Considering he's also a Texan, I'd say next to none.
FUN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW FACTS!

The President and Vice-President are not allowed to both reside in the same state. It's a subsection of the Electoral College, and incredibly stupid in my eyes, but it is the law. Choosing George Bush as VP would fail on that fact alone.

Besides, I've got other places for Haitch Dubya. :openedeyewink:
 
Plot twist is this TL is secretly a Fordwank and we're going for a more successful Ford presidency under circumstances better suited to it.
Forgot to mention this, but Ford also doesn't have the baggage of pardoning Nixon and I don't think he would do so under the circumstances of TTL should he become President.
I think the other direction is more likely. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Veep Ford or Baker, both of whom would be fairly easily confirmed.
You do have a point as that's why Nixon chose Ford in OTL. Also, Ford and Baker both have good credibility with staunch Republicans, a group that is suspicious of Connally due to him being a Democrat until 1973.
 
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Perhaps he goes over to Britain during the war on a tour, meets Maggie at Oxford and stays?
We need to see a US President married to a British PM in an AH tho, so perhaps Nancy dies in a horrible accident just prior to him winning the presidency and the after taking office he meets Thatcher (who for AH reasons is single) and enamours her with his romantic personality. The two get hitched before Reagan's first term is up and they become a global power couple.
 
We need to see a US President married to a British PM in an AH tho, so perhaps Nancy dies in a horrible accident just prior to him winning the presidency and the after taking office he meets Thatcher (who for AH reasons is single) and enamours her with his romantic personality. The two get hitched before Reagan's first term is up and they become a global power couple.
TBH I think Maggie would be asked to resign at that point. Unless she throws a classic Maggie.
 

Blizy115

Banned
FUN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW FACTS!

The President and Vice-President are not allowed to both reside in the same state. It's a subsection of the Electoral College, and incredibly stupid in my eyes, but it is the law. Choosing George Bush as VP would fail on that fact alone.

Besides, I've got other places for Haitch Dubya. :openedeyewink:
That almost happened in 2000, Cheney lived in Texas and had to move back to Wyoming.
 
FUN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW FACTS!

The President and Vice-President are not allowed to both reside in the same state. It's a subsection of the Electoral College, and incredibly stupid in my eyes, but it is the law. Choosing George Bush as VP would fail on that fact alone.

False.
Electors in the EC are not allowed to cast both of their votes for residents of their own state. That's it. So at worst, the electors from Texas would have to vote for someone other than Bush as VP.

Of course, it's a terrible idea for political reasons, but there's no constitutional reason why it couldn't be done.
 
False.
Electors in the EC are not allowed to cast both of their votes for residents of their own state. That's it. So at worst, the electors from Texas would have to vote for someone other than Bush as VP.

Of course, it's a terrible idea for political reasons, but there's no constitutional reason why it couldn't be done.
Isn't the first point just restating what @wolverinethad already said?

Of course Texas would have to cast electors for a different VP, potentially causing a Senate contingent election for the VP, which is exactly why it would never happen. Connally would smart enough to not risk that.
 
In 2000 Dick Chaney was a resident of Texas when he was selected by himself to be the GOP VP running mate of Texas Governor George W. Bush, and Chaney just reregister as a resident of Wyoming.
George H.W. Bush can always reregister as a resident of Connecticut.
 
Given who got shot where, Nancy is highly unlikely to be in that scenario. Without getting too spoiler-y, keep in mind the multiple permutations of the 25th Amendment that exist. Nixon and Connally both used Section 2. Section 1 was used de facto in Nixon's conviction. There's four sections. Technically, Section 4 only applies to the President, but theoretically, section 2 can shoehorn in for section 4 to be used on the Veep. I'm actually waiting for a con law attorney I know to reply to me on this, but that's my working theory from a political standpoint, where I have more experience.
She was the only person, who could get to him, really change his mind.
 
