Chapter 3: Rocky
The Nelson Rockefeller Presidency (1975-1976)
To many, President Ford seemed like a man walking a tightrope going into the next election. It seemed that the Democrats had a clear shot at victory, but then he fell—with a bullet in his brain.
When President Ford was declared dead, Nelson Rockefeller was on the opposite side of the nation, giving a speech to the Maryland Young Republican Club. A secret service member came up beside him, whispering the news to him. He ended the speech rather hurriedly, briefly apologizing to the students before departing. He was hurriedly driven back to the white house. His driver would later say, “He seemed fidgety the whole time, constantly tapping his foot and adjusting his glasses; something was wrong.”
The body of Gerald Ford had been brought back just two days after the shooting, with Betty Ford traveling alongside. She had been attending a separate series of stops on the San Francisco Penisula on the day of the shooting. The state funeral took place almost two weeks later in the D.C. National Cathedral. Presidents and prime ministers from around the world crowded solemnly in the rows of that old hall. It was a generally calm affair, except for the small media firestorm after Nixon’s eulogy to Ford.
Ford had largely selected Nelson Rockefeller as the man of stability." A competent vice president who would reassure the nation after the disaster at Watergate He also brought a much-needed appeal from more liberal constituencies that would not normally support the Republicans, such as African Americans, Hispanics, union members, and urban voters. He managed to rebuff the attacks from some of the much more far-right members, like Senators Barry Goldwater and Jessie Helms, in the Senate to secure the nomination. But Ford is dead now, and this supposed symbol of stability was going to be put to the test.
While he did see eye to eye with Ford on many issues, including his excursions in the Middle East and his policy toward Vietnam, His relationship was strained by his near ostracization from the government by Ford and Nixon cabinet holdovers. In part, the reason he accepted the nomination was due to Ford's promises of a near co-presidency with him gaining near total leeway on domestic matters, which were always Rockefeller's forte. However, Ford’s attempts to realize this never truly came to fruition, particularly because of the medaling of Donald Rumsfeld, which he had always felt partially bitter over.
The first few months of the Rockefeller Presidency were filled with a string of domestic and policy matters that would dominate his early presidency. In the immediate aftermath, he often attempted to keep aggressive policy matters to a minimum after the dramatic transition. His handling of the assassination and the resulting investigation gave him a huge overnight leap in popularity across America, particularly with middle-class Americans. The consensus of the Republican Party was a murmur of discontent on the far right and a rallying cry for moderates. Nelson Rockefeller had been the far-right Goldwaterites punching bag for decades, representing everything they despised about modern America.
Of prime focus to Rockefeller was the matter of the New York financial meltdown. His interventionist economic tendencies and clear love of all things New York made him more likely to join the side of economic intervention. However, he and his advisor were savvy enough to see how such an act would be framed in the press. He decided to keep the state afloat with what he said was just enough money “to get their economy back and walkin’ again.” However, this did not stop the newspapers from jumping all over the story. The New York Daily News, for instance, penned the infamous misquote headline Rockefeller to City: Take My Money and Run.
He managed to appoint Moderate Justice John Paul Stevens without much fuss through the Democrat-controlled Senate after the retirement of Justice Willam O. Douglas. However, this was not so much the case with his next attempt. When Nelson Rockefeller put forward Edward Brooke as a vice presidential nominee, the far right was in uproar. They attempted at almost every possible opportunity to derail the proceeding and to frame him as a northern elitist with a slight touch of racism from many of the southern senators sprinkled in.
However, their attempts broadly failed due to Rockefeller's incredible national goodwill and the willingness of the Democrats to vote for the more moderate nomination. Brooke was nominated 82-16, becoming the first-ever African-American vice president in American history. The nomination of Brooke for Rockefeller was more about his long and experienced career in the Senate, which would lend extra credibility to his ticket. It also served a practical purpose in that it would help win over many African American voters, which Rockefeller's advisors predicted would be a key demographic in the upcoming election, especially for the many midwestern and southern states that Rockefeller would need to win.
In his administration itself, however, Rockefeller’s so-called Kitchen Cabinet was proving to become more and more trouble by the day. The cabinet made up of hard-line Nixon loyalists, was awash with infighting. Henny Kissinger was proving further and further overloaded with positions as Secretary of State and head of the National Security Council. Many, such as Defense Secretary James Stislinger and White House Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld, had grown increasingly belligerent, not just towards the Ford administration's actions but especially towards the actions of the Rockefeller administration. Rockefeller had had enough and conducted what the media dubbed the Christmas Purge. Kisinger became exclusively Secretary of State, and the rest of the Nixonites were done. Donald Rumsfeld was replaced by Dick Cheney as White House Chief of Staff; CIA director William Colby was replaced by Vernon A. Walters; and Secretary of Defense James Stislinger was replaced by General Richard G. Stilwell.
Rockefeller's magnum opus was completing Ford’s agenda when it came to tax reform and the economy. The nation was in the midst of one of the worst economic depressions in recent history, with inflation and unemployment up dramatically. Following in the legacy of “Whip Inflation Now," he pushed for a series of social programs and spending plans nicknamed the New Plan by Nelson Rockefeller in one of his speeches. With major influence from the White House, the New Plan would be partially passed with some minor revisions from Democrats in May of 1967.
On foreign matters, Rockefeller was largely accused of tossing it to the wayside in favor of domestic preoccupations. The aftermath of the Vietnam retreat ran deep in Rockefeller's foreign policy. He took an internationalist view of the world, preferring to go through bodies such as the UN, which he was a great supporter of. He continued a policy of detente with the Soviet Union, ratifying a small arms reduction treaty in Athens in early 1967, for which he reserved much praise. Given his stressful domestic situation and ailing health, travel was generally off the table, and he is notable for being the president to take the fewest overseas trips in modern American history.
His strategy of peaceful negotiation seemed to only backfire on him. For instance, the attempted Operation Fluid Drive to save American civilians trapped in Lebanon proved to be extremely undermanned and an overall failure, resulting in seven deaths after Lebanese militants began firing on the transport ships. He also sparked a small riff between him and his close friend Henry Kissinger when he refused to allow Indonesia to launch an invasion of the nation of East Timor, which Kissinger was in favor of. These lackluster foreign policy credentials generally seemed to not have much of an effect on Rockefeller’s' popularity with the moderate voting public, but they were often used by his Republican opponents as ammunition against the president.
As Rockefeler's term carried on, one thing was apparent in everyone's minds: the 1976 election. Everyone knew that despite his popularity, Nelson Rockefeller was still on a short timer before he would have to test it.
