big Democrats ‘68 oppose war, but conservatives don’t criticize liberals as “weak” for next 50 years

George McGovern

Address Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida
[Friday early a.m.] July 14, 1972


http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=25967

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' . . . And this is also a time, not for death, but for life. In 1968 many Americans thought they were voting to bring our sons home from Vietnam in peace, and since then 20,000 of our sons have come home in coffins.

'I have no secret plan for peace. I have a public plan. . . '

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It's not a bad speech. At least the beginning is fine.

The problem is that it was almost 3:00 am when it was finally given! I think in part because of delaying tactics and procedural motions by opponents.
 
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Have a senior member of your team carry through adjourning the convention to be re-convened on Friday, and you give the speech prime time Friday night. And you easily and comfortably support this decision as if it's no big deal. The people who can stay for one additional day, stay, and those who can't, well, they don't.

You act like president. (as opposed to giving the speech in the middle of the night which is more acting like a damn employee)
 
I wonder if we can find examples from other countries in which a political party ran on ending a war. And they matter-of-factly made the case that it’s not in our national interest, plus in some ways it’s not in accordance with our values and traditions.

And they received some credit. But mainly they’re going to be judged on domestic policy and results.
 
There was the Church Committee in the Senate and the lesser-known Pike Committee in the House to look at CIA abuses, as well as those of other U.S. intelligence agencies.

The Church Committee ran from Jan. ‘75 to late April 1976 and was the reason Frank Church entered the Democratic primary season way late, because of a promise he had made to majority leader Mike Mansfield to finish the committee work first.

Well, at the end of the day I think most Americans are in favor of spying, and even more so, they didn’t want us to unilaterally concede the field to the Soviets.
 
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HHH wins in '68. UHC, UBI both shifting the electorate a bit to the econ left overall, combined with Vietnam ending in a korea-type stalemate and not an outright loss means no rep of international weakness. OF course the 70s being what they are, even with the dems running the McGovernites out of the party, HHH's successor most likely Muskie likely loses in '80 to Nixon or Bush.

HHH would get flak for continuing the war until he gets the armistice in '74 or '75, but he'd point out he ran on ending the war/disagreed with LBJ on vietnam from the start and that he needed to end it with the most honorable peace possible.
 
. . continuing the war until he gets the armistice in '74 or '75, . .
Okay, we supported a dictatorship in South Vietnam, and because we came in with resources and fresh energy, I’m very open to the argument that in a sense we became the wrong side.

But if you give me Cambodia, I’ll put up with a lot!

That is, even if we still have bombing and/or incursions into Cambodia, that because of butterflies if nothing else, the Khmer Rouge doesn’t rise to power in 1975 and there isn’t a genocide which takes the lives of approximately 2 million persons, most of them from starvation which has to be among the worse ways to go. And this was because the Khmer Rouge insisted on exporting rice to China as if they were achieving the fiction of a three-fold increase in production.
 
Optimal choice would have been letting ho have vietnam as a 'generic' neutral regime in 1945, not bothering with the mess and letting the countries of indochina get the socialism out of their system early. The best politically possible choice would have been keeping half of Vietnam, all of both Laos and Cambodia in SEATO. Vietnam OTL ended up more or less being a capitalistic dictatorship in practice by the 2000s, so it just skips the communist phase for half of vietnam.

You end up with South Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia as corrupt capitalist oligarchies that have a shot at Asian Tiger levels of prosperity. emphasis on it being just a chance, here. Worst case? I guess Thai or OTL Vietnamese economic performance. Best case? Vietnam as a tiger economy with low-end first world standards of living by now and the other 2 indochinese countries being no poorer than say OTL Malaysia. This is on top of no Khmer Rouge genocide, of course.
 
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