I think the other direction is more likely. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Veep Ford or Baker, both of whom would be fairly easily confirmed.
I'd concur. The main advantage of picking Reagan was removing the strongest potential challenger for the nomination in 76. I don't imagine Connelly is too worried about his right flank. His small c conservatism and aesthetics are more important to appealing to right wing voters than a commitment to the Conservative Movement policy agenda. If anything he'll prioritize shaping the American Right in his image. I'd imagine some one from the Midwest or Mid Atlantic would be the sort of complimenting VP that Connally is looking for, someone that that helps soothe concerns from party elites over his newcomer status to the GOP and its a nice geographical balance.
Connally likes to take big swings.
Thinking on this I expect Connally to play ball on healthcare reform. He'll sound the right words about fiscal prudience and government overreach but a chance to co-opt a Democratic priority, shape it more to his liking, and get some credit for himself and the GOP seems just the right sort of ruthlessness. Plus some bipartisanship could help lower post Impeachment rancor and spread some good vibes and I think Connally wants to be a happy warrior.
 
March 4, 1975
As word of the attempt on Reagan’s life went around the country, the first news that the Soviet Union received of the incident came from a short, encrypted message sent from its consulate in San Francisco, where intelligence officers that were tasked with monitoring American news witnessed the special report bulletins on every channel reporting on the incident. Their ability to do so was powered by the very recent deployment of Molniya-2M satellites, which had only begun deployment a little over two years prior. The signal was received in a downlink facility in Vladivostok, which immediately relayed it to Moscow Center, the KGB headquarters for the First Chief Directorate (foreign spying) on the outer ring road of the city. The decryption of the cable first caused a curse on the part of the communications officer, and from there, a courier sprinted to a Lada, which drove as fast as possible to the Lubyanka, the feared headquarters of the Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti, The Committee for State Security, colloquially known as the KGB. While the First Chief Directorate was housed on the outer ring road, the Directorate chiefs were all at the Lubyanka, where they could be available at any time to Viktor Chebrikov, the recently installed KGB Chairman, and formerly First Deputy Chairman. Chebrikov had yet to name a deputy, and Andropov’s work as Premier did not preclude him from coming to the Lubyanka three times a week for briefings. Chebrikov was quite cognizant that Andropov was the reason he held his position at his age, and therefore was eager to please his patron.

The courier was sent up to the office of General-Lieutenant Vladimir Kryuchkov, the recently appointed head of the First Chief Directorate and therefore the overseer of all agents outside of the Warsaw Pact. Kryuchkov read the decrypted cable and his mind went back 12 years to 1963, when there was a serious belief that the Soviet Union was behind the murder of John F. Kennedy. The removal of Khrushchev the following year did not do much to allay those beliefs. Kryuchkov sent the courier on his way and walked down the hallway to the office of the Chairman. He went straight through without getting any permission from the secretary outside, a breach of procedure very few could get away with. The disguised door that Beria had used during his time as Chairman no longer existed, but the large bust of Feliks Dzershzinsky, the founder of the KGB, still sat inside of the Chairman’s office, which, paradoxically, was not on the top floor like most Western leaders, but sat on the third floor overlooking the square where a much larger statue of “Iron Feliks” stood. The KGB was outgrowing its building capacity, so across the street, a more modern building was being constructed for the Second Chief Directorate, those responsible for the monstrous level of countersurveillance within the Soviet Union and the suppression of dissenters. That wasn’t the concern here and now, though. Internal dissent had been noticeably muted since Andropov became Premier.

