Fear, Loathing and Gumbo on the Campaign Trail '72

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John Farson

Banned
So Syria has gone to hell in a handbasket.

It'll be interesting (in a morbid sense) to see what kind of effects the Syrian Civil War will have on Lebanon. OTL one factor that contributed to the Lebanese Civil War was the heightened Israeli-Syrian tensions and jockeying for influence and strategic advantage along Israel's eastern front, which included Lebanon. Here Syria has collapsed, so there won't be that driver. However, you still have all those Palestinians in Lebanon making a mess of the demographic arrangement from the 1930s and giving the Maronites sleepless nights. I imagine they'll be having even more sleepless nights what with the Muslim Brotherhood rampaging over the border, threatening to give Lebanon's Muslim population... ideas. Of course the PLO wouldn't be too happy about it either, since the PLO was (and is) a secular nationalist organisation. I doubt Arafat would want Bayanouni to give young Palestinians any wrong ideas.
 
So Syria has gone to hell in a handbasket.

It'll be interesting (in a morbid sense) to see what kind of effects the Syrian Civil War will have on Lebanon. OTL one factor that contributed to the Lebanese Civil War was the heightened Israeli-Syrian tensions and jockeying for influence and strategic advantage along Israel's eastern front, which included Lebanon. Here Syria has collapsed, so there won't be that driver. However, you still have all those Palestinians in Lebanon making a mess of the demographic arrangement from the 1930s and giving the Maronites sleepless nights. I imagine they'll be having even more sleepless nights what with the Muslim Brotherhood rampaging over the border, threatening to give Lebanon's Muslim population... ideas. Of course the PLO wouldn't be too happy about it either, since the PLO was (and is) a secular nationalist organisation. I doubt Arafat would want Bayanouni to give young Palestinians any wrong ideas.

The PLO, the PFLP, and the numerous other off-shoots, the Maronites and Druze of Lebanon, the Turks, King Hussein of Jordan, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf States, the Egyptians and the Iraqis will not be at all pleased about Bayanouni and his pan (Sunni)-Islamic Caliphate; in fact it will scare them all to varying degrees. The Israelis will come to see them as more than just 'Rif Bandits' too. The current extent of the Brotherhoods influence borders mostly desert to the East, but to the west they have access to the Bekka and the heart of Lebanon.

Brings to mind the old saying, my enemy's enemy is my friend, or at least an ally of the moment. This will have all sorts of interesting butterflies on Middle East history, provided the US and the Soviets don't blow it up first.:D
 
So might comrade Brezhnev "become ill" and "resign for health reasons" in the near future?:eek:

Possibly, or there could be a sudden outbreak of ill-health in the top ranks of the Politburo, to which Brezhnev is gloriously immune. Either way a showdown of some kind is coming as a result of these events.

Another possibility is that Brezhnev could be promoted to Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the ceremonial head of state and stripped of all his powers as General Secretary of the CPSU, this becoming a figurehead while Suslov or Andropov move into the GS’s role. This would be less visibly disruptive and would “reward” the leader for his faithful service (thus not undermining his personality cult and the network of supporters under it), while removing him from day-to-day policy making.


I have an idea for this TL which will involve an evolution of the Soviet Union, such that it still exists in 2010, albeit in a different form than in the 70's.


I also have in mind a long-term effect of Agnew's bungling which results in a prolonged North Korea-like period for the PRC, which slows its emergence into the world economy by at least one and possibly two decades.
 

John Farson

Banned
Possibly, or there could be a sudden outbreak of ill-health in the top ranks of the Politburo, to which Brezhnev is gloriously immune. Either way a showdown of some kind is coming as a result of these events.

Another possibility is that Brezhnev could be promoted to Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the ceremonial head of state and stripped of all his powers as General Secretary of the CPSU, this becoming a figurehead while Suslov or Andropov move into the GS’s role. This would be less visibly disruptive and would “reward” the leader for his faithful service (thus not undermining his personality cult and the network of supporters under it), while removing him from day-to-day policy making.


I have an idea for this TL which will involve an evolution of the Soviet Union, such that it still exists in 2010, albeit in a different form than in the 70's.


I also have in mind a long-term effect of Agnew's bungling which results in a prolonged North Korea-like period for the PRC, which slows its emergence into the world economy by at least one and possibly two decades.

A Maoist China in the 80s and 90s? This I gotta see.:)

So the Soviet Union will still be around in TTL 2010? I suppose it'll be a "kinder, gentler" USSR, though that's not saying much.

Actually, I'm thinking that such a USSR wouldn't be much different from contemporary Russia. How ironic would that be if that USSR had one Vladimir Putin as the General Secretary? Or maybe Medvedev as a puppet GS with Putin pulling the strings from behind?:p
 
A Maoist China in the 80s and 90s? This I gotta see.:)

So the Soviet Union will still be around in TTL 2010? I suppose it'll be a "kinder, gentler" USSR, though that's not saying much.

Actually, I'm thinking that such a USSR wouldn't be much different from contemporary Russia. How ironic would that be if that USSR had one Vladimir Putin as the General Secretary? Or maybe Medvedev as a puppet GS with Putin pulling the strings from behind?:p

As someone once said, the bad old evil empire never really went away, now its called the Russian Federation with Bad Vlad as the boss.

No, I'm thinking the bad old Russian Empire with a new lease on life, or at least a longer term mortgage.

As for Maoist China think Gang of Four have their way, and Deng Xiaoping he's still out in the labour camp.
 
You have covered it in part with the reports of National Guard combat refusals but I think you are over-estimating the capabilities of the US Army in 1973. In OTL while going through the transition from the draft to AVF and with the pull out from Vietnam the Stateside US Army was generally regarded as combat ineffective. The USEUCOM was better but had very serious drug, morale and discipline problems.
Now the units going into Vietnam as part of Bold Eagle have to be State-side units as USEUCOM was made up of Armoured and Mechanised units. Personally I'd think that the National Guard would be more combat effective than the Regulars at this point in time, at least in terms of morale and small unit discipline.
 

pnyckqx

Banned
You have covered it in part with the reports of National Guard combat refusals but I think you are over-estimating the capabilities of the US Army in 1973. In OTL while going through the transition from the draft to AVF and with the pull out from Vietnam the Stateside US Army was generally regarded as combat ineffective. The USEUCOM was better but had very serious drug, morale and discipline problems.
Now the units going into Vietnam as part of Bold Eagle have to be State-side units as USEUCOM was made up of Armoured and Mechanised units. Personally I'd think that the National Guard would be more combat effective than the Regulars at this point in time, at least in terms of morale and small unit discipline.
Stop loss and Inactive Ready Reserve recall. It operated during Vietnam too.

You may be right about some of the NG formations. I know that the NG of my home state --an Infantry Division-- is composed of mostly combat veterans. Some of them have multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Question is whether or not that'd have been the case during Vietnam.
 
L'Affair Agnew

Le Monde - Editorial, November 9, 1973

The morality of Horatio Alger?

"The first thing that strikes a traveler in the United States is the innumerable multitude of those who seek to emerge from their original condition; and the second is the rarity of lofty ambition to be observed in the midst of the universally ambitious stir of society. No Americans are devoid of a yearning desire to rise, but hardly any appear to entertain hopes of great magnitude or to pursue very lofty aims. All are constantly seeking to acquire property power, and reputation; few contemplate these things upon a great scale; and this is the more surprising as nothing is to be discerned in the manners or laws of America to limit desire or to prevent it from spreading its impulses in every direction. It seems difficult to attribute this singular state of things to the equality of social conditions, for as soon as that same equality was established in France, the flight of ambition became unbounded. Nevertheless, I think that we may find the principal cause of this fact in the social condition and democratic manners of the Americans."

