AHC: Make John Nance Garner a great president

Poor Garner has bad luck when it comes to being president. OTL he settled for being FDR's second fiddle(or as he put it "not worth a bucket of piss") and wasn't VP for FDR's death. In many timelines like The Man In The High Castle he only becomes president because FDR is killed, and things go badly. Let's give Cactus Jack a break here, and find a scenario where he ends up being a great president. The POD is the 1924 election. Garner can either win the election or get it when FDR is assassinated, though I'd prefer he gets the win. Garner runs for only two terms at most. Can we make this Texan a great president?
 
If the Democratic Party convention of 1928 nominated Garner (for president) and Al Smith (for vice-president), they would have a good shot at beating the Republican team of Herbert Hoover and Charles Curtis, particularly if they placed opposition to prohibition the central plank of their platform. In particular, Smith would have been attractive to many voters in big cities and the Northeast while Garner would have brought in lots of votes from rural areas and the South.

As neither Garner nor Smith was a Progressive, they would have responded to the Stock Market crash of 1929 in much the same way that Harding had responded to the crash of 1921. That is, they would have refrained from heroic attempts to prevent wages and prices from falling, thereby avoiding the Great Depression.

However, as is so often the case with achievements that consist largely of acts of forbearance, the wisdom of this action (or, rather, deliberate inaction) would only have been apparent to the most thoughtful of observers. Thus, it is unlikely that Garner would have attained much in the way of fame.
 
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Roosevelt is killed in February 1933 and Garner, a moderate, implements a watered down New Deal, leading to an economy which recovers slowly but surely. Presidents after him implement more expansive programs, but his work in ending the depression leads him being seen as a great president.
 
If the Democratic Party convention of 1928 nominated Garner (for president) and Al Smith (for vice-president), they would have a good shot at beating the Republican team of Herbert Hoover and Charles Curtis, particularly if they placed opposition to prohibition the central plank of their platform. In particular, Smith would have been attractive to many voters in big cities and the Northeast while Garner would have brought in lots of votes from rural areas and the South.


Not a chance. Prosperity was too great for the GOP to lose in '28.
 
I have grave doubts that Garner could have achieved the presidency except by succession: in the late 1920s / early 1930s, the Civil War was still well within living memory, and southerners were looked on with some lingering suspicion. Selling a southern candidate to the bosses in the north (Curley in Boston; Tammany Hall; Hague in Jersey City; the Chicago machine) would have been very difficult to impossible. Long story short: Garner as a great president is essentially a non-starter.
 
Roosevelt is killed in February 1933 and Garner, a moderate, implements a watered down New Deal, leading to an economy which recovers slowly but surely. Presidents after him implement more expansive programs, but his work in ending the depression leads him being seen as a great president.
There is a very real chance Roosevelt could have been assassinated in 1933, making him another W.Harrison or Garfield. If Garner does not run in 1940, there probably will not be a 22nd Amendment.
 
The idea Garner would be a bad President is pretty much a bad meme devoid of historically accuracy, as the elements of the New Deal he opposed turned out to be portions that really ought to have been opposed by everyone, like the NRA. UCLA economists took a look at it a back a decade or so ago and found the Depression would've been over by 1938 if it hadn't been passed.
 
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