“Viktor Mikhailovich, I’ve just received a FLASH message from our consulate in San Francisco. It seems that some deranged woman has shot Vice President Reagan and his wife. They’re both in surgery right now. President Connally has not issued any statement yet, but it appears the Americans, again, have been caught completely off-guard by the lunacy of their armed citizens. One wonders why they continue to allow such things. Can you imagine if somebody here had shot Brezhnev? We’d be tearing apart whatever city it happened in.” Kryuchkov had used the familiar form of address because the two were less than a year apart, and were both proteges of Premier Andropov, therefore, their association was less formal than the norm. Chebrikov was taking it in stride, because it was the Vice President, after all, and not as serious as if it’d been somebody else. “Vladimir Aleksandrovich, it is their Vice President, not their President. It’s serious, but not so much as if they’d shot Connally. This Reagan man is not well-loved inside of their government, correct?” Kryuchkov nodded. “Then I doubt they will shed too many tears over this, and replace him when they are able to. The Politburo will be informed in the morning when we meet. I see no reason to call an emergency meeting now. It’d just get too many people talking about why.” Kryuchkov paused, then said, “Comrade Chairman, he is their most...prominent anti-Communist, and there are many who will be convinced we were involved because they believe we fear him. And that is not entirely unreasonable, is it? Especially since the prospect of him being their President one day is concerning given his wildly overblown beliefs about our goals?”

Chebrikov sighed. He had a point, but he didn’t want the Soviet reaction to inflame matters, especially as he was convinced the West had a source in the Kremlin, and knew that any full Politburo meeting would leak out. “You win. I will go see the Premier at home and we will discuss this. That’s as far as it goes tonight. The weekly meeting is in fourteen hours. It can, and will, wait.”

*****

Washington’s reaction could be best described as a collective “Oh, shit.” The Reagans were popular, not for their politics, but for their parties. Nancy and Ron were the first Second Couple to live in the renovated Naval Observatory, and they had already hosted some spectacular balls at the splendid Edwardian-era residence. Built in 1893 for the superintendent of the observatory, in 1923 the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Edward Eberle (who was a former superintendent himself and therefore aware of its beauty) kicked out the current superintendent to lesser quarters on the grounds and appropriated it as the official housing for the CNO. This arrangement lasted for another fifty years before the Secret Service, which spent a quarter of a million dollars securing Spiro Agnew’s house when he was VP, put their foot down and insisted that an official residence had to be set up now. It’d been seven years since LBJ had delayed building a new VP residence at the Observatory, which had a vast amount of unused space, and so the CNO was booted and the residence renovated at warp speed. The CNO now resided at Fort Myer, the titular Army post adjacent to Arlington National Cemetery, which contained flag quarters for Pentagon-based commands. This meant that the current CNO, Admiral James Holloway III, had the other chiefs as his neighbors, the same as Admiral Zumwalt had for the last few months of his tenure.

In any case, the house was finished in time for the Reagans to move in before Christmas, and they’d hosted a delightful Christmas party. Nancy, a skilled hostess, charmed the more hard-bitten amongst the Georgetown set by inviting their Hollywood friends, like Rock Hudson, Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Bob Hope and Don Rickles, to the party. Sally Quinn would write up the affair for the Washington Post’s Style section with flair, having attended with her paramour, editor Ben Bradlee, and the paper’s publisher, Katharine Graham. Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the grand dame of D.C., even scored an invite, the sort of connection that few could ever have imagined: the daughter of the century’s first president (McKinley didn’t count in most eyes, since he’d barely started his term when he was murdered) holding court over seven decades later. Quinn and Alice had a particularly amusing chat in which the former First Daughter spoke of her love for “dear old men’s things,” and when asked what she meant by a passing Vice President, she blurted out, “Penises, Ronnie. Penises.” A White House photographer caught Reagan bent backwards in laughter, and it quickly became the most requested photo at the White House Press Office for all of 1974. That was the amiable, friendly, well-mannered impression the Reagans had left on Washington, and so there was great sadness at the travails inflicted upon them at this moment.