So Alexis de Tocqueville once described in Democracy in America the nature of society in the American Republic of the 1840's, where the pursuit of material advancement through hard labour and personal enterprise became the fundamental civil virtue of the individual, even while liberty and freedom were lionized as the most fundamental of civic virtues of the State and community. Common in all three at de Tocqueville's time was that they were open to all white men, but denied to all others, and especially to the African slaves in the South and to their freed brethren in the North.

The condition of slavery has passed, and the freed blacks of America have struggled to claim their rights in the land of the free. Liberty and freedom have new definitions unknown in the 1840's. However, the pursuit of material advancement remains an unchanged, primal civic virtue bred into the heart of almost every school boy and school girl, regardless of race or origin. It even has a myth all its own called "Horatio Alger" after a literary character who rose from poverty to the top of the society by dint of hard work and the accumulation of wealth through personal enterprise.

In the recent controversies of Presidents Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon we see a strange playing out of this very quixotic civic virtue, and we see in the undoing of these two public men the curious price it extols.

First of President Agnew, the only President in American history to be removed from office before completion of his term by the quasi judicial process of impeachment. Spiro Agnew as born a man of modest means, who aspired to a higher station in life. This he achieved, progressing through a series of public offices before becoming Vice President of the United States. Along the way he became a voracious practioner of the black art of public office - graft. As Governor of Maryland State (and previously as a local Prefect) he conspired to fix public works contracts in return for payment by the Engineers and contractors involved. Although he enriched himself with some of this money, he also used it to enlarge his own network of political patronage. This would make him a good party leader and director in the obscure salons, or as Americans refer to this type of individual - "a good back room operator". It is unclear how much of a part it played in his rise from local obscurity to the second place in President Nixon's administration, but the fair bet is that it had some influence. Thus far, Agnew's Horatio Alger myth was on track.

By an unanticipated quirk of events, the American Presidential election system failed in 1972. It cannot be said to have been unforeseen, for it occurred in 1800, 1824 and 1876 as well, however the next ninety-six years dulled the appreciation of this, so that no contingency was present should the system fail altogether as it did last year (in a way that it hadn't before, even in 1800 and 1824; 1876 was solved by a political manoeuvre which was not regularized into law). As a consequence of this event, Nixon found himself deprived of re-election and Vice President Agnew came to be the President of the Republic.

There Horatio Alger might have been fulfilled for the modest son of a hardworking immigrant of Greek lineage (one must consider that Agnew was the first American President not of north European ancestry) had not the means of his aspiration returned to haunt him. But as in all morality plays, just when the hero reaches the exalted throne, the misdeeds of his rise come back as spectres to undo his crowning achievements. In Agnew's case his co-conspirators in Maryland talked to prosecutors to spare themselves long jail sentences, and when they talked the name Agnew came tumbling from their lips. Before long President Agnew was the center of a graft and corruption scandal, on the road to being undone by the very engines which lifted him up the rungs of political success.

A French President so caught out might resign, or could remain in office to the end of his term, as our law confers upon him judicial immunity while in office. In other nations, a Prime Minister in this position is compelled to resign (or forced out by his own party for their electoral good) and a new election may follow. Not so America, where Horatio Alger may be revered, but he is condemned if he strays across the fuzzy line of civic morality. There the offender must be made a public example of why the bad cannot prosper. This tendency to excessive zeal in public morality was observed by de Tocqueville, and remains firmly fixed in American society from the blue lists of Boston, the anti-liquor movement which tried to wring America dry of intoxicating spirits in the 1920's to the anti-Communist zealotry of McCarthy.

Agnew implemented a practical solution by exercising the powers of his office to pardon himself and his key co-conspirators, thus - it was assumed - ending the matter, as no further judicial action can be taken against him. It was a kind of judicial immunity though, unlike ours, it left him free of prosecution even after this term of office was completed. It was the Constitutional prerogative of his office to do this. But in so doing, he offended the civic virtue of the American political class even more.

The Congress, and the House of Representatives in particular, which is responsible for prosecution of the public misdeeds of office holders, was horrified into policing the morality of the system. While President Agnew exemplified the civic virtue of the poor man made better by hard work, it was the nature of his acts which offended, for in the land of the free all are self-righteous, and never more so when one offends the curious set of standards that says a man's net worth measures his value, but he must acquire that net worth by adhering to a curious moralistic code which demands purity of personal behaviour in an arena where success and purity are rarely in concord. So Agnew was tried and removed for - in the American vernacular - "being a crook". His pardon stood him in no good stead because, in the most curious twist of logic applied by the American Supreme Court, his pardon was an admission of guilt, and that stood as sufficient reason for ninety of one hundred Senators (the U.S. Senate being the Constitutionally designated High Court in this matter) to vote for the disruptive act of removing him from the Presidency, and this at a time of serious international tension in the Middle East.

Had Agnew been a murderer or guilty of some other despicable crime this could be understood. But apart from taking illegal money (an act which many of his own judges are no doubt equally as guilty, though their graft remains better hidden and as yet undetected), what did he do? He built roads and bridges. He favoured some contractors over others for this consideration, but he never licenses a faulty construction or a sub-standard job because of it, so far as has been discovered. So it may have been a petty personal vice, but where, one asks, is the greater harm? Was it worth damaging the reputation of the United States at so sensitive a time for this? Was his vice such that the Presidency of a global power had to be brought into complete disrepute? Did his personal vices so fundamentally affect Agnew's discharge of the Presidential duties in such an injurious way that his removal was an imminent requirement?

Some will argue that it was the best course because Agnew was patently incompetent in matters of economic and foreign policy, and as such a menace to the nation and the world. The policies of his Administration, judged from the perspective of the Vietnam War and the collapsing American economy, seem to bear out this judgement. He was no genius when it came to dealing with the Russians over the Middle East crisis either. If so, moralism and capricious venality have served a higher purpose, though one must be careful not to celebrate this accidental conflux of elements without a sober reflection on their wider meaning. Had Agnew been more competent, had he had the world policy knack of Nixon or the social vision of Lyndon Johnson, would we so quickly celebrate his removal by these means? Would we not instead ask how can a system be so quick to encourage the behaviour which lead to his downfall- indeed celebrate it in the quiet wink and nod - yet be so quick to destroy the nation's leader for it? This is to make a great monster of the trivial while the truly great monster lurks at the door. Fundamentally, is this not the sign of some disconnect, if not an outright denial, at the heart of the society? Horatio Alger must succeed, but he must be a St. Augustine to do it without condemnation. Where but in a perfect world is this possible, and where in our imperfect world is it to be even likely?

The next American President, and all who aspire to the post after him, must bear this lesson in mind, for they will all now be seen as little Agnews, their political lives forever under the moral microscope. Who will survive the challenge to rise above the crowd, yet be the purest of the crowd? Or do the Americans now create for themselves a society where only those of the highest station can expect to attain high office, not because they are more worthy, but because their high birth alone affords them the advantage of being above the obscure salon where meaner men of lesser station must compete in a dark and competitive arena to push their personal star higher? How would Washington, Jefferson and Franklin regard this? Or Hamilton, the lowest starter and hardest fighter for position of the lot? Is this truly Horatio Alger's America, or a new reality in which the American version of Alger's European Aristocratic cousin wins out over time and circumstance? How ironic if the Republic that so venerates the equality of opportunity for all its citizens became a society of the elite as a consequence of its own double-standards.

