Or Bob Dole
These are both good options. Obviously we'll cover the Republican nomination process in depth, but I believe it will be deep and wide, unlike OTL 1992 or even 1996. More akin to 2012 or 2016.Jack Kemp as a candidate
Or Bob Dole
These are both good options. Obviously we'll cover the Republican nomination process in depth, but I believe it will be deep and wide, unlike OTL 1992 or even 1996. More akin to 2012 or 2016.Jack Kemp as a candidate
To facilitate these things, President Jackson instituted the National Committee on Race and Reconciliation, appointing freshly retired Chief Justice Rehnquist
to chair it. One of the first programs out of this committee would be based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and it provided what would today be considered a
minimum basic income to blacks, the homeless, and other disenfranchised groups. Truly, reparations were finally starting to be paid...
Did you not read the part of him almost getting assassinated? Reagan broke the curse of POTUS's getting assassinated.It would be interesting if Jackson got assassinated, i mean the black president & the first “New Left”-ish president IN 1988 !!
I think it’s possible for him for Jackson to win, but I think it would be cool to see legacy as a the next Kennedy.
That is a good idea, lol.Nader and Nixon getting at each other about foreign trade policy. Or maybe they'll see eye to eye.
Maybe, maybe not. To speculate further might be spoilers. Also, Nixon was the last progressive POTUS. Jackson is just the first black POTUS. There's a major difference.I feel like the GOP would win 92. The backlash against such a Progressive POTUS for the time as well as a black man in office would likely be enough to push them to victory.
This what we call a backhanded compliment. Don't read. Problem sovled.First, I want to commend you because I have long wanted to write a Jackson wins timeline but have struggled with how to make it happen plausibly. I have several doubts - beginning with the idea that a frontrunner for the nomination and former US Senator would seemingly joyfully choose to go from out-front candidate to behind the scenes staffer for a candidate thought to be running a campaign about a moral statement rather than a serious effort to win, and including the appointment of a corrupt former president who was run out of town by the party of the Democratic president and by his own party. Yes, his image was in the process of rehabilitation, but it never reached the kind of post-presidency euphoria Jimmy Carter has experienced and it didn't happen as quickly as you posit. The Clinton/Nixon relationship was a significant factor in the rehabilitation of Nixon's image. I'm also struggling with the running mate choice. Is there any real evidence Jackson and Collins enjoyed a close relationship? Also, the idea of a nation that fell for the Willie Horton trap electing a ticket without a white man seems ... a stretch.
Mostly, I have a problem with this. First, why is Rehnquist retiring a few years after his appointment? That seems unlikely given the fact Rehnquist would clench the gavel until his death -- nearly twenty years later. Second, why would Jackson - who is a civil rights leader - appoint a man who once penned a memo about how Brown v. Board of Education was wrongly decided to lead a National Committee on Race. That seems the most absurd point of the timeline. Even if you want to argue Jackson would find a conservative or moderate Republican to give the findings of this Committee more weight, there are choices who are not avowed segregationists. Rehnquist's appointment makes just a tad more sense than naming, say, Strom Thurmond.
I do think this is an important topic and an interesting one to explore, but I think some of these particulars are distracting from what could be a grand narrative.
Jackson isn't elected because he was almost assassinated. He was elected because he campaigned. Ya'll racism is showing, LOL. Sad. Try again.This scenario absurdly exaggerates the extent to which an assassination attempt can make a presidential candidate overperform the "basics." If anyone should have been helped by such an attempt, it was Theodore Roosevelt in 1912--the way he insisted on continuing his speech won huge admiration--, yet he still finished with only about a quarter of the vote, far behind Wilson, and just barely ahead of the unpopular Taft. And in the present scenario, the attrmpted assassination is at the convention (not in October as with TR) giving any bump Jackson got from it months to fade...
BTW, a March 1988 Washington Post-ABC News poll:
Bush 58
Jackson 34
(Yes, the poll overestimated how well Dukakis would do against Bush, but to me that just shows they underestimated Bush, not that Jackson would do better than Dukakis...)
Yes, now we're talking. But to be clear, the campaign manager doesn't run the campaign, they "manage" it. She was chosen for the optics. Jackson and Hart truly ran the campaign in this scenario, not even the woman who they hand picked to run it.Of course, when Susan Estrich is running your campaign...yeah, there's a reason Dukakis lost, and Willie Horton was only part of the problem (@Andrew T posted about her failures a while back)...
... and that's the end of the Presidency right there. Rehnquist goes public and (recognizing that whatever a Democrat President can do, a Republican President can also do) a near-unanimous vote of the Senate (re-)confirms Rehnquist. Most of the Cabinet (led by former President Nixon, who got Rehnquist on the Supreme Court in the first place!) turn in their resignations. The rest of the term is speculation on the Democratic nominee for '92, and can the Democrats not lose both Senate and House in '90?One of the first acts as POTUS Jackson did was request the resignation of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who did not take it in stride.
Jackson isn't elected because he was almost assassinated. He was elected because he campaigned. Ya'll racism is showing, LOL. Sad. Try again.
You don't understand presidential politics, sorry.... and that's the end of the Presidency right there. Rehnquist goes public and (recognizing that whatever a Democrat President can do, a Republican President can also do) a near-unanimous vote of the Senate (re-)confirms Rehnquist. Most of the Cabinet (led by former President Nixon, who got Rehnquist on the Supreme Court in the first place!) turn in their resignations. The rest of the term is speculation on the Democratic nominee for '92, and can the Democrats not lose both Senate and House in '90?
In all seriousness, I see President Jackson being talked out of this course of action by his staff, and instead floating a list of potential names for the next Justice of the Supreme Court "... if and when an opening should occur ...", with some perhaps very-behind-the-scenes talks about getting Rehnquist to retire. If he can convince Nixon to help Jackson, then a suitable transition plan can be worked out.
But up until that point, you've had a REALLY believable timeline. I am still looking forward to what comes next.
Dukakis doesn't even run for the office in this timeline. I mentioned all 4 candidates by name. The crowd cleared for Cuomo. Nothing akin to Willie Horton. VP Bush thought the election was being handed to him, and Jackson came in and said nothing is ever handed to the president.*So no Willie Horton ad from Bush against Jackson (which was a low blow but which was effective in painting Dukakis as being weak on crime among Republican voters?) I might have gone with Sam Nunn for Secretary of State.
I'd love to see President Jackson on the Arsenio Hall Show (a la Obama on the Tonight Show and Letterman in OTL)
I could see Colin Powell being a serious contender for the Republican nomination in 2000 if he's part of a Republican administration after Jackson.