Walter Annenberg, who’d just returned from his five-year stint as ambassador to Great Britain, offered his plane to Ron Reagan, the namesake son, who was in high school at Sidwell Friends Academy in Washington, and his half-sister Maureen, who worked for a firm in Bethesda, Maryland. The Secret Service accompanied the two back to California. Daughter Patti, who was estranged from her mother because she was living unmarried with Eagles guitarist Bernie Leadon, was located at the Sunset Sound recording studio, where she’d been working on a song with Leadon for the Eagles’ latest album, and driven up to Sacramento by the very agents she’d dispensed with when she moved in with Leadon in the fall of 1974. She was joined (rather uncomfortably) by her older half-brother Michael, who was the director of events for a large caterer in Los Angeles. The two were as opposite as people could be, and Patti used the excuse of stopping to use a restroom on the long drive to swap cars so she didn’t have to sit with Michael. Michael, who’d been born out of wedlock, and then adopted by parents whose marriage was growing rocky and would end by his third birthday, once again felt the pain of abandonment gnawing inside himself. He’d been largely neglected by his father, who was so caught up in his politics that when he gave the commencement address at Michael’s high school graduation, he didn’t recognize his own son on stage receiving his diploma. Jane Wyman, his mother, had done a better job, but she lived in Palm Springs and between the two of them, there wasn’t a lot of time for a boy already feeling unloved and unwanted. Those feelings had broken Michael’s first marriage, and while he was set for a second in a matter of months, he still had many demons he had not dealt with, and those were rising to the surface as he sat inside a Secret Service sedan, being driven north towards an absent father whose love he craved and who might die.

While the Reagan children were in transit, John Connally was in a sort of semi-lockdown. Tours had been shuttered for the day, meetings with non-Cabinet officials canceled, and Connally found himself back in the Situation Room, a place he preferred to avoid. Upon learning the details of the shootings, aides would later say, his eyes sort of lost focus, and they could see that he’d gone off elsewhere in his mind. He didn’t speak a word, but after a couple of minutes asked for his wife to be brought down to the SitRoom. The briefing continued. Admiral Burke said every indication was that this was the final act of the Manson Family in striking out at Reagan, as he was governor during the slayings, the trials, and the death sentence followed by its reversal. Burke went on to add that the only thing that concerned him was the type of gun used. “It’s a Yugoslavian copy of the Soviet Tokarev pistol. We cleared it for import to help Tito stay out of Moscow’s orbit back in the Sixties, but they had to have safeties added upon arrival by any importing dealer and they couldn’t use the Soviet ammunition for it. This pistol however, does not have the safety, and it used the Soviet ammunition, which was copper-jacketed 7.62mm slugs. As best as we can tell from the way Mrs. Reagan was struck, one of those slugs ricocheted off something metal, perhaps the door frame of the hotel, and went straight into her. Those bullets are not sold here at all, which means somewhere in this country, somebody is smuggling Communist weapons and ammunition. We’re hoping for a serial number that we can track. I imagine that Tito will cooperate, because if we shut down imports, that’s a lot of cash the Yugos would lose out on,” said Burke. Bill Clements spoke up. “Admiral, that’s all well and good, but if they don’t find a serial number, doesn’t that mean some Soviet operative or operatives are running guns in this country?” The National Security Advisor looked over at the Secretary of Defense. “Mr. Secretary, I don’t think that’s an issue here. Or, as I should say, based upon what Director Kelley told me earlier (this was a reference to FBI Director Clarence Kelley, who was currently in the Hoover Building and a very busy man at the moment), it’s not a current issue. They had indications around 1969 that the KGB had some folks giving guns to the radical movements, folks like the Weather Underground and the Nation of Islam. If they were doing that, they’d give them the Soviet ammunition because that copper jacketing can penetrate police armor pretty easily. Someone like Fromme, who became pretty notorious, and who was living in the heart of great unrest in California, I imagine she’d know some of these people.”

