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little, too late. Conservatives from Bill Buckley to Strom Thurmond were already supporting Nixon.
    The result was never really in doubt. Liberal columnists had trumpeted the sometimes panting, sometimes Hamlet-like Rockefeller, Governor George Romney of Michigan, and Pennsylvania’s Governor Bill Scranton. But all of them were, of course, liberals from the moderate Tom Dewey wing of the party. They were the essence of the “Me Too Republicans.” They were Republicans who never really had any quarrel with the size or growth of government or higher taxes and never worried too much about Soviet expansionism. They were often proponents of a larger role of the state in the affairs of Americans. They favored higher taxes as a means to pay for that bigger state and were more interested in promoting trade with the Soviets than worrying about Russian missiles pointed at their children’s and grandchildren’s heads. Their main argument was simply that they could manage government better than their Democratic counterparts.
    Conservatives were disappointed that Nixon chose the little known, moderately conservative Governor of Maryland, Spiro Agnew, as his running mate. But Agnew fit the bill for Nixon. He was a border state Governor who would not cause Nixon to look over his shoulder. Nixon remembered the insults Eisenhower piled on him when he was Vice President, and he confided to a campaign insider at the 1968 convention that he wanted to run without a Vice President. 21 He had nothing but funerals and presiding over the Senate in mind for his running mate. Nixon wanted someone who would mind his Ps and Qs and not cause him any concerns.
    Nixon won the Presidency that fall by the narrowest of margins over Democratic nominee Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota and Alabama Governor George Wallace, who ran as an independent on the American Party ticket. John Mitchell, Nixon’s law partner, friend, and incoming Attorney General, famously told reporters, “watch what we do, not what we say.” Nervous conservative leaders, who had often been suspicious of the new President-elect over the years, planned on watching Richard Nixon too.

15

REAGAN’S REMARKS
    “There is no substitute for victory.”
    T hank you very much.
    Mr. President, Mrs. Ford, Mr. Vice President, Mr. Vice President to be, the distinguished guests here and you ladies and gentlemen:
    I am going to say fellow Republicans here, but those who are watching from a distance—all of those millions of Democrats and independents who I know are looking for a cause around which to rally and which I believe we can give them.
    Mr. President, before you arrived tonight, these wonderful people here, when we came in, gave Nancy and myself a welcome. And that, plus this, plus your kindness and generosity in honoring us by bringing us down here, will give us a memory that will live in our hearts forever.
    Watching on television these last few nights, and I’ve seen you also with the warmth that you greeted Nancy, and you also filled my heart with joy when you did that.
    May I just say some words? There are cynics who say that a party platform is something that no one bothers to read and it doesn’t very often amount to much.
    Whether it is different this time than it has ever been before, I believe the Republican Party has a platform that is a banner of bold, unmistakable colors with no pastel shades.
    We have just heard a call to arms based on that platform. And a call to arms to really be successful in communicating and reveal to the American people the difference between this platform and the platform of the opposing party, which is nothing but a revamped and a reissue and a running of a late, late show of the things that we’ve been hearing from them for the last 40 years.
    If I could just take a moment—I had an assignment the other day. Someone asked me to write a letter for a time capsule that is going to be opened in Los Angeles a hundred years from now, on