The Presidents: The Vietnam War Edition

[Asalto]

Wow, Soviets really have a great sense for business in this universe! I really like how Khrushchev is coming out with simple but genial ideas like the use of massive commercial air fleet and naval armada of Mongolian fishing boats.

 

[Nathan Madien]

Kurt_Steiner: Reminds me of a commerical for a kitchen device:
"It's from Germany. You know the Germans make the best stuff."

I don't think Chiang's attitude is odd at all. In fact, I think I am keeping him in-character. He's dealing with the Soviets for his own self-interest. If the Soviets wanted to fly planes into his country, I think he would be open to it if it benefitted him.

hoi2geek:

2000 Summer Olympics bidding results
Sydney, Australia - 45 votes (Round 4/winner)
Beijing, China - 43 votes (Round 4/second place)

Historically, Sydney won her bid over Beijing by two votes. Since this is alternate history, I decided to flip those two votes and give Beijing 2000 instead. Having moved China to 2000, I moved Australia to 2008 to compenstate.

By the way, Athens will still host 2004 and London will still host 2012 (sorry Paris, you aren't going to get any love TTL).

Mr. Santiago:
Aerobiz Supersonic is exactly where I got the whole airline idea from!

Asalto: The gunrunning airplanes concept was inspired by Air America and the gunrunning fishing boat concept was inspired by the Tokyo Express.

 

[Andreios II]

Khruschev really seems to know what he's doing in TTL. I don't think he's got any big master plan to spread Communism, but he seems very good at finding practical, functioning solutions to things. I really like the inclusion of Aeroflot, Chiang must have been rubbing his hands with glee when that offer came through! Mongolian fishermen too! Very inventive, using a wartime acquisition from the game to expand the narrative plot, nice one! The whole scheme of covert rather than overt assistance is impressive, one the Americans would do well to take note of!

 

[Nathan Madien]

Andreios II: Thank you very much for the compliment.

Right now I am working hard on my coverage of the 1958 midterm election. This election is going to be quite influential in that it will give me several potential Republican Presidential candidates to choose from.

By the way, here's actual footage of Sparkman that I found on YouTube.

[video=youtube;ZeJ5oNTqVh4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeJ5oNTqVh4[/video]

I assumed he had a Southern accent, so it's nice to see YouTube confirm my assumption.

 

[Nathan Madien]

Here it is: the final update of 1958, brought to you by the Longines-Wittnauer Watch Company (see above).
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The 1958 Midterm Election
Being a two-term President is a political double-edged sword. On the one hand, being given another four years means people either like the job you are doing or see a reason not to kick you out of office. On the other hand, second terms tend to be more difficult than the first for a variety of reasons. Another downside to serving two terms is that Presidents tend to see their political parties get hit hard at the polls two years after their re-election. For example, take a look at these two New Yorkers:

• Midway through Franklin D. Roosevelt’s second term in 1938, the Democrats lost seventy-two seats in the House and seven seats in the Senate.
• Midway through Thomas E. Dewey’s second term in 1950, the Republicans lost fifty-six seats in the House and eight seats in the Senate – enough to give control of both chambers of Congress to the Democrats.

The outcomes of both midterm elections were influenced by the vindictive attitudes these two Presidents displayed after being returned to office. FDR was angry at the Supreme Court and Conservative Democrats for standing in the way of his agenda; Dewey was angry at Conservative Republicans for standing in the way of his agenda. Not helping Roosevelt in 1938 was an economic recession brought on by wrong fiscal decisions that paralyzed the country just as it was recovering from the Great Depression. This background information brings us to the present two-termer and his second midterm election: 1958.

