Bicentennial Man: Ford '76 and Beyond

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1977 Elections
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    • KingSweden24

    "...what sticks out about the contests in '77 is how much Ford was a focal point of them, especially with his popularity having deteriorated so during the summer. New York in particular, of course; it goes without saying that Mario Cuomo's thunderous landslide win, on both the Democratic and Liberal tickets, was buffeted not just by his enthusiastic endorsement from Hugh Carey but also him running largely against Ford and all but accusing Koch of being a collaborator with what in another country would be characterized as a hostile occupying regime. But it went beyond that; Brendan Byrne was reelected in a landslide in New Jersey, with more than 60% of the vote, and Andrew Miller in Virginia, the outgoing Attorney General, won a decisive victory over Lieutenant General John Dalton, who had been favored due to the moribund and infighting-plagued Virginia Democratic Party. [1] The lone bright spot was the first Republican elected Attorney General in Virginia since Reconstruction, Marshall Coleman; but even there, his victory was narrow, and due only to African-Americans refusing to vote for former segregationist Edward Lane..."

    - The Ford Years

    "...'77 was the first stop on the road to 1980, really, and the big winner there was of course Hugh Carey, who had gotten his man elected in New York and who now had an able and canny operator in Cuomo running his machine in the city. Mario's kid, Andy - yes, Senator Cuomo, that's right - was really the brains behind the operation, and he was only 19! It was a feather in the cap for the old boxer, to have actually stuck it to Ford while all those Senators just preened and puffed their chests in DC..."

    - Pathway to Destiny: The Turbulent Seventies and the 1980 Election

    "...Moscone's footsoldiers really powered their way into power down in San Fran. Obviously Harvey Milk was the big name, but that was a really diverse Council now. It was seen as a huge backlash to the Castro Street Riots, how the cops had just beat the snot out of peaceful gay protestors. Even Dan White barely won in his district, down in the south end where all the cops and firemen lived. "The Hippies and Queers Take Over," was how conservatives positioned it. The Summer of Love was back on, baby! Though not really. There's a darker side, too. You can't tell the story of 1970s San Francisco without mentioning Jim Jones and the People's Temple..."

    - City of "Love:" San Francisco and the Seventies

    [1] Thus keeping with the tradition of the White House out-party carrying VA that was only broken in 2013 with T-Mac
     
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    • CountDVB

    KingSweden24 said:
    I've actually always been amazed that country didn't have a rougher 20th century than it did compared to a lot of its African peer nations
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    The Lion of Judah is an enduring beast and that's respectable. Perhaps the times will prove more fortunate for it in the long run
     

    KingSweden24

    CountDVB said:
    The Lion of Judah is an enduring beast and that's respectable. Perhaps the times will prove more fortunate for it in the long run
    Click to expand...

    One thing to ponder (because I generally don't chart out this TL much more than 3-6 mos in-world in advance) is that since the Derg just lost the Ogaden only three years after overthrowing Hailie Selassie, there's a chance - a small one - that a monarchist restoration could be a solution to the fighting as a unifying symbol. Perhaps.
     

    CountDVB

    KingSweden24 said:
    One thing to ponder (because I generally don't chart out this TL much more than 3-6 mos in-world in advance) is that since the Derg just lost the Ogaden only three years after overthrowing Hailie Selassie, there's a chance - a small one - that a monarchist restoration could be a solution to the fighting as a unifying symbol. Perhaps.
    Click to expand...

    Well, people do prefer stability and monarchies do serve as powerful rallying cries in the cultural sense, so I could see that being the case. After all, no one thought the USSR would fall until it did.
     

    Rfl23

    KingSweden24 said:
    "...that the Soviets now plainly backed the Ethiopians and were planning on financing and arming their counterattack made for strange bedfellows; we didn't want to be directly supporting the Somalis, mind you, they were still a pretty anti-Western and Socialist government, but we couldn't let them lose Harar after the advances they had made. The fighting there got ugly; massacres, trench warfare like the Western Front only with East Africans, it was bad stuff. The Somalis were exhausted but they were killing Cubans, and that was what mattered in Langley and at the Pentagon..."

