I’m not so sure about that. For the same reason Ronald Reagan didn’t wind up as vice president to Gerald Ford, which team I wrote would have knocked off Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale. I still believe it.

Dan Evans was mixed up in that one, as victim, not perpetrator. And the reason Bob Dole wound up as No. 2 instead of Reagan is chilling.

I attended the GOP national convention in Kansas City in 1976 and saw what I perceived as a rare and spine-tingling event occur before my eyes.

It was the last night. Ford had given his acceptance speech as had Dole. Nelson and Happy Rockefeller were on the platform and Reagan was invited to speak.

A beaten but still defiant Reagan gave what sounded like the speech he intended to give if he had won the nomination instead of Ford, which he fought hard for. It was a rip-roaring call to arms that bought the delegates out of their seats, cheering and weeping.

I saw out there a welling up of emotion as they suddenly realized they had nominated the wrong man. It was too late, of course, to substitute Reagan for Ford or Dole.

Besides, Reagan had sent a handwritten note to his own California delegation prior to the selection of Dole, saying, “There is no circumstance whatsoever under which I would accept the nomination for vice president. This is absolutely final.”

I didn’t believe that letter, and I was proven right. Reagan said later that not only would he have accepted, he let that be known to top Ford advisers.

The call never came.

The reason, I was told by one of those top Ford people was this:

Ford feared that if he chose Reagan for his vice president and they were elected, he, Ford, would never live to finish his term. There were among the Reagan followers some so fanatically dedicated to seeing him become president that they would have removed the last obstacle in his path, Gerald Ford.

“Dan Evans was the No. 1 man on Ford’s list for vice president,” said my informant.

“But Dan Evans was not acceptable to Reagan. Dole was. Dan knew why he didn’t get it and he knew why Reagan didn’t get it.”

I repeated this story to another prominent Republican who told me he’d heard the same thing as an explanation of why Ford wouldn’t have Rockefeller for his veep in 1976 — remember, before that, Rockefeller was only an appointed vice president. And he heard the same thing before that as to why John Kennedy would never have Lyndon Johnson as his vice president, which he subsequently did. Our own U.S. Sen. Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson was No. 1 with JFK for the No. 2 spot until Kennedy was talked into taking LBJ to carry Texas.

Anyway, many tales are told in politics as to why things happen or do not happen.

Why wasn’t Evans acceptable to Reagan? Maybe because Reagan feared having to face him for president the next time around, where, as a youthful Vice President Evans, he would have achieved stature he wouldn’t have merely as an ex-governor.

Jackson would have made a great president in his day and Evans in his. Fate intervened.

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, WA 98340.)