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What's wrong with the ending? Just look it up, still I think it would be intresting if you had the ending protests succeed or something(look up "Demand a Better ending for ME3)

Ok, the extended cut fixed a lot of problems, but the best choice would have been to create new endings.

Also great update, and I was just wondering one thing..........what's the status of relations between US and Iran in your timeline? Since the US apparently didn't participate in Operation Ajax, would Iran still hate the US as they do OTL?

And it looks like, the way things are going, the Republicans are gonna win.....
 
J.J.Jameson: It's based on his historic speech at the '64 convention.

Kurt_Steiner: He can't do any worse than Nixon.

Mr. Santiago: Personally, I think "minority vote" is such a weird concept in this day and age.

Mr. Sulu: Now that you mention it, I hadn't thought of that connection at all. o_O

Xie: I see.

The status of relations between US and Iran is -9 in my game. The UK still controls Iran as a puppet in my game, so any Iranian Revolution would be largely aimed at the Brits instead of the Americans.

It looks like it, doesn't it?
 
Mr. Santiago: Personally, I think "minority vote" is such a weird concept in this day and age.

By 'minority vote' I was referring to the effects the events would have in our present day and era, not in the 60's. You know, from the outside it looks like the black people are more tilted towards the democrats thanks to Kennedy and his stance in civil rights (not even mentioning Obama); with the republicans beeing so strong in the matter, I guess nowadays they would attrack more the minorities... But well, I'm just thinking nonsense here :p
 
Mr. Santiago: Which is ironic, considering Kennedy dragged his feet on civil rights and was pretty much pushed towards supporting the issue by events.

Also ironic: JFK, the great liberal icon, didn't like liberals all that much and preferred the company of conservatives. Heck, he was even friends with Nixon until the '60 race. I learned this watching a show on the History Channel about ten little known facts about JFK.
 
I really Want Goldwater to be President at some point.
 
I really Want Goldwater to be President at some point.

Hear hear!

And Nathan, beautiful series of updates, I hope that Director Lane can ensure that the Chinese do not move too swiftly to acquire WMDs.
 
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J.J.Jameson: You know what’s the funny thing about Goldwater is: Mr. Conservative probably couldn’t get the nomination in 2012. Considering his hostility to the Religious Right, he would probably be blocked from getting the nomination just for that. The Tea Party might still love him, though.

H.Appleby: Welcome back. It's nice to see you again.

We can only hope.

Since the next update is about the Democratic convention, here’s historic footage from that.

[video=youtube;1XD_28yS2kg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XD_28yS2kg[/video]

Spoiler Alert: TTL isn't going to be pretty.

You know what else is funny: YouTube has three videos of Sparkman but not one video of Scoop Jackson. In fact, this is the only piece of footage I have found of him. I'll have better luck finding footage of him in this alternate universe.
 
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The 1960 Democratic National Convention
On Friday, July 22nd, 1960, a small airplane touched down at the airport in Los Angeles, California. A crowd of reporters were on hand to record the moment a tall, lanky man stepped off the plane with his wife following right behind him. The man stopped to talk to a few reporters, his Southern accent making it clear he wasn’t from around here. He then climbed into a waiting car to take him to the hotel. Everyone knew who this very important person was: it was none other than Lyndon B. Johnson, the powerful Senate Majority Leader. A mercurial force of nature, Johnson had spent the last two months as the presumptive Vice Presidential candidate for the Democratic Party. Against the advice of some, the sitting Vice President had chosen LBJ as his running mate primarily for two reasons:
  • Johnson was seen as a compromise figure that could attract Southern voters who weren’t supportive of the Dixiecrats while at the same time would also be acceptable to Northern voters
  • Johnson was the quintessential Congressional deal-maker who knew instinctively how to twist arms and sweet-talk members of Congress into voting his way
Offered a spot on the ticket, Johnson - craving power - accepted despite a stiff warning from former Vice President John Nance Garner (1933-1941) that the office wasn’t “worth a bucket of warm piss.”
With the convention scheduled to open in three days, LBJ arrived in Los Angeles early to do some homework on Jackson’s behalf. Scoop wanted his friend to meet with the gathering Southern delegates and gauge their mood heading into that final weekend. With the South up in arms over his desire to lead the Democratic Party in a pro-civil rights direction, Jackson wanted Johnson to find out for him how bad things might get inside the convention hall.
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Two days after LBJ checked in, Air Force Two touched down in the City of Angels carrying the Vice President and his campaign team. A crowd of 5,000 people were there at the airport to welcome them. Jackson had spent the previous night in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he attended a party thrown in his honor by the famous entertainer Frank Sinatra. A politically active Democrat since the 1940s, Sinatra was an avid Jackson supporter and was looking forward to campaigning for him in the fall. Although Scoop didn’t really care for Las Vegas all that much, he appreciated the honor and attended Sinatra’s party like a good sport. Informed that the African-American entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr. would be there, Jackson made it a point to be seen conversing with him. When asked later about their conversation, Davis would reply that the Vice President “is a very pleasant man to talk to. He treated me like a normal human being, which is quite refreshing considering how other white men have talked to me.”
From Las Vegas, it was on to L.A. and a hotel suite reserved at the Biltmore (the Johnsons occupied the suite directly across the hall). Jackson’s team also had rooms at the Biltmore, which included:
  • John Kenneth Galbraith: a Harvard pro-Keynesian economist whom Jackson had recruited to be his economic advisor
  • Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.: the chief White House speechwriter who was pulling double-duty working for both Sparkman and Jackson
  • Archibald Cox: a Schlesinger associate from New Jersey who was serving as the chief of Jackson’s campaign staff
Although Jackson’s suite was his headquarters for the convention, he and his team filed into Johnson’s suite that Sunday for the first meeting. This was done largely because Scoop thought it was important for him politically to make his running mate feel important. Once the men were settled down, Jackson asked Johnson straight up what the mood of the Southern delegates were. Leaning forward, the Texan told him that he had no support in half the South. Delegates stretching from Maryland to Louisiana were controlled by the Dixiecrats and they were ready to give him hell as soon as possible. He could only count on solid support from Delaware, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Florida. Jackson could further count on Texas and Georgia to support him…but mainly because Johnson had twisted the arms of the delegation leaders in those two states into doing so. As for North Carolina, “they can’t decide which side of the fence to piss on.”
Even though Jackson numerically had enough delegates to secure the nomination on the first ballot without much Southern support, the presumptive nominee was still apprehensive about the Dixiecrats. There was no telling what they would do in order to disrupt the proceedings.
ed-clark-1960-democratic-national-convention.jpg

