How do you get rid of Vice Presidents? It’s not easy to fire them if they don’t want to go, especially in an election year. And there’s no way, short of catching them with their hands in the cash register, to get them to resign. So the drill is to send them on long trips to obscure places. That’s what Richard Nixon did to Spiro Agnew in the summer of 1971 when he wanted to get Agnew out of the public eye so that he could replace him with John Connally. Agnew spent weeks slogging through darkest Africa, making the papers only when something controversial surfaced, like the copulating rhinos incident. And now Nelson Rockefeller is setting off on a similar voyage, visiting such crucial spots as New Zealand, Malaysia, and Singapore. The reason: White House aides are climbing the wall over Rockefeller’s refusal to campaign for Ford and the tacit anti-Ford tone of a series of speeches that he proposes to deliver during the next few primary months. The first of the series, given at the National Press Club in late February, attacked all the presidential candidates for dealing in “personalities and promises,” and deplored “the national election year practice of putting off till tomorrow what we should be doing today.” Since Ford is the candidate in the best position to be doing the things that Rocky wants done, White House aides read Rockefeller’s speech as an implied attack on the President himself. Thus, a long, quiet trip has been scheduled for the Vice President.
Who’s the culprit? Washington campaign watchers can’t decide who’s behind the Ford attacks on Reagan as a right-wing extremist, attacks which seem to fly in the face of accepted primary campaign practices. “If Ford loses the nomination,” says one veteran newsman, “he gives the Democrats campaign ammunition, the same way Humphrey gave the Republicans antiMcGovern ammunition back in 1972. If Ford wins, then he’s alienated a large chunk of the Republican Party.” So who’s advising Ford? The process of elimination leaves only a couple of names. The advisors behind the assaults on Reagan aren’t Rogers Morton, Melvin Laird, or Bryce Harlow, all of whom reportedly deplore the attacks. And Bo Callaway is out, since he is no longer listened to. That leaves Ford himself and Robert Hartmann, his longtime political advisor. Hartmann, famous in Washington for his erratic temperament, once again has Ford’s ear now that Donald Rumsfeld is safely across the Potomac at the Pentagon. And although he calls himself a conservative, Hartmann has long been openly contemptuous of the organized American Right. “Bob personalizes things,” says one newsman. “He’s taking Reagan’s challenge personally.”
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