The 'short' wheelbase is only 10 inches shorter than the 4-door, and doesn't have much, if anything to do with the ride quality.
Tires and tire pressure have a lot to do with it - using P-metric tires like stock and not LT tires will give a smoother ride, as will keeping the tire pressure around 28-32psi (the stock 26psi is slightly low). You can run the rear tires about 2psi lower than the front when unloaded to made the leaf spring solid axle ride a little better.
Not all tires ride the same, either. Tires like the Michelin LTX M/S2 tend to give a smoother ride than some other brands, especially those with All-Terrain treads. At this point, the Load Range D tires are really the main ride quality issue, so I'd suggest selling those and getting something else, either P-metrics or Load Range C LT tires.
Twin-tube gas shocks like the Monroe Sensa-Trac will give a more luxury-car ride than monotube gas shocks will. Sensa-Tracs are good shocks for the money and are what I would use for this application. I switched over to Bilsteins, which are high-pressure monotubes - and those let you feel everything in the road.
New shocks, even the Sensa-Tracs, will ride firm at first, but after a few thousand miles they will break in and should give a ride that isn't too firm but also isn't sloppy.
You'll also want rubber bushings for everything. Sometimes the radius arm bushings are replaced with polyurethane, since it lasts a lot longer, but poly bushings ride much firmer than rubber. Personally I'd take the minor ride quality hit from the poly radius arm bushings, due to the hassle and expense of replacing rubber ones much more often.
One other thing to note is that often on the first gens, the front springs sag, and so the bump stops get really close to the beam arms - making it so the front end really only has a small amount of suspension travel before the bump stops are hit. This mades the ride really bouncy and rough. The simple and inexpensive fix is to use large diameter washers as spring spacers under the stock springs, and restore the stock height and suspension travel. This also helps restore the front end alignment.
