alternatehistory.com
Part 22: Wilson Presidency
The Republican wave years of 1994 and 1996 landed both the White House and both chambers of Congress in Republican hands for the first time since 1955, and President Wilson intended to seize on what the party viewed as a mandate for change. The Tax Fairness Act slashed the top marginal tax rates down to nearly 40% while the Welfare Reform Act of 1997 overhauled the nation's unemployment safety net, giving states more control over the program while imposing a ten year lifetime cap (effective January 1, 1998) on the program's availability.
Welfare reform proved to be extremely popular with the conservatives within the party and Wilson, hoping to make a strong showing among the group to prevent another right-wing third-party run in 2000, acceded to demands to co-opt the immigration issue by having Speaker Cheney introduce the Crime and Immigration Control Act of 1997 (CICA). The act, pushed strongly by conservatives from the Sun Belt, was envisioned as an "all-in-one" law that would formalize strict law-and-order policing on a national level and hopefully prevent illegal immigration by making the legal environment for such perspective immigrants unpalatable. The result, however, was that the act shocked the Democrats and political establishment in its harshness and stripping discretionary power on several issues dealing with illegal immigrants using public resources away from states and municipalities (including public education, welfare, Medicare and even providing drivers' licenses or identification cards) and make them subject to the acts' provisions. The act also pushed for strict standards for mandatory sentencing and implementing such laws for almost every felony, again at the expense of states.
The backlash to these acts was immediate and fierce. Hispanic groups notably were outraged and Senate Democrats notably succeeded in forcing several extremely onerous provisions of CICA to be removed, but could not prevent the act from passing. The Supreme Court (where only one justice had been appointed by a Republican president) found even more portions of CICA unconstitutional, effectively nullifying the most egregious portions of it. But the battle lines had been drawn and Wilson, Cheney and Senate Majority Leader Alan Simpson were confident that their legislative program would prevent midterm losses.
While the Senate barely remained in Republican hands (owing to the lopsided amount of Democratic seats up for re-election that year), the plan backfired as minority communities, who they felt had been targeted almost exclusively by the Wilson program, came out in droves firmly on the Democratic side, flipping the House back to the Democrats. Undoubtedly, this was helped by both Cheney's unpopularity with voters as well as the resignations of several high-profile Republicans (notably House Whip Newt Gingrich of Georgia) as a result of scandal.
Somewhat chastened, Wilson nonetheless was able to work with the new Speaker, David Bonior of Michigan, to implement some of his policies, including tort reform and deficit reduction, the latter of which, while popular in the abstract, ended up being disliked by the party's business supporters as it rested on increases on corporate tax rates (while balanced out by decreases in several aid programs beloved by the Democratic base).
...The president had his hands full with foreign affairs upon taking over from his predecessor. Despite the Bern Accords ending the Cold War, many Americans were not quite ready to accept a defeated Soviet Union and the so-called Baltic Coup briefly rekindled fears of a renewed Cold War. As part of the Bern Accords, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had agreed to bind the communist state to several international agreements, several of which had declared the Soviet occupation and annexation of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania during and after the Second World War to be illegal. Under pressure from the Wilson administration, Gorbachev reluctantly agreed to give the three socialist republics each referendums on independence. Each of the three, which had become the most restless of the Soviet constituent republics since the 1980s, voted to leave the union and were established as independent states on January 1, 1999. However, the loss of three republics was too much to bear for hardliners in the Soviet leadership and they deposed Gorbachev soon after, with Alexander Rutskoy, a former Soviet general and anti-reform Minister of Defence, being named the new General Secretary. Fears that Rutskoy would abrogate Gorbachev's agreements proved unfounded as the new Soviet leader quickly realized the futility of trying to rewind the clock and instead settled for keeping as much of the status quo as he could in place...
In Asia, the United States under Wilson increased its popularity. Evenhanded American dispute resolutions of both the Taiwan Strait Crisis and the establishment of relations with the government of Vietnam for the first time since South Vietnam's fall in 1977. Africa was a different story. The end of the Cold War had resulted in a rash of regimes, now without the stability brought about by either American or Soviet aid and support, collapsing in the face of popular unrest brought about by these regimes' corruption, brutality and favoritism at the expense of other ethnic groups. The countries that did not either fall or succumb to internecine struggles were soon flooded by refugees and occasionally fighting from neighboring states would spill over. The hallmark of this era was the collapse of Zaire following the death of its kleptocratic strongman, Mobutu Sese Seko, from prostate cancer in 1997. Almost immediately following Mobutu's death, the state fell apart into fighting, with Mobutu's family in the backdrop absconding with most of the country's wealth that the former leader had stolen during his long reign. By 1999, the horrific reports out of Zaire and the neighboring states of Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda had stirred the United Nations to commission a peacekeeping force. The Wilson administration backed the creation of a force, believing that both the Soviet Union and America's allies in the UK, France and Germany would contribute a great deal of troops. This hope was quickly smashed, with only Great Britain, now freed of having to garrison Northern Ireland, contributed a substantial amount of soldiers to the project (France declined to send many soldiers, although not for lack of concern that Republican partisans said- its troops were already scattered across former French colonies in West Africa and in the Horn of Africa as part of other peacekeeping missions).