When the Stevenson-Sparkman ticket won the 1952 Presidential election, no one could’ve imagined that Stevenson would be gunned down by Puerto Rican nationalists and that Sparkman would take his place. Sparkman’s Presidency got off to a rocky start but recovered when he started to amass several domestic and foreign policy achievements. He wasn’t a bad President – in some ways he was a visionary President – but his innate inability to reconcile his deeply-routed segregationist views with the rise of the Civil Rights Movement hamstrung him considerably. Sparkman became a divisive figure within the Democratic Party, exposing the internal rift between the anti-black attitude of the South and the progressive attitude of the North. Except for his election campaign in 1956, the President was seen as a political liability by non-Southern Democrats and was usually kept off the campaign trail. People were blaming him for the steady decline the Democrats were experiencing right after the Stevenson landslide of 1952. Between 1954 and 1958, the party in power lost twenty-three seats in the House of Representatives and three seats in the Senate. As the country headed into the 1958 midterm election, there were several signs that this election was going to be a bad one for Democrats:

• Sparkman’s popularity was once again in the ditch following his complete mishandling of the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School.
• Tensions within the Democratic Party had the twin effects of giving voters the impression that it might be time for a change and dampening enthusiasm among Democratic voters.
• Not helping matters was a sharp global economic recession that increased unemployment and inflation in the United States.

All this bad news energized the Republican Party, which had recovered from the devastation inflicted by the Dewey-Taft Feud in the early 1950s thanks to the fence-mending leadership of William F. Knowland. Also helping the G.O.P. strengthen her hand was the Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.-led Republican Advisory Committee, which was preparing candidates to take on the opposition by providing them with a clearer understanding of the issues that would be facing them. Another factor which gave the Democrats a bad feeling about the fall campaign was changing demographics in several states. The postwar economic boom influenced Republicans to move their families South and West in pursuit of better opportunities for business and family-raising. For instance, George H.W. Bush moved his family from Connecticut to Texas to become involved in the oil industry. The arrival of Bush and other Republicans into Democratic neighborhoods shifted the balance of power in several states; nowhere was this effect more pronounced than in Arizona.

For a long time, Arizona was one of the most dependable Democratic states outside the South. Ever since she achieved statehood in 1912, the Grand Canyon State had voted Democratic in every Presidential election. That steadfast support started to erode in the postwar period when Republicans moved into the state to take advantage of the growing manufacturing industry. Taking their control of the state for granted, Arizona Democrats received an eye-opening shock in November 1954 when voters elected the first Republican Governor since the 1920s. To give you an idea of how shocking this was, imagine the Chicago Cubs baseball team winning the World Series for the first time since 1908. Shocking, right? The lost of the governorship was such a blow for Arizona Democrats’ morale that they were rendered dazed and confused. Their situation wasn’t helped in March 1957 when Sparkman appointed Arizona Senator Ernest McFarland (1941-1957) to the Supreme Court following the retirement of Associate Justice Stanley F. Reed (1938-1957). The President made a sound choice: McFarland had a fine judicial background and had little difficultly clearing confirmation in the Senate. The problem for Arizona Democrats was that McFarland’s exit from the Senate meant his seat would then be vacant. Since Governors fill Senate vacancies until a special election can be held and since Arizona’s Governor happened to be a Republican…you can see where this is going. McFarland’s Senate seat was ironically filled by Barry Goldwater, the man McFarland defeated in the 1952 campaign. Having lost his Senate bid that year, Goldwater took his defeat in stride and returned to his seat on the Phoenix City Council. In 1956, he was elected Mayor of Phoenix. As Mayor, the conservative Goldwater ran the city like a businessman, reorganizing city functions and cutting spending. He prided himself on eliminating government waste and making sure that any taxpayer penny spent was spent for a good reason. Goldwater’s solid performance in Phoenix prompted Arizona Republicans to send him to D.C. to replace McFarland. Five years after losing the election, Goldwater went to Capitol Hill to serve out the remainder of McFarland’s term as the junior Senator from Arizona. Goldwater would seek a full term of his own in 1958, putting Democrats in the awkward position of trying to reclaim a Republican-held Senate seat in a Republican-leaning state in an election year that was shaping up to favor Republicans.

Another state that held bright promises for Republicans in 1958 was Arizona’s next-door neighbor California. That state’s governorship was held by a Democrat; elected in the Democratic landslide of 1950, the Governor was stepping down after two terms. This left the seat wide-open for Senate Minority Leader Knowland to seek the top post in California. Due to his popularity, Knowland easily won his Party’s primary and became favored to win the general election in November. In running for Governor, Knowland vacated his Senate seat – which was also up for a vote that year. His announcement that he wouldn’t seek re-election triggered an aggressive primary fight between several Republican Senate hopefuls. The race became so tight that no one won a majority on Primary Day, triggering a runoff election between the top two candidates. The second-place candidate, having come this far, threw everything into the runoff race and campaigned past exhaustion to secure support from voters who had favored his opponents in the primary. All that work paid off when the second-place candidate won the runoff by four percentage points. Knowland personally congratulated his potential successor: forty-five-year-old Representative Richard Nixon.

