Bicentennial Man: Ford '76 and Beyond

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Five Days in April
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    • KingSweden24

    "...I don't think you'll ever see five days, less than a week, where more crazy shit happened around the world at once than the stretch between the 22nd and 27th of April, 1978. All at once, it felt like the world was about to explode. It was just unreal..."

    - Former White House Chief of Staff Dick Cheney

    TANKS IN TEHRAN! - SHAH FLEES, MILITARY IN CHARGE
    - New York Times Headline, April 22nd 1978

    ROMERO FLEES EL SALVADOR, REFORMISTS AND HARDLINERS FIGHT IN STREETS
    - The Times of London, April 23rd, 1978

    After Botched Raid Kills Italy's Moro, What Next in Rome?
    - The Economist, April 24, 1978

    KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA - ARMY UNLEASHED ON FARC, PENTAGON INVOLVED?
    - New York Times, April 25, 1978

    EUROPEANS TRAPPED IN KOLWEZI BY REBELS - ZAIRE CALLS ON FRANCE!
    - San Francisco Chronicle, April 26, 1978

    COMMUNISTS KILL KHAN IN KABUL - MARXIST AFGHANISTAN DECLARED
    - Washington Post, April 27, 1978    ​
     
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    • Bomster

    Bomster

    CountDVB said:
    And it keeps hitting the fan like a manure truck
    Click to expand...
    tenor.gif
     
    Tanks in Tehran
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    • KingSweden24

    "...it was imperative to retake control, to reestablish that we were in charge, that we would not allow the country to descend into anarchy. The Shah was gone with his wife, his son remained in Tehran, and a regency council was in place. It was a time for peace, a time to listen to genuine grievances, and to dismiss those who would overthrow the Iranian state. These radicals, these revolutionaries, we were not going to allow them to win..."

    - General Nader Jahanbani

    "...the Shah and his wife left after Jahanbani communicated to them that his abdication in favor of his son and exile were the only way to avoid a bloodier coup. By the morning of the 23rd, both were in Lahore, soon to be guests of Prime Minister Bhutto, a personal friend of the Shah's who Jahanbani had reached out to ahead of his fateful missive to the Pahlavis (and before cutting the phone lines to the palace). The crown of Iran thus passed to Reza Pahlavi, a seventeen years old and impressionable boy, who was trotted out in front of cameras to urge peace and reconciliation in the streets. Even the name of the Iranian junta, the National Reconciliation Council - represented by Jahanbani as its chairman and handsome public face - indicated a time of Iranians coming together after the disastrous final years of the Shah's reign. The swiftness of the coup and the ruthlessness with which the SAVAK attacked antiregime forces, including arresting dozens of clerics and only further inflaming the holy city of Qom, spoke to a different reality - that while the Western-friendly Jahanbani was appearing on television sets and hobnobbing with European diplomats, true power flowed instead to Nematollah Nassiri, head of the SAVAK, who quickly partnered with Tehran's police chief Mehdi Rahimi to secure control of major cities with both secret and conventional police, instigating a bloody and brutal month of May in which as many as a thousand were killed in crushed protests and up to five thousand were imprisoned. Iran's government soon became indistinguishable from a tinpot Latin American dictatorship; by early June, civilian Prime Minister Jamshid Amouzegar had been forced to resign and was replaced by the army's chief of staff, Gholam Azhari, who filled his cabinet with military men. Iran was under military rule for the first time in three decades..."

    - Peace and Upheaval: The Mideast in the 1970s
     
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    • Rfl23

    KingSweden24 said:
    "...I don't think you'll ever see five days, less than a week, where more crazy shit happened around the world at once than the stretch between the 22nd and 27th of April, 1978. All at once, it felt like the world was about to explode. It was just unreal..."

    - Former White House Chief of Staff Dick Cheney

    TANKS IN TEHRAN! - SHAH FLEES, MILITARY IN CHARGE
    - New York Times Headline, April 22nd 1978

    ROMERO FLEES EL SALVADOR, REFORMISTS AND HARDLINERS FIGHT IN STREETS
    - The Times of London, April 23rd, 1978

    After Botched Raid Kills Italy's Moro, What Next in Rome?
    - The Economist, April 24, 1978

    KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA - ARMY UNLEASHED ON FARC, PENTAGON INVOLVED?
    - New York Times, April 25, 1978

    EUROPEANS TRAPPED IN KOLWEZI BY REBELS - ZAIRE CALLS ON FRANCE!
    - San Francisco Chronicle, April 26, 1978

    COMMUNISTS KILL KHAN IN KABUL - MARXIST AFGHANISTAN DECLARED
    - Washington Post, April 27, 1978    ​
    Click to expand...
    Oh moro escaped death? Now this is interesting oh btw who is the current pope? Is it still john paul II or the the first john paul
     

    KingSweden24

    Rfl23 said:
    Oh moro escaped death? Now this is interesting oh btw who is the current pope? Is it still john paul II or the the first john paul
    Click to expand...

    No, Moro dies - just in a botched raid in the safe house by the carabineri where he's being held, rather than being found in a car. So not a huge difference just needed another grenade to throw into the wild end of April.

    Paul VI is still alive at this point, as he does not die until August of 1978
     

    theflyingmongoose

    KingSweden24 said:
    (Considering how the Ford admin is going so far, I'm not sure how much of a political future the man who ran his White House would have, anyways)
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    Well, it is a true situation.

    Cheney would be a lot less likely to survive to present day without the utterly absurd quality of healthcare VPs and Presidents receive. I mean Reagan had dementia and still made 90.
     

