This is CBS Eye on the World.

Here's John Batchelor.

This is CBS, I'm John Batchelor.

The book is Reagan, his life and legend, Max Booth, the author.

We continue the story with Ronald Reagan running for the presidency in 1976.

Gerald Ford is in the White House, having ascended to the presidency at the resignation of Richard Nixon.

And the challenge to Gerald Ford is in the primaries. Max tells the story extremely dramatically.

The question is, at this point, Reagan was fine with the conservatives and looking to the center of the party.

He came very close, Max. What was the opinion of the Reagan supporters at the time why he didn't overwhelm Gerald Ford?

What hell?

What was there a moment where he could have won it and didn't?

I mean, I think there were some moments when when he could have wanted and just, you know, fell short.

And I think the key one was in early in the New Hampshire primary, where he came

very close to winning, but lost by something like a thousand votes. But it was, you know,

it's always very hard to unseat a president of your own party in the primaries, right? It's,

it's never happened during the open primary period of the post-World War II era. And Reagan came,

in fact, closer than anybody else to pulling off that feat, where even after

the primaries were over by the beginning of the summer of 1976, it still wasn't clear who

had won in both the Ford and Reagan campaigns were politicking right up until the convention

to secure the delegates.

And Ford did manage to secure the delegates.

But then Reagan won the heart of the convention of the Republican Party

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