DREAM TICKET MEMORIES

...I said...

...Reagan’s unexpected, ad hoc convention appearance just a few minutes later was a I didn’t know it at the time, but the fight was masterful stroke...

...The scribbler was a reporter for the Detroit News, which ran a front-page story about that Helms-Ellis-Bauman confab in the next day’s late editions...

...Ellis—but it might take 20 minutes to get there and back...

...I just kept following, for another 30 yards, hoping somehow to hear Laxalt explain to somebody, somehow, the meaning of what seemed to be utterly unbelievable news...

...Senator, senator,” he shouted, “please tell us about the Ford arrangement...

...Helms, ever courtly, thanked me—and off I didn’t walk but ran, darting around people, through the con course, down escalators and stairs, like a brokenfield runner in a pick-up football game...

...Not Ford, Bush,” the senator repeated...

...Amazingly enough, I found myself looking up to see that the voice belonged to none other than Senator Helms...

...Reagan would have looked no longer in control of his own convention, and 250 million Americans would have awakened to headlines announcing a Ford selection that just wasn’t so...

...Bob Bauman, then chairman of the Ameri can Conservative Union...

...Finally up in the balcony concourse, my brisk walk through growing crowds of returning conventioneers was interrupted by a polite but insistent voice: “Page...

...Through clenched teeth, Laxalt said, “It’s not Ford...

...All week long in Detroit in 1980, as conservatives celebrated their long-awaited takeover of the Republican Party via the presidential nomination of Ronald Reagan, speculation had been growing inside the convention hall and on the public airwaves that Reagan would choose former president Gerald Ford as a running mate...

...With the wild and enthusiastic reception Reagan received from the delegates, it would have seemed like bad sportsmanship, surliness, and a direct affront to Reagan for Helms and Company to carry out their plan...

...And they turned out to be not just correct but doubly so...

...They were operating on the “Prince of Wales” theory, named after the nextinline to the British throne, which is that the runThe Gipper somehow turned a fiasco into a triumph, and made it sound as if the choice of Bush was a logical and even brilliant way to carry the fight to the Democrats in the fall...

...The tentative idea was to call a press conference for the middle of the next morning, blast the choice of Bush, and call on the delegates to reject Bush in favor of another nominee, probably Helms himself...

...Finally Laxalt looked down at me, as if to say who are you...

...For better or worse, then, here we are 28 years after that momentous day in Detroit, still seeing repercussions from Reagan’s choice that would never, could never have happened had Reagan selected Kemp or Laxalt or even Rumsfeld instead...

...Jesse Helms of North Caro lina...

...and yes, I hustled Ellis through the crowds and back up to where Helms stood...

...But not before, somewhere along the line, I had heard somebody say something about Reagan himself coming to the conventional hall...

...That’s all the more reason why John McCain should think long-term when he picks his running mate—and why conservatives ought to pressure McCain to choose a Reaganite, one under age 60, to be the newest Republican Prince of Wales...

...Huh...

...Bush was anathema to Helms because he had campaigned as being prochoice, because he had called the Reagan tax-cut plan “voodoo economics,” and because, culturally, the patrician North easterner Bush could not have been more different from the North Carolina son of a small-town police and fire chief...

...Reagan figured he just had to put the Ford rumors to rest and announce the Bush selection before the Cronkites of the world could sign off for the night with the “dream ticket” being the last word...

...Longtime conservative activist and writer Craig Shirley this fall releases a book that will include the single best moment-by-moment, insiders’ account |of how Reagan and Ford went right up to the very brink of a historic ticket, only to reject the idea at the very last moment, so late in fact that national media already were reporting it as a done deal...

...Over-hyped up as only a 16-year-old can be, I decided I didn’t have time for this foolishness...

...it’s Bush...

...That’s all I know...

...In retrospect, I learned something important from my chance encounters with Laxalt and Helms that night: Vice presidential selections mean a great deal...

...And some hard-line conser vatives, appalled at the idea of either Ford or Bush, were agitating for Sen...