Nor can we dismiss this case as an aberration, as some on both sides of the Atlantic have been quick to do. Business-as-usual may return with President James Gavin's administration, but the prosecution of Richard Nixon stands in the wings. Here is another Horatio Alger who rose to the most celebrated office, who is brought down by his own deeds. Nixon's may be murkier and less easily comprehensible to the lay observer than Agnew's graft, but they were born of the same political milieu and the competition to succeed in the pitiless fight for office . Nixon is accused of political espionage and attempting to cover his tracks in the matter. He is not alone in using these tactics, but he is alone in being caught and, if what is said of his Executive Office tapes is to be believed, he is alone in confessing his involvement for history on series of indiscreet recordings. Yet like Agnew, Nixon is no murderer and his crimes do not rise above the petty in real circumstance. Yet, coming so soon after the removal of Agnew, his trial will both reinforce the message, and write it in stone as a standard and not an oddity.

In Europe the State is the embodiment of the people's aspirations for a place of justice and collective protection, and its head, be he or she monarch, president or prime minister, is the guarantor of its good order and vitality. Thus the head of state commands some level of majesty above the ordinary citizen, and this is why in France we have given a protection to our Presidents for their venial sins, at least while in office. This is why in many other countries, the political leader and the head of state have been parted into separate offices, so that the failings of the political need not reflect on the image of the state.

In America, Horatio Alger is the aspiration of the people, and the dream that any of their sons can become President the affirmation of the equality of opportunity of each (though we doubt that the father of a black man could say this to his son without a hint of the make believe). The system that promotes leaders demands much, and yet is quick to punish those who become enmeshed in the very means by which success is often demanded. It is a curious dichotomy that underlies the nation's civic morality, as both President Agnew and President Nixon have learned to their sorrow. Can this sustain a great power in a world where so much is of the shades of grey and not of black and white morality? If the example of Agnew is to become the model, how soon before this pernicious eye for the purity turns outward, and what will it mean for the rest of us? And what kind of future Presidents will it produce? This is the real peril the case of Spiro Agnew's fall brings us to.
 
Every President since Washington has taken the oath. Even if it isn't legally required, the symbolism would be important - perhaps even paramount - in a time of national uncertainty. Taking the oath confers legitimacy and the sense that all is well, it is a public affirmation that the Presidency goes on with the change of person holding it. John Tyler made it an American tradition (and set the precedent) when he took the oath after the death of William Henry Harrison at a time when it was not clear that the Vice President was supposed to be little more than an acting President at the time of a President's death. Here, Agnew is following tradition - and my guess, he, and those around him wouldn't think twice about the necessity from a public image point of view of having him do it. Note that it is a subdued ceremony inside the Capitol, and not a full inaguration.

US Code Title 3 section 19 d(3) implies, but does not mandate, that an acting President should take the oath. This section of the USC incorporates the 25th amendment and the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 into the US code. Article II section 1 of the Constitution specifies that the President take the oath before entering the office; the Tyler precedent seems built on this point. It seems safe to say that an acting President - entering into the office for more than a few hours of days while a living President recovers from surgery - would take the oath for symbolic reason, and to preclude any legal ambiguities.

This makes perfect sense, but I fail to see how somebody could take the oath to "faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States" and not become President. There would be no way back. I understand the symbolism of the oath and the necessity to demonstrate the continuity of power, but legally speaking, we would be on very shaky grounds.

Let's imagine a President going into coma a few days after his/her inauguration and not recovering. The POTUS would be alive, but obviously incapacitated, for the rest of the term (after all, former Israelian PM Ariel Sharon has been in a coma for the last 4 years). The VP would be Acting President, and there would be a need for symbolic gestures, but I am quite sure that there would be no swearing in ceremony. The 25th Amendment does not provide for a way to remove a President from office if he is permanently incapacitated (you cannot impeach him for having a stroke!). Maybe the Supreme Court could intervene and declare the President permanently incapacitated and a vacancy of the Presidency?

Another thing: any individual assuming temporarily the powers and duties of the Presidency would have taken the following oath as VP, or Congressman, or Senator, or Cabinet Secretary: "I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God"
Couldn't the Acting President re-take this oath in public, thus demonstrating the continuity of power?
 
johnjcakos said:
I fail to see how somebody could take the oath to "faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States" and not become President.

I suppose it depends upon how you parse the wording "faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States." Ordinarily the President takes this oath on Inauguration Day and it extends for the full four year term of office. The oath is discharged when the President leaves office, since he or she is no longer in a position to execute it. An acting President takes the office until the term expires or until a qualified candidate succeeds them, depending upon the issue. During their period of office, be it a day or four years, the acting President is executing the office of the President, albeit on a temporary basis. There is no inherent conflict in the oath in terms of its wording.

The reason for doing it, and not relying on the Federal Oath which is administered to the Vice President and the Cabinet officers is because the Constitution specifies the exact oath for a President, and it seems wise from a legalistic point of view to use it. OTL the situation has never arisen, but there is the example of Obama taking the oath the second time on Jan. 20, 2009 because the first time the word order was messed-up. This bit of legalism may seem over cautious, but it dots the i's and crosses the t's in the case of further challenge to the President or acting President's authority.

johnjcakos said:
Let's imagine a President going into coma a few days after his/her inauguration and not recovering. The POTUS would be alive, but obviously incapacitated, for the rest of the term (after all, former Israelian PM Ariel Sharon has been in a coma for the last 4 years). The VP would be Acting President, and there would be a need for symbolic gestures, but I am quite sure that there would be no swearing in ceremony. The 25th Amendment does not provide for a way to remove a President from office if he is permanently incapacitated (you cannot impeach him for having a stroke!).

This, or variations on the theme, happened several times before the 25th amendment was ratified in 1967. Abraham Lincoln had a prolonged absence from official duties in December 1863 which may have been attributable to a fever or mental depression, or a combination of the two. James Garfield was quite incapacitated from the time of his shooting in July 1881 until his death in September. The case of Woodrow Wilson's stroke is better known. Questions still surround FDR's state of health during his last year in office. Eisenhower was sicker than most people realized.

The 25th developed a mechanism for a President to voluntarily remove himself in the event of incapacity (Section 3) or for the Vice President and the majority of the Cabinet to do it if he was unwilling, or his/her incapacity was such that he couldn't (Section 4). Neither section makes a provision for involuntary permanent removal from office, and technically an illness is neither a high crime nor a misdemeanor, so impeachment doesn't really apply. I think the authors believed that a President who was so seriously ill such that he could not continue would voluntarily resign (though Wilson didn't when arguably he should have). In any case, the 25th provided a way to deal with the situation of an incapacitated President which hadn't been addressed in the original Constitution.

IOTL Section 3 has only been formally invoked twice when President GW Bush underwent surgery. At the time VPOTUS Dick Cheney became acting President, but he did not take the oath. But then, President Bush was expected to come out of anesthesia in a couple of hours in each case, so there was no long-term disability involved.

Section 3 was technically observed in March 1981, when Reagan was shot and in surgery, however there was no formal transfer of power made. VPOTUS GHW Bush simply undertook the necessary Presidential duties and no one really questioned it. (Reagan later signed any executive orders that GHW Bush had signed as acting President while Reagan was unconscious, and the number of these was kept to an absolute minimum).

In the cases I presented for this TL; Agnew was sworn in in a subdued ceremony in January 1973 because it was a time of uncertainty, there was no qualified President nor any indication that there would be one any time soon and the nation was exploring uncharted ground.

