An hour with Richard Norton Smith

From the Dull Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas, KPR presents an hour with Richard Norton Smith. I'm K MacIntyre. Richard Norton Smith is considered one of the nation's foremost presidential historians. He served as the first permanent director of the Dull Institute of Politics having served as the director of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum as well as several other presidential museums. Smith gave the eulogy at President Ford's Funeral Service in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His talk, remembering President Gerald R. Ford, was the first of the 2007 presidential lecture series at the Dull Institute. He speaks here with Bill Lacey, the current director of the Dull Institute, and now here are Bill Lacey and Richard Norton Smith. Thank you. We're delighted to have you here tonight. It's nice to be home. It's good to have you back. Thanks. It's so nice to see some of you. Lots of familiar faces. Thank you so much for coming out on a cold night. By the way,

this is unscripted, but I can't come back here or sit here as part of this program without saying what a fantastic job Bill and his colleagues are doing. He's one thing to build a building. It's another to make it come alive and that's what they are doing and it's wonderful to see the contribution that you're making, not only to this university and this community, but to this state. Well, thank you very much. Richard and I have some interesting parallels. I first met Ronald Reagan who I went on to work with when I was in college. You first met President Ford when you were in college at Harvard. I believe. Actually, I can beat you because I was I was an adolescent of annoying precocity, which was actually a preview of coming attractions, I guess. I was just playing a annoying adult. But anyway, at the age of 11, I decided I was going to start collecting autographs of political figures and in

the summer of 1965, I wrote off to more 30 or 40 people, including Ronald Reagan, including Nelson Rockefeller and including Gerald Ford. And I got back a lovely letter from the House Minority Leader, elected in the debris of the Goldwater disaster. But then we actually crossed paths for the first time about nine years later. I was at Harvard and as I said in the Eulogy, we were surprised that Richard Nixon's vice president would come to Harvard. He was surprised that there were enough Republicans at Harvard to form a club. And it was an extraordinary experience. And I introduced him and being annoying offstage couldn't resist showing him of a derogatory cartoon caricature. We go back 35 years and imagine yourself on the Harvard campus. Students for Democratic

Society had plastered the place with this caricature of Gerald Ford as a puppet impaled on the arm of a sinister looking Richard Nixon. And I showed it to him, you know, what a smart ass. And that was what most politicians would have said. They would have said it, but they would have thought it. They certainly most politicians would have blanched. He chuckled. He thought it was genuinely amusing. And then he asked if he could have a copy to display in his office. And that's the first time I knew this was not your typical, you know, politician, not your typical fill in the blank. Right. Well, he, we're going to focus tonight mostly on his presidency, but there are a couple of other aspects that I'd like to get into it with you, Rick, if I can. Some may not know this, but the president Ford was almost killed during World War II aboard the USS Monterey during a typhoon. Can you recount that story? Yeah. Actually, a little background on the evening of August 8, 1974, after Nixon announced his resignation. Of

course, the Ford's lies were turned upside down. And that night they went to bed and they held hands. And they said a prayer from from Proverbs that he had learned as a boy in Grand Rapids and had used often. He used it the day as a teenager that he discovered that his, his birth father was not the man he regarded, you know, as his father. And the other occasion, another occasion was in December of 1944 in the Philippine Sea. There was a typhoon with plus 100 knot winds. And he rushed up in the middle of the typhoon, lo and behold, the fire broke out on board the, the Monterey, which was a white aircraft carrier. Orde had originally enlisted in the Navy and had been sent to do physical education in North Carolina. That wasn't his idea of fighting for his country. So he did whatever he could to get onto a ship and he got onto the

Monterey. And in the middle of this typhoon, a great wave crashed over the thing and carried him all the way to the edge of the ship. And there was a two-inch railing around the ship. And that's what saved his life. And perhaps Proverbs. And 30 years later it was in a different kind of storm in which he found himself. Very definitely. He was, it was very, very clear from from the time that he kind of grew up on the national scene that that he and Mrs. Ford were extraordinarily close. That they were real partners. Talk to us about that a little bit. She just had such an incredible impact on his life. Yeah. And I think in some ways it's such a contemporary story. People thought of Ford at first blush in 74's is kind of white bread congressman from West Michigan, you know, who couldn't possibly be plugged into the zeitgeist, you know. And the fact of the matter is by then

you know, Mrs. Ford was struggling with with what we later learned were some addictions to pain killers. She was seeing a psychotherapist. All sorts of things that you know in those days would have destroyed a political career. But when people talk about the Ford's being grounded, I mean it's the whole family that's grounded. One of my favorite stories. On August 8th we all remember Richard Nixon was made for television. I mean whatever you think of Nixon, you know, from the Czech Republic to the helicopter, you know, to whatever. I mean Nixon was just mesmerizing TV presence. And Ford's best moments were off camera. When you think of August 8th, you all we all think of Nixon standing in the helicopter getting ready to leave. And I thought to myself, well I wonder what Ford said on the way back from the helicopter. You know, what would you say? And I asked him years later, he leaned over into Mrs. Ford's ear and said, we can do it. Which

