Wednesday's
Wall Street Journal ran a review of Craig Shirley's book, "Reagan's Revolution," which details his near-miss campaign to seize the Republican nomination from President Ford.
For those who were too young or who found better things to do than follow a GOP dogfight, the 1976 Republican Convention was the last one to feature high drama on the floor. On the opening night, there was a floor fight over an obscure party rule. Ford's forces narrowly won, as they did on the first ballot two nights later.
There were moments of low comedy, the best of which was Vice President Nelson Rockefeller tearing a phone out of its jack and showing it to the TV cameras. The Reagan delegates were defiant to the end, delaying Ford's acceptance speech with an hour-long demonstration. And who can forget the convention band playing the University of Michigan fight song 298 times on Thursday night? That cost Ford the state of Ohio, which he lost by fewer than 10,000 votes. (Buckeye fans are that serious about their football.)
But I digress.
Shirley described the state of the GOP in 1976:
[P]ost-Watergate, the Republican Party was moribund, suffering from "multiple personality disorder, an inferiority complex [and] delusions of persecution.
After the convention, some experts were convinced that Reagan's challenge had finished off the GOP, and that Reagan himself had just committed political suicide.
Does all this sound familiar?
Shirley made some observations about Reagan that reminded me of Howard Dean. The reviewer, Quin Hilllyer of the Mobile Register, sums them up:
Mr. Reagan's near-miss amounted to the most productive loss in American history. It consolidated the conservative movement behind a candidate skilled enough to nearly unseat an incumbent, and it proved that the movement's principles had a popular following, if not a winning one.
Of course, there are marked differences between Reagan '76 and Dean '04. The 1976 contest for the nomination dragged on for months; the 2004 race ran on Internet time. Reagan v. Ford was a one-on-one showdown; Dean faced a tag team of opponents. Most importantly, Reagan was a conservative ideologue; Dean is a reformer who has been mischaracterized by the Right as a Northeastern radical liberal.
But you get the idea.