Letter From Washington

The newest name on Gerald Ford’s list of vice-presidential possibilities is an old one—Nelson Rockefeller. “I would not rule out Mr. Rockefeller,” says Rogers Morton, Ford’s new campaign manager. “He has a tremendous constituency across the country.” Part of the shift in attitude is the result of the Reagan challenge. Because Reagan intends to go down to the wire, many Ford advisors feel it’s futile to continue to woo the hard Republican Right, whose votes will go to Reagan no matter what the campaign ploys or promises. But even more important are Rockefeller’s 114 New York delegates. The assumption has been that those delegates would automatically switch to Ford at the Convention. But that assumption is no longer quite automatic. Reagan is expected to score impressively in the remaining 23 Southern and Western primaries, and the Ford camp is revising its estimated delegate count sharply downward, no longer denying out of hand, at least in private, that Reagan could block a first-ballot victory. No one conceives of a situation in which Rockefeller would throw his votes to Reagan. But it is conceivable that Rockefeller, who deeply resents his treatment by Ford and still believes himself the man best qualified to be President, might decide to hold his delegates and offer himself as the compromise candidate most likely to win the general election. Thus, as the Nixonians used to put it, the stroking of Rockefeller.

Ford’s weakness on the issues is a source of growing concern among campaign aides. A case in point is the Panama Canal, an issue on which Reagan is scoring heavily in the South and Southwest, where voters believe that American withdrawal from Panama means Cuban control of the Canal. Attempting to catch up with the issue in Pallas, Ford said, “I can simply say— and say emphatically—that the United States will never give up its defense rights to the Panama Canal and will never give up its operational rights as far as Panama is concerned.” But the problem is that Ellsworth Bunker, chief of the U.S. negotiating team, is in the process of doing precisely that. In secret testimony to Congress, Bunker stated that Ford’s negotiating directives call for a treaty that would “give up the Canal Zone after a period of time.” Is Ford lying? “Not at all,” says a Capitol Hill Ford supporter with strong. Administration ties. “Those ‘negotiating directives’ aren’t Ford’s. They come from State. Ford just didn’t know what the fuss was all about until he read the newspapers.”

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Presidential Election

The newest name on Gerald Ford’s list of vice-presidential possibilities is an old one—Nelson Rockefeller. “I would not rule out Mr. Rockefeller,” says Rogers Morton, Ford’s new campaign manager. “He has a tremendous constituency across the country.” Part of the shift in attitude is the result of the Reagan challenge. Because Reagan intends to go down to the wire, many Ford advisors feel it’s futile to continue to woo the hard Republican Right, whose votes will go to Reagan no matter what the campaign ploys or promises. But even more important are Rockefeller’s 114 New York delegates. The assumption has been that those delegates would automatically switch to Ford at the Convention. But that assumption is no longer quite automatic. Reagan is expected to score impressively in the remaining 23 Southern and Western primaries, and the Ford camp is revising its estimated delegate count sharply downward, no longer denying out of hand, at least in private, that Reagan could block a first-ballot victory. No one conceives of a situation in which Rockefeller would throw his votes to Reagan. But it is conceivable that Rockefeller, who deeply resents his treatment by Ford and still believes himself the man best qualified to be President, might decide to hold his delegates and offer himself as the compromise candidate most likely to win the general election. Thus, as the Nixonians used to put it, the stroking of Rockefeller.

Ford’s weakness on the issues is a source of growing concern among campaign aides. A case in point is the Panama Canal, an issue on which Reagan is scoring heavily in the South and Southwest, where voters believe that American withdrawal from Panama means Cuban control of the Canal. Attempting to catch up with the issue in Pallas, Ford said, “I can simply say— and say emphatically—that the United States will never give up its defense rights to the Panama Canal and will never give up its operational rights as far as Panama is concerned.” But the problem is that Ellsworth Bunker, chief of the U.S. negotiating team, is in the process of doing precisely that. In secret testimony to Congress, Bunker stated that Ford’s negotiating directives call for a treaty that would “give up the Canal Zone after a period of time.” Is Ford lying? “Not at all,” says a Capitol Hill Ford supporter with strong. Administration ties. “Those ‘negotiating directives’ aren’t Ford’s. They come from State. Ford just didn’t know what the fuss was all about until he read the newspapers.”