tells you volumes. I mean this man whose first job was to reassure the country understood that first he had to reassure his wife. She said, all right, Jerry, if we have to, I will go with in the White House. But I'm too old to change. They're going to have to take me the way I am. Susan, who was not too old to change, was in tears because she said, does this mean I have to give up my boo jeans? Living in the White House. The great story that tells you something about the whole Ford family that night. Because remember the Nixon's, the Nixon's moved out. Obviously they went off to San Cometti. But it was so hasty that the Ford's didn't really move into the White House for two weeks. They went back to their house in Alexandria for two weeks. And every day the president would, you know, go to the White House and go to work and then come back to the suburbs at night. Anyway, on the night of August 9th, Mrs. Ford is in the kitchen, slaving over a hot pan of lasagna. And she said, Jerry, there's something wrong

with this picture. You're a president in the United States and I'm still cooking. And that tells you something about that relationship. And she kept him grounded. The famous 60 minutes interview, Moeys Safer said, she said, you could ask me anything you want. My husband won't mind. Famous last words. And Moeys Safer said, okay, do you ever tell him, you know, Jerry, you were very good today. She said, sure. She said, you know, I'm his, I'm the, I'm his worst or best critic. And that's exactly the, you know, the kind of relationship they add. The greatest trial for Richard for Gerald Ford, if you ask President Ford, what was the worst part of those first few weeks? It wasn't the burden. Horrible as that was. Going to Pittsburgh the next day and having a crowd yell, jail to Ford. The worst thing came 10 days later when Mrs. Ford went into the hospital for a surgery. No one really knew how drastic it was going to be. No one really knew

much at all about it. He went home that night, Friday night. And he said it was the loneliest night of his life. And the next day they operated, of course, you had the mistake to me. It was stage two cancer. It was a traumatizing experience for the whole family. They all gathered in the hospital and said, how are we going to handle this? How are we going to communicate this? And there was no question about it being the people they are that they were going to be completely candid. It's hard to believe now there are some people here who remember 30 years ago, you didn't talk about cancer. You didn't talk about breast cancer. And that silence was in many ways a death sentence. And the irony is that Mrs. Ford's ordeal I think did more than anything else to transform society's attitudes. And she did say that the one good thing about it was before she left the hospital, she turned on the radio and she heard

reports about women all over America who had been inspired by her example and who went to get checkups and saved their lives. The power of the first lady. And then you were sharing earlier the fact that she was went through a lot during all of the different funeral proceedings. And just recount what you told us a little bit earlier. Well, I mean, she was able to do that. Yeah, well, you know, I mean, if any, if you saw any of the funeral coverage, you know, she's she she'll be 89 in April. She's tiny, she's frail. And I at times wanted to how she physically managed to get through the week. It's a very grueling experience. I can tell you, someone who was sort of in the middle of it, I mean, I was exhausted. And God knows, you know, the camera wasn't on me. It was on them all the time. And if you remember the last day at the time of the internment, there's a very long walk all the way the length of the Ford Museum to the burial spot. And she was in a wheelchair and insisted on getting out of

the wheelchair and making that walk. And I talked to someone in the office on Saturday after they got home as I don't know how she ever did it. And she had actually already said the same thing to Mrs. Ford. She said, that's what my husband would have wanted, which tells you a lot about the kind of person she is. And you know, the kind of relationship that they had, they were married for 58 years. It was, I think, the greatest source of pleasure and the greatest source of pride in his life. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1948. And in a relatively short, I think 16 years later, he was elected the Republican leader in the US House. And you have to remember why he was elected in 48 years. Very interesting because he, you know, he came back, lots of veterans came back from the war. This whole class of 46 and 48 people like Dick Nixon, Jack Kennedy, you know, all these future leaders, Wendy Johnson. The interesting thing about Ford was he had been an isolationist before the war. At

Yale, he'd actually belong to America first. And so he goes off, he fights in the Pacific. He has a conversion like his hometown hero, Arthur Vandenberg, Senator Vandenberg. Anyway, he comes back and he runs for office for the best of reasons because of an idea. And the idea is United States can no longer take shelter behind two oceans. We are like it or not, a world power. And if we actually care about preserving what we have just fought and bled and died for, then we will step up to our responsibilities as a world power. He took on an entrenched Republican congressman, a guy who thought the world ended at the somewhere around Tera Hoat. And for him, no doubt it did, who opposed a martial plan, who opposed foreign aid, who opposed, you know, and no one gave him a prayer. And he outhustled him, out campaigned him. He proposed to Mrs. Ford in the spring of 1948, but it was a very unusual proposal. He said,