On July 25th, the 1960 Democratic National Convention officially came to order inside the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. From the moment the convention chairman banged his gavel, it was clear that trouble was brewing in the air. Outside the Arena, civil rights protestors organized by Dr. King were demanding that the Democrats show support for their cause by having a firm pro-civil rights plank in their party platform. They wouldn’t accept anything less and held up signs saying so. Inside the Arena, tensions ran high as pro- and anti-civil rights delegates mingled on the convention floor. The open hostility between them even got physical. Occasionally, things got rough and the police had to be called in to break up fist fights between hotheaded state representatives. Television cameras captured these fights for national consumption, giving viewers a taste of the turmoil engulfing the Party of Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson. Watching from the vantage point of the NBC broadcasting booth, Brinkley turned to Huntley and wryly remarked:
“To the untrained eye, Chet, this convention looks like a madhouse. People are punching each other and are making a lot of noises. To those who have been to these things in the past, this is business as usual.”
Brinkley had a point: Democratic conventions had a reputation for being volatile and sometimes downright nasty. In the week to come, 1960 would prove to be no different.
245a11dae4ceb75c_landing-1.jpg

The highlight of the first day was the convention keynote address. It was delivered by Frank Church, a young man who was also celebrating his thirty-sixth birthday that same Monday. A freshman Senator from Idaho (he was elected in 1956), Church was a progressive who was seen as representing the future of the Democratic Party. While acknowledging the divisive issue of civil rights, Church told his audience that the party in power had so much to be proud of. The main thesis of his speech was that thanks to the visionary leadership of Presidents Stevenson and Sparkman, the nation was better off now than it was at the beginning of 1953. Despite two recessions during the 1950s, the economy was on solid ground and the average citizen still enjoyed the affluence spurred on by the postwar economic boom of the late 1940s. America was more industrious than ever before, giving every American the chance to enjoy the full benefits of consumerism. If the Republicans were arguing that it was time for a change, Church set the tone of the convention by making the counterargument that Americans under Democratic leadership never had it so good. The speakers who followed him repeated the slogan “Eight Years of Peace and Progress”.
The big highlight of Tuesday was the address by the President of the United States. With “Hail to the Chief” announcing his arrival, Sparkman – flanked by his family – walked up to the podium (now adorned with the Presidential seal on the front). Receiving a respectful welcome from the audience, the President waved and took in the moment. Once the applause had died down, Sparkman proceeded to deliver his remarks. Regardless of whether they liked him or not, everyone agreed that he was an energized speaker and here he lived up to that reputation. Sparkman gave a passionate speech which whipped the listeners up into a frenzy-like atmosphere:
“My friends, I have come before you to express my great pride in the America of today and my great confidence in the brightness of her future. The stubborn fact is that this nation is enjoying unprecedented prosperity in a world made peaceful by the cooperation of our friends and allies. From Canada and Cuba to Yugoslavia and Egypt to Japan and Australia, there are many countries around the world that see the United States as a loyal partner in this great and unrelenting struggle against those who seek oppression.”
He credited “vigorous and imaginative leadership, the genius of our scientists, and the skill of our armed forces” for maintaining America’s role as leader of the free world. With relish, he challenged Knowland’s assertion that Big Government was Bad Government by rattling off achievements that the Federal Government had made possible such as agricultural reform, greater conservation and environmental protection, Federal aid to education, the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, and the Brooks-Houser Space Act (which established NASA). “To belittle these beneficial programs as a waste of money inflicts such insult to the notion of what is right that I can barely contain my indignation,” he told a cheering crowd in his distinct Southern accent. It was an dynamic address, one which encapsulated the best the Democrats had been able to achieve so far and laid the foundation for why they deserved another four years.
Untitled1-2.jpg

