The Myths and Electoral History of Ronald Reagan, Part 3: How Watergate Almost Certainly Saved Reagan's Career and His Decision to Challenge Gerald Ford

 

Ronald Reagan was re-elected governor in 1970.  He was considered by many in the conservative movement a front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination in 1976. However, by the time of the 1972 election both Reagan and those most closely aligned with him were beginning to have serious questions about how Richard Nixon was leading the party.

It had become very clear that the Vietnam War was going to end in an American defeat. The policy of détente that Nixon and Henry Kissinger were maintaining with the Soviets was anathema to the hard-liners of the conservative, as was his going to China in the spring of 1972. On the domestic level conservatives were even angrier. Nixon had taken the country off the gold standard in the fall of 1971. He had continued to expand the American government and the establishment of departments like the EPA infuriated the pro-business wing of the party. And privately many question his decision to act in favor of busing.

This caused many conservatives to seethe in private that the Republican party no longer had their best interests at heart. The problem was in the aftermath of the 1972 election that they couldn’t deny it wasn’t popular with the American public. Regardless of George McGovern’s flaws as a candidate and the Democratic Party establishment to basically abandon him early in the fall campaign, the fact remained that Richard Nixon would win in 1972 the greatest landslide in electoral history to that point for any major party candidate.  He had received more than sixty percent of the popular vote and had carried 49 states, losing only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia for 521 electoral votes in total.

To be clear, this was far more a triumph for Richard Nixon then the Republican party as a whole. The Democrats still maintained healthy majorities in both houses of Congress. They had managed to gain only twelve seats in the House and had lost two seats in the Senate. (One of the Republicans defeated was Caleb Boggs of Delaware who lost to a man who would not even be eligible to sit in the Senate for several months after he took office: Joe Biden.) But in that sense it was a recognition of his policies.  It was hard to argue that Nixon’s vision for the party was the one the public believed in, even if they disliked the man.

Reagan would no doubt have faced stiff opposition had events taken their normal course.  Spiro Agnew would likely have been a strong front-runner for the nomination. Nixon had taken a special interest in his new Secretary of the Treasury, a former Democratic governor of Texas John Connally. Nelson Rockefeller, who was also reelected in 1970 would no doubt throw his hat into the ring.

Then the coverup surrounding Watergate began to unravel. More importantly when it came to Reagan’s future, a federal investigation into Spiro Agnew began into kickbacks he had taken when he was governor of Maryland. These payments had continued into his time as Vice President. For much of 1973 Nixon continued to support Agnew, but that was as much for his own protection: he thought the idea of a possibly convicted felon in the White House would keep Congress from the march to impeach him. Finally on October 9, 1973 Agnew resigned the Vice Presidency and would plead no contest to the charges against him.

With Agnew gone, Nixon had to name another Vice President. Many in the public and the Republican party wanted Reagan to get the Vice Presidency: there is no indication whether Reagan was ever seriously considered.  Nixon received advice from Congressional leaders and later on Speaker Carl Albert that they ‘gave him no choice but Gerald Ford.”

Ford was the house minority leader who for more than a decade had been trying to build a majority to become Speaker. He was immensely disappointed Nixon’s landslide had not done that. Ford had told his family that he intended to make one last effort in 1974 and then retire in 1976. However Ford agreed to the nomination, telling Betty that it would be ‘a nice conclusion’ to his career. Under the 25^th amendment Ford was confirmed by near unanimous margins.

As Watergate continued to unravel Ford continued to defend Nixon. By August of 1974, Nixon decided to resign. Gerald Ford became President.

With the ascendancy of Ford, Reagan assumed his political life was over.  He was limited to two terms as governor of California and had to leave office in the fall of 1974.  Ford had not yet decided he was run for reelection but few doubted that would happen.  Even if he lost, Reagan’s next real chance would in 1980. By that point Reagan would have been an afterthought in the political conversation to whatever the next generation of Republicans were.

But it wasn’t just Reagan’s political career many thought was dead after Ford took office. The 1974 midterms were a disaster for the GOP. The Democrats would gain 49 seats in the House of Representatives and four in the Senate. Given everything that happened with Watergate, many thought the Republican Party itself was dead. Indeed in late 1974, Richard Viguerie, a right wing direct mail money raiser, came to Ronald Reagan and asked him to run on a third party ticket he was planning to run for the Presidency in 1976. Reagan considered it for a few weeks but ultimately declined, refusing to give up on the party.

Much of Reagan’s forward momentum for this campaign would come from a John Sears. Sears had masterminded Nixon’s delegate hunt but had been forced out of the administration by John Mitchell within a few months of Nixon taking office. Sears thought the process was doable. He believed, when most of the public and the press did not, that Reagan was far from a lightweight. He believed he could be educated and moved to the center. He thought if he altered his rhetoric Reagan could become a national candidate. He wanted the harsh edge that had been apparent of him as governor to become less evident on the campaign trail.

In this he had to convince not just Reagan but his staff. They wanted to do it, but the prospect of it was terrifying. Sears served as a go-between for them, many of the conservatives and the California money men. Finally his growing dissolution with Ford led him to begin his challenge officially on November 1975.

Few took it seriously at the time. Under other circumstances they would have every right too. To challenge an incumbent President for the nomination of his party just wasn’t done: four years later, speaking of the Ted Kennedy campaign, Theodore White would argue the basic fallacy of the concept, saying that the idea of an insurgent campaign bisecting the party powers in order to overcome the establishment and then brining it together to unify behind that candidate was a fable.

It’s worth noting, for the record, that White was a member of the old school who thought that primary politics were detrimental to the political process and that the bosses should have the power.  This was an example of White’s own being out of touch with American politics in his own lifetime. In 1952, Estes Kefauver’s defeat of Harry Truman in the New Hampshire primary had finally nudged Truman not to seek reelection. In 1968, the narrowest of Lyndon Johnson’s victory over Eugene McCarthy in that same state was one of the major factors that caused Johnson to announced he would not seek reelection. There was clear precedent for this.

And Ford had spent much of his presidency being both an inept candidate and the general reputation of a bumbler. The newly created Saturday Night Live had created the picture of Gerald Ford as someone who was constantly tripping and looking inept and foolish. He had to sacrifice his new Vice President Nelson Rockefeller early in his campaign saying he would not be on the ticket in 1976. Nothing Ford did seemed to help his image. And Reagan’s arrival as a challenger seemed to show Republicans frustration with Ford and their yearning for an alternative. Three weeks after his campaign officially began Reagan had shot from trailing Ford by twenty-three percent to an eight point lead.

In a sense, this is where the Reagan campaign made its fatal mistake. Rather than decide to campaign as an underdog against an incumbent and lower expectations, they chose to raise them. As we shall see in the next article, this decision would be a handicap to the Reagan campaign in the early days that could have doomed in it – and that they truly never overcame.