Betty, I want to marry you, but I can't tell you when. And I can't tell you why I can't tell you. And the fact is that he wanted to take this congressman by surprise in the Republican primary. And he did. They were married three weeks before election day. He showed up wearing one black shoe and one brown shoe. And their honeymoon consisted of going to a University of Michigan football game in Ann Arbor. And then that night, driving to Owaso, Michigan, sitting in a cold, rainy outdoor stadium, listening to cold, a Thomas E. Dewey, or rate, you know, the favorite son of Owaso. And then they came back to Grand Rapids and the president announced that he had some campaigning to do, could she make him some sandwiches. And he said 50 years later that she had never let him forget. And they'd had many second honeymoon as a result. Well, he had a very distinguished

career in Congress and is the Republican leader in the House. But he got kind of the point where he had decided he probably wasn't going to run for reelection. I believe in his autobiography. He mentions that he wanted to get everything down to a more simple, gentlemanly life. He wanted to, I believe he said he wanted to play golf four days a week and practice law three. All of a sudden, on October 10th, 1973, Spiro Agnew resigned from the vice presidency. Tell us a little bit about that and tell us why Nixon picked forward. Well, it's true. He had promised Mrs. Ford. What he wanted, remember, he never want to be president. He never want to be vice president. What he wanted desperately was to be speaker of the House. And remember, Nixon in 66, there'd been this big comeback after the Goldwater disaster. And then Nixon won in 68. They had 192 seats. So they only needed to pick up another 25 seats or so. And he could see his goal finally coming into view. And well, I need to say, the Nixon landslide in 72 didn't get him any closer. So he

decided at that point, he sort of gave in to Mrs. Ford. He'd been in Washington 24 years. He said, I'm never going to be speaker. I mean, I'm going to off. I can go back and make some money to provide for my family because he had nothing. And he had four kids. So anyway, so that was the plan. He was going to run again in 72, announces retirement. And in January of 1974, in January of 1977, he was going to leave Washington and then we're going to go back to Grand Rapids. And then along came Watergate and the Spirit Agnew. Vice President Agnew was indicted or was going to be indicted, basically for, you know, not to put too fine a point on it, taking cash and bags under the table. You know, that's how they do things in Maryland. That was the defense anyway. I didn't watch with Elliot Richardson, who was Attorney General at the time. So Agnew was out. Now, here's, here's how different things were 30 years ago. On that day, Ford

didn't know Agnew was leaving. Nixon, who was a very kind of crafty guy, invited Ford up to see him, not in the Oval Office, which he didn't like. Nixon liked to hide out in the hideaway across the street in the old executive office building. And that's where Nixon literally could relax. And he put his feet up and he'd smoke a pipe and came as close to being relaxed as Richard Nixon probably ever did. And he invited Ford up. Never told him why. Never told him Agnew was leaving. Just, you know, shot the breeze for an hour. Ford goes back to the hill and learns for the first time that Spirit Agnew is resigned. And all of a sudden understands why the president had invited him up there for this sort of round the subject talk. A couple days later, the re-Gerald Ford was not Richard Nixon's first choice for Vice President. Had it been left to his

own devices, he would have chosen John Connolly. He was mesmerized by John Connolly. Big swaggering, self-assured Texan who had been Secretary of the Treasury. And Nixon's kind of guy. But Connolly could not have been confirmed. The question in those days, Nixon was so weakened politically that basically the issue was, who can you confirm? He thought about Nelson Rockefeller, but that would have alienated the right wing of the Republican Party. He thought about Ronald Reagan. That would have been, in those days, there was a left wing in the Republican Party. And he would have alienated the Rockefeller Republicans. The Democrats on the hill came to the White House and said, Jerry Ford can be confirmed. And so basically Nixon was backed into this selection that he made somewhat half-heartedly. But to show you how what a different media climate were in, on the night of October 12th, I think it is, six o'clock, the phone rings in the Ford's home in Alexandria. Susan Ford picks up the phone and says, Dad,

it's the White House calling. The president, or then Gerald Ford gets on the phone. It's Richard Nixon. He wants to get Betty on the phone. The other phone. Anyway, the long and short of it is they make the offer and guess what? Two hours later, they have to be in the East Room for a nationally telecast introduction. Which means Mrs. Ford has to find something to wear. The kids all have to get dressed up. They all have to be carded off to the White House and introduced to the country for the first time. I mean, it's just mind-boggling to think that just things had sped up in that way. And then less than a year later, Richard Nixon resigns the presidency and Ford becomes president of the United States. Talk about his first days as president, about his decision to select Nelson Rockefeller as his vice president. And also, let's go ahead and talk about the

pardon as well. Well, first of all, the one line that everyone remembers from the speech, our long National Nightmares over, Ford wanted to cut from the speech. In other, in many ways, he was pitch perfect during those first few days. He understood the country desperately needed symbolic, inclusive leadership. So one of the first people he called was Charlie Rangle, who was that a very young congressman from Harlem. He said, Charlie, I'd like to meet with the Congressional Black Caucus. Then he called George Me, the AFL-CIO. Anyway, he had a whole list of these meetings with people who need us to say we had not been in the White House in a long time. But the other side of that was he remained what I say is Grand Rapids Modest. And when he heard the line a long National Nightmares over, he wanted to cut it because he thought it was piling on. And that's critical because it illustrates the challenges he faced