Watching the speech on television, Jackson felt the torch being passed to him. It would be up to him to make the oratorical effort to explain how he would build on the successes of his two predecessors. How he even found the time to work with Schlesinger in crafting his acceptance speech is a mystery considering all the visitors he received during the convention. He gave an interview to writer Norman Mailer, who was doing an article about the convention for the men’s magazine “Esquire”. Jackson paid his respects to his idol Eleanor Roosevelt, who gave a speech at the convention linking the Fair Deal to her late husband’s New Deal. With Los Angeles being the home of Hollywood, the Vice President was visited by several celebrities expressing their support for his campaign. Ronald Reagan stopped by the hotel suite and said that he would like to give some speeches for him in the fall. The black singer Harry Belafonte of “Calypso” fame talked to Jackson about doing a television campaign commercial appealing to those blacks who could vote to vote Democratic. Democratic couple Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh was photographed exiting Scoop’s suite at one point. Sinatra, who was in town to sing the National Anthem at the convention, re-united with the Vice President and introduced him to his Las Vegas pal Dean Martin. Then there was the visit by Clark Gable and his wife Carole Lombard (1908-1994). Gable was one of the biggest actors in Hollywood, starring in such films as the 1939 epic “Gone with the Wind” (Gable’s role as Rhett Butler earned him the Best Actor Oscar). That same year, Gable married his third wife Lombard, an actress who specialized in comedies such as 1942’s “They All Kissed the Bride”. In a town where celebrity marriages come and go, the Gable-Lombard marriage stood out for its’ stability and longevity. They were a happy couple despite their completely opposite political views: Gable was a conservative Republican while Lombard was a liberal Democrat. Remembering their meeting years later, Jackson recalled that Lombard pretty much dragged her pro-Knowland husband along to meet the presumptive standard-bearer of her political party.
Image-6_Clark-Gable-and-Carole-Lombard__1-1024x813-2.jpg

The afternoon of Wednesday, July 27th would see the Democratic Party change forever. Thousands of people poured into the convention hall, including the 1,500-plus delegates, to watch the balloting process unfold – not to mention the millions of television viewers across the country. Jackson watched on television as his good friend Washington Senator Warren Magnuson formally placed his name in nomination. In his speech, Magnuson declared that Jackson had the perfect combination of being “firm in foreign policy and enlightened in domestic affairs. My friends, you cannot ask for any better!”
He went on to hail the Vice President as “the only man who has the maturity and the experience to be our next President.”
Following the pro-Jackson demonstration out on the floor came Byrd’s turn for time in the limelight. Scoop took a deep breath and leaned back in his seat, filled with uncertainty. This was the Dixiecrats’ chance to disrupt the convention, but how would they do it? He would get his answer when his Southern rival made a surprise appearance at the podium. Amid mixed reactions of cheers and jeers, the elderly Virginia Senator angrily condemned “the high-jacking of our great Party by a cabal of devious individuals who seek to destroy our long-standing respect for the rights of the states in order to win the votes of those who are inferior.”
This racially-charged speech set off an intensely emotional explosion inside the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. With passions on both sides at fever pitch, Harry F. Byrd withdrew his name from consideration and proceeded to walk out of the building. Almost as if on cue, the delegations of seven states followed Byrd’s lead. Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas all vacated their seats and walked out of the convention in protest. It was an astounding moment: the collapse of the Democratic Solid South broadcast live on television. Pundits openly wondered how the Democrats could recover from the loss of their main base of electoral support – support that would take decades for them to rebuild. Standing behind Jackson, Cox glumly remarked:
“I think we just lost the election.”
SolidSouth2.jpg

