AHC: George McGovern wins in '68 and has successful presidency.

1) The '68 peace talks fail, in large part because Thieu didn't want to step down. But six months in, McGovern's administration puts together a coalition government which actually works out pretty well. Vietnam even becomes a bit of a success story.

2) The McGovern administration gets rolling much sooner on the loss of auto and other manufacturing jobs.

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Please give me a couple of other areas of realistic (or not too realistic! ;)) success.
 
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CalBear

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The ASB land and gives everyone a bottomless beer keg.

Which is actually MORE likely than McGovern having a successful Presidency.
 
McGovern continues to support Vietnam (he voted for Gulf of Tonkin). Humphrey declines to run and McGovern is the establishment candidate. He narrowly beats a conservative Republican (who has an image as a reactionary).

As for successful, he gets a first-class cabinet and leaves all governing to them.
 
The ASB land and gives everyone a bottomless beer keg.

Which is actually MORE likely than McGovern having a successful Presidency.
Well done! But please don't underestimate ol' George entirely.

He was a WWII pilot who flew bombing missions in the European theater. In midwestern fashion, he didn't think it was appropriate to brag. Well, you don't brag. But you can allow political allies to matter-of-factly bring it up as an example of your service. For example, 'Yes, Senator Glen, you can bring it up, just please don't make too big a deal about it.'

And he might see that just the beginnings of the loss of manufacturing jobs is a damn significant tectonic shift for the American economy.
 
McGovernsignedphoto.jpg

President George McGovern campaigning for re-election with daughter Susan at Williams College.

President McGovern said, "We've talked about greater energy independence. Haven't really gotten rolling as much as I would like. We've going to keep rolling with nuclear, and we have the safest waste storage in the world. And we're going to really get rolling with hydroelectric."

As we know, McGovern comfortably won re-election in 1972 winning thirty-eight states.
 
(This is what McGovern winning his top 38 states in OTL 1972 would look like)
genusmap.php

(This does not seem like a likely election outcome to me.)
 
Well maybe he is Senator for the other South Dakota seat. Not up in 68. Is the standard barer instead of Gene McCarthy. Bobby does not run. He somehow wins the nomination
 
and then runs a good general election and wins the presidency.

And as president, well, first I'd like to look up the timeline as far as federal district court decisions mandating busing,

Which President McGovern immediately recognizes are going to be unpopular. George's initial plan was to ramp up education so that all kids are getting a better education than they were five years.

even if he sees the future with magnet schools and so forth, where kids and/or their families are choosing to bus to.

Still a race between the positive side, and people being royally pissed off and under siege.

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President McGovern coins a new word: clunksville. As in, "Property taxes are a clunksville way of doing education financing." Maybe if he's able to delegate widely, not just present completed plan to what's a Democratic House and Senate anyway. Maybe if as president, he's able to highlight some positive change already going on in some locales, again without overplaying his hand. Then , perhaps!
 
http://www.pbs.org/makingschoolswork/dwr/nc/chronology.html

The case, known as Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, leads to the 1971 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allows school systems nationwide to use mandatory busing and other race-based efforts to desegregate public schools.
The perception might be that Nixon regretfully does this and has to do this since district courts backed by the Supreme Court are ordering this, whereas McGovern wants to do this all along. Surprisingly similar to the "only Nixon can go to China effect"!

But, if McGovern gets a reputation as a president who's involved and engaged in education, who's open to the best ideas from the state and local level, maybe enough people in the middle cut him some slack. See that busing is a heck of a tough issue struggling with de jure vs. de facto segregation, that struggles with how do you handle entrenched housing patterns and how do you avoid visiting the sins of the parents onto the children?

Racial issues are likely to remain a bugaboo in American politics. And particularly, resentment on the part of European-Americans on economic issues is likely to lead to a fair amount of scapegoating toward African-Americans. Once again, a growing economy solves a heck of a lot of problems.
 
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And yes, President McGovern got the ball rolling on new energy and energy conservation. Just small-scale experiments to get the long arc going when presented with long-term projections from his scientific advisors. Almost any president would have done the same.

And yes, following the two energy crises of '73 and '79, we as a people finally got rolling in a big way and the United States is now a world leader on energy efficiency and environmentally-friendly energy. Of course, we are. You think we're stupid. How many crises do you think it would take to get our attention ? ?
 
And on war and peace, he didn't need to prove anything to anyone.

President McGovern was largely successful at transforming the arms race with the Soviet Union to competition over trade deals with the Third World. This turned out highly advantageous to a number of Third World countries, and led to a fair amount of genuine economic development, which is always a tough puzzle to solve.

Following the SALT II Treaty in '72, starting several years later in the mid-'70s under a more mellowed Brezhnev, the Soviet Union began to loosen up. I think this probably would have happened anyway. I'm not a McGovern nut. Just think he was an above average president.
 
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Wallet

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Barry Goldwater somehow gets the nomination again in 1968. Once again Rockefeller and Romney refuse to support him.

Both Robert Kennedy and Humphrey are shot. Ted Kennedy refuses to run.

McGovern wins a hotly contested convention against Muskie
 
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