AHC: President Richard Cheney in the Seventies or Eighties

POD: Lyndon Johnson wins his Senate bid in 1941.

FDR taps the young Texan to be VP, and he becomes President as WW2 ends. He botches the Japanese Occupation, making it much bigger than OTL and a massive waste of resources and lives.

Eisenhower runs in 1948 to fix the mess. After two terms, he is succeeded by Averell Harriman, who over his two terms is largely dealing with a drawn out Korean War that America and the South Koreans lose in 1963. Nelson Rockefeller wins two terms, followed by Henry Jackson. In 1980, former Secretary of State Richard Nixon is elected with Richard Cheney as his Vice President. Nixon dies of a stroke in 1983, allowing for Cheney to be elected in 1984 and 1988.

Read between the lines for details of what happens in that world.
 
He does not give up on his no new taxes pledge. So there are more intense budge battles. After the liberation of Kuwait, he orders the military to invade Iraq. Most of the Allies pull out of the coalition. There is a quagmire just as there was. oTL twelve years later. 1992 presidential election popular vote
Clinton 45 percent Cheney 32 percent Perot 22 percent electoral college Clinton 483 OTL plus Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Indiana, Texas, Kansas, South Dakota and Arizona

ITTL Clinton is the first Democrat since LBJ 28 years earlier to carry Virginia, Indiana, Kansas and South Dakota and the first Democrat since Harry Truman 44 years earlier to carry Arizona.
 
Hence the challenge.

Yahbut you were talking in the first post as if people ignoring Cheney scenarios in these periods was somehow aberrant. It isn't. You're asking people to shoe-horn Cheney into political maturity in a period in which he was naturally not going to mature, hence why almost all of the scenarios offered have a distinct lack of realism about them.
 
Yahbut you were talking in the first post as if people ignoring Cheney scenarios in these periods was somehow aberrant. It isn't. You're asking people to shoe-horn Cheney into political maturity in a period in which he was naturally not going to mature, hence why almost all of the scenarios offered have a distinct lack of realism about them.

Care to critique?

POD: Lyndon Johnson wins his Senate bid in 1941.

FDR taps the young Texan to be VP, and he becomes President as WW2 ends. He botches the Japanese Occupation, making it much bigger than OTL and a massive waste of resources and lives.

Eisenhower runs in 1948 to fix the mess. After two terms, he is succeeded by Averell Harriman, who over his two terms is largely dealing with a drawn out Korean War that America and the South Koreans lose in 1963. Nelson Rockefeller wins two terms, followed by Henry Jackson. In 1980, former Secretary of State Richard Nixon is elected with Richard Cheney as his Vice President. Nixon dies of a stroke in 1983, allowing for Cheney to be elected in 1984 and 1988.

Read between the lines for details of what happens in that world.
 
Cheney runs for Congress in 1972. Perhaps Rumsfeld or Nixon convinces him. In the 1972 Republican landslide, he wins the election, beating a one-term incumbent who'd gotten beaten for Senator six years before and only narrowly won the election in OTL. Four years later, incumbent Congressman Cheney beats state senator Malcolm Wallop and wins the GOP nomination for Senator from Wyoming and then he wins the election which went for the GOP by nearly 10 points in OTL. Four years after that, Reagan chooses him as VP, and then gets assassinated in 1981.
 
Last edited:

TinyTartar

Banned
A better question to ask is why Cheney would even try to become President. He never really showed much inclination towards trying to engage in Presidential politics or building a personal brand on the path to Presidency in the way that someone like Hillary has.

Cheney loved being behind the scenes and having influence there. He was very much a defense/foreign policy wonk and never really strayed from party orthodoxy on other issues. His single largest influence as a statesman was Scoop Jackson, a Democrat.

I don't think Cheney is someone who would want to deal with the day to day or symbolic nature of the office.
 
A better question to ask is why Cheney would even try to become President. He never really showed much inclination towards trying to engage in Presidential politics or building a personal brand on the path to Presidency in the way that someone like Hillary has.

Cheney loved being behind the scenes and having influence there. He was very much a defense/foreign policy wonk and never really strayed from party orthodoxy on other issues. His single largest influence as a statesman was Scoop Jackson, a Democrat.

I don't think Cheney is someone who would want to deal with the day to day or symbolic nature of the office.

He did make a brief attempt, I believe in 1996. I didn't know about it until I saw the Showtime Documentary with him in it.
 
Top