This was a sentiment Jackson didn’t share at all. He wanted to be President and he wasn’t going to let the Dixiecrats get in the way. Despite the pre-balloting drama, Vice President Henry Martin Jackson was nominated for President on the first ballot. The rest of the Southern delegates – including wobbly North Carolina – fell into line behind the new standard-bearer. He became the first sitting Vice President since John C. Breckinridge one hundred years earlier to be elevated to the top of the ticket. Two months after being offered the position, Lyndon Baines Johnson was nominated for Vice President despite concerns from some liberals over his mixed voting record in Congress. With the Jackson-Johnson ticket officially ratified, the convention concluded Thursday evening with the acceptance speech. John F. Kennedy had the honor of introducing “our next President of the United States” to the cheering convention crowd. In an eloquent speech that highlighted his friend’s strengths, JFK touched on the issue of civil rights which had splintered the Democratic Party into two irreconcilable factions. He said that President Jackson would offer “no compromise of basic principles – no evasion of basic controversies – and no second-class citizenship for any American anywhere in this country.”
P081_NTBR2_002110_19_crop-1.jpg

After the Massachusetts Senator finished speaking, he was joined at the podium by Jackson and Johnson. Scoop shook his friend’s hand, leaning in close and whispering his approval of the speech amid the enthusiastic roar from the audience. While the band played the state song “Washington, My Home”, Washington and Texas delegates triggered a wave of pro-Jackson/Johnson signs to be raised up across the convention floor. JFK then withdrew to the side when the President walked up to join the new ticket at the rostrum. Despite the abandonment by the Alabama delegates, Sparkman was firmly behind his Vice President. He wanted Jackson to be his successor and publically endorsed him despite being called a traitor by Dixiecrats for doing so. After sharing the stage with the President and the Vice Presidential nominee, it was time for Jackson to step into the limelight and give his acceptance speech. Accepting his invitation, Mrs. Roosevelt sat in the VIP box a short distance away so she could hear the Presidential nominee pay his respects to her two-term husband during the speech. “Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom,” Jackson explained to a hushed audience, “Gave our nation a new political and economic framework. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal used that framework to provide security to those in need. The Fair Deal of which I have talked about will finish the work of guaranteeing to every single American that this Government will always be there to help you up when you fall down.”
As much as he admired FDR, he couldn’t match his famous rhetorical skills. Jackson wasn’t a charismatic speaker; his acceptance speech came across as flat and colorless at times...not exactly the kind of delivery which fires up conventions. The truth was that Jackson was better equipped at dealing with small crowds; large crowds such as the convention before him simply overwhelmed him. Aware of his disappointing performance, Scoop pushed himself forward through the speech. On the issue of war and peace, he was adamant that money should be no object when it came to national defense:
“The richest country in the world can afford whatever it needs for defense.”
He shot down his critics on the far left who accused him of being a peace-endangering hawk:
“I’m not a hawk or a dove. I just don’t want my country to be a pigeon.”
He defended his “Evil Empire” attitude of the Soviet Union and proclaimed that the only way to prevent the Cold War from heating up was through “strength, the only word Mr. Khrushchev respects.”
He showed scorn towards those countries, such as the Czech Republic, who wanted peace with the Soviets “at any price. What they fail to understand is that when you get peace at any price, that price is worthless.”
Pivoting back to domestic concerns, Jackson defended the bold measures of the Fair Deal from conservative attacks. Against the advice of some, he didn’t demonize conservatives like Knowland and Goldwater as extremists who wanted to roll back progress. The Vice President openly expressed his respect for conservatives...partly because those same people supported his stances on national defense and anti-Communism. As the Democratic nominee saw it, the problem with conservatives when it came to domestic issues was that they “see America like a blanket -- one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size.”
Jackson disagreed. He saw America as being “more like a quilt -- many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread.”
That color included black. He dismissed the Dixiecrats as a special interest group “whose only interest is to prop up the discredited notion that skin color determines your superiority.”
He said that a black man of good character who worked hard was equal to a white man of good character who also worked hard and vice-versa. It was time for the Democratic Party to break free from the bonds of white superiority and embrace racial equality. Failure to do so, Scoop warned with evident conviction, “Will render this Party irrelevant to the changing attitudes of our nation. The old era is ending. The old ways simply will not do.”
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Feeling exhausted after the convention, the Vice President flew home to Everett, Washington to recuperate. He received an excited welcome by the town upon his arrival. All of Everett was in a heady mood: their favorite son was now one campaign away from becoming the thirty-eighth President of the United States. Of course, winning the election was another story. By Monday, August 1st, Jackson had a pretty good idea of the challenge he faced on the road to the White House. The Republicans had unified behind the Knowland-Bush ticket, slashing Jackson’s six-point lead in the Gallup Poll a month earlier in half. Other polls also showed the two major candidates in a dead heat due to the fact that both men were seen as being men of ability, convictions, and character. Post-convention polls showed that Jackson had a narrow 3-to-2 lead over Knowland in the five biggest states:
  • Leaning Democratic: Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Texas (totaling eighty-three electoral votes)
  • Leaning Republican: California and New York (totaling seventy-seven electoral votes)
Jackson needed 269 electoral votes to cinch victory and news from the South complicated the math. In the wake of the walk-out in Los Angeles, top Dixiecrats met in Mississippi and announced that they were putting forward a third-party ticket to challenge what they saw as a war on their segregationist beliefs. Byrd was selected to headline their ticket; Byrd in turn recruited movement founder Strom Thurmond as his running mate. With the Byrd-Thurmond ticket running amok in the South and Knowland spoiling for a good fight elsewhere, Jackson was clearly in the fight of his political life. With three months to go until Election Day, no one knew for certain what the outcome of this hotly-contested three-way race would be.
 