    KingSweden24

    theflyingmongoose said:
    Well, it is a true situation.

    Cheney would be a lot less likely to survive to present day without the utterly absurd quality of healthcare VPs and Presidents receive. I mean Reagan had dementia and still made 90.
    Click to expand...

    True! He'd probably make it to the mid-2000s or somewhere thereabouts in that case.
     

    theflyingmongoose

    KingSweden24 said:
    True! He'd probably make it to the mid-2000s or somewhere thereabouts in that case.
    Click to expand...
    Speaking of the Bush Admin, I think we should make Bush, Jr. a person of at least some significance. Maybe like a State Senator or (I don't know why) an award-winning author. But I do think that for Bush Sr. to get out of the Ford administration still being politically viable (unless he becomes Sec. State during the Ford years) he needs to preform an act of defiance or something. That could be convenient for salvaging political figures who you want to have at least some future.
     

    KingSweden24

    theflyingmongoose said:
    Speaking of the Bush Admin, I think we should make Bush, Jr. a person of at least some significance. Maybe like a State Senator or (I don't know why) an award-winning author. But I do think that for Bush Sr. to get out of the Ford administration still being politically viable (unless he becomes Sec. State during the Ford years) he needs to preform an act of defiance or something. That could be convenient for salvaging political figures who you want to have at least some future.
    Click to expand...

    Being the SOS who let the Panama Crisis happen on his watch has probably killed off the Bush family fortunes for good, for better or for worse.

    Besides, I think a GOP without an influential Bush family is more interesting!
     

    Rfl23

    KingSweden24 said:
    No, Moro dies - just in a botched raid in the safe house by the carabineri where he's being held, rather than being found in a car. So not a huge difference just needed another grenade to throw into the wild end of April.

    Paul VI is still alive at this point, as he does not die until August of 1978
    Click to expand...
    Ah okay so i bet carabineri got a lot of criticism from the public because of this (somewhat like the german attempt to free the munich hostage) and oh interesting i hope you touch on the pope in the future (btw does indonesia still invade east timor or did the invasion was cancelled?)
     

    KingSweden24

    Rfl23 said:
    Ah okay so i bet carabineri got a lot of criticism from the public because of this (somewhat like the german attempt to free the munich hostage) and oh interesting i hope you touch on the pope in the future (btw does indonesia still invade east timor or did the invasion was cancelled?)
    Click to expand...

    Cant say I know enough about the Indonesia/East Timor situation so if it’s not included in here, presume it proceeds like OTL
     
    Fordnomics
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    • KingSweden24

    "...the regulatory agenda was moving forward smoothly, with the Surface Transport Reform Act of 1978, or Staggers-Kennedy as it came to be known, building steam for passage to deregulate rail and trucking transport, soon after we'd just deregulated air travel. Water transport was to be the third leg, something we'd just cooked up, with repeal of the Jones Act and a one-time investment in canal and riverine transport, something very important to the public mind all of a sudden [1]. Byrd and O'Neill were just fine moving the ball along slowly though, and very hesitant to endorse the White House's tax cut-based stimulus passage to combat the supply shock and economic crisis. The reappointment of Arthur Burns to another term atop the Fed became controversial in the Senate, too, over his skepticism of using the Fed's powers to curb inflation, which was now set to increase even further as consumer goods and oil spiked in price thanks to the twin crises in Panama and Iran..."

    - Former White House Council of Economic Advisers Chair Alan Greenspan, 2000 Interview

    "...Greenspan and Simon were part of an economic troika, if you will, of ideologues that included Burns. Ford was an orthodox budget conservative behind all the "aw shucks" all-American dad persona and on the budget front probably wasn't that different from how a Reagan administration would have ticked. So it was a big break from previous dogma when Burns announced shortly after his confirmation to another term at the Fed that he would raise interest rates in an attempt to head off inflation, and acknowledged in his press briefing, "We have avoided the push for higher rates out of concern for the public appetite for the unemployment levels such rates would require. However, now, the circumstances have changed. We have shifted from what we have called "stagflation" into truly aggressive inflation, and if not controlled, the types of horrific hyperinflation seen in Weimar Germany might soon be upon us. Merely repairing and reopening the Panama Canal will not be a sufficient solution. It is now a time for action, a time for response, and a time for sacrifice."..."

    - Former Senate Majority Leader Walter Mondale, 1997 Interview

    "...Burns' press conference presaged a series of increasingly aggressive hikes, approximately a quarter percent per month, over the next twelve months, and his "shock therapy" program would continue into 1980 after a brief hiatus in late 1979 where rates were kept stable for five months without change. Republicans on Capitol Hill were shocked, but Ford publicly supported his Fed Chairman even despite pushback from his other economic advisors; with no reelection to run for, and the economic outlook worsening, Ford was determined to not be the next Herbert Hoover, to allow his team breathing room to use all the tools at their disposal to create the appearance of doing something to combat the deepening malaise..."

    - Stagflation: How the Beast Was Born, and How it Was Slain (Financial Times, 1989)

    [1] Obviously an addition from the Carter package of deregulation unique to TTL
     
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    • CountDVB

    Yikes. This is getting kinda nuts. I actually appreciate this alot because of my own upcoming timeline, which does start on this time period. But yeah, looks it's getting pretty nuts. Stagflation seems like a very tricky beast in dealing with it. I wonder how people will try and deal with it outside of the Feds handling inflation.

    I recall a comment someone made on how the US of today keeps trying to focus on manufacturing and neglecting its service sector which has become more prominent. I wonder if ITTL, this will be taken into account for handling the economy
     
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