A navy veteran from Yorba Linda and a happy family man, Nixon had been serving in the House since 1947. His congressional record included voting for the Taft-Hartley Act (an anti-union measure passed in response to postwar labor unrest), voting for the Civil Rights Act of 1957, and voting for foreign aid to Yugoslavia. However, Nixon was best-known for his strong stance against Communism and his willingness to stand up to anybody in the name of defending the country from this threat – even the leader of his own political party. In 1948, the Congressman gained national attention when he uncovered evidence that the Dewey Administration wasn’t quite living up to its’ claim that “we are informed about the Communists here in our midst and we are keeping the American people informed about where they are, who they are, and what they are up to.”
According to Nixon, they had somehow managed to miss a Soviet spy in the State Department named Alger Hiss. The revelation that the Administration in fact didn’t have all the Communist spies accounted for like they claimed came just as Dewey was gearing up for his re-election campaign. The President spent the fall campaign defending himself against allegations that his methodical anti-hysteria approach to rooting out spies was ineffective and leaving the country vulnerable. "How many more Alger Hisses are out there waiting to be found?" became a frequently-asked question on the campaign trail. Although Dewey weathered the controversy to win that November, his anti-Communist reputation was damaged and never fully recovered. Nixon, on the other hand, became the darling of Conservative Republicans who were happy to see the President get taken down a notch. Ambitious and driven, Nixon spent the next ten years in the House waiting for an opportunity to advance his political career. The chance to become a Senator in 1958 was one too good for him to pass up.

As Goldwater, Knowland, and Nixon conducted their fall campaigns, they were joined by Lodge. Being the titular leader of the Republican Party meant Lodge was active in supporting races across the country. He stood alongside candidates and gave stump speeches about why that particular G.O.P. candidate should win. Lodge also used these opportunities to highlight the work his RAC was doing in preparing candidates and helping lay the groundwork for victory. The RAC already had a major win under its belt: in the 1957 off-year election, RAC-backed candidate Malcolm Forbes – the son of “Forbes” magazine founder B.C. Forbes – was elected Governor of New Jersey. This victory propelled the committee into 1958, where they backed candidates across the ideological spectrum. As their leader, Lodge was all over the place that fall making arguments:

• He urged voters in Arizona to keep Goldwater’s conservative voice in the Senate.
• He urged voters in California to stand behind Knowland and Nixon.
• He spoke in New York on behalf of gubernatorial candidate Nelson Rockefeller (the grandson of Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller) and Senate candidate Kenneth Keating. Like Knowland in California, Rockefeller was campaigning to take the governorship away from the Democrats after the G.O.P. lost it in 1950.
• He spoke in New Jersey on behalf of Senate candidate Robert Kean.
• He supported Prescott Bush’s bid for a second term as Governor of Connecticut.
• He urged voters in Indiana to replace Democratic Senator Henry F. Schricker with his Republican opponent Harold W. Handley.

In short, if you were a Republican candidate in 1958, chances are Lodge would be campaigning for you.

One person who wasn’t on the campaign trail was the President. Shunned by Democrats for being politically toxic, Sparkman sat out the midterm election. He could’ve brooded about being the leader of a party that didn’t want him, but he didn’t. Instead, Sparkman spent autumn gently reminding the public that for all the political potshots he was taking from both sides (Republicans and some Democrats were campaigning against him), he was moving the country forward. In August, to demonstrate America’s military might, the Commander-in-Chief ordered a Nautilus-class nuclear submarine to sail under the geographic North Pole and show that the ice sheet could be penetrated. She did so in early September, giving the United States an historic first over the Soviets. Two weeks later on September 17th, Sparkman hosted a ceremony at the White House for the unveiling of the Mercury Seven. After months of a stringent selection process, NASA had finally chosen seven out of twenty-two candidates to become America’s first astronauts. Sparkman instructed NASA to do the public unveiling at the White House as a way to remind people that space exploration was a program he initiated. Gathered in the East Room for the ceremony was the President, the Vice President, Lyndon B. Johnson (the leading space advocate on Capitol Hill), and the seven Mercury astronauts:

• 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)

After being introduced, the seven men shook hands with the President and were personally congratulated on being picked. Addressing reporters covering the event, Sparkman said that “these seven heroes are made of the same courage and boldness that formed the core of [Meriwether] Lewis and [William] Clark. Just as they mapped out the route to the Pacific Coast 150 years ago, [the Mercury Seven] will map out the route to the Moon that will be used for the next 150 years.”

