We have had generals as POTUS, but never any admirals. Some possibilities (from both before and after 1900):
(1) David Farragut (Lincoln decides he needs a Southern War Democrat on the Union Party ticket in 1864, and Farragut has a lot more popular appeal than Andrew Johnson...)
(2) George Dewey ("Dewey explored a run for the 1900 Democratic presidential nomination, but he withdrew from the race and endorsed President William McKinley." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dewey)
(3) Elmo Zumwalt if he had been elected to the Senate from Virginia--though he lost rather badly to Harry Byrd, Jr. in OTL. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_United_States_Senate_election_in_Virginia (Maybe if Byrd had decided to leave the Senate in 1976 rather than 1982, feeling that his victory as an Independent in 1970 was sufficient vindication, Zumwalt would have had a better chance.)
(4) Joe Sestak--his current candidacy is being treated as a joke but if he had defeated Toomey in the close 2010 Senate race and then gotten re-elected in 2016 (both of which are plausible--or he might even have been elected in 2016 for the first time if he had won the Democratic primary that year) he would presumably be taken more seriously. But this is current politics.
(Of course there's always Larry Niven's Admiral Heinlein!)
(1) David Farragut (Lincoln decides he needs a Southern War Democrat on the Union Party ticket in 1864, and Farragut has a lot more popular appeal than Andrew Johnson...)
(2) George Dewey ("Dewey explored a run for the 1900 Democratic presidential nomination, but he withdrew from the race and endorsed President William McKinley." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dewey)
(3) Elmo Zumwalt if he had been elected to the Senate from Virginia--though he lost rather badly to Harry Byrd, Jr. in OTL. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_United_States_Senate_election_in_Virginia (Maybe if Byrd had decided to leave the Senate in 1976 rather than 1982, feeling that his victory as an Independent in 1970 was sufficient vindication, Zumwalt would have had a better chance.)
(4) Joe Sestak--his current candidacy is being treated as a joke but if he had defeated Toomey in the close 2010 Senate race and then gotten re-elected in 2016 (both of which are plausible--or he might even have been elected in 2016 for the first time if he had won the Democratic primary that year) he would presumably be taken more seriously. But this is current politics.
(Of course there's always Larry Niven's Admiral Heinlein!)
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