Oct

30

Ohio Could Learn From Reagan vs Ford History

October 30, 2007 |

What would the nation be like if the Republican Party hadn’t put into office a moderate? Instead of Ford what would have been if Reagan or another conservative had won? Certainly there probably wouldn’t have been a Peanut Farmer for President with a woeful foreign and domestic policy.

The recent revelations about Ford really should raise eyebrows in Ohio. What would Ohio have been like if the GOP hadn’t put their backing behind one of the worst moderates in Ohio history… BOB TAFT? What would have happened if in the Senate we had placed two conservative Senators? We wouldn’t have seen Brown put into office and we certainly wouldn’t be losing the Senate seat that Voinovich currently holds.

Thanks to weak willed Moderates in Ohio we now can sit back and bask in the glow of another Democratic Governor. When will the insanity end. Perhaps we will yet see a conservative have an opportunity after this governorship.

[National Review] Reagan opposed Ford’s signing of the Helsinki Accords in August 1975, a product of détente which Reagan perceived as a human-rights farce. He said it was nothing more than a “propaganda plus” for the Kremlin. By signing the accord, the United States had, in effect, “agreed to legitimize the boundaries of Eastern Europe, legally acquiescing in the loss of freedom of millions of Eastern Europeans.” Worse, said Reagan, Helsinki did nothing to constrain the Soviets outside of Eastern Europe. “After Helsinki,” wrote Reagan correctly, “the Soviet Union quickly made it clear that the so-called ‘wars of national liberation’ of which they are so fond, would not be affected by the document.”

Reagan hit détente so hard throughout the campaign that there was a consensus that President Ford stopped using the term because Reagan had made it a dirty word. So successful was Reagan that the New York Times, in a May 14, 1976, editorial titled “Mr. Reagan’s Veto,” claimed that the former California governor had “won something approaching veto power over the Ford Administration’s foreign policy.” As Reagan did, Ford dropped in the polls. In another editorial, titled, “President Under Seige,” The Times opined: “Governor Reagan has become a credible candidate while President Ford has slipped from almost certain victor to underdog.”

Reagan was making a dent, and Ford knew he was now vulnerable in the primaries. After New Hampshire, Ford had surged to five consecutive decisive victories, at times by big margins. These wins came mostly in the liberal northeast. As Reagan aide Martin Anderson remembered, the unasked question to Reagan by his campaign staff was, “When are you going to quit?” Reagan, however, was adamant. “I’m taking this all the way to the convention in Kansas City,” he declared defiantly, “and I’m going even if I lose every damn primary between now and then.”

Immediately after that decision, Reagan won North Carolina, claimed a huge triumph in Texas, and followed with victories in Indiana, Georgia, and Alabama. The Ford team began shaking in its boots. In a stunning turnabout, a new question was posed: Could Reagan go to the Republican convention in August and win enough delegates on the first ballot? Reagan estimated a “very great possibility, if not probability,” that he could do just that.

Suddenly, Ford not only dropped the word détente but replaced it with the preferred phrase of Reagan: “peace through strength.” In a pronouncement that signaled a startling concession before the convention, a waffling President Ford declared: “Our policy for American security can best be summarized in three simple words of the English language: peace through strength.” Reagan chuckled, noting it was “a slogan with a nice ring to it.”

All of this came to a head on August 19, 1976, when Republicans held their convention at the Kemper Arena in Kansas City, where Reagan, in the end, did not get the nomination, crushing his supporters. And it was then, at that precise moment, that Gerald Ford’s immeasurable graciousness was again put on display before the entire nation:

President Ford had just finished speaking. As a gesture of reconciliation and supreme good will, he waved from the podium to the Reagans, seated in a skybox. He beckoned Reagan to come down to speak. The Republican faithful exhorted, “Ron! Ron! Ron!” They chanted “Speech! Speech! Speech!”

A blushing Reagan refused, gesturing his hands downward, pushing delegates to sit down and shut up. “It’s his night,” he muttered to friends, deferring to Ford. “I’m not going down there.” Ford pressed on: “Ron, will you come down and bring Nancy?” National television audiences watched in anticipation, as ABC, CBS, and NBC news anchors peered through binoculars with moment-by-moment commentary.

Reagan eventually obliged. As he trotted down the corridors on his way to the podium, he said to Nancy, “I haven’t the foggiest idea what I’m going to say.”

Reagan soon resolved the problem, giving one of the most memorable convention speeches in American history. Official biographer Edmund Morris later wrote of the extemporaneous talk: “The power of the speech was extraordinary. And you could just feel throughout the auditorium the palpable sense among the delegates that [they had] nominated the wrong guy.”

The race for the GOP presidential nomination had come down to the wire, and Ronald Reagan fell frustratingly short. He missed by only 117 votes, grabbing 47.4% of delegates in an 1187 to 1070 contest. The winner needed 1130.

Three months later, Gerald Ford lost the presidency to Jimmy Carter.

From 1974-79, during those Ford-Carter years, the Soviets picked up eleven proxy or satellite states around the world. America was losing the Cold War. The third and most disastrous year of Carter’s presidency — 1979 — ended with Americans taken hostage in Iran in November and the Soviets invading Afghanistan in December. Now, much of America agreed with Reagan that détente was a joke. His time would come a year later.

The Ford-Reagan relationship in the 1970s was a metaphor for Ford’s presidency: His policy toward the Soviets was flawed, and he was neither a notably effective nor inspiring president, but his kindness as a person was hard to surpass.


Comments

1 Comment so far

  1. Ben keeler on October 30, 2007 5:50 pm

    Taft obviously was a disaster, but DeWine might have lost regardless in 2006.

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