That's close to the way I heard it. It was The Great One himself, who worked 1976 and 1980 who related the story that Ronaldus Maximus *did* ask Ford if he wanted to be VP but the old RINO had un-Constitutional conditions demanding power-sharing. Reagan wisely dropped the idea and went with the runner-up Bush41.
Wikipedia kind of falls in between ...
After securing the Republican nomination in 1980, Ronald Reagan considered his former rival Ford as a potential vice-presidential running mate, but negotiations between the Reagan and Ford camps at the Republican National Convention were unsuccessful. Ford conditioned his acceptance on Reagan's agreement to an unprecedented "co-presidency",[151] giving Ford the power to control key executive branch appointments (such as Kissinger as Secretary of State and Alan Greenspan as Treasury Secretary). After rejecting these terms, Reagan offered the vice-presidential nomination instead to George H.W. Bush.[152]
They use the word "considered", but the rest of it kind of implies he *did* ask him. I suspect the truth is somewhere in between, perhaps the Rockefeller RINOs first went to Reagan and said 'PLEASE balance the ticket with an ideological weenie' ( as opposed to geographic balance ). LOL.
NB: 'The Great One' is of course Mark Levin. I pinged him on this in case he has time to help us out ... To Mark, if I remember your broadcast incorrectly I apologize profusely!
Of course, Mark would have been there (unlike me, who was watching it on TV) and I would defer to him. I’m sure Reagan was an astute observer of the political landscape and knew, like it or not, he had to deal with the Rockefeller wing. OTOH, I’d always thought that the GOPe foolishly thought they could steamroll Reagan and pushed too hard, at which point he pushed back even harder and the deal fell through.