    - Former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft

    "...the collapse of the Derg government triggered the Ethiopian Civil War, immediately pitting Mengistu's Derg against other socialist groups, Eritrean and Tigrayan rebels, and even fringe Oromo [1] separatists from the south. The start of the war, in which rival groups seized Cuban and Soviet weaponry and turned it against each other, was the beginning of one of Africa's bloodiest and most destructive conflicts. By early November, Somalia had consolidated its control over the Ogaden and the Western Somali Liberation Front was preparing to hold a "referendum," if it could even be called that, on the accession of the Ogaden to Somalia..."

    - Africa in the Cold War

    [1] Seeing as how intermixed Oromo and Amhara are and the dominant position the Oromo have traditionally enjoyed by virtue of their ethnic plurality, Oromo separatism really is a fringe position in my view
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    Oh man so ethiopia will be the one who will have the black hawk down type scenario btw does this mean that ethiopia will be the one that do the pirate thing so it wouldnt be somali pirate but ethiopian pirate?
     

    CountDVB

    Rfl23 said:
    Oh man so ethiopia will be the one who will have the black hawk down type scenario btw does this mean that ethiopia will be the one that do the pirate thing so it wouldnt be somali pirate but ethiopian pirate?
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    They would need Eritrea for that to get shore access, Somalia will still need to deal with the rise of Islamic extremism and the Puntland and Somaliland uprisings that will likelu come up. Ethiopia is gonna try and stablize itself.
     

    Rfl23

    CountDVB said:
    They would need Eritrea for that to get shore access, Somalia will still need to deal with the rise of Islamic extremism and the Puntland and Somaliland uprisings that will likelu come up. Ethiopia is gonna try and stablize itself.
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    Yeah true though i mean they either can go the stabilize themself route or go down otl somalia though yeah the rise of islamic extremism is a threat to somalia lets see how they are planning to handle the aftermath of their victory in ogaden tbh im mlre interested to see what is the response back in cuba i mean their defeat at ogaden is for sure a military failure and i bet castro isnt too happy who knows something might happen to cuba or not
     

    KingSweden24

    CountDVB said:
    They would need Eritrea for that to get shore access, Somalia will still need to deal with the rise of Islamic extremism and the Puntland and Somaliland uprisings that will likelu come up. Ethiopia is gonna try and stablize itself.
    Click to expand...
    How much of those uprisings stemmed from the disastrous Barre years though? There was nothing inherently unstable about Somalia - quite the opposite in fact - until getting wrecked in OTL!Ogaden War destabilized the country
     

    CountDVB

    KingSweden24 said:
    How much of those uprisings stemmed from the disastrous Barre years though? There was nothing inherently unstable about Somalia - quite the opposite in fact - until getting wrecked in OTL!Ogaden War destabilized the country
    Click to expand...

    Hmmm... they probably played a part, but I imagine the sentiment was still there. I am wondering how a Somalia would be like here. While probably still stable, it's gonna have its fair share of problems I imagine that they need to overcome.

    Will be interesting to see how Ethiopia and them will get along when both get their act together.
     

    KingSweden24

    CountDVB said:
    Hmmm... they probably played a part, but I imagine the sentiment was still there. I am wondering how a Somalia would be like here. While probably still stable, it's gonna have its fair share of problems I imagine that they need to overcome.

    Will be interesting to see how Ethiopia and them will get along when both get their act together.
    Click to expand...

    Oh for sure, it’s not going to turn into an Asian Tiger economy just because it didn’t lose the Ogaden War, but it has some advantages such as a strategic location, more ethnically homogenous than many post colonial African states, etc.

    I mean really anything would be an improvement over OTL!
     

    CountDVB

    KingSweden24 said:
    Oh for sure, it’s not going to turn into an Asian Tiger economy just because it didn’t lose the Ogaden War, but it has some advantages such as a strategic location, more ethnically homogenous than many post colonial African states, etc.

    I mean really anything would be an improvement over OTL!
    Click to expand...

    Yeah. Maybe Somalia could try and have a growing relationship with the US, resulting in that weird sort of odd friendship due to the support.

