A Choice Not an Echo by Phyllis Schlafly

Author:Phyllis Schlafly [Schlafly, Phyllis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781621573364
Publisher: Regnery Publishing

17

The Accidental President

1974

The Eastern Establishment and the kingmakers were probably well satisfied with the way Republican President Nixon allowed Henry Kissinger to continue the foreign and defense policies of Democratic Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. But Nelson Rockefeller wasn’t satisfied with directing policy through his surrogate, Henry Kissinger, because he still cherished his lifelong ambition to become president. His dreams having been thrice dashed—in 1960, 1964, and 1968—Rockefeller realized that no Republican National Convention would ever nominate him. So he planned an alternative route to the White House that would bypass the convention—an amendment to the Constitution providing for the president to nominate a new vice president in the event of a vacancy in the office.

It’s not easy to amend the U.S. Constitution. To accomplish this task, Rockefeller called on Herbert Brownell, one of the cleverest lawyers of the New York establishment. Brownell had managed Tom Dewey’s campaign in 1948, engineered the smear-campaign against Taft in 1952, and been a chief adviser to the liberal New York City mayor John Lindsay. Brownell wrote the proposed Twenty-fifth Amendment, marshaled the talking points, lobbied it through Congress, and then lobbied it through three-fourths of the state legislatures to ratification in 1967—all without any publicity. He made it appear so reasonable, so necessary, so noncontroversial.

The Twenty-fifth Amendment is one of our longest constitutional amendments, and few people read it before or after it was passed. Under cover of its wordiness, its real purpose was to give us a president who was appointed to the position—but never nominated by a national convention or elected by the American people.

To make the Twenty-fifth Amendment work for Rockefeller, Vice President Spiro Agnew had to be removed first. Agnew was accused of failing to report $29,500 on his income tax return and was offered a plea bargain he couldn’t refuse. By pleading nolo contendere, he escaped a felony conviction and jail sentence. The price, of course, was vacating the office. Agnew resigned as vice president on October 10, 1973. President Nixon then used the new Twenty-fifth Amendment to appoint Representative Gerald Ford as vice president. Congressional confirmation was no problem because Ford was a popular member.

Ford had already proved he was a man whom the Establishment could count on to take orders.1 He had been a member of the Warren Commission assigned to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Then came the Watergate scandal causing Nixon to resign in disgrace on August 8, 1974. Nixon’s resignation bumped Gerald Ford into the Oval Office. That’s how Ford became the one and only U.S. president who was never elected by the American people. When Ford entered the White House, Henry Kissinger was waiting to advise him how to use the Twenty-fifth Amendment. Eleven days after Ford became president, he appointed Nelson Rockefeller as vice president.

The Twenty-fifth Amendment made all this happen. For the next two years, Rockefeller served as vice president, just a heartbeat away from his lifelong goal. In a CBS television documentary on this appointment, Walter Cronkite commented that “the Rockefellers are the epitome of America’s permanent establishment.

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