As a result, American soldiers made up a larger portion of the boots on the ground than the administration had anticipated, and despite private hopes of being able to persuade the PRC to provide troops in order to scale back US involvement, memories of successful involvement in Iran and the broad international and domestic support for military action resulted in the plan going ahead. As such, the United States took the lead when MINUSTAC (Mission des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation au Congo) forces moved in to Zaire in the fall of 1999...
Welfare reform proved to be extremely popular with the conservatives within the party and Wilson, hoping to make a strong showing among the group to prevent another right-wing third-party run in 2000, acceded to demands to co-opt the immigration issue by having Speaker Cheney introduce the Crime and Immigration Control Act of 1997 (CICA). The act, pushed strongly by conservatives from the Sun Belt, was envisioned as an "all-in-one" law that would formalize strict law-and-order policing on a national level and hopefully prevent illegal immigration by making the legal environment for such perspective immigrants unpalatable. The result, however, was that the act shocked the Democrats and political establishment in its harshness and stripping discretionary power on several issues dealing with illegal immigrants using public resources away from states and municipalities (including public education, welfare, Medicare and even providing drivers' licenses or identification cards) and make them subject to the acts' provisions. The act also pushed for strict standards for mandatory sentencing and implementing such laws for almost every felony, again at the expense of states.
The backlash to these acts was immediate and fierce. Hispanic groups notably were outraged and Senate Democrats notably succeeded in forcing several extremely onerous provisions of CICA to be removed, but could not prevent the act from passing. The Supreme Court (where only one justice had been appointed by a Republican president) found even more portions of CICA unconstitutional, effectively nullifying the most egregious portions of it. But the battle lines had been drawn and Wilson, Cheney and Senate Majority Leader Alan Simpson were confident that their legislative program would prevent midterm losses.
While the Senate barely remained in Republican hands (owing to the lopsided amount of Democratic seats up for re-election that year), the plan backfired as minority communities, who they felt had been targeted almost exclusively by the Wilson program, came out in droves firmly on the Democratic side, flipping the House back to the Democrats. Undoubtedly, this was helped by both Cheney's unpopularity with voters as well as the resignations of several high-profile Republicans (notably House Whip Newt Gingrich of Georgia) as a result of scandal.
Somewhat chastened, Wilson nonetheless was able to work with the new Speaker, David Bonior of Michigan, to implement some of his policies, including tort reform and deficit reduction, the latter of which, while popular in the abstract, ended up being disliked by the party's business supporters as it rested on increases on corporate tax rates (while balanced out by decreases in several aid programs beloved by the Democratic base).
...The president had his hands full with foreign affairs upon taking over from his predecessor. Despite the Bern Accords ending the Cold War, many Americans were not quite ready to accept a defeated Soviet Union and the so-called Baltic Coup briefly rekindled fears of a renewed Cold War. As part of the Bern Accords, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had agreed to bind the communist state to several international agreements, several of which had declared the Soviet occupation and annexation of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania during and after the Second World War to be illegal. Under pressure from the Wilson administration, Gorbachev reluctantly agreed to give the three socialist republics each referendums on independence. Each of the three, which had become the most restless of the Soviet constituent republics since the 1980s, voted to leave the union and were established as independent states on January 1, 1999. However, the loss of three republics was too much to bear for hardliners in the Soviet leadership and they deposed Gorbachev soon after, with Alexander Rutskoy, a former Soviet general and anti-reform Minister of Defence, being named the new General Secretary. Fears that Rutskoy would abrogate Gorbachev's agreements proved unfounded as the new Soviet leader quickly realized the futility of trying to rewind the clock and instead settled for keeping as much of the status quo as he could in place...
In Asia, the United States under Wilson increased its popularity. Evenhanded American dispute resolutions of both the Taiwan Strait Crisis and the establishment of relations with the government of Vietnam for the first time since South Vietnam's fall in 1977. Africa was a different story. The end of the Cold War had resulted in a rash of regimes, now without the stability brought about by either American or Soviet aid and support, collapsing in the face of popular unrest brought about by these regimes' corruption, brutality and favoritism at the expense of other ethnic groups. The countries that did not either fall or succumb to internecine struggles were soon flooded by refugees and occasionally fighting from neighboring states would spill over. The hallmark of this era was the collapse of Zaire following the death of its kleptocratic strongman, Mobutu Sese Seko, from prostate cancer in 1997. Almost immediately following Mobutu's death, the state fell apart into fighting, with Mobutu's family in the backdrop absconding with most of the country's wealth that the former leader had stolen during his long reign. By 1999, the horrific reports out of Zaire and the neighboring states of Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda had stirred the United Nations to commission a peacekeeping force. The Wilson administration backed the creation of a force, believing that both the Soviet Union and America's allies in the UK, France and Germany would contribute a great deal of troops. This hope was quickly smashed, with only Great Britain, now freed of having to garrison Northern Ireland, contributed a substantial amount of soldiers to the project (France declined to send many soldiers, although not for lack of concern that Republican partisans said- its troops were already scattered across former French colonies in West Africa and in the Horn of Africa as part of other peacekeeping missions).
As a result, American soldiers made up a larger portion of the boots on the ground than the administration had anticipated, and despite private hopes of being able to persuade the PRC to provide troops in order to scale back US involvement, memories of successful involvement in Iran and the broad international and domestic support for military action resulted in the plan going ahead. As such, the United States took the lead when MINUSTAC (Mission des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation au Congo) forces moved in to Zaire in the fall of 1999...
- lord caedus
- Word Count: 1.2k