Blue Skies in Camelot: An Alternate 60's and Beyond
- Thread starter President_Lincoln
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I made this infobox for the 1968 presidential election as I thought it would play out given the candidates and conditions of this TL's 1968. President Lincoln's writing is fantastic as usual, however, like the 1964 election, I thought some of the ways certain states voted was unrealistic. In this revision, Romney still wins following Humphrey's gaffe, running up competitive margins in the midwest and coastal regions. Without the southern strategy in effect, Wallace does better in the South, as he strikes a clearer contrast as the only "conservative" candidate running. Humphrey rides Kennedy's popularity to victories across the North East, while the peculiarities of three-way vote splitting in the South allows him to eek out wins in NC and Florida, as well as the border states of Kentucky and Missouri. Humphrey also does well in Appalachia due to the popularity of Kennedy's social programs with White working-class voters. Romney wins Texas due to the absence of LBJ from the political scene (in OTL LBJ used his immense influence in the state to *narrowly* deliver it to Humphrey), Bush's presence on the ticket, and the state's natural drift toward the GOP.
Also: Romney becomes the first GOP president to be elected without Ohio. Alaska breaks towards Humphrey due to the fact that this state was still rather competitive in the 1960s.
Excellent work, President Zinn!
I always love hearing (and seeing) what you have to say about the elections. Thank you for the wikibox and the valuable information, as well as the compliments.
Thanks! But credit where it's due, @BP Booker made the actual image, all I did was change the text in the corner the way he wanted it.Excellent work, Roger! I love this.
A good question, your Majesty! And one whose answer largely depends on what form my writing schedule winds up taking over the next several weeks.
I can guarantee at least Monday and Friday updates, beyond that I'm not sure.BP Booker
Banned
No White Anglo Saxon Protestant Male Presidents after Eisenhower:
Joe Kennedy 1961 -1969 (Catholic)
George Romney 1969 -1977 (Mormon)
Milton Shapp 1977 -1981 (Jewish)
Robert Kennedy 1981 -1989 (Catholic)
Joe Biden 1989-1997 (Catholic)
Hillary Rodham 1997 -2005 (Woman)
John Lewis 2005 -2013 (Black)
Mitt Romney 2013 - (Mormon)
I can beat that:
John Kennedy (1961-1969) Catholic
George Romney (1969-1877) Mormon
Miilton Shapp (1977-1985) Jewish
Edward Brooke (1985-1993) African-American
Daniel Inouye (1993-2001) Asian-American
Tom Cole (2001-2009) Native American
Harold Ford (2009-2017) African-American
Raul Labrador (2017-) Mormon AND Latino
I can beat that too
John Kennedy (1961-1969)
George Romney (1969-1977)
Richard Nixon (converts to Scientology, 1977-)
John Kennedy (1961-1969)
George Romney (1969-1977)
Richard Nixon (converts to Scientology, 1977-)
Haha yes!
"Only Communists deal in absolutes."
"To me, the capitalists with their corrupt democracy are worse than the Communist's Dictatorship of the proletariat!" (in which Obi Wan responds with "replace proletariat with kleptocrats")
Chapter 46
Chapter 46: Come Together - George Romney Takes the Oath of Office
Above: Governor George Wilcken Romney is sworn in as the 36th President of the United States by Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Earl Warren. Romney’s wife, Lenore looks on with a smile as her husband recites the oath, while President John F. Kennedy, Secretary Robert Kennedy and Senator Hubert Humphrey watch from the sides. Humphrey, still bitter from his narrow defeat called the occasion “possibly the single saddest day of my life”. (Photo credit to Nerdman 3000)
“I, George Wilcken Romney do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. So help me God.”
“Mr. Chief Justice, Speaker McCormack, Senator Mansfield, Vice President Bush, Vice President Sanford, President Truman, President Eisenhower, President Kennedy, my fellow Americans, and my fellow citizens of the world;
I ask you to join with me today in sharing the majesty of this moment. The peaceful transfer of power is tradition in our country, but as we have so tragically seen of late, this is not the case in all parts of the world. In continuing this brave tradition, we affirm, in unity, the values that make us truly free...