I expect that Johnson's whistle-stop campaign is going to be more aggressively supported in the South than Kennedy did in '60, and if any one man can pull some of the southern states out of the Dixiecrat can, it will be Lyndon Johnson - especially when he starts quietly pointing out to men like Byrd, Russell, and Thurmond just how much their resistance might cost them.
 
Yeah, I think that ol' H.F. Byrd might want to be careful about this candidacy thing, though Bill Knowland might not want Desegregation, he might be willing to use it as a bargaining chip.
 
c0d5579: I've been reading about Johnson and his tenure as Vice President and from what I have gathered, he was pretty much tossed aside after JFK became President. His main purpose was to keep the South Democratic and once that was achieved, he was largely ignored. By November '63, LBJ hated being Vice President and thought his political career was over. Then Dallas happened.

Unlike Kennedy, Jackson needs Johnson as more than attracting votes. If he hopes to get anything done with a Congress that is deeply divided between a Republican House and a Democratic Senate, he'll need LBJ's experience and advice. Johnson will probably be what he hoped to be under JFK: one of the President's closest advisors.

The nice thing going for Johnson TTL is that he doesn’t have Bobby Kennedy to screw with him (of course, it worked both ways). That will probably help his sanity.

H.Appleby: That's true, especially if no one reaches 269 on Election Day and the election gets thrown into the House of Representatives to decide.
 
c0d5579: I've been reading about Johnson and his tenure as Vice President and from what I have gathered, he was pretty much tossed aside after JFK became President. His main purpose was to keep the South Democratic and once that was achieved, he was largely ignored. By November '63, LBJ hated being Vice President and thought his political career was over. Then Dallas happened.

Unlike Kennedy, Jackson needs Johnson as more than attracting votes. If he hopes to get anything done with a Congress that is deeply divided between a Republican House and a Democratic Senate, he'll need LBJ's experience and advice. Johnson will probably be what he hoped to be under JFK: one of the President's closest advisors.

The nice thing going for Johnson TTL is that he doesn’t have Bobby Kennedy to screw with him (of course, it worked both ways). That will probably help his sanity.

Yeah, that's part of my point. Even during the '60 presidential election, the Kennedy inner circle dismissed Johnson's campaign style. The problem was that Johnson campaigned like a Southern politician in the South - Kennedy could talk to the Baptists in Houston all he wanted, but that wouldn't reach every small town in the region. If Jackson has an honest need for Johnson, he will most likely at least treat Johnson better than Kennedy did before Sam Rayburn's death. That includes sending Johnson in to the area where he might do the most damage. Scoop Jackson himself isn't likely to make a dent in the Solid South, but Lyndon Johnson can do it on two levels, congressional influence, and old-fashioned whistle-stop campaigning during the '60 election.

What's going on on the Republican side?
 
c0d5579: I agree with you. Jackson recognizes he can't win the election without Johnson, nor does he think he can get far without Johnson's experience. That is why he is doing his best to treat Johnson better than the Kennedys ever did on their best day.

The big question is how long a leash will Jackson give Johnson if they win. Scoop knows how much LBJ loves power and he's going to have to figure out how to balance giving his Vice President room to play around in and maintaining control over his own Administration. It won't help him if his Vice President gets out of hand.

On the Republican side, Knowland is trying to figure out how he can take advantage of what happened in Los Angeles.

The next update will be space-related since I completed the Manned Orbital Flight tech on August 27th, 1960.
 
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Oh wow, oh wow oh wow! Relentless counterfactual politics, I love the double-whammy of conventions. Totally forgot about Prescott Bush, with so much attention focused on the regional issues plaguing the Democrats it's easy to forget the fact that the GOP need to balance their ticket as well. Gotta love Dewey just stepping in to solve the Knowland-Rockefeller feud, I suppose he knows better than most how bad that sort of battle can be (though I'm sure he would still think he was in the right vs Taft!).

Bush is a good choice though, it's very refreshing to see the role that the Republicans are taking in TTL. From the viewpoint of a British outsider looking in on contemporary American politics, it's easy to think that the GOP has always been conservative and the Democrats have always been liberal (most of my friends see this difference in very black and white terms). Because of this it's interesting to see a strong liberal wing and how it influences the party.