On October 31st, the President and his family boarded Air Force One for a six-day trip to Asia. They would be out of the country during the final days of the campaign. Never before or since has a President been out of the country before a major election…that was how low he regarded it. The six-day trip would take the First Family to Indonesia and India. The purpose of the trip was to highlight America’s relationship with these two countries. Although the policy was already in place when he became President, Sparkman escalated the strengthening of relations with Indonesia and India. Both countries were headed by anti-Communist governments, which fit America’s foreign policy of supporting governments opposed to Moscow like a glove. For their part, Indonesia and India recognized that solid economic ties with the US would help them build up their economies at a time when the Soviets were expanding their influence in Asia. They were both worried about the Domino Theory and the unpleasant prospect of being consumed by it – Indonesia was particularly concerned since she had a Communist Party operating within her borders. Since a strong economy is a pillar of stability, it made sense for the two countries to be friendly towards the United States. Just as Chiang welcomed Khrushchev with open arms, the leaders of India and Indonesia did their best in hosting the American Head of State. The President of India gave Sparkman and his family a private tour of the famed Taj Mahal, a 17th Century mausoleum built by a Mughal emperor for his third wife. Sukarno, the President of Indonesia, honored the First Family with a lavish state dinner and showered them with expensive gifts. Although he was friendly with Sukarno in public, there was something about the Indonesian leader that the President privately had a problem with. Like Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam and Syngman Rhee in Korea, Sukarno was an authoritarian concerned more about keeping the country in line than promoting democracy. Since the guiding Cold War policy dictated that anti-Communism trump democratic aspirations in deciding how to deal with countries, the President had to set his problem aside and bring Sukarno into the pro-US camp.

Sparkman was still in India on November 4th when voters in the United States headed to the polls to voice their opinion on the status quo. Joining the chorus for the first time were the territories of Alaska and Hawaii. Alaska (purchased from the Russians in 1867) and Hawaii (annexed in 1898) were both on the verge of achieving statehood in early 1959 and would use the 1958 midterm election to select their first Congressional delegation (consisting of one Representative and two Senators). Just as projected, Election Night was a devastating defeat for the party in power. The Republican landslide netted the party out of power fifty-four seats in the House (giving them the majority for the first time since 1951), a net gain of five seats in the Senate (more on this in a bit), and several governorships (giving the G.O.P. the majority status in state control). The composition of the new 86th Congress:

• House of Representatives: 245 Republicans; 191 Democrats; 1 Independent
• Senate: 57 Democrats; 43 Republicans

These results meant that come next year, Sparkman would have to work with a divided Congress – the last Congress to be divided was the 79th (1945-1947). Although the Democrats’ majority in the Senate was reduced by one seat, they actually suffered more than that. They failed to win back Arizona (thus giving Goldwater a full term of his own) and lost seats in Connecticut, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming. Fortunately for the Democrats, they were able to win some seats to help offset the losses. Voters in Alaska and Hawaii decided to break even, giving each major party a seat. Furthermore, the Republicans lost seats in Maine, Ohio, West Virginia (2x), and Wisconsin. This is why the Democrats suffered a net loss of one seat while the Republicans had a net gain of five seats. Among the winners:
-Alaska elected her first Congressional delegation: Republican Representative Henry A. Benson, Democratic Senator Bob Bartlett, and Republican Senator Mike Stepovich.
-Voters in California decided to send Knowland to Sacramento (the state capital) and elevate Nixon to the Senate.
-In Connecticut, Bush won re-election as Governor.
-Hawaii elected her first Congressional delegation: Democratic Representative Daniel Inouye, Republican Senator Hiram Fong, and Democratic Senator Oren E. Long.
-In Maine, Republican Senator Frederick G. Payne (elected in 1952) lost his bid for a second term to Democratic challenger Edmund Muskie. The son of Polish immigrants, Muskie was a navy veteran who entered politics after World War Two. After a stint in local politics, Muskie pulled off an upset in 1954 by winning the Maine gubernatorial race. Four years later, he knocked out a weak Payne to become a freshman Senator.