...It also happened to be probably the wildest, most dramatic decision in modern convention history...

...All day long, though, the “dream ticket” negotiations went on between Reagan and Ford, with Ford even going on TV with Walter Cronkite to describe what commentators began calling a virtual “co-presidency...

...This was bizarre...

...Tin support of Rep...

...Not only did Reagan’s choice create an heir apparent, but that successor bred, literally, a quite apparent heir who inhabits the Oval Office today...

...A impromp tu speech...

...4 8 t H e a M e R I c a n s P e c t a t o R J u l y / a u g u s t 2 0 0 8 by Quin Hillyer John McCain’s vice presidential choice reach a fever pitch—and it is not just a political game...

...Consider how little Dwight Eisenhower knew about the ramifications of choosing for his veep a man who had been in public office fewer than six years...

...I’ll get the message to Mr...

...Waiting with Helms by that time was Maryland’s Rep...

...What, whaddya mean it’s Bush...

...ning mate is the heir apparent for the party’s next nomination...

...I first told Helms I had no floor pass, but his distressed look made me reconsider...

...At some point as I eavesdropped, somebody scribbling notes asked my name—at which point Helms looked up, saw that I was still there, and thanked me profusely before making clear I was no longer needed...

...Reagan and Ford pulled the plug—and because some of Reagan’s key aides still doubted whether a Reagan/Kemp, actor/football player ticket would sell in a general election, the Reagan team settled on Bush, the primary runnerup, almost by default...

...Running mates are often chosen with only short-term, purely political considerations in mind, so that even the presi- July and august ought to see speculation about dential contender making the selection rarely realizes just how much he might be shaping long-term history...

...He was angry and so stunned that he looked white as a ghost as he entered the convention hall...

...It was Nixon who took a particular shine to three 1960s-era congressmen, making two of them his personal choices as chairmen of the Republican National Committee and the third one a high administration appointee...

...I already had used up all of my floor time, so I hotfooted it around the bowels of the convention hall to the other side of the building, where I at least could go up to the balcony “guest” area—with many more seats than the convention floor itself—to try to secure a spot...

...But what Shirley describes happening at the highest cam paign levels in his book Rendezvous with Destiny was matched in excitement at the lowest level of the convention also, outside a holding room for convention pages, one of whom was the then 16-year-old Yours Truly...

...It was 28 years after Ike chose Nixon—and 28 years ago this summer, perhaps meaning that the time is exactly due for another momentous veep selection—that another GOP presidential nominee made a choice that would shape his party long, long after he left office...

...That entrance happened to be right next to the page holding room, where I saw the senator and approached him in hopes of getting an autograph...

...And with that he pushed through what suddenly had become, out of nowhere, a huge throng of reporters and, somehow with me in tow, crossed into a private hallway closed to the Fourth Estate but not to pages...

...At the time, the whole experience, exciting as it was, soured me on Helms’s judgment...

...I don’t know how I’ll do it, sir, but wait right here...

...A real, honest-to-goodness convention fight...

...Nomi nees never made convention-hall appearances until the evening of their acceptance speeches, the final night of the gathering...

...And, nosey as ever, I stood right close and eavesdropped as, right there in the middle of the concourse, the three conservative leaders discussed whether or not to launch a “Stop Bush” movement...

...Overnight, the idea fizzled, and the ReaganBush team went on to victory in the fall over Carter and then victory in the Cold War over the Soviets...

...Rumsfeld was somewhere in the mix as well, and Ronald and Nancy Reagan themselves really wanted Sen...

...yes, I convinced him that Helms was indeed stuck in the balcony awaiting him...

...Arriving back at the page holding room, panting like a dog, I tried to explain that I needed a floor pass for a message from Jesse Helms...

...Laxalt Jack Kemp J u l y / a u g u s t 2 0 0 8 t H e a M e R I c a n s P e c t a t o R 4 9 George H. W. Bush D R e a M t I c K e t M e M o R I e s was one of the first to get the news, on a telephone in a trailer just outside the VIP back entrance to the convention hall...

