AHC: President L. Ron Hubbard.

Your goal is to get pulp science fiction writer and, er, religious figure L. Ron Hubbard to become US president. Bonus points if he still founds Scientology as per OTL.
 
Hubbard was an extreme case of narcissistic personality disorder. Although such people can rise within totalitarian revolutionary movements, they get weeded out in parliamentary and other election-based systems, especially if the press is free to focus on their foibles. No person of this type has ever risen to the Presidency of the United States in its entire history, nor has such a person become PM of Great Britain, Canada or Australia. Joseph McCarthy made a stir in the U.S. Senate, but his NPD was accompanied by alcoholism and probably by closet homosexuality. He would never have made it to the White House unless the Soviets had declared war on the U.S. in the early 1950s (even then, the public would probably have gravitated to some other person). In a grave crisis Douglas MacArthur might have become president, but his narcissism was nowhere near as extreme as that of Hubbard and I can't see MacArthur becoming a malignant narcissist under any circumstances.

What I'm saying is that Hubbard as president is ASB, just like the celebrated scenario in which the shy, retiring H.P. Lovecraft becomes president. Such scenarios are great for satire, however.
 
Not to derail the thread entirely but what is the argument for Joe McCarthy being a Narcissist? I speak from a position of relative ignorance, and I merely intend to gratify my curiosity. I hope my curiosity is not misconstrued as a defense of the Senator's personality or actions in the Senate. The little I've read suggested that Joe McCarthy may have been bipolar, and that at the very least his daily life was marked by a certain degree of mania. However, and again, I'm merely betraying my own ignorance here, I've never heard an argument for McCarthy being a individual with NPD. Again, I'm simply curious what that argument might be.
 

pnyckqx

Banned
Your goal is to get pulp science fiction writer and, er, religious figure L. Ron Hubbard to become US president. Bonus points if he still founds Scientology as per OTL.
With what can be verified about Hubbard's background --i.e. his actual military record-- as opposed to what Hubbard and his biographers have claimed, it is likely ASB that Hubbard ever gets a major party nomination let alone win a Presidential election.
 
Perhaps he run on the claim to have "broken up Black Magic in America", after his involvement with John Whiteside Parsons. (Never mind all he did was break up Parsons's marriage...)
 
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