This was from a rather dark TLIA I had never got around to starting - basically, the POD was with Dick Gephardt entering the 1988 Primaries and managing to beat Bush and get two terms in the White House, which means no NAFTA, no Gulf War (which spirals out of control in dramatic fashion) and a less messy Balkans. Dick (Cheney) succeeds him thanks to hawkish rhetoric against Iran, who stepped in as the "mediator" in the Iraqi conflict and has asserted dominance in the region. This leads to a bloody war not unlike OTL Iraq War, but its a little less bloody, and the Administration can legitimately claim success with the restoration of Saddam Hussein in 2001.
However this undercut when the Daily Inquirer reports that Secretary of Education Dennis Hastert has been grooming and molesting minors while in office, and everything snowballs from there. Cheney and most of the Administration deny any knowledge and sack Hastert and a few underlings in a show of force, but the damage has been done. In 2004, socialist (yeah, you read that right) Governor Paul Soglin takes the White House in dramatic fashion, but ends up seeing his agenda watered-down and killed off by a moderate Democratic Congress, but hey, Universal Healthcare is passed and public housing initiatives begin in major cities, and we got a liberal majority on the Court! George Allen succeeds Soglin as most everybody is put off by a literal socialist in the White House and most people are willing to forget the troubles of the Cheney days in exchange for prosperity - Allen mostly delivers on that, with young politico Andrew Breitbart leading the Administration's ideological push from within the Cabinet. However, after it comes to light that federal funds were being used to cover-up for Hastert and other various crimes and misdemeanors, and that many leading figures on the right have been implicated in various offences related to sexual assault, Allen goes down with the ship.
Jindal is left with the unenviable job of trying to clean up the mess Allen, Soglin and Cheney started, but his attempts at meaningful legislation is stopped by a strong opposition in Congress, and his poll numbers slip and fall every day. In 2012, he loses in a landslide to D.C. Mayor Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, his promise of finishing the work Soglin and Gepthardt started resonating with millions across the nation.
Eh, I might need to workshop that ending but I might come back to this someday - it still is really intriguing to me plot-wise.
However this undercut when the Daily Inquirer reports that Secretary of Education Dennis Hastert has been grooming and molesting minors while in office, and everything snowballs from there. Cheney and most of the Administration deny any knowledge and sack Hastert and a few underlings in a show of force, but the damage has been done. In 2004, socialist (yeah, you read that right) Governor Paul Soglin takes the White House in dramatic fashion, but ends up seeing his agenda watered-down and killed off by a moderate Democratic Congress, but hey, Universal Healthcare is passed and public housing initiatives begin in major cities, and we got a liberal majority on the Court! George Allen succeeds Soglin as most everybody is put off by a literal socialist in the White House and most people are willing to forget the troubles of the Cheney days in exchange for prosperity - Allen mostly delivers on that, with young politico Andrew Breitbart leading the Administration's ideological push from within the Cabinet. However, after it comes to light that federal funds were being used to cover-up for Hastert and other various crimes and misdemeanors, and that many leading figures on the right have been implicated in various offences related to sexual assault, Allen goes down with the ship.
Jindal is left with the unenviable job of trying to clean up the mess Allen, Soglin and Cheney started, but his attempts at meaningful legislation is stopped by a strong opposition in Congress, and his poll numbers slip and fall every day. In 2012, he loses in a landslide to D.C. Mayor Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, his promise of finishing the work Soglin and Gepthardt started resonating with millions across the nation.
Eh, I might need to workshop that ending but I might come back to this someday - it still is really intriguing to me plot-wise.
