AHC:President Audie Murphy

The challenge I’m proposing to you today is with a point of divergence after January 26th 1945 is for Audie Murphy to be elected president of the United States
 
I would say the biggest thing is for Audie to be physically capable of attending West Point...he would then go to the prep school for a year to be academically prepared before attending USMA...and you know the Army would spare no effort to ensure he graduated...
 
Well, if he had a more successful film career, it is not outside the realm of possibility for one of the two major parties to approach him to run for something in California. Rumors that a celebrity might run for high office there have popped up for decades, though relatively few of them actually go through with it (and my impression is that the ones who do, and went on to win, such as George Murphy, Ronald Reagan, Sony Bono, Clint Eastwood, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, seem disproportionately Republican for whatever reason).

That said, unlike Ronald Reagan or John Wayne on the right, or any number of left-wing celebrities, I do not know that Audie Murphy ever expressed any strong political views publicly.
 
Murphy's plane doesn't go down in '71. He gets into politics after Watergate after publicly denouncing Nixon for being a scumbag who offended his sense of morality. Couple terms in the House, drafted in '80 by the Republicans because Reagan gets sick, picks someone fairly moderate as a running mate, trounces Carter due to the catastrophic economic situation, is uncomfortable in office (not very active President, more "do my duty" type, but clean as a whistle, destroys relations with his own party with a really tough anticorruption program that hits both parties hard, is primaried but survives, loses the general to an equally weak candidate like Mondale in a humiliating narrow loss, retires from politics, writes a book called "I never wanted this" or something like that, is rated as a terrible President like Grant for some 20 years but then experiences a rehabilitation in reputation. Dies in the 2010s and gets a state funeral and 5 or 6 documentaries about him. Every white leading man in Hollywood of the right size and age spends the 2010s seeing if they can do "1940s action hero Audie Murphy" and "1950s actor with PTSd Audie Murphy" and "1960s upstanding citizen Audie Murphy" and "1970s-1980s embattled but noble politician Audie Murphy" and competing for Academy Awards for those performances.
 
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