turning from a congressman into a president. And I think the first few months were very much a transitional period. And Bob Hartman, the speechwriter, who wrote those that the inaugural address was seven minutes long. And Bob Hartman had to get down on his hands and knees and beg and threaten to quit and everything else. And finally, Ford said, well, maybe you're right. And he gave the speech. And of course, that's what we all remember. People all talk about the pardon as a defining moment. And it was. But before the pardon, two weeks before the pardon, was another defining moment, which was part of the same unfolding attempt at national reconciliation. He went, he had a plan to basically open the door for thousands of Vietnam era draft evaders to as he put it work their way

back. They would set up a clemency board with Father Hesberg, the odore Hesberg, the president of Notre Dame, as the chair. And I think you knew it advanced. Father Hesberg was going to say yes to 99% of anyone who who applied, which in the end is exactly what he did. So this was by any other name, Amnesty. But here's the interesting thing. It was a gutsy thing to say because your base would not necessarily approve. The revealing thing is where he decided to announce it. He deliberately chose to announce it before the national convention of the VFW. And on the way out to Chicago on the plane, he said to someone, well, at least I'm not going to have to worry about being interrupted by applause. And if you look at the if you look at the tape, he was a prophet. I mean, that speech weighed an egg. And I think the only reason they didn't boo was Mrs. Ford was sitting in the front, you know, up on stage next to

him. But the fact is that was in its own way, at least as gutsy, an act as the burden. Now, the burden, the debate goes on and the debate will go on for years. I will never forget one of the great experiences of my life was to spend an evening with the president in a hotel room in Grand Rapids about maybe eight or nine years ago. For three hours, we argued the burden back and forth. And I was an agnostic on the burden. I thought that I didn't have strong feelings one way the other. But like lots of people, I thought, you know, on balance, it was probably necessary. But there had to have been a better way. There had to have been a more politically a droid way to prepare the country. And you know, by the end of that evening, I had come to the very reluctant conclusion that under the circumstances, given the mood of the country at that time, there was no way you

could raise a trial balloon. There was no way you could resort to the usual weeks because the first sign, the first hint that you were thinking of this, I guarantee it would have been shot down. Congress on both parties would have, you know, denounced it. You have to remember what was going on in the first month of the Ford presidency. Here's a guy who never expected to be president. Literally, I know it sounds how to believe, but until the last week, until the first week of August, literally never had prepared. There was no transition, nothing. He becomes president in his first week, Greece and Turkey are about to go to war over Cyprus. There's a crisis with the Soviet Union because the Soviet sub has sunk in the Pacific. And guess what? The United States has a top secret vessel designed by Howard Hughes called the Glomar Explorer, whose purpose is to reach out these great claws and grab a Soviet submarine. And, you know,

the need to say the public didn't know about that. King Hussein of Jordan is scheduled to come for an important state visit, talk about the Middle East. The inflation rate for the month of July 1974 was released. It was 3.7 percent. One month, not a year. Anyway, all of this is happening to this brand new president. Oh, and one other thing. On the fourth day he was president, when they were finally moving his things into the Oval Office, they found two more bugs in the walls of the Oval Office behind pictures. And Ford, for the first time, lost his temper. Because the first order he had given when he moved into the Oval Office is, I want every bug out of this place. So anyway, you had all of this going on. And you had the lawyers, you had Al Hague on behalf of the Nixon loyalists who were saying, when are you going to send the papers out to say a committee? Why haven't

you sent all those tapes out to say a committee? Because remember, for 200 years, presidents took their papers with them. They were their personal property. So you had the Nixon tapes. You had the Nixon papers. Behind the scenes, the special prosecutor, William Jaworski, was telling the White House very artificially that it could be two years before Nixon ever saw the inside of a courtroom if they decided that he could get a fair trial at all. So here is Ford sitting, looking out over this ocean of troubles. The country is obsessed with Nixon. The triggering event, in my opinion, the triggering event in the burden is a press conference on August 28th. He goes in naively assuming that the press is going to want to talk about Cyprus and inflation and anything but Nixon. And all they wanted to talk about was Nixon. Now, one of the things that people didn't know about Gerald Ford is he had a very sharp temper. He had spent a lifetime controlling it and controlling it very well. But he had a

temper and he lost his temper that night. He was angry with himself. He wasn't angry at the press because if you look at the tape, he gives these rambling contradictory because he wasn't prepared. And I think that set in motion. And I think he just decided there was an argument that went on in the in the Louisville office and Bob Hartman, the press secretary, was citing polls statistics. And Ford did something very unusual. He slammed his hand against the desk. He said, God damn it. He said, don't tell me about polls. I don't need polls to tell me what's right and wrong. And then he went on to say something very interesting. He said too many decisions have been made in this office based on politics. And I think at that moment, he decided he had no alternative. And there was no good time. There was no good way. It had to be done. So you bite the bullet on Sunday morning, September 8th, very interesting. Before he