Connally was still listening, but everyone around the table was surprised at his lack of engagement, except for Ben Barnes. He knew what it was about. He also knew what was next to ask. “Okay, what do we do from here? Is it safe for the President to go on television and speak in detail? Can we say we have Fromme in custody? Are there more threats out there we need to worry about?” Before anyone could answer, the door opened and Kelley walked in. “I apologize for being late, but I wanted to have the latest information from the Sacramento field office before I joined,” Kelley said. “Mr. President, we are quite confident that this was an isolated incident, motivated by the shooter’s hatred of the Vice President from when he was governor. Ms. Fromme and a Sandra Good, another “Family” member, had been going around for weeks, dressed in pseudo-religious attire, claiming to be nuns in the ‘International Church of Retribution.’ They share an apartment in the city. We tossed it and arrested Ms. Good, who has not been very forthcoming except to express her pleasure that the Vice President and Mrs. Reagan were shot. She said that they were responsible for keeping them away from Charlie. An agent asked her how Mrs. Reagan had anything to do with that, since she held no office or position of authority, and Ms. Good replied, ‘Everyone knows that bitch runs the show. He’s just her puppet.’ Henry Kissinger stifled a laugh and leaned into Clements’s ear. “She’s not that far off. Reagan listens to Nancy more than he does to me.” Clements resisted the urge to grin. He’d heard the stories.

“Okay, so there’s no continuing threat, just a very personal grudge between a cultist and my Vice President. What’s their condition?” This was Connally, finally joining the conversation.

Kelley fielded the answer. “The Vice President and Mrs. Reagan were taken to separate hospitals. In the case of the Vice President, he was able to be moved and an agent got him to Sutter General, which was a straight shot five minutes away. He’s in surgery, and he might lose a kidney and/or his spleen, but he should survive. Mrs. Reagan could not be moved due to where she was shot, and they had to wait for an ambulance with the necessary equipment to stabilize her. She was transported to UC-Davis Medical Center, where two full professors of neurosurgery are operating on her. The bullet struck about her mid-to-lower back, collapsing her immediately. She’s so damned little that it might’ve done worse damage, but at the same time a ricochet decelerates...it’s hard to tell. One of the trauma docs told her lead agent to expect the surgery to go on all night. They’ll have to move very slowly to find it, and then to remove it.”

“What about Fromme,” Burke asked.

“Ms. Fromme may not survive herself. The manner in which she fired at the Vice President was concealed, and that caused a panic, and she got trampled. She’s not very big, 5’4”, kind of malnourished, so maybe a hundred pounds, and so when our agents got her, she’d been run over by several fleeing bystanders and was half-conscious. They cuffed her as a precaution, got the gun, and carried her to a car. They were initially going to take her to the police station, but one of the agents recognized that she was in a bad way, took her pulse, and they drove to Sutter as well. We’re not releasing that information, by the way. It’s going to be secured for the Veep, and she is in no condition to start anything. When she’s well enough to be released, she’ll be taken to Los Angeles. We’ve got an MDC there to hold her until trial. We’re also asking any cameramen or photographers or citizens to give us film if they caught anything on camera. If we get a photo of her firing, it’ll seal her fate. She’ll go to prison and never come out.” This last sentence was spoken with relish by Kelley. A Secret Service agent leaned in and whispered to the President that Nellie had arrived. Connally stood and informed them that he’d go on television within a couple of hours, and he wanted Barnes to be given the facts that could be released. Barnes, in turn, was instructed to find Peter Hannaford, Reagan’s top speechwriter, and have him work on the address for Connally. Hannaford had a golden touch with words, and even in his emotional despair at this time, was best suited to help John Connally talk about his vice president.

The President stood up, walked with Nellie back to the Residence, and when nobody but his wife could see or hear him, he wept for nearly ten minutes.

*****

The public did not see that John Connally that night. Having purged the pain of the worst day of his life being dredged back up, he sternly stood at a podium in the press room and demonstrated firm leadership.

“My fellow Americans, I want to begin by updating you on the condition of Vice President Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy. The Vice President has just come out of surgery, where his spleen was removed, but he is expected to make a full recovery. Nancy Reagan is still in surgery at this time, and both myself and the First Lady are praying for her to also make a full recovery.

