AHC: President Lovecraft

This challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to make Howard Phillips Lovecraft, author of the Cthulhu Mythos stories, President of the United States of America. You may use any POD up to the moment of his birth. Bonus points if he still publishes his stories. Extra bonus points if you make a short TL about it.

(And no, I am not GMB)
 

mats

Banned
Um, maybe if you... No.... Maybe if you make him not be an idi... No...
You know what, change his personality
 
1905 isn't too bad. If he avoids the nervous breakdown he suffered in 1908, he'd probably be able to graduate with a high school diploma. Lovecraft intended to use that diploma to go to Brown and become an astronomer, though; he turned to writing after high school, starting with poetry. If he's at Brown, I imagine he ends up dropping his original goal of becoming an astronomer; he's likely to get frustrated with the advanced math (as he did in high school in OTL). Not sure what he'd go for, or if he'd just drop out; for the purposes of this scenario, he should probably go for political science, so that he gets interested in politics, rather than writing.

Potentially, he could've volunteered for the military around 1917; a bit of war heroics would do him well. Alternatively, or just after the war, he could've gotten involved in Rhode Island politics, which would've meant Republicanism. He ended up being a New Deal Democrat, but only after the Depression started; before then, he was likely a solid Republican. As long as he finds solid employment, his racism would be moderated, if Houellebecq's thesis is right.

If he turned on the GOP in '32 and ran as the Democratic candidate for Governor of Rhode Island, he'd likely have won - Theodore Green did in OTL. He could've followed Green's political career and become a US Senator in '36, and his health would probably have been much better, so I imagine he could've lived into the '60s (as Green did, despite having been born in 1867).

This Lovecraft is pretty much unrecognizable, but it doesn't seem implausible to me, particularly given how early the PoD is in his life.
Cross-posted from another thread, which asked for a PoD in 1905 or later. Getting him into the presidency from here is tricky... maybe have him take the lead (instead of Truman) on the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program?

I don't think Lovecraft gets re-elected in '48 if he rises to the Presidency Truman-style; Truman barely pulled it off himself.
 
If you don't change his personality, this would be kind of hard, seeing how he was ridiculously reclusive and practically never left New England for something like ten years. Actually, make that "he never left his house for ten years".
 
I have an Idea!

Cthullu takes over H.P.Lovecraft's body, makes FDR look into the Deadlights and die, and plop Lovecraft in the Presidential seat.:D

On a serious note, you'd have to change his personality dramatically.
 
Cross-posted from another thread, which asked for a PoD in 1905 or later. Getting him into the presidency from here is tricky... maybe have him take the lead (instead of Truman) on the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program?

I don't think Lovecraft gets re-elected in '48 if he rises to the Presidency Truman-style; Truman barely pulled it off himself.

What's the point though? Unless you start pulling in supernatural either real or imagined via insanity I don't see why anyone would bother.
 
What's the point though? Unless you start pulling in supernatural either real or imagined via insanity I don't see why anyone would bother.

It's an interesting way to get a Dewey presidency in '48, and a chance to see a Rhode Islander in the White House. Plus, there's the question of what happens to Truman if he doesn't come to national prominence in the '40s - if he's just an ordinary Senator from Missouri. Does he perhaps come to prominence later on - perhaps running in '52 or '56 instead of Adlai?

You're not going to get Lovecraft-the-author into the White House, so yeah.
 

Hendryk

Banned
No takers?
"Make so-and-so president of the US" is a popular parlor game at AH.com but sometimes it goes too far. This is one of those times. For one thing, Lovecraft is brought up too often around here; we should leave the poor guy alone, and I say that as one of his die-hard fans, so imagine what people who don't care for his oeuvre feel like. For another, this challenge makes no sense, because it takes both a certain personality type and a certain skill set to make a career in politics, and Lovecraft had neither.
 
It's an interesting way to get a Dewey presidency in '48, and a chance to see a Rhode Islander in the White House.

Surely a President Claiborne Pell or John Chafee timeline would be more plausible and interesting from a political and social perspective.

The only reason to make Lovecraft president is for him to either lead the nation against an invasion of otherworldly horrors or for him to go horribly insane under the pressure of the office and think Eldritch creatures were out to get him.
 
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