I tip Jackson/Johnson to just edge it out by using LBJ's influence in the South and the Republicans still being shut out of the same region because although the Dixiecrats hate the party mainstream, they hate the GOP just as much.
 
I have the odd feeling that we've seen the eclipse of the Democrat party...
 
I have the odd feeling that we've seen the eclipse of the Democrat party...

Probably not. They survived the unpleasantness of 1861-65, and both parties have survived cataclysmic schisms before.
 
Andreios II: Historically Dewey forged the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket in '52 and I imagined him doing the same in '60. He really did have a party boss attitude, and the fact that he had this "my way or the highway" approach leads me to think he would've had problems if he had been President. Dewey hated people who stood in his way and is one of the reasons why he got into a bitter relationship with Taft OTL and TTL. Although Dewey was an effective politician, he was also his own worse enemy.

I like the Bush family. I've a particular soft spot for Bush '41.

That's why I see the South as just kind of doing its' own thing from this point on. I highly doubt Strom Thurmond would join the Republicans TTL or that the Deep South would go for Nixon's Southern Strategy because the G.O.P. is so identified with being pro-black.

Kurt_Steiner: Certainly the Democratic Party as it used to be known as.

c0d5579: That's very true. It took a long time after the 1850s for the Democrats to retake the White House, but they finally did so with Grover Cleveland in 1884.

If the Democrats lose the White House in 1960, they will get it back eventually.
 
[video=youtube;b-3MS6duEMY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-3MS6duEMY[/video]

The Right Stuff
If you were visiting the nightclubs of Hamburg, Germany on the night of August 27th, 1960, chances are you might have heard a new band playing in one of them. The band wasn’t German but English, sent to Hamburg by a Liverpool band promoter to participate in the city’s nightclub scene. For the five lanky young lads, Hamburg was unlike anything they had seen before. Sex and drugs were available everywhere, to the point where it was very hard not to bump into these seedy aspects of life. However, this band was looking for a gig to play and Hamburg offered them a chance to play the rock and roll music they loved very much. Of course, they had to put up with dirty living conditions and night-long performance sessions. It was all worth it, though. By playing live music a lot, these five guys were able to improve their instrument skills and became noticeably better singers in the process. Inspired by Buddy Holly and The Crickets, the band from Liverpool named themselves The Beatles.
1960-beatles-hamburg_germany-1.jpg

