Diplomat Jim Patterson at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, MI
Reagan's Moral Foreign Policy Amendment to the 1976 GOP
Presidential Platform by Jim Patterson
JEPDiplomat@gmail.com
Patterson worked for President Ford’s Convention Staff at the 1976 GOP
Convention in Kansas City
Forty years has not for a moment dulled the excitement and
political drama of the 1976 GOP National Convention in Kansas City. As a Young
Republican at university, I joined the President Ford Campaign for a variety of
reasons.
For a time in 1973 and 1974, Jerry Ford was like a Minuteman
from the Revolutionary days. Perhaps 1976 being the Bicentennial brought such
imagery. One minute Jerry Ford was a U.S. Congressman from Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The next minute Ford was vice president of the United States. The next minute
Jerry Ford was President of the United States. The next minute Ford was a
presidential candidate. The next minute Ford was a former United States
President.
Jerry Ford was Bicentennial Minuteman, an average citizen
called to do extraordinary things during extraordinary, challenging and
dangerous times. Mr. Ford, I realized when President Nixon resigned, was the
president our country needed. As a Young
Republican I wanted to help him and First Lady Betty Ford win election to the
White House.
Mr. Ford was challenged for the GOP presidential nomination
by former California Governor Ronald Reagan, who made the Panama Canal and the
immorality of détente with the Soviet Union his central points to highlight the
weaknesses of Ford. The canal proved to be a potent issue for Reagan who wanted
to project an image of strength.
Congress had negotiated a treaty to turn control of the
canal, over a period of years, to Panama. The Canal Zone had become a
controversial issue over decades and Congress had rightly, in my view,
negotiated a deal to retain good relations between nations.
Reagan saw this as capitulation to communism. He claimed the
U.S. had sovereignty over the Canal Zone and he would go to war to defend it
from Castro’s communists. Arizona Senator
Barry Goldwater publicly told Reagan to stop this talk for fear it would ignite
a guerilla war in Panama during the presidential election. Reagan gained votes
on the canal issue by appearing strong in the face of Ford’s perceived weakness
on “communism.”
Reagan and his political allies did not agree with the Ford
policy of détente with the Soviet Union. They felt accommodation of Communism
immoral and with it Ford and Secretary of State Dr. Henry Kissinger, architects
of the policy. Reagan and his ever-present conservative ally North Carolina
Senator Jesse Helms began calling for a moral foreign policy and they drafted a
6-paragraph statement for such and demanded the GOP platform be amended to
include it.
“The goal of a Republican foreign policy is the achievement
of liberty under law and a just and lasting peace in the world,” Reagan and
Helms wrote. “The principles by which we act to achieve peace and to protect
the interests of the United States must merit the restored confidence of our
people.”
Because Ford had not met with Soviet dissident Alexander
Solzhenitsyn in Washington, Reagan and Helms added this language: “We recognize
and commend that great beacon of human courage and morality, Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, for his compelling message that we must face the world with no illusions
about the nature of tyranny. Ours will be a foreign policy that keeps this ever
in mind.” It was a swipe at Ford and
Kissinger, our nation’s first Jewish secretary of state, who knew the
complexity and importance of continued US-Soviet relations.
“Ours will be a foreign policy which recognizes that in
international negotiations we must make no undue concessions; that in pursuing
détente we must not grant unilateral favors with only the hope of getting
future favors in return.
“Agreements that are negotiated, such as the one signed in
Helsinki, must not take from those who do not have freedom the hope of one day
gaining it.
“Finally, we are firmly committed to a foreign policy in
which secret agreements, hidden from our people, will have no part.
“Honesty, openly and with a firm conviction, we shall go
forward as a united people to forge a lasting peace in the world based upon our
deep belief in the rights of man, the rule of law, and guidance by the hand of God.”
