolt in 1952.

As regards TR and the Bull Moose, that challenge had an opposite effect of Reagan's, in that the challenger, TR, was kicked out of the party, and the party was rebuilt around Taft. Taft's GOP was far more conservative, free market-oriented than TR's, or what it would have been under TR in 1912. Taft defined the Republican party thereafter, not Roosevelt.

Anyway, I have no idea why Novak brought this up, anyway, other than, perhaps, to compare Reagan with Roosevelt, I guess.

Nicollo unmasked: Bromleyisms here

I've read that too...

Barry and JFK were going to run a 64 campaign like we have never or will never see....

They had even discussed the major issues, how how they would frame the agenda, and to hopefully lift politics with major debates over the future of the republic.
No "school uniform/appeal to soccer moms" nonsense.

Goldwater would have lost, but I don't think he minded.
He really just wanted to make Americans think about the role of government and the impact of the state on the individual. It would've been a hellova campaign.
Do we really need a welfare state? The U.N.? An income tax? Imagine those TV debates.....

From what I've read Goldwater took the assasination of JFK very hard. They got along very well as friends even thought they disagreed politically. (thought... not nearly as much as the mainstream would have you believe)

JFK "liberalism" vs. Goldwater "Conservatism" would have been a fantstic campaign to see.
(JFK was liberal only in a early '60's sense....If he were voting today he'd probably be a RINO from the northeast, not a Ted Kennedy Democrat....hehe
That said, Goldwater also would tick off half of the Republicans in the room if he spoke today....no matter the topic...hehe)

Gerald Ford is a RINO if there ever was one, it serves him well getting beat by the lunatic peanut farmer and his snooty wife.

The question of course is, did we deserve it? We are still cleaning up after the problems Carter caused. Better if Ford had won in 1976.

remember that George Wallace (a former socialist who turned racebaiter in 1962 when it became "politically expedient" to do so -in Alabama anyway-). George Wallace was shot in 1972 at the height of his political power on the day he won the democrat primaries in Maryland and Michigan (the latter with a whopping 51% effectively derailing former VP Hubert Humphrey's campaign). He was ahead of McGovern when it happened (he had also won Florida carrying every county in the state). He made another bid in 1976 and narrowly lost Florida to Carter (the "national" democrats skipped Florida thinking Wallace would win it) who promptly gained momentum as the "man who stopped Wallace". Had Wallace not been shot in 72, Carter wouldn't have been the democrat nominee in 1976. It's however unlikely Wallace would have been elected in either year, but history would sure have been different.

Ask John L. Lewis (black civil rights leader) about a phonecall from governor Wallace in the late 70's...

Wallace returned to the political arena one more time winning the governorship in 1982, and he won with the black vote and would have lost without it.

"THE ONLY STATEWIDE elected Texas Republican official in 1976, Senator John Tower, was Ford's national-convention floor manager. "

True, but he wasn't allowed on the floor. He had to wander the halls in embarrassment because we (the Texas Reaganites) would not allow Tower to be a delegate.

It was very immature of us but we were inexperienced, heady with our new power and had been treated like dogs by the Tower/Ford establishment. I will always regret my roll in hind site.

If JFK hadnt been assassinated, could Goldwater have beaten him??

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In my opinion, no. I remember how abrasive Goldwater was. Long after Reagan was not President anymore, I saw a documentary on Goldwater and was amazed that he said all the EXACT things Reagan said, but Reagan was so much milder in tone. Plus Kennedy was America's golden boy. I've heard all the talk that Kennedy's popularity was waning, but I don't know if, at crunch time, people would have given him up for someone as abrasive as Goldwater.

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