Word: fording
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Then there is the "Dump Quayle" strategy. "If Jerry Ford could dump Nelson Rockefeller," says a Baker friend, "why couldn't Bush dump Quayle?" Bush could, of course, but then there would be the residence problem. With both candidates from Texas, a Bush-Baker ticket might be required by the Constitution to forfeit that state's electoral votes. "And besides that," says Robert Strauss, "folks would probably find the whole thing too cute...
Later, in 1975, Bush persuaded President Ford to name Baker Under Secretary of Commerce. It was then that Baker first learned how to play the inside game. Ford was locked in a struggle for the 1976 Republican presidential nomination with Ronald Reagan. From his perch at Commerce, Baker was trying to help with Southern supporters by persuading the President to take a hard line against textile imports from China. At the same time, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wanted nothing to upset the Chinese...
...Ford was scheduled to speak to a group of textile manufacturers in San Francisco on March 26, 1976, and Baker talked him into indicating his willingness to get tough on Chinese textiles. Kissinger's deputies were aghast, and Baker suspected that the Secretary of State would call Air Force One to have the offensive language deleted from the President's speech. Baker arranged to be notified if Kissinger tried such a ploy. When word came, Baker called the plane too. Arguing again for the President's political interests against China's hurt feelings, Baker had the lines reinserted...
Baker soon took over management of Ford's losing campaign and brought the President within an eyelash of beating Jimmy Carter. Four years later, the Reaganites tried to recruit Baker for the '80 campaign. But Bush was running, and Baker never hesitated to dance with the man who brung him. Moreover, he ensured Bush's selection as Reagan's Vice President, which wasn't easy. "What I'll admit to, but George never will," said Baker in 1981, "is that the Veep thing was always the fallback. It was always in my mind. That's why, at every opportunity...
Hope, 48, has had a distinguished career as a lawyer specializing in transportation issues. She first entered politics as an advisor to the Ford Administration, and has since served as co-chair of Lawyers for Reagan/Bush in 1984 and as general counsel to the 1988 presidential campaign of Sen. Robert Dole...