WI: Anyone but Curtis LeMay in '68

Emperor Norton I · Oct 25, 2012

George Wallace's pick of LeMay as his running mate proved to be a fiasco since LeMay saw fit to talk about how he had no problem using nuclear weapons. Certainly it didn't help George Wallace with the election, and though he came close to getting it thrown to the House, it never was.

The issue then is who else besides Curtis LeMay could George Wallace have picked for his running mate, and what effect would they have had on the campaign and the election?

RogueBeaver · Oct 25, 2012

They initially wanted Colonel Sanders (per TMP), Wallace reluctantly agreed, but his base revolted because of Sanders' racial moderation and it had to be canned. I'd assume a similar thing would happen with any other more mainstream running mate pick.

Ariosto · Oct 25, 2012

RogueBeaver said:
They initially wanted Colonel Sanders (per TMP), Wallace reluctantly agreed, but his base revolted because of Sanders' racial moderation and it had to be canned. I'd assume a similar thing would happen with any other more mainstream running mate pick.

That wasn't Colonel Sanders, that was Happy Chandler.

Colonel Sanders though was considered , as was Ezra Taft Benson, John Wayne, and a couple others..................

Now I'm reminded I have a project to get back to.

Orville_third · Oct 25, 2012

Well, I once read a (then-FH) novel in my High School library (which I need to find again) in which Wallace picked Thurmond. There were lots of surprises- and I won't spoil the ending.

As for LeMay, didn't he embarrass Wallace more when he said integration hadn't hurt the USAF?

Andrew T · Oct 25, 2012

Wallace lost South Carolina's 8 EV to Nixon by 6 points; he wasn't within 8 anywhere else. So it seems like Wallace's maximum realistic upside is 54 EV, which isn't materially different from 46.

Nixon won 301 EV in '68 IOTL, so he can afford to lose those 8 EV.

So it's difficult to imagine that another VP would make a material difference, even though, you know, LeMay was insane.

Ariosto · Oct 25, 2012

Orville_third said:
Well, I once read a (then-FH) novel in my High School library (which I need to find again) in which Wallace picked Thurmond. There were lots of surprises- and I won't spoil the ending.

As for LeMay, didn't he embarrass Wallace more when he said integration hadn't hurt the USAF?

At the very Press Conference in which Curtis LeMay was introduced as Wallace's running-mate, despite having loosely promised to avoid the topic of nuclear weapons, upon being asked, he went into length over how nuclear weapons should be more open to use (and potentially used in Vietnam), and that the after-effects were far less severe than people think ("you got these little crabs still living on those isles............going about their daily business"). To say that Wallace was horrified would be an understatement.

Deleted member 16736 · Oct 26, 2012

Bombs Away was a terrible fit for the ticket. Wallace was a populist, great at riling up a crowd, and that is the kind of campaign he was running. The choice of Curtis LeMay, who was NOT a "GI's General" type of commander, to fill out the rest of the ticket made absolutely no sense from a marketing stand point.

Like Ariosto pointed out, too, LeMay immediately took the focus of the Wallace campaign off of the populist "There's not a dime's worth of difference between those two," and put it squarely on how Wallace would be unable to handle the War in Vietnam. Right off the bat Wallace had egg on his face. At least Palin made it through her first press conference before imploding. Sheesh. After that Wallace lost a lot of time trying to figure out what to do about LeMay, while the media reported on the General and not the Governor. That was when he dropped in the polls.

I really don't think Wallace could have made a worse choice. LeMay detracted from the candidate's strengths and highlighted his weaknesses, while saddling him with "more likely to blow us up than Goldwater" baggage.

Also, to Andre T's point, I don't think Wallace had such a low ceiling in 1968. Supposedly when the team was deciding on the running mate question, one of Wallace's people said something along the lines of "We have the Birchers no matter what, let's try to win some respectable votes." That was the point when they were leaning towards Happy Chandler who was still very popular in Kentucky and other parts of the upper south.

Honestly, if LeMay isn't around to detonate on the campaign and Wallace picked Chandler, I think you have a scenario where Wallace remains around 20% (his polling high mark that he hit in September before the infamous presser) and picks up ~100 EVs. All you would really need is for organized labor to take a little longer to jump behind Humphrey and start providing him with cash and volunteers so that they can settle on Wallace as their candidate and I think he makes decent showings as far north as Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania.

I don't want to suggest that Wallace could win if it weren't for LeMay, but picking the general was, really, the point when his campaign took a nose dive.

Emperor Norton I · Oct 26, 2012

terrellk said:
Bombs Away was a terrible fit for the ticket. Wallace was a populist, great at riling up a crowd, and that is the kind of campaign he was running. The choice of Curtis LeMay, who was NOT a "GI's General" type of commander, to fill out the rest of the ticket made absolutely no sense from a marketing stand point.