did it, he didn't take a poll. He said a prayer. He went over to St. John's Episcopal Church early that morning. He sat in St. John's. He took communion. And then he came back about eight o'clock in the morning to the White House. And taped that announcement. And of course, the country went into another firestone overnight. He had the biggest drop in poll ratings ever recorded 22 points from a 71% approval rating to a 49% approval rating. And in some ways, he never recovered. And 30 years later, it's considered an act of political courage. 30 years later, the one of the wonderful things the president lived long enough to know that not only scholars, but that I think the majority, and I think the great majority of his countrymen had come to believe not only that he did what was necessary, but he did what was courageous. And I will never forget, again, the day I'll never forget in May of 2001,

when the God of Kennedy Library presented him with the Profiles in Courage Award, which was pretty courageous on their part. The fact of the matter is there was a very heated debate on the board. And, but they went ahead. And I think it was an amazing moment to hear Ted Kennedy say, I was wrong. President Ford was right. I mean, I think it sort of put the cap on on that. And, you know, winning Johnson never lived long enough to see, you know, any reassessment of his presidency. Harry Truman lived just long enough to see one. Dwight Eisenhower didn't really, but Gerald Ford was fortunate enough that he did. And I think it was a source of real gratification to him. Yeah, a lot of foreign policy challenges that occurred during his relatively short time as president. He had salt too, the Helsinki Accords, the fall of Vietnam, the Maya Gez incident. Do you want to comment on some of that?

Sure. How he handled that is. Well, you know, it's funny. Me again, he becomes president on August 8th. And he's already scheduled to meet with Brezhnev. He's going to the far east. First American president ever to visit Japan. And it tells you something about the change media climate. This was just before Saturday live went on the air. The president went to Japan and for some god awful reason, he had, you know, formal dinner we're on. And, and his pants were too short. It was like three or four inches of shin. And I guarantee you that's all anyone paid attention to. No one kid would he sent up right here Oedo or vice versa. It was like, you know, it was like George Bush throwing up in the prime minister's lap. And then he went on to Vladivostok. And it was interesting because they just, they found out later on the night before he met with Brezhnev. Brezhnev had a stroke and managed to, you know, to conceal it. They wrote a train through Siberia and got acquainted. Before he went, the

plane Air Force wanted stopped in Alaska for refueling. And a friend there had presented him with a wolf skin coat. And all through the Vladivostok conference, Brezhnev, who was a real kleptomaniac, he got a car out of Richard Nixon by, you know, admiring he couldn't take his eyes off this coat. So at the airport when they left, the president, you know, took off the coat, handed it to Brezhnev, who was thrilled. And then he said, you know, what am I going to tell my friend, you know, gave me the coat. But the interesting thing is that's all he gave away at Vladivostok. The right forgets it. But, you know, there was a weapons system in development then called the cruise missile. And no one knew whether the cruise missile would work or not. And Ford was so convinced of its, because remember Ford had spent 25 years on the, the fence appropriations

committee. So Ford knew the military inside out. And Ford was a great believer in the cruise missile. And the Soviets pressed very, very hard. And he refused to, to yield. And so they made progress on salt, but they never, they never really were able to close the deal. The other great frustration he had, of course, was with the Soviet Jews. I mean, he negotiated a deal with the Russians to increase. The Russians were under a lot of pressure, deservedly, for the treatment of Jews and refused nicks and, and, and, and affect prisoners of conscience. And they had under pressure, sub-Rosa agreed to let as many as 35,000 a year emigrate, primarily to Israel. Ford got that number bumped up to 60,000 a year. But there was a condition, a big condition. And that is, no one

could announce it. So he couldn't get any credit. And no one could put it on paper to formalize it. It had to be a handshake deal. The Soviets would abide by it. But of course, scoop Jackson, who was running for president, created something called the Jackson Vanneck Agreement, which was great politics, which, which criticized the Soviets for the treatment of those who were religiously persecuted, and put all sorts of mandates upon US Soviet trade. And in the end, they lost the trade, and they lost the 60,000 a year. And I mean, Ford was just that kind of stuff drove him up the wall. Congress had changed. I mean, he'd spent 25 years in a body where basically, you know, at six o'clock, you had urine partisanship, you know, you had a drink, you were on a first name basis, you shook hands, and you, you honored your word. That's how the institution worked. When he

came up with the first energy policy in American history, 167 page detailed blueprint for energy conservation and alternative energy sources, along with the decontrol of energy prices, something to offend everyone. But anyway, he asked Mike Mansfield and Carl Albert, who are good friends, would you please, we have a crisis. Remember the energy crisis? We have a crisis. Would you respond in kind, create a joint congressional committee? I'm not asking you to pass this. I'm just saying, create a joint congressional committee, exert some imagination so that we can get something fast, whatever it is. They said, oh, I'm sorry, that would upset the procedure. Anyway, they went back and forth over decontrol. How, you know, 90 days, whatever. They finally came up with a deal. A week later, they came back and said, sorry, we can't deliver on our promise. The troops won't go along

with it. So I think one of the things that Ford had to deal with this president, ironically for someone who'd spent his whole life in Congress, he becomes president and he finds himself defending the prerogatives of the executive branch against his colleagues. And of course, there was a whole influx of Watergate babies in the 74 off your elections that made for a very contentious relationship. Gerald Ford vetoed 66 spending bills. Now, how many spending bills has George W. Bush vetoed? I don't think he's vetoed one. And you know, and Ford took a lot of heat. People said he has no vision. He had a vision. He didn't want the government to, you know, practice pick pocket economics. He wanted to restrain the growth of government. And he was willing to use the veto power if that's what it took. He's really the last president who made a significant effort to try to restrain the fundamental growth of

