California Governor Ronald Reagan was fond of invoking the Republican ‘Eleventh Commandment’ which was “Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.” This epistle was credited to California Republican State Chairman Gaylord Parkinson during the 1960’s. In 1976, Reagan broke that commandment to advance his own political career.

            Reagan grew up in central Illinois and was a lifeguard who saved 77 people from drowning. In his youth he had the nickname “Dutch,” After graduating from tiny Eureka College, he worked on radio and rebroadcast Chicago Cubs games. With the team for spring training in the thirties he took a screen test and became a Hollywood actor. He appeared in more than fifty films, and from 1954-1962 he hosted General Electric Theater on television. During those years he visited GE plants across the country and honed his public speaking skills talking to employees in his folksy style

            Reagan had been a New Deal Democrat and served several terms as the Screen Actor’s Guild (union). His second wife Nancy (and her father) influenced his political shift to a conservative Republican. His 1964 speech supporting Barry Goldwater “A Time for Choosing” catapulted him as a rising political star and he was elected governor of California in 1966.

            Less than two years later, he dipped his proverbial toe into the waters and made himself available for the waters for the Republican nomination in 1968 as an alternative to Richard Nixon. His efforts were tepid at best, and Nixon’s remarkable comeback that he had secured a majority of delegates before the Miami Beach convention. Reagan received the exposure he needed for the future.

            When Richard Nixon resigned in August of 1974, his vice-president, Gerald Ford ascended to the Oval Office. Ford had been appointed to that position after the resignation of vice-president Spiro Agnew. Ford discovered that he liked the job and decided to attempt to be elected in his own right in 1976. Reagan had other plans.

            As the (unelected) incumbent, Gerald Ford was the leader of the Republican Party One could say when Reagan did more than speak ill of a fellow Republican when he challenged Ford that year in one of tightest nomination battles in American history, and there hasn’t been anything like it since. Ford edged out Reagan 1,121 to 1,078 in the delegate count at the Kansas City convention, and entered the general election more beat up than he ever was as a football start at the University of Michigan in the 1930’s. He would lose a close race to Jimmy Carter that November.    

Reagan promised to campaign for Ford but didn’t go out of his way. He had his sights set on 1980. Coincidentally, there was discussion of Ford joining him on the ticket at the Detroit convention that was intriguing but never materialized. Reagan would go on to win two of the biggest landslides in presidential election history.

            Historian Max Boot just published a new Reagan biography that he spent a decade on and gives us a 2024 perspective of ‘The Gipper.” I have not read the book, I have perused reviews, and it is a new look and analysis of his legacy. The judgement of history changes over the year and decades. Andrew Johnson, Ulysses Grant, and Woodrow Wilson are all excellent examples. Reagan took the Republican Party to the right, but if he were to visit today, he wouldn’t recognize it.