Like Ariosto pointed out, too, LeMay immediately took the focus of the Wallace campaign off of the populist "There's not a dime's worth of difference between those two," and put it squarely on how Wallace would be unable to handle the War in Vietnam. Right off the bat Wallace had egg on his face. At least Palin made it through her first press conference before imploding. Sheesh. After that Wallace lost a lot of time trying to figure out what to do about LeMay, while the media reported on the General and not the Governor. That was when he dropped in the polls.

I really don't think Wallace could have made a worse choice. LeMay detracted from the candidate's strengths and highlighted his weaknesses, while saddling him with "more likely to blow us up than Goldwater" baggage.

Also, to Andre T's point, I don't think Wallace had such a low ceiling in 1968. Supposedly when the team was deciding on the running mate question, one of Wallace's people said something along the lines of "We have the Birchers no matter what, let's try to win some respectable votes." That was the point when they were leaning towards Happy Chandler who was still very popular in Kentucky and other parts of the upper south.

Honestly, if LeMay isn't around to detonate on the campaign and Wallace picked Chandler, I think you have a scenario where Wallace remains around 20% (his polling high mark that he hit in September before the infamous presser) and picks up ~100 EVs. All you would really need is for organized labor to take a little longer to jump behind Humphrey and start providing him with cash and volunteers so that they can settle on Wallace as their candidate and I think he makes decent showings as far north as Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania.

I don't want to suggest that Wallace could win if it weren't for LeMay, but picking the general was, really, the point when his campaign took a nose dive.

I was messing around with electoral atlas. Is this what you had in mind? It's 100 EVs exactly (and throws the election to the House due to no electoral majority).

Plumber · Oct 26, 2012

Emperor Norton I said:
I was messing around with electoral atlas. Is this what you had in mind? It's 100 EVs exactly (and throws the election to the House due to no electoral majority).

With Chandler, that works out pretty plausibly.

Wallace was backing Humphrey to win in the House.

NKVD · Oct 26, 2012

So, how would a vote in the House likely go? And in the Senate?

Emperor Norton I · Oct 26, 2012

XNM said:
So, how would a vote in the House likely go? And in the Senate?

Humphrey/Muskie. The House and Senate were Democratic. That does bring up the topic of public reaction to the situation of a hung electoral college, and the handing of the election over to Humphrey/Muskie if they did not get the popular vote (in the OTL, Nixon won the popular vote, 43.4 to 42.7 to 13.5).

EDIT: Bear in mind that nothing is destined if you complicate the electoral map like that. If it goes to the House and Senate, the Democratic ticket wins, and that's not what I'm talking about. What I mean is, the election between Humphrey and Nixon was so close that on a sneeze you could have states flip flop back and forth between each of them in the electoral college, so what you do by giving Wallace a better running mate is increase the chances of throwing it to the House, while not necessarily leading to that universe. You also have the possibility of Nixon pulling out some dirty tricks to swing a few states out of Wallace's column if need be. Some votes are overcounted in this county here, undercounted for Wallace and Humphrey in this county over here, some people get bused in from over here, and some people are given the wrong times to come in over here, and Nixon wins a few more states to push him just over that 270.

Paul V McNutt · Oct 26, 2012

Inremember reading that Ezra Taft Benson, Eisenhower's Secretary of Agriculture and later President of the Mormon Church was Wallace's second choice. He would have been unpopular with farmers but overall a much safer pick. I don't know about Wallace getting 20 percent, but he does better. If Wallace takes away enough Nixon votes in California, New Jersey and Illinois, Humphrey wins.

Whanztastic · Oct 26, 2012

Chandler was a non-starter with Wallace's base.

Former Gov. of GA Marvin Griffin was a stand-in for VP early on, could just stay.

A dark horse I tend to like (use him in a non-posted TL I'm failing to write) is Sam Yorty, Democratic Mayor of Los Angeles.

Andrew T · Oct 26, 2012

terrellk said:
Also, to Andrew T's point, I don't think Wallace had such a low ceiling in 1968. Supposedly when the team was deciding on the running mate question, one of Wallace's people said something along the lines of "We have the Birchers no matter what, let's try to win some respectable votes." That was the point when they were leaning towards Happy Chandler who was still very popular in Kentucky and other parts of the upper south.

Honestly, if LeMay isn't around to detonate on the campaign and Wallace picked Chandler, I think you have a scenario where Wallace remains around 20% (his polling high mark that he hit in September before the infamous presser) and picks up ~100 EVs.