In November 1973 a President was removed - again uncharted ground - and there was only one successor, and there were two major international crises going on. As I noted, swearing Gavin in as a President may have stretched the law a little, but it met the needs of the moment since there was no potential for there to be a President-elect or Vice President-elect who would qualify for the post.

johnjcakos said:
Maybe the Supreme Court could intervene and declare the President permanently incapacitated and a vacancy of the Presidency?

They have no Constitutional or statutory power to do this. Except for a conviction in the Senate at the end of an impeachment trial, neither does the Congress. The Courts can rule on the legality of the application of election laws, and disputes arising from those laws, or varying interpretations of those laws, as happened IOTL 2000 (and 1876) or in 1972-73 TTL, but declaring a vacancy where there has not been a resignation, death or legal removal would be a serious challenge to the separation of powers.

Section 4 of the 25th Amendment does give the Congress the power to determine by law who can exercise this authority (i.e. declare a President incapable of exercising the office and declare a vacancy). The fact that Congress hasn't addressed this in the forty-three years since ratification (during which time a Vice President was forced to resign while the President was under active investigation (OTL 1973), a President was forced to resign under threat of impeachment (1974) and one was nearly killed (1981) - ample justification to review the issue) suggests just how difficult and divisive a thing this would be. Who could you trust with this authority?

One issue that does arise from this is that if Congress gives this authority to itself, then it could set a precedent that might over time introduce the parliamentary concept of a vote of confidence into American law via the back door.

The objection to the Supreme Court doing this is that the Court was never intended for this function and should appointed judges have the right to remove a sitting President? Currently only elected Senators can do that, based on the indictment by elected Representatives.
 

Thande

Donor
Interesting French perspective. The penultimate paragraph hits upon an important point I feel - I have often thought that the chief problem with the American political system is that the President is both the elected leader with the power and yet also the venerated head of state replacing a monarch. When they get one who turns out to be rotten, then, that shakes faith in the whole system. Perhaps the national veneration might be transferred to an institution, then (the US Constitution is the obvious one).
 
Interesting French perspective. The penultimate paragraph hits upon an important point I feel - I have often thought that the chief problem with the American political system is that the President is both the elected leader with the power and yet also the venerated head of state replacing a monarch. When they get one who turns out to be rotten, then, that shakes faith in the whole system. Perhaps the national veneration might be transferred to an institution, then (the US Constitution is the obvious one).

The fact is that the Presidency has become so identified with the American form of government, and the sense that anyone can become President so associated with the aspirational culture of America, that it could never be changed at this point - for better or worse. It was designed with Washington in mind and that has given it the "great man" principle ever since.

About the only change I could think of that could be folded into the present context of American politics is to make the Vice President the Head of Government, and make the President a ceremonial Head of State. But I doubt it would be accepted at this point.

The alternative is to choose a Prime Minister from the House or Senate (Prime Minister Pelosi or Reid? Or, not so long ago, Prime Minister Hastert or Prime Minister Lott?) but this would undermine the American concept of separation of powers which, if anything, is a scared standard of American government.

The Constitution is already a venerated document, but the document has to have life in the form of people who embody its functions. For better or worse, the Presidency has come to symbolize that. And that leaves it open to being brought into low regard by an incompetent or crooked President, just as it can be uplifted by an inspirational or highly competent one.
 

Thande

Donor
The fact is that the Presidency has become so identified with the American form of government, and the sense that anyone can become President so associated with the aspirational culture of America, that it could never be changed at this point - for better or worse. It was designed with Washington in mind and that has given it the "great man" principle ever since.

About the only change I could think of that could be folded into the present context of American politics is to make the Vice President the Head of Government, and make the President a ceremonial Head of State. But I doubt it would be accepted at this point.

The alternative is to choose a Prime Minister from the House or Senate (Prime Minister Pelosi or Reid? Or, not so long ago, Prime Minister Hastert or Prime Minister Lott?) but this would undermine the American concept of separation of powers which, if anything, is a scared standard of American government.

The Constitution is already a venerated document, but the document has to have life in the form of people who embody its functions. For better or worse, the Presidency has come to symbolize that. And that leaves it open to being brought into low regard by an incompetent or crooked President, just as it can be uplifted by an inspirational or highly competent one.
I don't mean literally change the system of government, I agree that's not happening - but I think public attitudes to it might change. Perhaps American politics might become more like French politics - similar system but voters are a lot more cynical about it.
 
I suppose it depends upon how you parse the wording "faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States." Ordinarily the President takes this oath on Inauguration Day and it extends for the full four year term of office. The oath is discharged when the President leaves office, since he or she is no longer in a position to execute it. An acting President takes the office until the term expires or until a qualified candidate succeeds them, depending upon the issue. During their period of office, be it a day or four years, the acting President is executing the office of the President, albeit on a temporary basis. There is no inherent conflict in the oath in terms of its wording.

The reason for doing it, and not relying on the Federal Oath which is administered to the Vice President and the Cabinet officers is because the Constitution specifies the exact oath for a President, and it seems wise from a legalistic point of view to use it. OTL the situation has never arisen, but there is the example of Obama taking the oath the second time on Jan. 20, 2009 because the first time the word order was messed-up. This bit of legalism may seem over cautious, but it dots the i's and crosses the t's in the case of further challenge to the President or acting President's authority.



This, or variations on the theme, happened several times before the 25th amendment was ratified in 1967. Abraham Lincoln had a prolonged absence from official duties in December 1863 which may have been attributable to a fever or mental depression, or a combination of the two. James Garfield was quite incapacitated from the time of his shooting in July 1881 until his death in September. The case of Woodrow Wilson's stroke is better known. Questions still surround FDR's state of health during his last year in office. Eisenhower was sicker than most people realized.

The 25th developed a mechanism for a President to voluntarily remove himself in the event of incapacity (Section 3) or for the Vice President and the majority of the Cabinet to do it if he was unwilling, or his/her incapacity was such that he couldn't (Section 4). Neither section makes a provision for involuntary permanent removal from office, and technically an illness is neither a high crime nor a misdemeanor, so impeachment doesn't really apply. I think the authors believed that a President who was so seriously ill such that he could not continue would voluntarily resign (though Wilson didn't when arguably he should have). In any case, the 25th provided a way to deal with the situation of an incapacitated President which hadn't been addressed in the original Constitution.

IOTL Section 3 has only been formally invoked twice when President GW Bush underwent surgery. At the time VPOTUS Dick Cheney became acting President, but he did not take the oath. But then, President Bush was expected to come out of anesthesia in a couple of hours in each case, so there was no long-term disability involved.

Section 3 was technically observed in March 1981, when Reagan was shot and in surgery, however there was no formal transfer of power made. VPOTUS GHW Bush simply undertook the necessary Presidential duties and no one really questioned it. (Reagan later signed any executive orders that GHW Bush had signed as acting President while Reagan was unconscious, and the number of these was kept to an absolute minimum).

In the cases I presented for this TL; Agnew was sworn in in a subdued ceremony in January 1973 because it was a time of uncertainty, there was no qualified President nor any indication that there would be one any time soon and the nation was exploring uncharted ground.

In November 1973 a President was removed - again uncharted ground - and there was only one successor, and there were two major international crises going on. As I noted, swearing Gavin in as a President may have stretched the law a little, but it met the needs of the moment since there was no potential for there to be a President-elect or Vice President-elect who would qualify for the post.