-In Massachusetts, Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy easily won re-election to a second term. He became one of the few Democrats swept into office during the Stevenson landslide of 1952 to still be in office six years later.
-In Minnesota, Republican Senator Edward John Thye (first elected in 1946) fended off Democratic challenger Eugene McCarthy to win a third term.
-In New Jersey, Kean was elected to the Senate.
-Republicans swept the ticket in New York, taking every major position. Keating was elevated from the House to the Senate and Rockefeller was sent to Albany (the state capital).

-In Ohio, former Attorney General Frank Lausche used his handling of the Little Rock Crisis to win a Senate seat.
-In Pennsylvania, Republican Representative Hugh Scott was elected to the Senate.
-The Democrats took both Senate seats in West Virginia. Former Representative Jennings Randolph won a special election and was seated the day after the election. Representative Robert Byrd won the general election and would be seated in January 1959.
-For the Democrats, their favorite victory was the Wisconsin Senate race. After years of being constantly attacked over anything, they finally took out Republican pain-in-the-neck Joseph McCarthy. Once the G.O.P.’s favorite attack dog, McCarthy’s incessant and shrill verbal bombardments had come to sour his standing in the party. His public attacks on anyone he didn’t like were becoming embarrassing and annoying to the point that Lodge steered clear of McCarthy's third term bid. McCarthy’s voting record had become a liability as well since it consisted of “No” towards anything the Democrats wanted to accomplish. He even voted against establishing NASA and the interstate highway system on the grounds that they were somehow Communistic. By being himself, McCarthy had provided the opposition with an opening to take him down. William Proxmire, a rising political star in Wisconsin, took on McCarthy and ran a simple but brilliant campaign centered around a three-word sentence:
“I’m not Joe.”
Talking to voters across the state, Proxmire portrayed himself as the anti-McCarthy candidate who wouldn’t seek attention all the time and would vote “Yes” every now and then. Tired of the same-old song-and-dance routine they were getting from McCarthy, the people of Wisconsin decided to kick him out of office and replace him with Proxmire instead.

All in all, Election Night proved to be a good one for the opposition party. After suffering major defeats in 1950 and 1952, the G.O.P. had turned their fortunes around and now once again controlled the House and a majority of state governorships. The Senate still remained outside their grasp, but at least they were chipping away at the Democrats’ once-formidable majority. With 1958 behind them, the Republicans set their sights on the upcoming Presidential election in 1960. With Sparkman ineligible to run again, a chance emerged to take back the White House. A Republican Presidential victory looked possible after 1958.

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

The race for the White House is going to be quite interesting with these odds. I wonder what the Democrats will do to avoid the incoming disaster...

 

[Nathan Madien]

Kurt_Steiner: That's a good question. The careful balance between Southern and Northern Democrats has been shattered and there isn't likely any way to put it back together. Since the Republicans are undoubtably going to play the race card in 1960, the Democrats are going to have to make a painful choice: either continue trying to placate the South or ignore the South and try to play catch-up on the race issue. I can very easily see a Dixiecrat third party in the 1960s similar to what happened in OTL 1948.

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

Or a split in the Democrat party if they try to win the Afroamerican vote, as the Southern Democrats and the voters won't like that too much.

 

[talt]

Or a split in the Democrat party if they try to win the Afroamerican vote, as the Southern Democrats and the voters won't like that too much.

IF that is the case we could see a three, maybe even four sided race in 1960. That would be interesting to say the least and would mean things end very badly for both wings of the Democrat Party.

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

Absolutely. That may mean a long time of Republican supremacy.

 

[talt]

Absolutely. That may mean a long time of Republican supremacy.

We could also possibly see the GOP remaining more liberal while the Democrats remain more Conservative and southern based in their support. Depends how things go during the 1970s I suppouse...

 

[El Pip]

Can I put in a request for a four way Presidential squabble, just because a political party utterly exploding into three rival factions sounds too good to miss.

