A Butler Presidency

Let me be the first to say: The Butler did it!! :D

i meant how would he react to Nazi Germany and imperial japan? would his distrust of corporations give the axis free reign to pillage Eurasia?

and what would america look like domestically?
 
How does he become President, and during what period? Is this about the Business plot actually working?

I'm not sure how you get Butler into the White House. He isn't really politically active until 1932, when he runs for Senate. I suppose its possible he could turn that into a Presidential race, but how does he overcome Roosevelt and Smith?

I'm just not seeing a good pod for this.
 
say for whaterve rreasons he wins in 1932.

Would the axis be emboldened by a pacifist in the white house, thinking that his fear of corporations will give them carte blanche?
 
I have a rough idea of how this might happen.

The POD rests in 1932, with Butler winning election to the Senate over incumbent James Davies. When Butler comes to the Senate, he becomes a supporter of the New Deal, but grows increasingly skeptical of the affair as he becomes closer to a certain Senator named Huey P. Long. Long and Butler become political allies, with Butler becoming a public supporter of Long's 'Share Our Wealth' platform.

Long convinces Butler to field himself for the Presidency in 1936 in lieu of planning his own bid for the White House in 1940, and Butler does so. Long, as per OTL, is still assassinated in 1935, but Butler stays the course, accepting the nomination of the 'Union Party' in 1936, choosing little known labor lawyer Thomas O'Brien as his running mate [1]. On the campaign trail, Butler attacks Roosevelt and Landon as puppets of financial interests, and bleeds enough out of the liberal and radical vote to deny Roosevelt the White House in a three-way race. Alfred M. Landon of Kansas would be inaugurated as the nation's 33rd President on January 20, 1937.

Returning to the Senate, Butler quickly made headway with potential allies for a second run for the White House, again under the banner of the Union Party. As President Landon moved to cut federal spending, throwing the economy back into recession in the late thirties, Butler again gained traction, and Unionists were elected in droves to Congress in 1938, cutting into both traditionally Republican and traditionally Democratic constituencies. Labor unrest helped in that regard, and the breakaway CIO made electing Unionists the part and parcel of it's electoral platform, leaving the AFL as the feeble supporter of the emasculated Democrats.

As the 1940 Presidential Election neared, President Landon made it known that he would not seek a second term, having become the 'second coming of Herbert Hoover' in the words of Senator Butler. Vice President Frank Knox, an interventionist and progressive, would field his own name for the Presidency within the Republican Party, as would New York Governor Tom Dewey, isolationist Bob Taft, and Indiana lawyer Wendell Willkie.

Knox would barely win the nomination, and in response, was forced to choose the isolationist Taft as his running mate.

The Democrats found themselves torn between former Agriculture Secretary Henry Wallace (the darling of the liberals) and a number of favorite son candidates. President Roosevelt was considered a dark horse nominee for the top spot, in hopes of replicating the feat of Grover Cleveland in 1892.

In the end, the Convention would deadlock between Wallace and the more moderate Frank Murphy of Michigan, leading to a draft Roosevelt movement on the floor. In the end, the draft Roosevelt forces would prevail, and Roosevelt would choose Wallace as his running mate for a firmly interventionist ticket.

The Unionists would nominate Butler for the White House and isolationist Democrat Burton K. Wheeler for the Vice Presidency. As the election opened, they lead in the polls, though Roosevelt's return also heralded a significant bump for the Democrats.

With the interventionist vote split between Roosevelt and Knox, the election would come down to the House of Representatives. Against all odds, Unionists succeeded in uniting isolationist forces in the House to elect Butler to the White House, though he was stuck with Henry Wallace as Vice President, courtesy of the Democratic Senate.

On January 20, 1941, Smedley Darlington Butler became the first Unionist to take the Presidential oath, and as well, became the first third party candidate to do so in eighty years.

President Butler quickly moved to diffuse tensions in the Pacific on the part of the United States with the passage of an updated Neutrality Act, completely severing aid to belligerents on both sides of the conflict. His foreign policy team, headed by Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, focuses on diffusing tensions between the United States and other national powers, focusing on increasing trade rather than promoting belligerency.

On the economic front, Butler committed himself to a modified version of Long's 'Share Our Wealth' program, passing wages and hours legislation, legalizing labor unions, and generally passing the unfinished New Deal legislation that had fell stagnant with the Landon administration. As Keynesian economic stimulus began flowing, so did credit, and so did the economy as a whole.

As Europe and Asia burned, the United States moved to full recovery in the early forties. With Hitler master of Europe (having negotiated a peace with Britain in 1945), fighting a protracted war in the East against an ailing Soviet Union and the Japanese stuck in a quagmire in China, the United States seemed now more palatable than ever, leading to waves of immigration that would be halted quite quickly with an Immigration Act in 1944 that effectively banned immigration to the country itself.

President Butler was a shoo-in for re-election in 1944, and would have won easily, had he not succumbed to stomach cancer in 1943, placing into office the last man that most of the country wanted as President: Henry Wallace, the dyed-in-the-wool liberal, interventionist, and (according to some), fellow-traveler...
 
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