government. Talk about the 76 presidential campaign for a minute. Give me a couple or three more questions, then we'll get the questions and answers. The last national convention that really mattered was about an hour away in Kansas City when the president barely beat back a challenge from Governor Reagan. Bob Dole came out of that convention as a vice presidential candidate. Speak to that issue. Yeah, well, of course, remember, he had several months earlier on to pressure from the right. He had dumped Nelson Rockefeller and no one knew who was going to be his pick. And he had come from behind and won the New Hampshire primary. And he won Florida. And Reagan was on the ropes until and this is this is revealing. Critical moment. Reagan discovered foreign policy. I mean, he was against any Panama Canal Treaty. He was against any real change in American policy in Africa, in black Africa, and arms control.

Basically, he was a strong critic of Daytona and a very effective one, a very powerful one. And he rode those issues to victories in North Carolina and a number of southern states. And in fact, at one point, led in delegates. Defining moment right before the Texas primary on May 1st is a meeting in the Oval Office. Henry Kissinger is supposed to go to Africa. And the reason he's going to Africa is to announce a fundamental change in American policy toward Africa. And that changes the United States will no longer support white minority governments, specifically in Rhodesia on its way to becoming Zimbabwe and implicitly throughout the whole rest of the continent. The fact is it is time for black majority rule. The writing is on the wall for South Africa and apartheid. And there was a heated debate in the Oval Office. Because this was

not a policy on the face of it that would win a whole lot of delegates in Texas. And couldn't Henry delay his trip. And the president said, no, it's the right thing to do. And basically went ahead. Well, he lost the Texas primary 100 delegates to zero. And as you say, came into Kansas City about 100 delegates ahead of Reagan. Reagan then tried something tactically daring. Some would say desperate. He named his own vice presidential nominee. And it turned out to be too clever by half because, classically, you try to compensate for your strengths and your weaknesses. So he nominated, he announced Dick Schweiker, who was a liberal Republican from Pennsylvania, would be his running mate. And the idea was this would break open the Pennsylvania delegation. And all you needed was to win a few delegates. And, you know, he go over the

top. It was it was risky. It backfired. But, you know, on the other hand, it was a bold. And in many ways, it was a preview that Reagan was an unconventional conservative. Reagan was a bold outside the box. Kind of conservative. And and then they then they tried to force the critical vote of the convention came on the vice presidency. There was they they introduced a resolution to force president Ford to announce who would be his running mate. And everyone knew this was this was a really this was a vote about who was going to be nominated. And and by this time now Ford had made concessions foreign policy on the platform Henry Kissinger had smoke coming out of his ears because the Republican platform in 76 not only did not endorse Daytont but really backed away from the whole Kissinger policy. Kissinger wanted to fight it out on the floor. Ford and Coolerhead said, look, we've got bigger fish to fry. You know, no one cares about

the platform. But we care about the nomination. Anyway, so the right got the platform. They lost that critical procedural vote on the vice presidency. So then the question becomes, okay, who who is he going to choose to be vice president? Polls had been taken. There were several names in contention. Mrs. Ford was campaigning for a woman. She'd already gotten Carla Hills into the cabinet. She almost got a woman on the Supreme Court when Justice Douglas retired and the president chose John Paul Stevens. And the the woman on the shortlist was the Ann Armstrong of Texas, who was then ambassador to Great Britain. And she was seriously considered as was Howard Baker, as was Bill Ruckleshous, a name from the past, who would have been sort of inoculation against the Nixon pardon, the Watergate, having resigned as a point of honor rather than fire the special prosecutor. I think Ruckleshous was in it right up until the end. And doles

name actually didn't come into the into it until later on. To this day, there's a debate over what the Reagan people really wanted and didn't want. The president was told, Dick Cheney has told me and he's told other people. The president wanted to go over and call on Governor Reagan once the nomination was decided and begin the healing process because this has been a very bitter contest. He was told, okay, you could come and see the governor on one condition. And that is that you do not bring up the vice presidency. It was as explicit as could be. Now, I don't think he minded because I don't think at that point he was in a mood to ask Ronald Reagan to be his running mate. But nevertheless, they had a cordial somewhat, if you might imagine, awkward meeting. But he was mindful of the Reagan people and the need to heal the party. The story that I

have just uncovered is they had discussions that went until four o'clock in the morning. Now, Senator Rockefeller was in those discussions. They could not come up with a consensus. Governor Vice President Rockefeller said, Mr. President, to hell with consensus. You've now been nominated in your own right. You don't have to listen to all these people. You just tell them who you want and they'll nominate it. And Ford said, well, look, let's sleep on it. So at four o'clock in the morning, they adjourned. They were going to meet again at nine o'clock, 10 o'clock, something like that. In the meantime, Rockefeller and one of his political ways, and many of George Hinman, who you know, of national commitment from New York, went to the breakfast meetings with the other delegates. Hinman calls Rockefeller and says, hey, the southerners, which were the core of the Reagan people, the southerners said they had prepared to drop Reagan as a Vice Presidential candidate and go with don't. Rockefeller said, you know, how

