Dream Tickets
Nollson, John
"Dream Tickets" John Nollson Life was simpler in the early days of the Republic when presidential candidates did not have running mates. Everybody just ran for president. If you came in first,...
...The convention adjourned in total exasperation...
...Though it was widely believed that former secretary Kissinger was representing former presiden-t Ford in discussions with former governor Ronald Reagan, he was in fact an emissary from former president Nixon...
...Johnson thought this demand demeaned the office which he himself had once filled...
...Not only did T.R...
...if you came in second, you became the vice president...
...Unhappily, not even Dr...
...Hoover, so newly discovered documents reveal, was more than willing...
...Nixon refused...
...Democratic nominee Lyndon B. Johnson attempted to persuade former president Dwight D. Eisenhower to be his running mate...
...This, of course, also provides the background to the real unreported story at the GOP convention of July, 1980, in Detroit...
...The Texan, ever the cagy politician, offered all manner of inducements to the General, but negotiations collapsed over Eisenhower's insistence that the vice...
...Grant was so upset that he spent most of his time as president working on his famous memoirs...
...Historians have long wondered how Woodrow Wilson, whom everyone knew to be a pompous bore, managed to win the presidency in 1912...
...There are, first of all, two living former presidents, namely Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford...
...refuse, but he was so incensed at having been asked to perform this demeaning chore that he ran for the presidency himself...
...Nixon was willing to accept second spot on a ticket headed by either Reagan o r Ford...
...The advisers thought that Hoover was so unpopular that he would cost votes...
...y o review, then, this is the situation we now face...
...In 1976, former president Richard Nixon dispatched Henry Kissinger on a delicate mission to New York City...
...If the polls are accurate, there will soon be another living former president, namely Jame.s E. Carter, and yet another living former vice president, namely Waiter F. Mondale...
...Then they began to write letters to one another...
...Landon's closest advisers had to talk the Kansan out of it...
...Naturally, his first choice was the former, or soon to be former, president, George Washington himself...
...If you came in first, you became the chief magistrate...
...When Humphrey ran on his own account in 1968, he too tried to get Eisenhower to run with him, but the General had, by then, lost all interest...
...When it was Thomas jefferson's turn to run for president, he tried to unify the country by persuading former president Adams, a Fecleralist, to accept the second spot on the Anti-Federalist ticket...
...Dewey's secret diary brims with unflattering references to Hoover's effort to get himself on the ticket...
...Readers who are old enough to remember the 1964 Democratic convention will recall the tale that almost won Theodore H. White a Pulitzer Prize...
...There are, for the record, four living former secretaries of state, but who cares about them...
...Kissinger's patient explanations could disabuse him of this notion...
...The Georgian, represented in the secret negotiations by his younger brother, insisted that Nixon agree to change his party registration before joining the ticket...
...I t is now known that he became a real pest, trying to foist himself on Thomas Dewey at the GOP convention of I948...
...designation on the GOP ticket headed by William Howard Taft--who weighed more than 300 pounds...
...Instead, he picked Hubert H. Humphrey...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1980 25...
...Washington thought about it for a while but decided to return to land speculation...
...Hoover, incidentally, continued to declare his availability for the second slot well into the 1950s...
...Nixon was interested in heingJimmy Carter's running mate...
...Jefferson was quick to point out that he had been elected president, even though Adams had refused to be his running mate...
...That was the source of all the confusion...
...When George Washington decided not to run for a third term, the political process was thrown into confusion...
...Clearly, we have to look ahead to 1984, when former president Carter will be able to run again with former president Nixon as his running mate...
...Somehow, Ford got it into his head that he was being asked .by Reagan to run for vice president...
...Moreover, this system produced presidents of one party and vice presidents of another, a very unstable arrangement...
...He retired to Quincy in a huff, and did not speak to .Jefferson again for about 20 years...
...Complex negotiations ensued, but the deal could not be made...
...John Adams had the Federalist nomination sewn up long before the convention, but he needed a running mate...
...Adams thought that having a former president on the ticket as his vice-presidential running mate would aid his chances...
...Naturally, all candidates wished to finish either first or third...
...Nobody wanted to be vice president at all, especially after the first vice president, John Adams, called the job the most insignificant office ever devised by the mind of man...
...C } n e interesting sidelight on the 1936 Republican convention was Alf Landon's effort to get former president Herbert Hoover to run with him for vice president...
...John Nollson DREAM TICKETS L i f e was simpler in the early days of the Republic when presidential candidates did not have running mates...
...Landon, ever a realist, believed that he wouldn't do any worse even if he had the Great Engineer by his side and, truth to tell, he was not far off the mark...
...Adams thought about it, and then became very angry, thinking that he had somehow been insuhed...
...presidency be completely restructured so as to become a totally powerless and meaningless office, the occupant of which had absolutely no functions to perform...
...Ulysses S. Grant tried to get former president Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, to come out of retirement and accept second place on a GOP ticket headed by old Unconditional Surrender himself...
...Or maybe we need to open up the political process and begin to think in terms of co-tickets, as for example, Nixon-Carter for president running with Ford-Mondale for vice president, or maybe the other way around...
...The fault, so it seems, lies with former president Theodore Roosevelt, who refused to accept the V.P...
...On the other hand, there was Calvin Coolidge, who did not choose to run for president in 1924, nor did he choose to be Warren Harding's running mate either...
...Both of them are also former vice presidents...
...After all, these are difficult times, and we have to be imaginative and forthcoming, willing to run risks, take chances, and, most of all, forge ahead...
Vol. 13 • September 1980 • No. 9