They have no Constitutional or statutory power to do this. Except for a conviction in the Senate at the end of an impeachment trial, neither does the Congress. The Courts can rule on the legality of the application of election laws, and disputes arising from those laws, or varying interpretations of those laws, as happened IOTL 2000 (and 1876) or in 1972-73 TTL, but declaring a vacancy where there has not been a resignation, death or legal removal would be a serious challenge to the separation of powers.

Section 4 of the 25th Amendment does give the Congress the power to determine by law who can exercise this authority (i.e. declare a President incapable of exercising the office and declare a vacancy). The fact that Congress hasn't addressed this in the forty-three years since ratification (during which time a Vice President was forced to resign while the President was under active investigation (OTL 1973), a President was forced to resign under threat of impeachment (1974) and one was nearly killed (1981) - ample justification to review the issue) suggests just how difficult and divisive a thing this would be. Who could you trust with this authority?

One issue that does arise from this is that if Congress gives this authority to itself, then it could set a precedent that might over time introduce the parliamentary concept of a vote of confidence into American law via the back door.

The objection to the Supreme Court doing this is that the Court was never intended for this function and should appointed judges have the right to remove a sitting President? Currently only elected Senators can do that, based on the indictment by elected Representatives.

Drew, I hope I'm not misusing this forum - it's about alternate History, not Constitutional science, after all, and your contribution is excellent!

The point you make about Obama's inauguration blunder is interesting, though. The fact that they thought it was necessary for Obama to re-take the oath with the proper wording seems to indicate that the oath "makes" the President; that there is a risk that one cannot really be President without taking the oath as written in the Constitution (this being said, "so help me God" is not in the Constitution, but I know that Washington added the words and that every President followed the tradition, except Herbert Hoover).

So if somebody is allowed to take the oath, then it stands to reason to consider that no other individual has or can possibly have a better claim to the office of President. If not, then the person can act as President, but is not the President.

Anyway, let's agree to disagree on this. Please carry on with this timeline, it's very good.
 
Nice update Drew, I like the kind of postgame psyco/social anaylsis of why the 36th and 37th Presidents of the United States provided for their own downfall and brought the prestige of the Executive Branch of government down with it.
 

MrP

Banned
I've spent yesterday and today reading this, and you can thus deduce I'm really enthralled. I am also usually wary of large amounts of text, but you write so compellingly that I've overcome this. Congratulations, and may there be much more to come!
 
Cleaning-up after the last guy

(from Yin Jao: In a Time of Trials Caused by Fools)

The Mongolian War with the Soviet Union lead to the postponement of the tenth Party Congress, which had been scheduled for August 1973 (according to the western imperialist calendar). Some think the Great Chairman engineered this in order to blunt the influence of the Revolutionist wing (called the “Gang of Four” by western propaganda; supposedly after a derogatory reference made about them by the Great Chairman himself) amidst the chaos that the ill-conceived War had brought to the nation and the Party. Others think that he panicked, or that the enfeeblements of his old age were beginning to affect the clarity of the Great Chairman’s mind (he celebrated his eightieth birthday at the end of that year). There is ample evidence to support both conclusions, though it is my observation that the Comrade Chairman stumbled over his own intrigues.

The collapse of the Nixon regime in the United States and its replacement with the arch reactionary Agnew, who set his friendship with the rebellious province – thereby negating all that had been done in the previous two years, placed Premier Chou Enlai, who was closely associated with the American policy, into fading importance against the rising voices that argued that his design of negotiating with the capitalists was a doomed. No sooner had the new American leader embraced the rebel province, than he reintroduced his troops into Vietnam, again threatening our Southern security. This at a time when our spearhead into Mongolia faltered, placing our nation in peril from both superpowers at once. Fortunately for us, the United States and the Soviet Union were also adversaries, and so did not formulate a common plan against China which might have seriously damaged our Revolution.

By the end of 1973, Comrade Chou Enlai stood in complete disgrace, as the one to bear the public blame for this outcome. The Great Chairman had used the occasion of the War to purge the Party of the revisionists who sought an opening of China to greater outside influence and economic activity. As many of these had also opposed a pointless – and potentially dangerous – war with the Soviet Union, they were labelled defeatists. When the war proved a complete failure, many of the Generals who had planned it and their staffs were purged for incompetence. With them went others of the political commissars who were convenient to blame for this catastrophe. As the matter had been first conceived to persuade and reinforce with both the deviationist Soviet leadership and the reactionary Agnew regime in the United States that China was a power of the first rate, so the entire policy of engagement with the American regime was seen as at the root of what became known as “Chou’s deadly advice.”

Clearly – the argument went – Nixon had seduced Chou with his great state visit and talk of common interests, while Agnew had shown the true face of American imperial capitalism by turning his back on Revolutionary China, an act to be expected from a reactionary. If someone expected that the Americans would intervene in a Chinese-Soviet war, and recognize China as a great power and compel the Soviets to do the same, they had been mistaken. Nixon had either been a fool or a deceiver, and Chou had been a dupe or worse, a potential counter-revolutionary. The Europeans had come to solve the war, and even assisted us with the unrighteous, piratical reparation demands of the Soviet Union, but the Europeans were not the United States, and they had little power to affect the situation in Vietnam. Theirs was an act to attempt to regain imperial advantage over China, which the Party would never allow (though the Party could take their money and use them to extricate itself from the Mongolian fiasco).

It is unlikely that Premier Chou Enlai would have encouraged the war policy – I recall him being referred to as a leader of the defeatists early in 1973 (although the Great Chairman tried to protect him then) – but he soon became the figurehead of the “foreign intrigues” which – it was said – threatened to undermine the Chinese revolution.

When the tenth Party Congress was finally held in December 1973, the winds blew against Comrade Chou and his policies. The Revolutionists (Gang of Four, though it quickly became worth one’s life to speak this term aloud), lead by the Comrade Chairman’s wife Jiang Qing, and three of her close associates, Comrades Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen gained control of the Party Congress and used it to denounce the Comrade Premier, who was retired from all his government and Party posts, due to his “historical error” and “Revolutionary insufficiency.” Only his increasingly ill-health spared Comrade Chou a public trail for his “crimes against the people and the great Chinese Revolution.” Many of his close associates were convicted of just these crimes and sent to the labor camps for “re-education” and “revolutionary purification.”

At the same time Jiang Qing and the Chairman’s nephew, Comrade Mao Yuanxin (the “Lesser Mao”) gained control of the Party’s day-to-day function, as the Great Chairman himself was eased into a semi-retirement as “elder leader” and “inspiration”. After the multiple purges of 1973, and the failure of the American and Mongolian policy, the Chairman had a nation of admirers who still adored him, but few political allies to support him.

Once the new leadership had established itself through the forum of the Tenth Congress, they announced the “Revolutionary Purification Campaign,” which was the name given to a program of purging the Party ranks of all remaining Chou Enlai policy supporters. At the same time they sought to use the “Purification” to re-establish the people’s pride in the nation, and in the Revolution. This was of keen importance, because there had been a number of uprisings and protests during the Mongolian War. During the “Purification” many leaders of these protests were rounded-up and denounced as “Chou-ist” enemies of the Revolution, while the people themselves were set to work “cleansing” and “re-building” the Revolutionary society.