Generally, political party platforms use language
highlighting failures and controversies of the other political party. The
Reagan/Helms foreign policy amendment was such a repudiation of Dr. Kissinger,
the secretary of state was seen as a political liability to President Ford. As
a result, Dr. Kissinger’s arrival in Kansas City was delayed until Wednesday
with the convention set to close, if it could, Thursday evening.
Reagan posed several political challenges (1) that Mr. Ford
name his vice president before the first convention ballot (2) the foreign
policy language to the platform (3) the fight for uncommitted Mississippi
delegates and (4) convention controversies.
With emotions running high and many of the first-time
delegates from the Deep South unaware of Convention rules, there were many
controversies in Kansas City 40 years ago.
Conservative Reagan delegates taunted Vice President Nelson Rockefeller
and came close to assaulting Rocky on the convention floor where he sat with
his New York delegates.
Reaganites reported Rocky lost his temper and tore a Reagan
sign that a cowboy delegate pushed in this face while shouting insults. The
vice president was helpless since he could not risk the bad press by having his
Secret Service agents arrest the enraged and irrational Reagan cowboy
delegate.
There was a whisper campaign on the convention floor at
Kemper Arena about First Lady Betty Ford’s health since Day One of the
convention. It grew uglier and louder.
“America doesn’t want a First Lady who is a drunk,” one of
the Reagan cowboy delegates said near me. As we were all wearing Convention
credentials and campaign buttons it was clear whom we supported for the
presidential nomination. The guy’s
efforts to convince me to switch to Reagan failed.
Reagan was not floating names of whom his secretary of state
might be. His cowboy supporters did. One told me confidentially it would be the
actor John Wayne. Wayne did not attend
the convention.
One day on a shuttle bus to Crown Center Hotel, where the
Fords were staying, I overheard Bill Moyers, then with CBS, telling another
reporter of his conversation with a Reagan cowboy supporter. Moyers had asked the man why he supported
Reagan. “The guy had no answer,” Moyers told his colleague. His colleague
replied: “I doubt if any of them have an answer.”
About this same time, I saw an interview of author and
diplomat John Kenneth Galbraith in the Kansas
City Star. The influential author of “The Affluent Society,” stated
political conventions had become nothing more than publicity stunts.
Political conventions are what their planners, delegates and
candidates want them to be. The political shoot-out between two fine men, Jerry
Ford and Ronald Reagan, at the Kansas City corral 40 years ago gave Republicans
a presidential nominee who lost to a Democrat peanut farmer who later lost to a
former California governor who rewrote foreign policy by overseeing the
collapse of the immoral Soviet Union.
The 1976 GOP National convention was the most exciting
political event I ever attended. It was politics and drama from start to finish.
It was a political shoot-out of differing philosophies and personalities.
In some ways, the 2016 GOP convention in Cleveland was a
political shoot-out if not about philosophies certainly among
personalities. Texas Senator Ted Cruz,
for example, declined to ask delegates to vote for GOP presidential nominee
Donald Trump. In September, after negotiations between Cruz and Vice
Presidential nominee and current Indiana Governor Mike Pence, Cruz announced his
support for Donald Trump. Despite
controversies, tasteless and fabricated social media campaigns, and heated
rhetoric and tempers, conventions are a way for parties, candidates and
delegates to grow.
The GOP grew to be a majority political party after the 1976
national convention and the GOP will grow after Cleveland. Donald Trump and
Mike Pence recognize the GOP must appeal to a more voters to be successful in
defeating the vast corrupt political machine that supports Hillary Clinton. Trump
and Pence have the leadership ability to defeat the machine and return the
government to the people not the special interests of the Clintons and the
Obamas.
-30-
Jim Patterson is a life member of the American Foreign
Service Association, life member of the Associates of Vietnam Veterans of
American, and Associate Member of the Korean War Veteran’s Association, member
of the U.S. Philippine Society, member DACOR, contributor Foreign Service
Journal, and others.
No comments:
Post a Comment