I’m feeling much less spry this week as I get prepared to play another game of soccer. I thought I’d share a nice anecdote I just found about the 1976 Republican convention:
In one of the convention’s boldest strokes, Reagan startled the party by announcing in advance that his running mate would be Sen. Richard Schweiker, a liberal Republican from Pennsylvania. (The state had more than 100 delegates, and almost all were uncommitted.) The move dismayed conservatives — but it showed Reagan’s willingness to do what he needed to do to win.
It wasn’t enough. On the first ballot on Wednesday, Aug. 18, the penultimate day of the convention, Ford got 1,187 votes to Reagan’s 1,070. The incumbent president won just 57 votes more than he needed.
By prior agreement between the campaigns, the winner would call upon the loser. So Ford went to the Alameda Hotel to meet in private with Reagan and start mending fences. Beforehand, Reagan sent word that Ford shouldn’t offer the vice-presidential nomination; the defeated candidate didn’t want it, but he also didn’t want to embarrass Ford by saying no. Weeks earlier, when the subject of a Ford-Reagan pairing came up, Ford told his chief of staff, Dick Cheney: “Absolutely not! I don’t want anything to do with that son of a bitch!” as Cheney recalled to me years later. For the first time that year, Ford and Reagan agreed on something.
So, I guess Ted Cruz should promise to make Pat Toomey his veep, right?
After all, the Pennsylvania delegates are still uncommitted all these years later.
