AHC: McCain elected in 2008 has two-month heart issue in ‘11, and Palin does okay as acting presiden

In particular, she realizes her limitations with international policy, and is surprisingly middle-of-the-road during her brief caretaker presidency.

Paint me a scenario. :)
 

FBKampfer

Banned
When was she born? Because you're gonna need to take her away from her parents and put her in a more sane household to get even a modicum of reasonability and rationality out of the zealot novice politician.

Which means she's likely not a teabilly ...... Which means McCain doesn't tap her for VP in a moment of senility....

Which means that this is ASB.



In all seriousness though, you're going to need a non-political POD. The problem is not politics, but personalities that were problematic in politics.
 
The Congress and Senate from both sides of the aisle will be working together to shore her up for the function of the country.
 
If the economy is good enough in 2008 for McCain to win, he won't choose her. His choosing her instead of a more conventional running mate was the product of the belief that something had to be done to "shake up" the campaign.
 
I think it’s possible for McCain to get a heart attack from the stress of the job... my only question is how does he win in 2008? I can’t see him winning without an ASB messing things up for Obama.
 
I think it’s possible for McCain to get a heart attack from the stress of the job... my only question is how does he win in 2008? I can’t see him winning without an ASB messing things up for Obama.

Obama dies or has to pull out of the race right after the North Carolina primary, leaving Clinton standing but with her victory deeply tarnished. Add in her arrogance and tone-deaf campaigning and you might have a thin McCain victory.
 
If the economy is good enough in 2008 for McCain to win, he won't choose her. . .

. . . I can’t see him winning without an ASB messing things up for Obama.
But John had staked our providing real, genuine oversight of defense contractors as one of his main issues. When the financial institution crisis hit (with Lehman Brothers filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy on Sept. 15, 2008), if John had realized this was squarely in his wheelhouse and went harder and quicker than Barack, I think he could have made a real race of it.

For example, John says, Yes, we will bail out the same banks who got us in this mess as we must, but then we will use Sherman Anti-Trust and similar legislation, in a lawful and orderly way, to break up the large bloated banks. And we will see that regulation and reserve requirements have some real teeth to them. And let me tell you, Wall Street executives find themselves wishing that they had a Democrat in office.

And John is saying this kind of thing a day or two before Barack.
 
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But John had staked our providing real, genuine oversight of defense contractors as one of his main issues. When the financial institution crisis hit (with Lehman Brothers filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy on Sept. 15, 2008), if John had realized this was squarely in his wheelhouse and went harder and quicker than Barack, I think he could have made a real race of it.

For example, John says, yes, we will bail out the same banks wh got us in this mess as we must, but then we will use Sherman Anti-Trust and similar legislation, in a lawful and orderly way to break up the large bloated banks. And we will see that regulation and reserve requirements have some teeth to them. And let me tell you, Wall Street executives will be wishing they had a Democrat in office.

And John is saying this kind of thing a day or two before Barack.

People hold recessions against the party that controls the White House--period. Nobody could have been more opposed to Grover Cleveland's policies than William Jennings Bryan--but voters still preferred to choose someone who was not a member of the same party as Cleveland.
 
The Congress and Senate from both sides of the aisle will be working together to shore her up for the function of the country.
As well as the National Security Advisor, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Joint Chiefs, etc.

Let’s say early on in her tenure as vice president, she hears an advocate of the greater madman theory and she’s quite unimpressed with it.

So, when a mid-sized crisis erupts while she is acting president . . .

She asks her team:

1) Is it strong?

2) Is it sane and reasonable?

And she actually does an excellent job some delegating authority, some making her own decisions. :) Perhaps more than expected.
 
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She has a promising later national career if she does fine as acting president for the brief period in 2011.
 
It wouldn't just be a caretaker presidency. Any health issue that knocks a president completely out of commission for more than a week or two at most would be seen as an unacceptable liability to the nation, and therefore place the president under heavy pressure to resign outright. If Palin enters the Oval Office under this circumstance, she's in it for the long haul.
 
People hold recessions against the party that controls the White House--period. Nobody could have been more opposed to Grover Cleveland's policies than William Jennings Bryan--but voters still preferred to choose someone who was not a member of the same party as Cleveland.
I agree to an extent, but . . .

There’s not near as many data points as in baseball and its statistics for example.

And with John saying that he had made a big mistake with Keating Five but that it taught him a lot and he was now a better man, that’s an appealing position, if it kind of hits people right. Now, a lot of voters just don’t know that John McCain was part of the Keating Five scandal. As in so many topics, American voters are surprisingly uninformed on factual issues, much more attune to emotional texture.

All the same . . . let’s suppose that in deciding to take a series of medium risks John had a commercial leading with the Keating Five right at the time Lehman Brothers is failing on Sept. 15, 2008. Now, even this wouldn’t get the attention of every voter, but it would get a lot of the more news-watching voter-in-the-middle’s attention.
 
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Timeline: Banking crisis

CNN, Oct. 16, 2008

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/BUSINESS/09/30/us.bailout.timeline/index.html

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Sept 7 [2008]: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac effectively nationalized by the U.S. Treasury which places them into "conservatorship."

Sept. 9: Lehman Brothers shares plummet to lowest level on Wall Street in more than a decade.

Sept 14: Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy. Stock markets plummet; Central banks inject billions of dollars into money markets. Bank of America agrees to buy Merrill Lynch.

Sept. 16: AIG Corp, the world's biggest insurer, bailed out by the U.S. Federal Reserve. Morgan Stanley and Wachovia enter merger talks.

Sept. 17: Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) to merge with UK bank Lloyds TSB in an emergency rescue plan.

Sept. 18 [2008]: Federal Bank and other central banks inject billions into global markets to help ease the crunch.

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And please notice the international aspect with the Halifax Bank of Scotland having to merge in an emergency plan, although I think we in the U.S. with our banks creating a turbocharged market for reselling sub-prime mortgages were more guilty than most!

And we got lucky!!! :)

Things could have gotten a heck of a lot worse. Please don’t forget that, although I guess we could say relatively lucky with the emphasis on the relatively.
 
It wouldn't just be a caretaker presidency. Any health issue that knocks a president completely out of commission for more than a week or two at most would be seen as an unacceptable liability to the nation, and therefore place the president under heavy pressure to resign outright. If Palin enters the Oval Office under this circumstance, she's in it for the long haul.
I don't think John runs for a second term. Even if it's a heart issue he fully recovers from, it would just feel like too much of a risk and be too hard to sell to the American public.

But, per the 25th Amendment, once John puts in writing that he's once again fully ready to assume the duties of office:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxxv

" . . . when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office . . . "
I think that will carry the day.

I don't think we'll get to the part of the 25th in which the vice-president and majority of the cabinet disputes this and Congress decides the matter within 21 days, with the vice president staying acting president in the meantime, but at the end of the 21 days needing two-thirds of both the House and Senate to keep the elected president out of office.
 
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