Since “Chou-ist” intrigues with outside powers had threatened China’s security, the new leadership determined that China should remove the outside world from its territory and, as much as was possible, itself from the outside world. All foreign Embassies and legations were summarily expelled, and all Chinese diplomats overseas were recalled. Even the seat at the United Nations, so recently won through the international work of Premier Chou, was abandoned as the poisonous fruit of his corrupted garden. China under the “Purification” was to close itself off from the dark intrigues of the world, and instead concentrated on the three strengths: the inherent strength of the people as a nation, the strength to be found in the pure zeal of the Revolution, and the strength of our self-sustaining production of food and industrial production. The Armed Forces were to be built-up to keep outsiders from ever again entering our territory. Contact with outsiders was to be shunned as “Chou-ist” contamination. Any citizen or official found to have unauthorized contact was to be sentenced to death, the penalty to be administered by a slow evisceration with a sword. In some cases “authorized contact” became “de-authorized” after the fact, with the official in question facing a grizzly end.

There is little wonder that some of our diplomats posted overseas chose not to return after this decree was made. Comrade Huang Hua, the last of the “Chou-ists” to survive in power had been, until he was recalled in December 1973, our ambassador to the United Nations. There he had given several pro-U.S. votes in the Security Council during their reactionary struggle with the deviationist Soviets over unimportant Arab matters. At first this was missed in Peking, where no one thought much of the far away sand. But when it was drawn to the attention of the new leadership, Comrade Huang was in great trouble. This motivated him to remain in the United States after his recall, and to seek asylum there – a move which the reactionary propaganda regime with its hostility to the People’s Revolution triumphed as a victory of its materialistic false values over the Revolution. Huang was declared a traitor and sentenced to death, and many of his family were cut apart by the sword as a result. Huang only hardened in exile, become a self –declared defender of Chou-ism and the leader of a revisionist Chou-ist opposition in exile.

Comrade Mao Yuanxin devised another policy of the “Purification” which was to prove most controversial for years afterward. He determined that the poppy could prove to be a valuable export crop, where Burmese, Laotian, Thai and Hong Kong and Singapore Chinese could act as our export agents, thus minimizing direct exposure to either foreign buyers or the foreign corruption of the narcotics trade. Mao set selected cadres of peasants to growing huge harvests of poppies, which he would then sell to the intermediaries for conversion to opiate drugs, especially heroin. China thus reaped an enormous bounty in terms of foreign currency and gold, which could then be used to purchase outside products (again through intermediaries) and bring these goods back to China through other intermediary buyers. The proceeds of “the Red Flower” initiative also gave Comrade Mao Yuanxin a tremendous reserve of personal wealth with which he purchased the loyalty of many party cadres. The grace of power and wealth was said to flow from the patronage of the “Lesser Mao” and his poppies. This policy then was the origin of his other nickname “White Powder Mao”, though to speak either nickname, and especially the second, to his face was certain death.


(from James M. Gavin A Call to Duty: A Memoir)

When I came to office we faced four immediate problems: the Middle East Crisis, the renewed Vietnam War (and the political crisis caused by President Thieu’s murder), the abysmal state of our national economy and the search for a suitable candidate to fill the Vice Presidency.

The Middle East


Henry Kissinger’s report was not encouraging. He had single-handedly negotiated a cease-fire settlement with the Soviets, then watched it unravel when the Russians pressed to introduce their troops into Syria and along the Suez cease-fire line. We were not going to allow that, recognising it for what it was, a Soviet power play to retain their crumbling foothold in the region. Egypt’s Sadat had kicked their advisors out: he didn’t want them back in the Suez (which was communicated to us via intermediaries from other Arab governments); Syria was a basket case, and even Iraq was sniffing us up for some kind of military support. The Soviet hand with their allies was very weak, and I saw no need to save it for them.

I called the DEFCON-3 alert to make clear to the Soviets that we were serious about limiting their role in the Middle East, which to our analysis had been destructive to the stability of the region. That much of our policy was not an aberration of my predecessor but the policy of the United States - period.

After Dr. Kissinger had briefed me (and gotten several night’s sleep) we, together with Secretary of State Bush and my National Security Advisor General Brent Scowcroft, met in the Oval Office with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and Soviet Ambassdor Anatoli Dobrynin on November 14th. Our talks were frank and contentious, but we did manage to push the Soviets back to the original agreement that Dr. Kissinger had worked out with them in Moscow. It seemed we had called the Soviet bluff, although in light of what came next we may also have dug Brezhnev’s political grave. Still that wasn’t my immediate concern.

Ultimately, Gromyko and I signed a joint communiqué on the 16th which in essence recognized the Suez cease-fire as being along the lines in place at the end of the fighting on November 11th (an awkwardly historic date for such an agreement) and which committed to allowing UN troops, and not either American or Soviet troops, to police it; although both countries were to be allowed observers under UN “Blue Helmet” auspices in the region.

The question of Syria proved more vexatious, though the Soviets did agree to keep their combat troops out of that crumbling nation in return for an assurance from us that we would seek a “timely” Israeli withdrawal from the South of Syria along the lines of the “Faisal Proposal” and that Jordan, once it occupied the area around Damascus, would allow the Syrian National (Aleppo) government to return to Damascus and re-establish governance from the traditional capital of the country. It would be a face saving measure for the Soviets, who could say they stuck by their guns for a beleaguered Arab ally and had extracted from us the means for an Arab solution to the question of Israel’s occupation of Southern Syria. For our side it kept the Soviet combat troops out of Syria, where their presence would provoke the Turks, another of the things we sought to avoid. Above all we did not want Turkey using Syria’s disintegration as an excuse to invade that country, and so inflame old tensions in the region on top of the current problems.

To ensure that the “Faisal Proposal” would indeed come to fruition I sent Bush and Kissinger to lean on Israeli Ambassador Simcha Dinitz to ensure that we had Tel Aviv’s quick agreement – and their commitment to carry it out. We also told them to stop their “adjustments” along the Suez line, and to withdraw to the cease-fire lines of November 11th. I reinforced these points in a two-hour phone conversation with Prime Minister Meir and Defence Minister Dayan. Neither was overly enthusiastic about either measure, but they conceded to me that it would afford everyone breathing room and so set about implementing our side of the agreement. The Jordanians were acceptable to them along their northern border (as long as they retained the Golan Heights) as long as we had influence with King Hussein’s government in Amman. They were certainly preferable to the Iraqis, or the Muslim Brotherhood forces moving into the area.

The question of Bayanouni’s Muslim Brotherhood and what to do about them was going to be a more intractable problem, and for now the best we could think of was a policy of containment until – we hoped – the Syrian government could gain the upper hand. This would not be easy, as their military was in very poor shape. We were already hearing disturbing reports that the Brotherhood was spreading into Lebanon, where Bayanouni’s followers were not only inciting Lebanese Muslims, but where they were also finding ready converts in the Palestinian refugee camps. This too was apparently happening in Jordan, and there were indications of pro-Brotherhood activity in Iraq. At one point I made the remark that we might be facing a new Crusade in the Middle East to put down Bayanouni as the new Saladin. I meant it as a joke, but the remark was greeted by a lot of uneasy expressions, as I had hit a nerve in our foreign policy establishment.

Right-off I decided that I had to meet with President Sadat. I had evaluated Dr. Kissinger’s analysis of his motives, specific a long treatise that boiled down to the fact that Sadat had started the October War not with the intention of destroying Israel (he knew he couldn’t achieve that) but of giving the Arabs a victory, or at least an honorable near victory, that would wipe away the humiliations of 1948, 1956 and 1967. That way the Arabs could appear to negotiate from strength, and in so doing they might be able to change the game in the Middle East, at least where the intractability of the Arab-Israeli relationship was concerned. Arab governments could never negotiate from a position of defeat, Dr. Kissinger’s analysis argued, as that would only bring about the downfall of the leaders who tried. President Sadat had sought to create a position of relative strength for himself, so he could move beyond the traditional roadblocks and start a new era in the region.

