McCain's selection of Palin as his running mate got me thinking about Reagan's choosing of George Bush Sr. as his running mate in 1980. I had read previously that it was a last-minute, rather rash decision. Makes me wonder what went on in the choosing of Palin over the preceding months, weeks, days and hours. Personally, I view McCain's choice as reckless and irresponsible and exceedingly selfish. Clearly, however, it was also a desperate choice; there is satisfaction in the fact that the whole matter likely caused them all much turmoil as pressure grew, and as McCain shook in his boots throughout the historic Democratic National Convention unfolding flawlessly before him and his cronies.
According to one account,
The Rise of the Vulcans, by James Mann:
On the night of the Republican convention approved Reagan's nomination for president, Reagan's advisers held a series of intense negotiations with some of the leading officials in the Ford administration, led by Henry Kissinger and Alan Greenspan. The Ford team was seeking an agreement under which Ford would become in effect a copresident with responsibility for certain issues, including foreign policy. In the early negotiations the deal was specifically to include the appointment of Kissinger as secretary of state. ...
It was a fateful moment in U.S. foreign policy. The underlying question was whether Reagan and his supporters were willing to abandon their challenge to Henry Kissinger and his policies in hopes of attracting moderate Republicans and improving their overall chances in the fall election. The Reaganites had chosen to make detente one of the main issues during Reagan's 1976 primary challenge to Ford. In the 1980 campaign they had repeatedly argued that the Carter administration was weak in foreign policy, principally because they claimed he too had supported detente for too long. Yet now, at the conservatives' moment of victory within the Republican party, the Reagan forces were still so unsure of their chances of defeating Carter that they were on the verge of handing the control of foreign policy back to Kissinger, their bete noire, the architect of detente. Some of Reagan's foreign policy were horrified. One, Richard Allen, lobbied against the Ford deal.
Finally, late at night, the negotiations broke down. The Reagan advisers began to balk at the requests of the Ford team for power sharing ... (Ford) paid a visit to Reagan's hotel suite and told the Republican nominee, "Look, this isn't going to work."
The sudden collapse of these negotiations left the Reagan team in crisis. It was nearly eleven o'clock Wednesday evening, and by that time the Republican convention and the nation were wating for Reagan to announce his vice presidential choice. "For several days, I had expected Ford to be on the ticket, and I hadn't given much thought to the other candidates," Reagan later admitted. He needed to find someone else quickly. At that moment of certainty, Allen, who for several hours had been suggesting Bush as a possible alternative to Ford, again suggested Bush and found his phone number; Bush and his wife, Barbara, were at a nearby hotel, where they had been glumly watching televeision reports of the Reagan-Ford discussions. Reagan made the call, and a surprised Bush happily accepted the invitation to run for vice president. In those few moments, almost by happenstance, the Bush family dynasty was given its start.
Reagan's belated offer to Bush was especially disappointing to one other Republican aspirant who thought he should have been chosen instead. Donald Rumsfeld ...
Afterward, Rumsfeld asked Allen, his friend of many years, why the Reagan team had decided to turn to Bush instead of him. "Because I didn't happen to have your phone number handy, and I did have Bush's," Allen answered. That wasn't the full story; Allen had been pushing for Bush because he seemed like the Republican with the best chance of derailing the Ford-Kissinger deal.
Many years later Allen privately mused to friends that he had probably made a mistake, that instead of having had Reagan telephone Bush, he should have lobbied for Rumsfeld, who he thought would have become vice president and then made a great president.
pp. 104-105
Here's Allen's own account of the Repugs' choosing of Bush Sr. as VP running mate, entitled
George Herbert Walker Bush; The Accidental Vice President:
July 30, 2000
George Herbert Walker Bush; The Accidental Vice President
By RICHARD V. ALLEN
What I remember most about entering Ronald Reagan's suite early on the third evening of the 1980 Republican convention, the night of his nomination, was the silence. It's not that there weren't plenty of people around. William J. Casey, Reagan's campaign manager, Richard Wirthlin, his pollster, and his advisers Peter Hannaford, Michael Deaver and Edwin Meese were all there in the candidate's elegantly appointed rooms on the 69th floor of the Detroit Plaza Hotel. So, too, was Reagan, dressed in a casual shirt and tan slacks. The entire group was seated on a large U-shaped couch, hushed, as if they were watching some spellbinding movie on TV.
~snip~
At 11:25, the negotiators returned; Casey reported that ''the answer is probably no.'' Five minutes later, Ford, accompanied by Barrett, entered the suite to talk with Reagan, and we left the room. The two men spent a few minutes alone, and at 11:35, Ford departed. We rushed back into the room, and Reagan said: ''I have to say the answer is no. All this time, my gut instinct has been that this is not the right thing. I have affection and respect for Ford. He said he would go all out to help.'' There was complete silence.
Reagan glanced around and asked those assembled -- a group that included Casey, Meese, Wirthlin, Hannaford, Deaver and me -- Well, what do we do now?'' There was no immediate response. No one offered an alternate plan. No one tossed out a name. Expecting instant opposition, I ventured, ''We call Bush.'' Once more, silence. Reagan again looked at each of us; hearing no objection, he said, ''Well, let's get Bush on the phone.''
At precisely 11:38, the phone was in Reagan's hand; though they barely knew each other, Reagan dove right in. ''George,'' he said warmly, ''I would like to go over there and tell them that I am recommending you for vice president. Could I ask you one thing -- do I have your permission to make an announcement that you support the platform across the board?'' We could hear Bush agreeing at the other end. Reagan then left for the convention center where, shortly after midnight, he took the podium to praise Ford and then to announce his running mate, George Bush.
And so it came to pass that Ronald Reagan averted what would have been a disaster for his candidacy and the Republican Party. The following morning, Ed Meese called us together and declared the official line should be that the process of selecting a running mate had been orderly and measured and that there ''never was a deal with Ford'' for the vice presidency. Technically, he's right, since no deal was ever consummated.
Months later, while on the campaign plane, I asked Deaver what was in his mind as he sat in those discussions. He thought for a moment and said, ''Look, I'm a guy from Sacramento, Calif., and there I was sitting at a negotiating table with Henry Kissinger, and Kissinger had negotiated with Mao.'' Astonished, I waited for something more, then asked, ''And so, that's it?'' He looked at me as if I didn't understand and said, sharply: ''Of course that's it. I was sitting right there!''
For his part, Kissinger, no stranger to balky negotiations, later told The Washington Post that ''if it had been possible for both the principals to go to bed, sleep on it, meet again in the morning, we could have wrapped up this thing in two hours in the morning,'' adding, ''that's how close it was.'' And I believe him.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B02E4DE133AF933A05754C0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1edit to clarify
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