On the same day Hamburg got its’ first taste of The Beatles, history of another sort was made on the other side of the Atlantic. On a launch pad in Florida, an eighty-four-foot-tall black and white rocket stood gleaming in the sunlight. Its’ official name was Mercury-Redstone 3 and at its’ tip sat a small black capsule named Freedom 7. Inside the cramped capsule, a man sat ready to make history. The launching of this particular rocket had been seven months in the making. To understand the importance of what was about to happen, you have to go back five years to 1955. A strong supporter of space exploration, Sparkman had made the establishment of man’s presence in space a high priority of his administration. In 1955, he signaled his intent by making Redstone Arsenal in his native Alabama the new headquarters of the US rocketry program. With the brilliant Wernher von Braun at the helm, the Americans developed the first artificial Earth satellite (Explorer I) and launched it into orbit on May 4th, 1957. Not resting on his laurels of beating the Soviets into space, the President forged ahead and pushed through Congress legislation establishing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (better known by its’ acronym NASA) to serve as America’s space agency. NASA’s first mission was to put men into space. On March 17th, 1958, NASA announced the $384 million Project Mercury – named after a Roman mythological god.
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While contracts were handed out to build Project Mercury from the ground up, NASA put out the call for military test pilots who were interested in becoming America’s first astronauts. Over 500 applicants responded, all eager to become space pioneers. Since NASA only planned to have seven astronauts for Mercury, a very stringent selection process was implemented to whittle over 500 down to just seven. Their strict requirements for candidates:
  • The maximum height allowed would be five feet eleven inches
  • The maximum weight allowed would be 180 pounds
  • The maximum age allowed would be forty
  • They had to have at least a bachelor’s degree or an equivalent
  • The minimum flying time experience would be 1,200 hours
  • They had to be qualified to fly jets
These requirements reduced the list down to 135 possible candidates. Following intense physical and mental exams, twenty-two candidates remained. From these candidates, NASA announced on September 17th, 1958 in a special White House ceremony the final selection of the Mercury Seven:
  • John Glenn (age thirty-seven, from Ohio)
  • Wally Schirra (age thirty-five, from New Jersey)
  • Alan Shepard (age thirty-four, from New Hampshire)
  • Deke Slayton (age thirty-four, from Wisconsin)
  • Scott Carpenter (age thirty-three, from Colorado)
  • Gus Grissom (age thirty-two, from Indiana)
  • Gordon Cooper (age thirty-one, from Oklahoma)
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With the various and complicated pieces of the project coming together, the top officials at NASA went to the White House on January 26th, 1960 to brief the President on the progress of Project Mercury. Sparkman enjoyed these regular briefings; after all, he considered the whole thing to be a cornerstone of his Presidential legacy. After listening to the latest technical updates, the President asked the men gathered before him to give him an estimate on when the United States could carry out a manned orbital flight. Christopher C. Kraft, Jr., NASA’s first flight director, confidently answered that the United States would be able to put an astronaut in Earth’s orbit next year. To the astonishment of Kraft and the others, Sparkman instantly frowned and replied, “That’s not the answer I want to hear, gentlemen.”
He pointedly reminded them that he would be out of office by then. Having done so much during his tenure to get America’s space program off the ground, he didn’t want to give the honor of congratulating the first man in space to his successor. Instead, Sparkman wanted this historic mission done by the end of the year. Kraft, internally reminding himself who he was talking to, tried to diplomatically dismiss that idea as impractical. “With all due respect, Mr. President,” he said carefully, “We are not in a position yet to take such an unprecedented step like that. While the mechanical components are largely in place, the flight operations are far from finished. We’re still putting together the technical components like flight plans, mission procedures, and tracking communications. We feel we still need another year to have all of that in place.”
Sparkman looked around the room and asked for a consensus: did everyone at NASA feel the same way? The answer came back as unanimous: yes. They felt it was dangerous doing something that had never been done before in a hurry. Was there any way to achieve the first human spaceflight before the beginning of 1961, Sparkman asked hopefully. One NASA official replied that they could put an astronaut into sub-orbit. When asked by the President what sub-orbit was, the official explained that a rocket could get a man at least sixty-two miles above sea level before returning him to the surface. This height was the official starting-point for space:
“We could theoretically get an astronaut into space, Mr. President. It just wouldn’t be orbital. Instead, it would be half-way.”
Upon hearing this next-best option, Sparkman slapped his hand down on the table and told them to make it happen. Half-way was better than no-way to him.
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For the next seven months, NASA worked tirelessly to meet the President’s deadline of conducting a suborbital flight by the end of 1960. Two months after the meeting, the Mercury capsule Freedom 7 arrived at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The inside of the single-seat capsule was cramped: there was just sixty cubic feet of habitable space. Whoever would sit inside it would be surrounded by 120 controls consisting of fifty-five electrical switches, thirty fuses, and thirty-five mechanical levers. In mid-June, the Redstone booster rocket which would propel the capsule into space arrived at the Cape. Because NASA was concerned that the rocket wasn’t sufficiently ready for the mission, the launch was delayed two months while the rocket underwent further development testing to meet their satisfaction that the mission would be as safe as possible considering how unprecedented it would be. In August, NASA informed Sparkman that they were reasonably satisfied with the results and that the mission would be carried out at the end of the month.
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Who would be the lucky pilot for Freedom 7? That honor went to Shepard, a highly-experienced naval test pilot who had thousands of flying hours under his belt. Glenn and Grissom would be his backups just in case he couldn’t fly the mission for some reason. After a few weather delays, August 27th was designated as launch day. The countdown began at 8:30 PM on August 26th. In the early hours of Saturday, August 27th, Shepard – suited up and ready to go – made his way to the launch pad. On the way there, he was intercepted by none other than the President of the United States. Having pushed for this moment, he would be damned if he missed out on watching history unfold. Sparkman shook Shepard’s gloved hand, wishing him the best of luck. Shepard thanked the President for coming out to support him and continued on his way. He was clearly a man on a mission. While Sparkman was whisked off to the Mercury Control Center to watch the mission unfold live, Shepard entered Freedom 7 at 5:15 AM and was secured tightly into the capsule. Weather and minor technical problems delayed the countdown until 9:34 AM when the Mercury-Redstone 3 lifted off the launch pad and shot up into the sky.