Each moment in history is a fleeting time, a speck of sand in an eternal hourglass, unique and precious. Some however, stand above the rest as moments of opportunity and promise. This can be such a moment...
We stand, for the first time, at the precipice of achieving many of mankind’s deepest aspirations. The dizzying pace of change allows us to contemplate, within our lifetimes, advances that once would have taken centuries....
In throwing wide the horizons of space, we have discovered new horizons here on Earth...
For the first time, because the people of the world want peace, and the leaders of the world are afraid of war, the times may at last be on the side of peace. But true peace can only be procured and protected through a proper and necessary display of strength on the part of freedom loving people everywhere…
Our destiny offers not the cup of despair, but the chalice of opportunity. So let us seize it not in fear, but in gladness-and "riders on the earth together," let us go forward, firm in our faith, steadfast in our purpose, cautious of the dangers, but sustained by our confidence in the will of God and the promise of man. Thank you, and may God Bless the United States of America.”
- Excerpts from President Romney’s inaugural address
Elected largely through the machinations of George Corey Wallace’s one man crusade to bring down the Democratic Party, George Romney, 61 years old at the time of his inauguration, decided that his first order of business was to set about unifying the divided country he’d been elected to govern. In many ways, the new President was everything the previous Chief Executive wasn’t. JFK had been born into a political dynasty and enjoyed an early life of wealth and privilege; Romney was a largely self made man whose family hardly scraped by during the lean years of the Great Depression. JFK was magnanimous, a party animal, and possessive of a towering intellect, the quiet Romney’s senior yearbook photo was captioned: "Serious, high minded, of noble nature – a real fellow.” Despite their differences, both men did possess a great deal of patriotism, and during their meetings to discuss the transition, a mutual respect formed between the New Englander and the former head of American Motors. The rest of Romney’s life story was interesting as well. He, like most young men of his faith, served as a missionary for two years in his early 20’s. Working in Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland, Romney would credit the skills he developed on mission, particularly his public speaking, salesmanship, and ability to organize and direct volunteers, as being critical to his future success in business and politics. Upon returning from mission in late 1928, he married his high school sweetheart, aspiring actress Lenore LaFount, who was one year his junior. Known for her sweet, generous nature, Lenore and George were both renowned in the Mormon church and beyond for their outstanding acts of charity. From the late 50’s on, the Romneys donated 20% of their annual income to charity and the church (including the 10% tithe required by Mormon doctrine). Calling his religion his “most important possession”, Romney presided over the Detroit Stake of the church by the time he came to head American Motors, which covered not just all of Metro Detroit, but Ann Arbor, and the Toledo area of Ohio but also the western edge of Ontario along the Michigan border. Because the stake covered part of Canada, he often interacted with Canadian Mission President Thomas S. Monson. Romney's rise to a leadership role in the church reflected the church's journey from a fringe pioneer religion to one that was closely associated with mainstream American business and values. Due in part to his prominence, the larger Romney family tree would become viewed as "LDS royalty".
Romney was a number of firsts for an occupant of the Oval Office: the first Mormon of course, a church whose tenets he followed devoutly and resolutely; and the first to be born outside of the United States. Born to Mormon missionaries in Colonia Dublánin Galeana in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, Romney initially faced questions about his constitutional ability to be President. Though the Humphrey campaign had avoided the topic entirely, saying that they did not want to include personal attacks in their rhetoric, and the courts would sort out the matter if need be, the Wallace/Chandler ticket had had a field day. They called Romney “Mex”, an old nickname he’d suffered throughout High School, and made several other disparaging remarks about his eligibility to be in the race. Romney, for his part answered these attacks with his trademark patience, compassion, and kindness. He reminded the American people that his parents were both American citizens, natives of the territory of Utah. Thus by the laws of the land, he was a natural born American citizen himself, even if he had been born outside of the country. “The place of my birth should not be of any concern to the people of this great nation.” The President-Elect said in a speech shortly before taking office. “America is and always has been, my home.” Though some Conservative Party members still threatened to level lawsuits against the President-Elect, most legal scholars agreed that any case they made was likely to be thrown out of court. Romney successfully leveraged his faith and “outsider” status to incur sympathy from the people, especially African Americans, Mexican Americans, and other minorities, who turned out to vote for him in greater numbers than the Republicans had seen in decades. This wasn’t perfect of course, and his Church’s policy regarding African Americans being barred from the cloth would later come under scrutiny, but for the time being, Romney enjoyed a reputation for racial egalitarianism.