 

[Nathan Madien]

Kurt_Steiner: Historically, JFK ran into trouble in Alabama and Mississippi in 1960 for chasing after the black vote. I think any effort to do so TTL will have a similar result. The Democrats are too divided now to put the genie back in the bottle.

talt: I agree. 1960 can very easily turn into 1948 (both historically and in this story).

Kurt_Steiner: Not necessarily. Harry Truman won in '48 despite having Strom Thurmond and Henry Wallace breathing down his neck. Then again, it helped Truman that Dewey ran arguably the worse campaign ever:

"No presidential candidate in the future will be so inept that four of his major speeches can be boiled down to these historic four sentences: Agriculture is important. Our rivers are full of fish. You cannot have freedom without liberty. Our future lies ahead."
-The (Louisville) Courier-Journal

It is possible to have a Democratic victory in 1960...but they will have to win with the South in rebellion.

talt: Or during the 1960s...

El Pip: A three-way Presidential squabble is likely to occur, but a four-way squabble? Progressive and Southern factions are a given, but what would a fourth faction be?

 

[El Pip]

El Pip: A three-way Presidential squabble is likely to occur, but a four-way squabble? Progressive and Southern factions are a given, but what would a fourth faction be?

Republicans vs Dixiecrats vs Southern Democrats vs the Remaining Democrats.

OK so that ends up with a massive Republican win, maybe not too interesting. Could you have the GOP pick two not-sufficiently-anti-communist candidates, because the leadership is taking the base for granted given how divided the Democrats are, and prompt McCarthy or someone similar to form a breakaway hardline party? Or the other way round and have the leadership indulge the base as it's a 'guaranteed' win and prompt the more centrists to run an alternative candidate?

 

[Andreios II]

Could you have the GOP pick two not-sufficiently-anti-communist candidates, because the leadership is taking the base for granted given how divided the Democrats are, and prompt McCarthy or someone similar to form a breakaway hardline party? Or the other way round and have the leadership indulge the base as it's a 'guaranteed' win and prompt the more centrists to run an alternative candidate?

That would be interesting of course, but I think, with the tensions in the GOP at this time being nowhere near the level they are in the Democratic Party, the leadership will most likely go for solid candidates that can please both the conservatives and the moderates as much as is practical. Given the recent experience of 1948 where Progressives ran against conservative Democrats (and let's not forget 1912 either!) I imagine party unity and a strong, consensus-building candidate being the main issues of the GOP rather than pleasing one group or another.

And in a more general note, they have much to be happy about with the Congressional elections, why let a shift too far left or right mess that up in '60?

 

[El Pip]

And in a more general note, they have much to be happy about with the Congressional elections, why let a shift too far left or right mess that up in '60?

All true, particularly this last part, which is why it probably wont happen. I was just angling for the largest multi-faction pile-up election possible, though I concede it's a very unlikely outcome it would be more interesting than a straightforward Republican triumph over badly split Democrats.

 

[Andreios II]

All true, particularly this last part, which is why it probably wont happen. I was just angling for the largest multi-faction pile-up election possible, though I concede it's a very unlikely outcome it would be more interesting than a straightforward Republican triumph over badly split Democrats.

Of course, you make a very valid point. It's always a historical fiction writer's problem trying to match entertainment/interestingness with historical plausibility. I'm sure we'll have plenty of unusual elections in the future, if Nathan Madien's epilogue from the original 'The Presidents' is anything to go by. *cough* Ross Perot *cough*

 

[Nathan Madien]

El Pip: Dixiecrats and Southern Democrats are the same thing.

Hmm...I will keep your idea in mind.

Andreios II: I think Knowland would be a strong candidate for the G.O.P. in 1960. He's a conservative who has spent the last several years mending fences with moderates after the Dewey-Taft fisaco. Throw in a moderate from the Northeast for a running mate (Prescott Bush perhaps?) and you have a balanced ticket which pleases everybody.

On a side note, after losing control of the House in 1954, the G.O.P. didn't get it back until 1994. In TTL, they lose the House in 1950 and get it back eight years later.

El Pip: You seem very certain the Republicans will automatically win in '60.

Andreios II: I already have an idea about how the 1960 election will unfold...and interesting it will be.