I wasn’t sure Dr. Kissinger had it dead-on, but I thought I should sit down with Sadat and see if there wasn’t something to be made of a relationship with this man. We agreed that Secretary Bush and Dr. Kissinger would go to Cairo as soon as possible, to do a preliminary evaluation of President Sadat in face-to-face talks, and – if Dr. Kissinger’s evaluation of him held true – from there see if we could arrange a Presidential meeting in a neutral country. To do this we decided to employ the good offices of King Hassan II of Morocco, who had good relations with both the Egyptians and us. Word soon came back that the Egyptian side was very receptive, and a formal invitation for Secretary Bush and Dr. Kissinger to visit President Sadat in Cairo at their earliest convenience came to us through the Moroccans. We accepted at once.

We also asked our ally King Hussein of Jordan to use his influence with President Al-Bakr of Iraq to see if we could send a special envoy to Baghdad, to determine if there was anything to build on from Dr. Kissinger’s meeting with their Vice President in Paris (Kissinger described that man as untrustworthy). I was particularly concerned that we keep the Iraqis, who still had a military presence in Southern Syria and who shared a long border with that country, from interfering in any way with the implementation of the “Faisal proposal”.

Vietnam


Once we calmed matters in the Middle East, I had to turn my focus to Vietnam. The third Battle of Dong Hoi from November 11 – 18th proved that our troops were in a vulnerable position, and that the objectives of the original Bold Eagle plan had been highly optimistic. In fact, on studying it closely, I recognized some of the same magical thinking which had gone into General Bernard Montgomery’s plans for Operation Market Garden, which I had taken part in during the Second World War. The Bold Eagle planners anticipated an overwhelming victory for our side, and so based all their subsequent planning on that expectation. The last five months had not borne that out.

The North Vietnamese came at Dong Hoi from two sides, after first launching a series of diversionary strikes into South Vietnam from Cambodia and Laos. By the time the assault on Dong Hoi began in earnest, our attention was focused around the country. With an army of well over 60,000, the enemy basically staged what could almost be called a World War I style trench assault against our defensive lines in Dong Hoi. We had approximately 40,000 troops of our own there, supported by 50,000 South Vietnamese troops (whose quality had rapidly deteriorated as their morale collapsed after the October coup in Saigon). The enemy was more than ready to take heavy casualties to regain this piece of their territory, and what followed was a week long battle that cost them well over 30,000 casualties, as compared to 15,000 casualties on our side. The United States was not dislodged from Dong Hoi, but it was clear that we couldn’t continue like this either.

The previous administration had expected to use Dong Hoi as a launching point for an invasion of North Vietnam once the rainy season ended in November. I believe they expected to march into Hanoi and topple the Communist government, much as had been done in Germany and Italy during the Second World War. Leaving aside the fact that such a move would undoubtedly provoke the Soviets and (more significantly from a regional manpower standpoint) the Chinese, it also augured for a long and bloody campaign since we could expect heavy resistance from the civilian population as well as the military in the North. The casualties the enemy had sustained over the past five months showed that, if anything, they were more than ready to throw every man, woman and child living in North Vietnam at us as needs be. Our officers reported that many of the enemy corpses they recovered at Dong Hoi after the battle were of adolescents, some as young as twelve. That proved both the cold bloodedness and the determination of our enemy. After the third Dong Hoi battle, the prospects for an invasion of the North dimmed, unless we substantially upped the ante.

The third Battle of Dong Hoi also awakened me to other shortcomings in our Bold Eagle plan which any competent officer should have recognized. The previous administration had expected to take the fight to the North while economising on the troops deployed, they sent a division to do the work of an army, and tried to masquerade it by giving command to a highly competent, tough talking general with some unorthodox ideas about the application of force. Well, even Michelangelo needed a steady supply of paints and assistants to paint the Sistine Chapel. It wasn’t that Lt. General Henry “Gunfighter” Emerson had done a bad job – to the contrary he was an excellent commander; he was just being starved of the tools he needed to get the job done, especially when he had to re-secure large parts of the South and deal with a government of gangsters in Saigon.

The National Guard troops that had been sent were excellent at their work; they were highly trained infantry units, but they did have a morale problem from the outset. They shared a popular view that my predecessor had committed them to war which had already ended, and that they were being used as cannon fodder. The experiences of the 37th Infantry (Indiana National Guard) received wide attention and tended to reinforce that image, perhaps too much so in the popular mind. Over one-hundred Iowa Guardsmen were killed in an act of terror (their aircraft was shot from the sky as they were on approach for landing at Saigon airport a few hours before I became President) which was eventually traced back not to our enemy, but to our nominal allies in the South Vietnamese Army. Our troops had been killed in what was to be the first act of a plot to extort money from the world’s airlines (and the United States government) who flew in and out of Tan Son Nhat airport in Saigon. Such a situation, and the underlying chaos that allowed it to occur, was absolutely unacceptable.

One of my first executive orders was to endorse what the MACV command had done to ease the apparent mutiny in the 37th. I agreed with the assessment of a Colonel Schwartzkopf, who had been General Emerson’s ADJ until he was wounded by a sniper, that to go after the individual members of the 37th, after what they had been through (and, Cap Weinberger and John Volpe added, with the overall support they had in their home state) would only inflame the situation. A Sergeant Quayle from the unit had been sent back to the States to be made an example of, largely because he had appeared on ABC television at the height of the so-called mutiny. I decided to talk to this Sergeant myself, and asked a sceptical Cap Weinberger to arrange it for me.

I was faced with two fundamental problems, both of which I decided to address head-on and which I informed the nation of in my first Oval Office address on November 17th. After laying out our solution to the immediate challenge in the Middle East, I made the following remarks about our situation in Vietnam:

“Now I must turn to the question of our involvement on the other side of the globe, in Vietnam. There our troops are fighting valiantly against the enemy, and there the United States, and the United States alone, must bear the direct responsibility for finding a solution.

“To that end I am ordering an increase of our troop levels, though only for the short term. I know this will not be popular. Long before I became your President, I wrote a book called Crisis Now, where I argued the opposite course – that our government seek a solution which would remove our troops as quickly as possible and turn the war over to the South Vietnamese government which would press the fight for their homeland with our support. President Richard Nixon did just that in a policy initiative I endorsed at the time, and which I still consider to have been very skilful. Had his policy not been reversed, we would not now face the situation we are in.

“At the moment we need additional troops in South Vietnam to shore-up our position, and to aid in rebuilding the South Vietnamese forces. These added forces, indeed all our troops, will be there only so long as they are needed, as we intend to resume the Paris peace talks with the enemy at the earliest possible date. Our goal is to end the war with an honorable truce which will preserve the freedom of South Vietnam, and ensure that the sacrifice of our fighting men in Southeast Asia has not been in vain. The aim of the United States is a peaceful Vietnam for the Vietnamese people. Our policy is not to destroy North Vietnam, or overrun it in a war of conquest, but to bring that nation to the bargaining table and fashion with its leaders a durable cease-fire that will improve the quality of life for all the Vietnamese people. It is my hope that if North Vietnam responds in kind to our initiative, that the last American combat soldier will leave Vietnam before my term of office ends at the end of 1976.

“I know you have heard promises of that kind before from this office, and I understand your disappointment. At the start of 1973 we had nearly achieved that honorable settlement which so long eluded us, only to see it slip through our fingers. Well, we aren’t going to let that be the end of it. As President I will support our troops in the field, even as I work to bring them home.