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Forty-seven million Americans watched on television as the first manned mission into space began. People were on the edge of their seats, uncertain about what would happen next. Shepard was one of them; as he felt himself rising higher and higher into the air, he said to himself, “Don’t screw up, Shepard.”
Then another unsettling thought popped into his mind during the liftoff:
“Every part of this ship was built by the low bidder.”
Two minutes after launch, the rocket engine shut itself down. Shepard at that point was being subjected to a maximum acceleration of 6.3g. At the three-minute mark, everything not attached to the capsule was jettisoned and the automated attitude control system rotated Freedom 7 so the heat shield could be faced forward for re-entry. Shepard then took manual control of the spacecraft, running a couple tests to see what the capsule was capable of midflight. Once he was satisfied at the performance of his spacecraft, the astronaut returned to automatic control and took in the breathtaking scenery outside. He was the first man to see Earth’s features with his own eyes and it must have been quite a sight to behold.
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Five minutes into the flight, Freedom 7 reached its’ peak altitude of 116 miles above the surface of the Earth. Having demonstrated that the United States had the capability to put a man in sub-orbit, NASA felt the time had come to bring the now-weightless Shepard back down to the surface. Using a so-called “fly-by-wire” controller, Shepard ordered the automatic system to fire off retrorockets to get the capsule into the desired position for re-entry. Once the retrorocket pack – strapped atop the heat shield – had done its’ job, it was jettisoned. After the confirmation light failed to turn on, Shepard was forced to activate the manual override for the jettison system so he could get confirmation that the rockets had been fully released. When the clock at the Mercury Control Center reached 7-and-a-half minutes, Shepard felt up to 11.6g rock his body as Freedom 7 was pulled by gravity into Earth’s atmosphere. After two minutes of free-fall, a drogue parachute was deployed to stabilize the capsule at 21,000 feet. It slowed down the spacecraft’s descent enough to allow the main parachute to safely take over at 10,000 feet. At 15 minutes, 28 seconds, Freedom 7 touched down in the Atlantic Ocean 302 miles away from the launch pad. Once it hit the surface, the capsule tilted 60 degrees to the right before righting itself. Shepard then reported to a nearby aircraft carrier that he had landed safely and was ready to be picked up. A recovery helicopter arrived a few minutes later, lifting the capsule and flying it to the waiting carrier. Eleven minutes after splashdown, Shepard climbed out of Freedom 7 and set foot aboard the USS Lake Champlain.
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When Charles Lindbergh demonstrated that a man could fly solo across the Atlantic in May 1927, he became the most famous man in the world. Thirty-three-years later, Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr. joined Lindbergh in the pantheon of courageous men who became heroes by pushing the limits of what was possible. His fifteen minute sub-orbital flight was the result of years of hard work and a determination to figure out the unknown. By becoming the first man in space, Shepard had opened the door for others eager to push the limits of exploring an uncharted territory. In doing so, he became a national hero on a scale comparable to that of Lindbergh after his history-making flight. That Shepard’s life was about to change forever became apparent after splashdown. He received telegrams of congratulations from around the world, people everywhere impressed by his feat of heroics. He was mobbed everywhere he went, people anxious to get a glimpse at the first man to make it into space. In New York City, Shepard received the largest ticket tape parade in the city’s history. Visits to Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles wielded similar parades of honor. In a special ceremony at the White House, the President awarded Shepard the highly prestigious NASA Distinguished Service Medal. Sparkman, who considered watching the mission unfold from inside the Mercury Control Center to be one of the highlights of his tenure, heaped praise on the astronaut. He unabashedly predicted:
“School students today learn in their books about the voyages of Christopher Columbus some 400 years ago. Some 400 years from now, I believe our school students will learn all about Commander Shepard and his voyage of a lifetime.”
Asked by a reporter for his opinion on Freedom 7, Shepard admitted that he “didn’t really feel the flight was a success until the recovery had been successfully completed. It’s not the fall that hurts; it’s the sudden stop.”
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Shepard’s launch was widely celebrated as a major psychological triumph for the United States. Once again, the Americans had demonstrated their superiority by being the first country to get a human being into space. The ball was now in the Soviet Union’s court to prove that she was just as capable of doing the same. Freedom 7 was a huge embarrassment for Khrushchev, who had vocally promised after Explorer I that the Soviet superpower would never lag behind again in the Space Race. Now that his country had been denied a major P.R. trophy, the General Secretary aggressively raised the pressure on his scientists to beat the Americans at something. Like their American counterparts, the Soviet scientists didn’t think the country’s space program was ready for an orbital flight. Like his American counterpart, Khrushchev didn’t take “No” for an answer. On September 19th, three weeks after the first Mercury manned mission, cosmonaut (the Soviet equivalent of the English “astronaut”) Yuri Gagarin became the second man to reach sub-orbit. Strapped into a spherical capsule just as cramped as Shepard’s but with limited thruster capability, Gagarin rocketed into space and calmly landed after reaching a point 119 miles above the surface of the Earth. That he went three miles higher than Shepard gave the excited Soviets room to boast that whatever the Americans could do, they could do better. In that sense, the Soviets beat the Americans as far as height was concerned. When Liberty Bell 7 – carrying Grissom – was launched into space for the second Mercury manned mission on November 12th, it could only carry Grissom 118 miles up before returning to Earth.
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1960 ended with three men having reached sub-orbit. 1961 would see the world’s two superpowers locked in a competition driven by Cold War ego to determine which side would make the highly sought-after first manned orbit around the Earth.
 
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I'm sorry to be a kind of heretic, but I always thought that the Space Race was a waste of money and efforts.