widely are you hearing this? And Hinman said widely. He said, well, I think we ought to tell the president. So they had back to the hotel and before the 10 o'clock meeting, Rockefeller sees the Vice, sees the president and relates this information. The meeting begins. President Ford says Nelson has something to tell us. He relates this story. And at that point, the meeting was all about Bob Dole. And within the hour, it was decided that Bob Dole would be the running mate. Bob Dole was selected because Gerald Ford believed that it would help unify the party, that it would be well received by Governor Reagan personally, by Reagan Republicans generally. He knew Dole intimately. He owed Dole because in 1965, when he ran for House Minority Leader, he won that race by three votes. And those three votes were supplied by the Kansas delegation led by a 41 year old congressman named Bob Dole. So they had a longstanding relationship. He

knew Dole. He liked him. And the other and the final thing is critically, the base, they had no base. They were 30 points down in the polls. And there were problems in the firm belt. And if a Republican, as you know, running for national office is worried about carrying Kansas and Nebraska and the decoders, then he probably should take his name off the ballot. So the very first rule of politics is secure your base. And by choosing Bob Dole, Ford secured his base, not only geographically, but I think demographically, for example, with veterans. As you just noted, Rick, the Ford Dole ticket came out of Kansas City, 30 points behind, totally untenable position, and then proceeded to make what is arguably one of the most magnificent comebacks in the history of presidential politics. Speak to that.

Well, it's true. And of course, people now, they are, you know, you think of the debates and you all know about the Polish gaff. And the wonderful story about that, years later, when we were redoing the Ford Museum, President Ford was wonderful because he wanted the whole story told. So when you walk through the Ford Museum and you walk through the 76 campaign overhead, you see a TV screen and it plays endlessly the Polish gaff, which to refresh your recollection, he said that, you know, Poland, Eastern Europe is not dominated by the Soviet Union and never will be. Now, it was a gaff of major proportions. But it's interesting because if you actually go back and read what he said, he mentioned three countries, including Poland, three countries he had recently visited, three countries that were all trying to ease themselves out of the Soviet orbit. One was Yugoslavia, which had long been relatively free, and one was Romania, and the third was Poland. He'd gone to those countries after the Helsinki

Accords, which were all about establishing human rights behind the Iron Curtain. So what he should have said was, as a result of the policies of this administration and the Helsinki Accords, I've seen with my own eyes that the people of Eastern Europe, though they may be politically dominated by the Soviet Union, I can tell you they don't feel spiritually dominated by the Soviet Union. If he'd said that, you know, he would have hit a home run. He won the first debate going away. At the end of the first debate, by the end of the first debate, the first poll showed that the gap had narrowed at ten points, and going into a second debate, which was foreign policy, everyone thought, well, this will be his trade as an incumbent, and he stepped in it on Poland. And then he made it worse because he is a very stubborn man, and he refused to admit that he'd screwed up. And a day went by, and two days went by, and three days went by, and

finally, you know, he was prevailed upon to come out and tell the press that he had misboke, and, you know, to say what he, how he shouldn't put it. If he had, you know, who knows? But those last ten days, and people for long memory, that was the first time I voted for a presidential candidate. And I can remember, I mean, day by day by day, you could sense this thing was, was really moving. And what happened in the last weekend, a poll appeared, a Harris poll appeared, the Gerald Ford had actually taken a one-point lead over Jimmy Carter. And people were talking about a bigger comeback than Harry Truman. And what happened the last weekend was in November, the first week of November, the last week of the campaign, they released the unemployment numbers for October. And they went from 7.3% to 7.9%. And at the

very least, it suggested that the economic recovery that Ford was taking credit for had paused, had come to a halt, perhaps had reversed. And it fed the doubts. And I said, as I said earlier, I think what happened was people sort of realized that weekend, you know what, this is a dead heat, this could go either way. And they looked in the mirror and said, am I really confident enough that I want four more years? And people say the Nixon pardon cost them the election. There's a poll after the the internal polling shown, 7% of Republicans voted for Carter, specifically because of the Nixon pardon. And obviously that would more than account for the victory. But personally, I will always believe that it was the economy at the very end of the campaign that made people step back and change their minds again. And it just a handful of votes in a couple states had switched

over. He would have been reelected since an incredible story. Ohio went for Carter, you know, by 10,000 votes. And Hawaii, which is a very reliably democratic state was carried by only a few thousand votes. But you know, he was not the sort of person, you know, he didn't harbor. He didn't dwell on that. The morning after he lost, you know, he lost his voice. He lost the White House and he lost his voice. And the morning after he was in the Oval Office, consoling staffers and asking them what he could do to get them jobs. I mean, he was thinking about them, you know, and it was just it's one reason why it's interesting. Most people don't know. Every June, the Ford White House alumni gather in Washington. I think it's the only administration where this happens. And they've been doing it for 30 years. And it's because of the loyalty, you know, loyalty goes up and loyalty goes down. And I think people who worked for him in