“As for the political condition of South Vietnam; I have found it necessary to impose an American Military Government of the kind last seen during World War II on that nation, but only as a short term, interim step. The provisional military government will not seek to rule South Vietnam for long, or as a permanent arrangement. To the people of South Vietnam I say, this is not a return to colonial rule that so many of you may fear.

“However, the leadership of the present government of the Republic of Vietnam came to power through murder and criminal behavior. The current so-called leaders achieved their status by murdering – in cold blood – President Thieu, the elected leader of South Vietnam. These criminals do not deserve to be called a government, and the United States cannot stand by and allow them to prosper from their crimes. Therefore, I have ordered the United States military now present in South Vietnam to arrest these individuals, to detain them, and to turn them over to duly constituted South Vietnamese judicial and police authorities at the earliest practical time to do so. It is my intent to see these men prosecuted by the courts of their country for what they have done.

“The purpose of our temporary military government will be to oversee a regularization of government authority in South Vietnam, and to supervise the election of a new civilian leadership of that nation. Once a new President has been elected by the people of South Vietnam, the mission of the temporary military government will be at an end, and the new President will then direct the policies of his nation.”

This was the best solution we had for the situation. For us to withdraw our forces and simply leave would be to invite a total collapse of South Vietnam. The last nine months had totally undermined all of the work that had gone in to strengthening South Vietnam since 1969. It was as if President Nixon’s tenure had never been, and I was at the same place that he found himself when he took office in January 1969.

The previous administration, by reintroducing American combat troops, had undercut President Thieu and his regime in the eyes of his people. It was as if my predecessor had said he no longer trusted Thieu by repudiating all of what President Nixon had tried to achieve in partnership with the late South Vietnamese President. It was an unmitigated disaster, and the criminals who replaced Thieu – by murdering him – had taken full advantage of that fact. As long as I remained President I was not going to allow them to profit from our mistakes or their brutal criminality. To do otherwise – to in any way reward this criminal group for their actions – could only lead to a further collapse of South Vietnam and either an endless war, or a capitulation to the Communists.

I did not welcome escalation, nor did I intend to follow the disastrous path which President Lyndon Johnson had set his administration on. It was my full intention to re-invent Nixon’s wheel if need be, and hopefully this time see it through to completion. However, first I needed a credible partner in Saigon to do it with, and these thugs would never do, not after what they had done. I would never say it was the best solution, but it was the only one which presented itself with any ray of hope associated with it.

Economy


Our national economy was in shambles. I retained George Shultz as Treasury Secretary, and appointed Walter Wriston of Citicorp as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, and brought in Under Treasury Secretary Paul Volker to run the Office of Management and Budget. I tasked these three men to develop an overall forecast of where our economy was going and, if the news was bad – which we all knew from the outset it would be – to develop a plan for addressing it.

What came back was a very gloomy forecast. The economy had already entered a recession, which was being seriously aggravated by the steep rise in oil prices due to the Arab producer’s embargo of the United States. Wriston declared with gravity that we were going to enter a depression in 1974; there was no way around it at this point. Secretary Schultz and Volker had a political aversion to even hinting at the term “depression,” but neither went to any pains to contravene the Wriston’s central point. We were faced with the worst economic downturn since the 1930’s.

To combat it Volker and Wriston prescribed some economic shock therapy. We were going to have to keep interest rates high both to squeeze out inflation and to draw back some of the capital which had been seeping out to Europe. That meant more months of unemployment and other misery in the country, a solution I found a little hard to take. Only when we squeezed out inflation, Volker and Wriston argued, could be expect to see any return to economic growth.

Their prescription came with an exotic assortment of tax cuts, spending freezes and (just to prove how contradictory a science economics is) a series of targeted stimulus spending. And, we would have to sell all this to Congress in an election year. Cap Weinberger blanched in the face of that, but somehow we were going to have to arrive at a compromise plan with the Congressional leadership which they could sell to their membership, and we didn’t have the luxury of waiting until after the 1974 elections to get started.

The Vice Presidency


From the outset I wanted a political leader in this position who had demonstrated executive experience and who had not been involved with the impeachment or removal of my predecessor: that way there could be no question ever being raised of a possible quid-pro-quo for a removal vote, which was bound to occur, especially if I chose a sitting Senator who had voted to remove my predecessor. That was why my focus turned early to a short list of Governors.

Two leading contenders on my short list were William Scranton, Republican of Pennsylvania and Carl Sanders, Democrat of Georgia. Both men were former Governors, and neither had displayed any signs of Presidential ambitions within their own parties. That, together with their legacies for competent administration, made them attractive choices for me to nominate as the next Vice President.

I wanted a competent political manager in the job because I was hoping to make of the Vice Presidency a more active position, one in which the Vice President could zero in on areas such as the economy and regulatory reform and exercise real executive power in getting things done without having to come back to me for approvals. To that end he had to have the experience of running a government together with a record of sound judgment, and a little innovation. I also did not want someone in the Vice Presidency who would use the position to begin his own Presidential campaign for 1976. I needed a Vice President who was going to focus on the job at hand full-time, recognizing that his term would end with mine, but that he could make a real, effective contribution during his time in that job. That required a certain mix of maturity with a lack of political ambition, or at least a willingness to see what ambition he had as being fulfilled through the Vice Presidential role I was offering. Finally, but certainly not least, I had to choose a man capable of stepping into the Presidency should anything happen to me, who was capable and wouldn’t make a hash of it. The importance of this had just recently been reinforced in everyone’s mind, so I expected it to be top-of-mind with the Congress when they evaluated any nominee I sent their way.

Word filtered back through Clark Clifford that both Scranton and Sanders were interested in the job as I had laid it out, so now I had meet with them and sound out the Congressional leadership on their suitability for confirmation. I had also had Clark speak to Nelson Rockefeller, a serving Governor who I knew still entertained Presidential ambitions, and he too had signalled that he might be interested. But I put his name aside for the moment, as we focused in on how a Sanders or Scranton nomination would be received by the Congress.
 

pnyckqx

Banned
The fact is that the Presidency has become so identified with the American form of government, and the sense that anyone can become President so associated with the aspirational culture of America, that it could never be changed at this point - for better or worse. It was designed with Washington in mind and that has given it the "great man" principle ever since.

About the only change I could think of that could be folded into the present context of American politics is to make the Vice President the Head of Government, and make the President a ceremonial Head of State. But I doubt it would be accepted at this point.

The alternative is to choose a Prime Minister from the House or Senate (Prime Minister Pelosi or Reid? Or, not so long ago, Prime Minister Hastert or Prime Minister Lott?) but this would undermine the American concept of separation of powers which, if anything, is a scared standard of American government.

The Constitution is already a venerated document, but the document has to have life in the form of people who embody its functions. For better or worse, the Presidency has come to symbolize that. And that leaves it open to being brought into low regard by an incompetent or crooked President, just as it can be uplifted by an inspirational or highly competent one.
Speaking of which, how far do you intend to take this time line?

I only ask because your last update appeared as some sort of epilogue.

If you've finished, excellent piece. If not, I look forward to further updates.

BTW, know it or not, you stole some characters from a small time line that I'm in the process of writing. Unfortunately, I have to make some decisions and do some research for part II which is being written at the moment. It's slowing me down a lot.

FYI, with graphics, the story took 260 pages in Open Office with images included. Keep in mind though that this old man has to use larger print these days.

It is something that you may consider selling as a short story and have appear in the next collection of alternate history short stories.
 
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