    Ethiopia meanwhile, well, they're gonne need Eritrea to try and do better though I imagine if the monarchy returns, it'll be interesting to see. Hell, maybe this leads to the monarchy siding solidly more with the Americans in exchange for support in Eritrea.
     
    The Last Off-Ramp
  • Index

    • KingSweden24

    "...the Soviets and Chinese agreed to call for a Security Council meeting over Panama, which all that did was further inflame the right and encourage them to think that Torrijos was the next Castro. The public appearance of Ford walking away from negotiations, leaks about what Torrijos had allegedly said to Bush in the meetings, it was all building to a head. Dick [Scranton] [1] called for a full meeting of the General Assembly rather than just the Security Council, largely out of hope that he could use it as an opportunity to more publicly remonstrate against the Panamanians. There was also some hope that Torrijos himself might come to the United States at Langley, as I recall, as well as certain corners of the White House... well, I shouldn't name names. You can probably figure out who I'm referring to, and what they had in mind. Anyways, the polling was bad, both for the President who now was slumping deeper into the 40s, but polling was hostile to the idea of dealing with Torrijos. It's like the public wanted the issue dealt with, but couldn't decide how they wanted it dealt with. George agreed to postpone talks until after the UN meeting. Dick Scranton got up there in front of the world and alleged that it was Panama that had sunk the talks, that the US wanted peace, but that we were still bound by the Hays-Bunau-Varilla Treaty and that "America stands by its treaty obligations, will continue to do so, and will expect any other state to execute the treaties into which it has entered with us." The Panamanians did not respond; they instead walked out. That the Soviets then vetoed a Security Council resolution in favor of the US position seemed to be a clear sign to populists and left-wingers throughout Latin America, throughout the Third World, that the Soviets still had their back. I think they felt they had to, after the faceplant in Ethiopia they had just had. It was a major escalation..."

    - Former White House Communications Director David Gergen, 1989

    "...Dad wrote something really ominous in his diary that I remember reading years later, because if there's one thing Dad never talks about, its Panama. [2] He really felt that he was going to spearhead an agreement, then he had his legs cut out from under him by conservatives at home - invariably ones out of government or comfortable in their Senate perches - and radical Soviet cutouts abroad. We could have had a deal, I genuinely believe that, and he believes it to this day. Anyways, Dad wrote the night the Soviets vetoed the resolution at the UN, and Torrijos went on camera to puff his chest about it an hour later on Panamanian television... he wrote, "We just passed the last off-ramp on the highway." Nothing else. That's the entire entry. I think about that all the time, when I think about Panama. I don't know that that entry ever made it into his published works that he wrote after leaving Foggy Bottom."

    - George W. Bush, son of former Secretary of State George Bush and failed 1978 Congressional Candidate in Texas

    [1] American ambassador to the UN
    [2] Ironically
     
  • Index

    • KingSweden24

    Darth_Kiryan said:
    Interesting.

    Either Bush does not get the Presidency or this is written before Bush does so.
    Click to expand...

    Your first read is correct.

    After Ford, no OTL President - or Vice President - will achieve the Presidency. I'm going to do my best to avoid any similarities with OTL national tickets, even, though that'll be much easier once we get a few decades down the line (1980 will have a familiar face involved, for starters, because it's hard to butterfly the person who shall remain nameless away by 1977/78).
     
    Super Bowl XII
  • Index

    • KingSweden24

    "...Dallas does it! And with that, Landry's Cowboys have their second Super Bowl win, 27-10, over Denver! Not even close to competitive, what a dominant defensive performance that was!"

    - Pat Summerall, CBS, Super Bowl XII color commentary

    "...blowouts are the least fun to watch, and Dallas beating the snot out of Denver and poor Craig Morton in January of 1978 has to take the cake for one of the least exciting games of all time. Unlike some blowouts the winning team didn't score that much, so it was really just a pretty good team beating up a not so good team. Of course, the historical context in which the game occurred is way more interesting than the snoozefest on the field..."

    - Hall of Fame Coach Don Coryell
     
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