the White House or, you know, whenever. There was a very special kind of attachment that people felt. And they would and he would come back. He missed his Ford every year until last year. There was the first year when physically they weren't able to get to DC. But anyway, okay, let's open it up to questions. Go ahead. Do you see a parallel between President Truman and President Ford in the manner in which they achieved office and had extremely difficult decision to make? Not only that, I think the parallel goes beyond that. I think they're character. I think the euphemism is they were playing spoken. The fact is they weren't slick. They weren't eloquent. They weren't, you know, they weren't great communicators. Although certainly Harry Truman had great ideas to communicate. The first thing as a interesting, a president defines himself in a number of ways. One of the

most obvious ways is whose portrait he hangs in the cabinet room. And the day that he became president, Gerald Ford looked at the portraits. He left Twinken. He left Eisenhower, who I think was his favorite president, truth be told. And he removed Woodrow Wilson, who had been a great hero of Richard Nixon's, and he replaced him with Harry Truman. And he, another story. When he was a freshman congressman, the lowest of the low, he was on the public works committee. And you can imagine how important that was. Except the White House was falling down. So one Saturday morning, Harry Truman invited the public works committee to come to the White House. And he gave them a personalized tour. And he showed them where Margaret's piano was coming through the ceiling. And, you know, where a corner of the east room was propped up, and literally the house was falling down. And they basically had a choice. They could gut the place, tear the place down, build a new White House, which would

have been cheaper. Now, Ford, dirty old secret is, Ford was cheap. When the public money was concerned, Ford was as tight as they come. And in any other situation, he would have taken the the cheap route. But the majesty of the White House, being what it was, he said, no, he agreed with President Truman, who said, we'll gut the interior, we'll preserve the walls, and we'll restore the White House. And he came away from that experience with a great admiration for Harry Truman. He admired Truman's foreign policy, bipartisan foreign policy, fighting the Cold War, the Marshall Plan, NATO, all of that. So he was a great admirer of Harry Truman. And I will tell you something that a lot of people don't know. And in 1976, near the end of the campaign, the Ford's went to Independence, Missouri. Now, President Truman had died by then. But best was living on in the Truman House at 219 North Delaware Street. She had the secret

service across the street because she never let them inside the house. But they were there. They were they were over a garage or something across the street. So anyway, the Ford's came to visit Bess and Bess let them know that she was voting for it, Gerald Ford, for President. And the only thing that tops that was the was, I think George McGovern's shocker. Some of you may have seen one night on Larry King after the President died when McGovern let it be known that he voted in 1976 for Gerald Ford. And three weeks after the election, he was talking to his wife, Eleanor, who sadly just passed away about two weeks ago. And Mrs. McGovern let's slip rather shame facetly. The she had voted for Gerald Ford. And so it tells you something about the McGoverns and the Ford's, and I suppose Jimmy Carter. You mentioned having a discussion with Ford about the decision to pardon. And you said that it went back and forth and back and forth. And you made the comment

that wasn't there something a better way to do this. What were the options? There were a number of options. For example, in theory, in a perfect world, you could have waited for Nixon to be indicted. And then, you know, ironically, if Ford had waited two months, some of you may remember Richard Nixon almost died. In October of 1974, he went into the hospital for flabitis, was operated on. The operation was a success. He went back to his room and passed out internal bleeding. And he very, very nearly died. And it was the weekend before the 74 elections. And Ford was going to be in California. And everyone said, whatever you do, stay away from the hospital. I mean, the last thing you want to do is remind people of Richard Nixon, you know, and the pardon. And he called Julie and said, would it do your dad any good for me to come? And Julie and her mother said, it's

the best medicine possible. So he went to the hospital. He reminded everyone of the pardon. Republicans got shocked on election day. The irony is had he waited until Nixon was on his, quote, deathbed. He might have been able to pardon him on the grounds of compassion and gotten away with it. The main argument, though, was, do you wait until he was indicted? The problem with that was, as I said, Jaworski was telling him, there's no schedule here. I can't tell you whether he's going to be indicted. I can't tell you whether he's ever going to be in a court room or not. It's that uncertain. It's that fluid. And every time you tried to nail down a scenario, well, I can do it at this point or I can do it at this point. Or maybe you go through a trial and let him be convicted or found innocent and then pardon him. But the problem is the thought of an American president in the doc would have so preoccupied and so polarized this country at a time when it was

already terribly divided. And I think he just decided there's only one way to end this. There's only one person who can end this. And that's me. Thanks for coming out tonight. You've just heard a talk by Richard Norton Smith and Bill Lacey, recorded February 8, 2007 at the Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas. It was a presentation of the Dole Institute's 2007 presidential lecture series. The recording engineer was Lawrence Bush of the Dole Institute. I'm Kay McIntyre. KPR presents is a production of Kansas Public Radio at the University of Kansas.