REPUBLICANS: A GAMBLE GONE WRONG

Q. What if President Ford were to pick a liberal Northerner as his running mate?

A. "It would be a foolish mistake. Ford would lose the South. And a lot of Republicans might not work for him."

—Ronald Reagan in an interview with TIME, July 12.

"I have chosen the distinguished United States Senator, the Honorable Richard Schweiker."

—Reagan at a Los Angeles press conference, July 26.

It was one of the most astonishing and bizarre turnabouts in a campaign full of surprises. President Ford was at a White House staff meeting when he got the tip that California's conservative Reagan was about to name as his vice-presidential choice Pennsylvania's Schweiker—just about the most liberal of all of the party's Northern Senators and a man who opposes many of the things that Reagan supports (see box). Ford looked stunned, then puzzled. "I thought someone was pulling my leg," he explained later.

As the significance of Reagan's act sank in, the President relaxed. He thought it was prompted by what he called "a high degree of desperation." He felt, said his aides, "relieved and liberated." After battling with his dogged challenger for eight tough and often frustrating months, Ford could be more certain than ever of a first-ballot victory in Kansas City on Aug. 18, a less bitterly contested convention and unexpected freedom in selecting his own vice-presidential candidate.

Ford and his strategists assessed the Reagan move accurately and with caution. Says one insider: "We saw it as a dangerous gamble that Reagan would not have made if he were not behind and worried, but we sure didn't proclaim it the political faux pas of the century right away." Indeed, the President's aides expressed some sympathy for Reagan, who they concede has run a strong, issue-oriented campaign. "I feel a little sorry for the Governor," explained a Ford assistant. "There was no way he could catch up. He had to roll the dice."

REASONS FOR THE GAMBLE

Reagan's wild gamble in naming Schweiker was couched in lofty terms of unifying the party for victory in November, but it was a much more naked move than that. His search for delegates had been stalled, and Ford was making inroads in delegations from Hawaii to Mississippi. So the challenger made a bold reach to the left in hopes that he might pick up some of the "soft" Ford delegates in such states as Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey. The calculated risk was that Reagan's conservative ideologues would grumble, but finally stay with him, while moderates would drift away from Ford. By the end of a tumultuous week, it was clear that the last-gasp Reagan strategy had failed. He had managed to hang on to his most conservative delegates, despite their screams of pain. But he had not achieved the ultimate goal of the whole operation: to shake loose wavering Ford delegates in the Northeast.