Funny you mention my epilogue from my original AAR...the original roadmap I came up with for continuing my storyline has gone the way of Zelda CD-i. In other words, the epilogue exists...but as far as this AAR is concerned, it doesn't.

 

[El Pip]

If a Republican party coming off good mid-terms cant beat a spectacularly divided Democratic party led by an unpopular President during a global recession then they might as well just give up and disband.

Southern Democrats and Dixiecrats don't have to be the same thing, one you start on the process of splitting it's easy to go too far. For instance if the Democrats decide to woo the black vote then the Dixiecrats split off, however if they decided to just go state's rights on the whole Civil Rights issue, then you could get another split of those who want to go the whole hog on segregation at a Federal level, this new groups founds a party called the Southern Democrats.

Looking at the history of these sort of splits (Liberal Party in the UK, most western Communist parties, etc) the difference don't have to be big and the names are usually similar so I's say it would be possible to get Democrats, Dixiecrats and Southern Democrats all on the same ballot. Not wise or even likely, but possible.

 

[Nathan Madien]

January 1959

El Pip: Except for the global recession part, you just described why everyone thought Truman would lose in 1948...and why his victory astounded everyone. Whomever the Democrats nominate to be the pro-black candidate doesn't have to win the popular vote to win the election, they just have to win the electoral vote count (269 in 1960). There are a few elections in which a candidate won the electoral vote but lost the popular vote (like 2000) and there are a few elections where the vote was so close in key states that the loser could've won the election while losing the popular vote (like 1916).

It is possible, but I would rather just keep things simple with three political parties in '60.
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On the Drawing Board

Marmon-Herrington: Elite Anti-Tank Artillery
AT New Model: Elite Anti-Tank
AT: Model ‘Semi-Elite Anti-Tank’ is now obsolete​

Texas Oil Company: Naval Bomber Anti-Carrier Role
Nav: Cost -0.4 IC
Nav: MaxOrg +3(%)
Nav: Morale +3(%)
​

Christie: Elite Armored Car
AC New Model: Elite Armored Car
AC: Model ‘Commando V-100’ is now obsolete
​

Norfolk Naval Yard: Elite ASW Destroyer
ASW New Model: Improved ASW Missiles
ASW: Model ‘ASW Missiles’ is now obsolete
Convoy Escort Efficiency: +10%
​

NASA: Precision Guided Munitions Focus
Logistical Strike Efficiency: +10.0%
Naval Strike Efficiency: +10.0%
Tac: MaxOrg +5(%)
Tac: Morale +5(%)
​

State of American Technology

Production Status

Highlights of the Year
-Alaska and Hawaii are each granted statehood, bringing the total number of American states up to present-day fifty
-American stock car driver Johnny Beauchamp wins the first Daytona 500 race in Florida, beating rival Lee Petty in a close photo finish
-Mattel, Inc. sells the first Barbie fashion doll
-“A Raisin in the Sun”, a play written by Lorraine Hansberry, becomes the first play written by an African-American women to debut on Broadway (the Theatre District of New York City)
-The 31st Academy Awards is held at the RKO Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles, California. This year’s ceremony becomes infamous when show producer Jerry Wald decides to cut all the musical numbers in an effort to keep the show running on time. Wald’s decision backfires when host Jerry Lewis discovers he has twenty minutes to kill before the show is scheduled to end. “The Defiant Ones”, starring Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier, wins eight awards:

• Best Picture
• Best Director (Stanley Kramer)
• Best Actor (Curtis)
• Best Supporting Actor (Theodore Bikel)
• Best Supporting Actress (Cara Williams)
• Best Original Screenplay (Nedrick Young and Harold Jacob Smith)
• Best Black and White Cinematography (Sam Leavitt)
• Best Film Editing (Frederick Knudtson)

Rounding out the top winners, Susan Hayward wins Best Actress for her role in “I Want to Live!”
-In New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum – designed by Frank Lloyd Wright as his last major work before his death in April of this year – opens to the public

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Having axed M*A*S*H and scrapped The Bridge on the River Kwai, I have decided to eliminate another pop culture icon: The Twilight Zone. Historically, Rod Serling survived fighting the Japanese during World War Two and went on to create TTZ in 1959. In this alternate universe, Serling dies in combat and thus no TTZ.