According to newspaper accounts, the phraseology of the joint communique suggested
that the meeting had been more than usually cordial. There had also been a two-hour
meeting with Deng Xiao-ping reported by the Ford White House as "a constructive
exchange of views on a wide range of international issues." At a banquet, Deng used a
toast for an anti-Soviet tirade which the Soviet news agency TASS criticized as "vicious
attacks." [fn 18] Ford thought, probably because he had been told by Kissinger, that the
fact that Mao had accompanied him to the door of his villa after the meeting was a
special honor, but he was disabused by Beijing-based correspondents who told him that
this was Mao's customary practice. Ford's daughter Susan was sporting a full-length
muskrat coat for her trip to the Great Wall. "It's more than I ever expected," she gushed.
"I feel like I'm in a fantasy. It's a whole other world." Days after Ford departed from
Beijing, Bush also left the Chinese capital. It was time for a new step in his imperial
cursus honorum. During his entire stay in Beijing, Bush had never stopped scheming for
new paths of personal advancement towards the very apex of power. Before Bush went to
Beijing, he had talked to his network asset and crony Rogers C.B. Morton about his
favorite topic, his own prospects for future career aggrandizement. Morton at that time
was Secretary of Commerce, but he was planning to step down before much longer.
Morton told Bush: "What you ought to think about is coming back to Washington to
replace me when I leave. It's a perfect springboard for a place on the ticket." This idea is
the theme of a Ford White House memo preserved in the Jack Marsh Files at the Ford
Library in Ann Arbor. The memo is addressed to Jack Marsh, counsellor to the President,
by Russell Rourke of Marsh's staff. The memo, which is dated March 20, 1975, reads as
follows: "It's my impression and partial understanding that George Bush has probably
had enough of egg rolls and Peking by now (and has probably gotten over his lost V.P.
opportunity). He's one hell of a Presidential surrogate, and would be an outstanding
spokesman for the White House between now and November '76. Don't you think he
would make an outstanding candidate for Secretary of Commerce or a similar post
sometime during the next six months?"
The Next Step
Bush was now obsessed with the idea that he had a right to become vice president in
- As a member of the senatorial caste, he had a right to enter the senate, and if the
plebeians with their changeable humors barred the elective route, then the only answer
was to be appointed to the second spot on the ticket and enter the senate as its presiding
officer. As Bush wrote in his campaign autobiography: "Having lost out to Rockefeller as
Ford's vice presidential choice in 1974, I might be considered by some as a leading
contender for the number two spot in Kansas City...." [fn 19]
Bush possessed a remarkable capability for the blackmailing of Ford: he could enter the
1976 Republican presidential primaries as a candidate in his own right, and could
occasion a hemorrhaging of liberal Republican support that might otherwise have gone to
Ford. Ford, the first non-elected president, was the weakest of all incumbents, and he was
already preparing to face a powerful challenge from his right mounted by the Ronald
Reagan camp. The presence of an additional rival with Bush's networks among liberal