That's a fair point, but here's the counterargument: LeMay was named as Wallace's VP on October 3, 1968. As I look at the -- admittedly sparse -- Gallup history of Presidential polling, and here's what I see:

In 1968, Wallace stayed at 20-21% in the polls until late September; by October he was polling at 15%. Actual share of vote: 13.5%.
In 1980, John B. Anderson hit polling highs of 24% in the summer; by October, he was down to 8-9%. Actual share of vote: 6.6%.
In 1992, Ross Perot peaked at 39%; ultimately, he dropped out, re-entered the race (at 8%), and had a late surge to 20% in October, before dwindling to 14% on Election Day. Actual share of vote: 18.9%.
In 1996, Perot peaked at 19%; by July, he was polling at 7%, which is where he finished. Actual share of vote: 8.4%.
In 2000, Nader hovered around the margin of error all year (2-4%); his final vote total was 2.7%.

So five isn't a lot of data points, and Ross Perot actually outperformed his final poll numbers (which surprised me) -- but I think there's some evidence there that third party candidates tend to peak and then peter out by Election Day. The obvious thesis would be that "soft" supporters of a third party candidate are more likely to abandon ship once the evidence is in that their guy is going to lose.

All you would really need is for organized labor to take a little longer to jump behind Humphrey and start providing him with cash and volunteers so that they can settle on Wallace as their candidate and I think he makes decent showings as far north as Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania.

Again, I get your thesis, but consider the baseline: Wallace won just 11.8% of the vote in Ohio, 11.4% in Indiana, and a tick under 8% in Pennsylvania. You're talking about tripling or quadrupling his support in those states to make them competitive, and that strikes me as somewhat implausible no matter who the vice-presidential nominee is.

One final point: I'm not sure I would want to bet on the counterfactual that Happy "I said most of the Zimbabweans were n-----s and they are n-----s" Chandler wouldn't gaffe on the campaign trail in a similarly damaging way.

Ariosto · Oct 26, 2012

Paul V McNutt said:
Inremember reading that Ezra Taft Benson, Eisenhower's Secretary of Agriculture and later President of the Mormon Church was Wallace's second choice. He would have been unpopular with farmers but overall a much safer pick. I don't know about Wallace getting 20 percent, but he does better. If Wallace takes away enough Nixon votes in California, New Jersey and Illinois, Humphrey wins.

Everything I've ever read suggests that those Union members in the Rust Belt that had remained with Wallace was virtually tied between Nixon and Humphrey; the grand majority of voters who left Wallace, among the Unions, actually went to Humphrey. So in all likelihood you end up with Hubert doing worse rather than Tricky Dick.

Winston Smith · Oct 26, 2012

I see nothing wrong with the use of nuclear weapons in wartime either.

vultan · Oct 26, 2012

Emperor Norton I said:
I was messing around with electoral atlas. Is this what you had in mind? It's 100 EVs exactly (and throws the election to the House due to no electoral majority).

Well, as Ariosto said in so many words, Wallace may have been a spoiler for Nixon in the South, but he was a spoiler for Humphrey in the North, taking the votes of white working-class urban voters. So it's likely that if Wallace is doing as well in the South as you have him doing there, the vote-splitting in the North would result in Nixon winning Maryland (assuming Agnew's still on the Republican ticket) and Pennsylvania, along with possibly New York and Michigan.

lukedalton · Oct 26, 2012

Winston Smith said:
I see nothing wrong with the use of nuclear weapons in wartime either.

Using nuclear weapons free a geniee that very few want see free, and for many using A-bombs mean end of the world or, if lucky, simple destruction on enoumous scale and the vanishing of modern civilization, so a candidate who seem to be to much eager to use that weapon not inspire a great deal of trust or enthusiasm to see him as the commander in chief.

edvardas · Oct 26, 2012

If the election were by congressional districts, it may have gone to the house. Wallace carried districts in FL, NC, SC, TN and even 1 in TX. In the states which Wallace carried, Humphrey carried several more districts than Nixon.

Emperor Norton I · Oct 27, 2012

lukedalton said:
Using nuclear weapons free a geniee that very few want see free, and for many using A-bombs mean end of the world or, if lucky, simple destruction on enoumous scale and the vanishing of modern civilization, so a candidate who seem to be to much eager to use that weapon not inspire a great deal of trust or enthusiasm to see him as the commander in chief.

Not to mention this is the Cold War. To paraphrase Khrushchev during the Cuban missile crisis, nuclear weapons use is like both sides pulling on the end of a rope in which the knot of war is tied, because the harder you pull, the tighter the knot becomes "[a]nd a time may come when this knot is tied so tight that the person who tied it is no longer capable of untying it, and then the knot will have to be cut".
There's a degree of desensitization to be had. Even if it doesn't lead to nuclear war between the superpowers, it does mean each superpower, in their conflicts, will be willing to use nuclear devices of a certain yield. Then the next one, more nuclear weapons and of a higher yield. Then the next one, more and of a still higher yield. And between each other, as over all, the use of nuclear weapons in conflict becomes more desensitized which can have grave, grave repercussions.

WI: Anyone but Curtis LeMay in '68

Deleted member 16736