...The Gipper somehow turned a fiasco into a triumph, and made it sound as if the choice of Bush was a logical and even brilliant way to carry the fight to the Democrats in the fall...

...But sometime nearing mid night, it all fell apart...

...Yes, I found my way to the floor...

...Instead, vice presidential selections can be among the most consequential decisions in Ameri can history...

...The names Bush, Dole, and Rumsfeld will surely ring a bell...

...Paul Laxalt of Nevada, their good friend, on the ticket, but Laxalt was seen as adding almost nothing to the ticket geographically, philosophically, or otherwise politically...

...Ellis among the North Carolina delegates...

...Fifty-six years later, even from the grave, Richard Nixon is shaping Republican politics still...

...Here we are 28 years later still seeing repercussions from Reagan’s choice that would never have happened had he selected Kemp or Laxalt or even Rumsfeld instead...

...Without a good one in the hand, you can end up with two Bushes...

...But only eight pages at ’ n a g a e R e h t e r e p s e d t n a w young e d reaganite a t to ly the o core a , r I of course a s time (out of about 200) were stationed on the convention floor, with another few passes available for specific messages...

...A convention official who had materialized must have assumed I was an aide to Laxalt, because he hustled me along right beside the senator...

...yes, I found Mr...

...Even if Bush were not the senator’s first choice, I reasoned, it was just bad form, at the very moment that Helms’s dreams of a Reagan-led ticket were coming to fruition, for the North Carolina conservative to be raising a stink...

...Laxalt was no Bush fan...

...Excuse me, page, would you come over here...

...On the other hand, Laxalt—who was so angry that he left Detroit without even waiting to hear his friend Reagan’s acceptance speech—and Helms were absolutely right that the running mate selection was of vast importance...

...It’s Bush...

...Jack Kemp for vice presi e r fi n o t u b l l a n e e b h k e w h t n i r e i a e he r l situation e was e this ad : The convention hal - l dent, while Ambassador George H. W. Bush, who had run a strong second to Reagan in the primary Running mates are often chosen with only short-term, purely political considerations in mind, so that even the contender making the selection rarely realizes just how much he might be shaping long-term history...

...Even walking fast, it was a good 10-minute journey...

...Never had a former president run on a national ticket again as a deputy to someone else, but Ford was more popular out of office than he ever had been in office, and he seemed sure to reassure voters worried (wrongly) that Reagan was too ideological for the job...

...We all know it’s Ford,” the reporter spluttered...

...is it true that Reagan is giving Ford total control of foreign policy...

...But now, at midnight no less, the nominee-to-be was headed to the hall to address the delegates...

...and he and the convention official ducked into some office, finally leaving me behind...

...asked the functionary behind the desk...

...A random reporter got to Laxalt just as I did...

...Not Ford, Bush...

...And I still didn’t know what any of this was about...

...Long story short, he had given up his floor pass for the evening, but he desperately wanted to summon Tom Ellis, famed director of the Helms-affiliated Congressional Club, from the North Carolina delegation for a meeting...

...Dream Ticket Memories The night in Detroit that conservatives found themselves am-Bushed...

...Page...

...season, was seen as a logical choice but one who would be a bitter pill for many conservatives to swallow...

...Who’s Jesse Helms...

...not to be...

...But I already had a story, a huge story: A fight was a-brewing...

...This was Wednesday night, only the second-to-last night of the convention...

...I spied one stray floor pass on the functionary’s desk 5 0 t H e a M e R I c a n s P e c t a t o R J u l y / a u g u s t 2 0 0 8 Jesse Helms Q u I n H I l l y e R and, like a petty thief, snatched it and ran, yelling behind me that “I’ll be back...

...He seemed distressed...

...Quin Hillyer is a senior editor of The American Spectator and an associate editor of the Washington Examiner...

...J u l y / a u g u s t 2 0 0 8 t H e a M e R I c a n s P e c t a t o R 5 1...