What happened today on the streets of Sacramento is unconscionable. For the last twelve years in America, we have witnessed far too many political disputes resolved with violence. There is nothing wrong with speaking your mind, taking to the street, and protesting without violence. You can make your voice heard without turning to pipe bombs or assassinations. I will be the first in line to always defend your rights, guaranteed by our Constitution, to petition your government. What I cannot, and will not, abide by is what Miss Lynette Fromme did today when her state denied her request, and that is to use violence to demonstrate her displeasure. For those who may not know, Ms. Fromme is a devotee of Charles Manson, the ringleader of the Hollywood murders in 1969. When the Vice President was still governor of California, Ms. Fromme petitioned to be allowed visitation with him, even though, as she well knew, was considered a security risk for her continued support of Mr. Manson and her association with his remaining followers. She was denied by the governor, and instead of reconsidering her approach, apparently decided to shoot him instead when the opportunity arose. We will continue our investigation, which will be thorough, and then we will endeavor to obtain swift justice for this heinous act. Ms. Fromme herself is in the hospital, having been trampled by the very crowd she terrified when she began shooting at the Reagans, so I pray that she also recovers so justice can be served.

I will restate what we should all know to be true: America is a nation of laws, not of man. It is a nation of ideals, not of raw power. It is a nation where we can start small and end up the president of the finest nation on this Earth. I am the son of a tenant farmer from Texas. Ronald Reagan is the son of a shoe salesman. We did not reach this office through elective ballot, but neither did we reach it through a coup. The point of a democracy is that we choose our leaders. Sometimes our leaders have to be replaced before a term Is completed, but the process in which we do that is laid down in the Constitution. What we should not do is to shoot our leaders. We have an awful habit in this country of crazed individuals taking advantage of our freedoms to injure our nation through attacking its leaders, and I am here to say to you “no more.”

I know what it is like to be shot. The day President Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, one of the bullets meant for him struck me and caused severe injuries. By the grace of God, I survived that tragic day, even though I did not believe I would when I was in that limousine before losing consciousness. As I recovered, I did not believe that the gun itself had anything to do with what had occurred. I did not believe changing any laws regarding firearms would have stopped anything. What has transpired in the twelve years since, though, has led me to reconsider that. The gun used to shoot our Vice President and the Second Lady was an illegally modified Soviet bloc pistol. I was shot with an Italian made rifle. Guns have been smuggled into this country and used for political violence, and they’ve been smuggled out of this country and used for political violence in places such as Northern Ireland. I intend to put before Congress a law that would require all foreign-made weapons to be registered with the United States government. That law would also create additional penalties for possession of an unlawful foreign-made firearm, and for any modifications to the weapon or ammunition. Today’s shooting of the Vice President and Mrs. Reagan used copper-jacketed bullets, the import of which has long been banned, but not the possession of them. That will change if Congress passes this legislation. I further intend to introduce another bill to address the sale of guns overseas. Until this point, we have focused specifically on the manufacture and sale of military weapons to overseas nations, but in light of today’s events and the sheer scale of the violence in Northern Ireland, where American-made weapons are fueling a rise in murders over politics and religion, we will now ask Congress to revise the statutes from 1961 to regulate the sales of rifles, pistols and shotguns to nations where political violence is occurring. I am tired of seeing good people like Jack and Bobby Kennedy, like Ronald and Nancy Reagan, or the innocent civilians in Belfast being murdered over political disagreements. We cannot stop crime by banning guns, but we can certainly exercise good judgement by limiting the availability of those that are being used in this most vile fashion.

I will close by asking everyone to pray for the Reagan family tonight. May God bless you all, and this great nation we are so fortunate to live in.”

PHOTOS:

reagan and alice.jpg

Alice Roosevelt Longworth and Vice President Ronald Reagan, 1974 Christmas party at the Naval Observatory. This was
taken right after her comment that in modern parlance is known as a "dick joke."



KGB HQ 1975.jpg

Outside the Lubyanka, headquarters of the KGB, snapped hurriedly by a U.S. embassy employee sometime in 1975.
 
Surprisingly well thought out knee jerk reaction. Banning the ownership of illegal foreign ammunition types should be doable both politically and constitutionally, requiring the registration of imported firearms ditto. Restricting the export of American made firearms might be slightly trickier, gun manufacturers aren't going to be keen on that but on the other hand the NRA aren't going to kick up a fuss as it doesn't directly effect their members.
 
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