AHC: Exactly flip Herbert Hoover and J. Edgar Hoover

Deleted member 94680

The FBI in the 20's/30's never becomes the FBI and stays as the small-time BI.

America becomes a right-wing nuthouse with continued purges and a... readjustment of the term limits of Presidents.
 

cpip

Gone Fishin'
Well, if they both stand on exactly the right spot, with the right leverage, we can probably get them both flipped over in an exacting fashion...

Otherwise, it seems very unlikely that a mining engineer, born in 1874, who went on to head up relief efforts in Europe because he was the man at the place at the time, which led to his being famous enough to get named Secretary of Commerce and then make a run for the White House, could be "flipped" with a man who was born in 1895, happened into law enforcement because there was a war on, became a favorite of an Attorney General, and ran a ruthless ship that led to his being in office for 48 years.

Do you want President John Edgar Hoover and Director of the FBI Herbert Hoover? Do the rest of their careers have to parallel previously?
 
Well, if they both stand on exactly the right spot, with the right leverage, we can probably get them both flipped over in an exacting fashion...

Otherwise, it seems very unlikely that a mining engineer, born in 1874, who went on to head up relief efforts in Europe because he was the man at the place at the time, which led to his being famous enough to get named Secretary of Commerce and then make a run for the White House, could be "flipped" with a man who was born in 1895, happened into law enforcement because there was a war on, became a favorite of an Attorney General, and ran a ruthless ship that led to his being in office for 48 years.

Do you want President John Edgar Hoover and Director of the FBI Herbert Hoover? Do the rest of their careers have to parallel previously?

Yes, but their careers don't have to exactly parallel
 

cpip

Gone Fishin'
Yes, but their careers don't have to exactly parallel

It's easier to get J. Edgar into politics -- he was a law student at Georgetown, and certainly moved in the right circles to get into politics from a young age. Getting him into the White House is harder given the timing.

Getting Herbert into law enforcement requires some odd shifts, presumably in his earlier years. I'm not as well acquainted with Herbert Hoover's early life; does anyone know if there was a point where instead of geology, he demonstrated any interest in law and order? Reading this brief biography suggests that Herbert was always a math and science sort of fellow from a young age.

But let's give it a try...

Herbert lived with his uncle in Portland during the 1880s. Let's say that the Oregon land fraud scandal captures his attention, and, in a fit of moral disgust, he helps expose it, coming into contact with the United States Attorneys in the region. Instead of studying geology, he studies accounting, bookkeeping, and finance harder, and becomes one of the fathers of modern forensic accounting, such that when Teddy Roosevelt stands up the BOI (in no small part in response to that same land fraud scandal!) Herbert Hoover is a natural choice to be hired to come to Washington in 1908, being one of the men Stanley Finch wants to join as an examiner along with A. Bruce Bielaski. Instead of Bielaski, it's the slightly older and more famous Herbert who takes over as head of the Bureau of Investigation in 1912, where he continued to lead the Bureau into the thirties.

Meanwhile, J. Edgar, while at Georgetown, finds work as a clerk at a Senator's office rather than as a messenger and file clerk at the Library of Congress. This starts him down a career of politics: in 1920, he gets elected over in Delaware as a Congressman on Harding's coattails. "Fast-Talking J. Edgar" spends the rest of the 20s climbing the party ranks, becoming increasingly indispensable: at least one wit in a column contrasts J. Edgar's rapid-fire manner of speech with Coolidge's reticence, for instance. In 1928, J. Edgar is appointed to complete DuPont's term in the Senate, where he gets re-elected. He's named as the Vice Presidential candidate in 1936 to Landon, but that of course goes nowhere. However, he has the last laugh, as the headlines blare "Hoover Defeats Truman" in 1948; he serves from 1948 - 1956.


Will that do?
 
It's easier to get J. Edgar into politics -- he was a law student at Georgetown, and certainly moved in the right circles to get into politics from a young age. Getting him into the White House is harder given the timing.

Getting Herbert into law enforcement requires some odd shifts, presumably in his earlier years. I'm not as well acquainted with Herbert Hoover's early life; does anyone know if there was a point where instead of geology, he demonstrated any interest in law and order? Reading this brief biography suggests that Herbert was always a math and science sort of fellow from a young age.

But let's give it a try...

Herbert lived with his uncle in Portland during the 1880s. Let's say that the Oregon land fraud scandal captures his attention, and, in a fit of moral disgust, he helps expose it, coming into contact with the United States Attorneys in the region. Instead of studying geology, he studies accounting, bookkeeping, and finance harder, and becomes one of the fathers of modern forensic accounting, such that when Teddy Roosevelt stands up the BOI (in no small part in response to that same land fraud scandal!) Herbert Hoover is a natural choice to be hired to come to Washington in 1908, being one of the men Stanley Finch wants to join as an examiner along with A. Bruce Bielaski. Instead of Bielaski, it's the slightly older and more famous Herbert who takes over as head of the Bureau of Investigation in 1912, where he continued to lead the Bureau into the thirties.

Meanwhile, J. Edgar, while at Georgetown, finds work as a clerk at a Senator's office rather than as a messenger and file clerk at the Library of Congress. This starts him down a career of politics: in 1920, he gets elected over in Delaware as a Congressman on Harding's coattails. "Fast-Talking J. Edgar" spends the rest of the 20s climbing the party ranks, becoming increasingly indispensable: at least one wit in a column contrasts J. Edgar's rapid-fire manner of speech with Coolidge's reticence, for instance. In 1928, J. Edgar is appointed to complete DuPont's term in the Senate, where he gets re-elected. He's named as the Vice Presidential candidate in 1936 to Landon, but that of course goes nowhere. However, he has the last laugh, as the headlines blare "Hoover Defeats Truman" in 1948; he serves from 1948 - 1956.


Will that do?

I like it
 
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