I wonder what kind of pressure they put on Reagan to pick Bush? I hear that when a man is President (or selected to be President) that “they” have a talk with him, and he is never the same.
There may not have been that much pressure at all as Bush was the runner-up. Reagan reached out to party liberals in 1976 picking Sen. Schweiker as his running mate, but it got him nowhere (it didn’t get him liberal support, and may have cost him with Conservatives wondering what he was thinking).
Remember, there was brief pressure to get Reagan to pick Gerald Ford in 1980 (”Two Presidents for the price of one”). Of course, the upside to picking Ford would’ve meant he likely would not have run in 1988 at 75 (unlike Bush, Sr).