Word: schweikered
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...most astonishing and bizarre turnabouts in a campaign full of surprises. President Ford was at a White House staff meeting when he got the tip that California's conservative Reagan was about to name as his vice-presidential choice Pennsylvania's Schweiker-just about the most liberal of all of the party's Northern Senators and a man who opposes many of the things that Reagan supports (see box). Ford looked stunned, then puzzled. "I thought someone was pulling my leg," he explained later...
Reagan's wild gamble in naming Schweiker was couched in lofty terms of unifying the party for victory in November, but it was a much more naked move than that. His search for delegates had been stalled, and Ford was making inroads in delegations from Hawaii to Mississippi. So the challenger made a bold reach to the left in hopes that he might pick up some of the "soft" Ford delegates in such states as Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey. The calculated risk was that Reagan's conservative ideologues would grumble, but finally stay with him, while...
...cozy with the Washington establishment. Conspicuously missing was the ability to lead the nation if elevated to the Oval Office. The choice apparently narrowed to William Ruckelshaus, the Deputy Attorney General in the Nixon Administration who refused to carry out orders to fire Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, and Schweiker, whose name, Sears says, "kept popping...
...Reagan operatives had settled on Schweiker by Friday, July 16. Laxalt tried to reach him in Washington, but discovered he was on vacation. He could not make contact until the following Monday, when Schweiker returned his call from a pay phone in Ocean City, N.J. Laxalt said that he had something so important to discuss that he could not reveal it on the phone. Schweiker agreed to meet him and Sears in Washington on Tuesday morning. At a 90-minute meeting in Laxalt's office, Sears recalls, "we told him if he was agreeable, we would recommend...
...Schweiker recalls it more dramatically: "It was a stunning shock. I was numb. It crushed me down." He conceded that he had "some negative conceptions" about the offer and asked for time to think it over. He spent most of the night weighing it with his wife. Finally he decided to accept. Though he talked about wanting to help unify the party, it was clear that he was also tempted by what almost certainly was his only long-shot chance to be more than just another U.S. Senator. He expected criticism from friends but was surprised at their cries that...