He invited his opponent, Senator Humphrey to attend his swearing in ceremony, not to gloat or strut his victory in the Senator’s face, but as a show of unity and respect for the nation’s hallowed democratic traditions. Humphrey agreed to attend, and the two attracted much attention by shaking hands shortly after Romney finished reciting the oath. Unfortunately for the President-Elect however, this move backfired somewhat, as many in the press used their coverage of the event to remind their readers that it was Humphrey, not Romney who had won the popular vote, undermining, even if only to a small degree, the new President’s mandate to govern. This was worrisome not just to Romney, but to his advisers as well, as even within months of his election, a mountain of work and issues to resolve had piled up in the Oval Office.
President Kennedy left behind a strong state of the union for his successor: a booming economy, powerful military, and sizable budget surplus meant that Romney would be able to forgo making too many difficult decisions, at least for the time being. What Kennedy could not fix for the new President however was the burgeoning sense of political gridlock engulfing Washington.
It began in June of the previous year, when Chief Justice Earl Warren of the Supreme Court informed President Kennedy of his desire to retire before the election, in case Governor Romney, or heaven forbid, Governor Wallace won and would be entitled to appoint a conservative justice as his successor. Sympathizing with Warren’s position, and wanting to add yet further to his legacy, the President agreed and named Paul A. Freund, a Harvard Law professor and constitutional scholar as his choice for Warren’s successor as Chief Justice. With a 63 - 37 majority in the Senate, the confirmation process should have been a breeze, but given the President’s already difficult fight for the AFP in the Upper Chamber, combined with Senate Republicans’ filibusters and Conservatives’ refusal to back anything at all that Kennedy put forward, the nomination stalled. Following AFP’s passage, the President, through some tough negotiations and long nights spent on the phone with party leaders, was able to successfully push Freund’s nomination through the Senate, though at a great cost of goodwill among Republicans. Years of tough as nails campaigning and arm twisting on behalf of Civil Rights and other issues had turned JFK into a battle hardened political veteran, though one who never once lost sight of his ideals, and Chief Justice-to be Freund was a final example of that talent. Chief Justice Warren agreed to stay on long enough to inaugurate President-Elect Romney, and would retire shortly afterward, leaving a court, in the words of Vice President-Elect Bush, “dominated” by liberals.
The Supreme Court following Romney’s Inauguration
Chief Justice Paul Freund - Kennedy appointee, since 1968. (Liberal)
Associate Justice Hugo Black - Roosevelt appointee, since 1937. (Liberal)
Associate Justice Byron White - Kennedy appointee, since 1962. (Moderate)
Associate Justice Arthur Goldberg - Kennedy appointee, since 1962. (Liberal)
Associate Justice William O. Douglas - Roosevelt appointee, since 1939. (Liberal)
Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan II - Eisenhower appointee, since 1955. (Conservative)
Associate Justice Potter Stewart - Eisenhower appointee, since 1958. (Moderate)
Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall - Kennedy appointee, since 1967. (Liberal)
Associate Justice William Brennan - Eisenhower appointee, since 1956. (Liberal)
Disappointed by their inability to stop Freund’s confirmation, which they feared would stack the court in a progressive direction for possibly decades to come, conservative Republicans were perturbed further by Romney and Bush’s moderately progressive social positions on the campaign trail. Apathetic or moderately pro-abortion stances and an “embracing” of affordable contraceptives by the Vice President-Elect seemed not to jive with the beliefs of many in the Grand Old Party. As William F. Buckley of The National Review and Firing Line summarized in his 1983 book Revolution on the Right, “Conservatives within the Republican Party were sick and tired of the same disappointments that had given us a defeated Richard Nixon in 1960, and Nelson Rockefeller in 1964. Even with a victory for our party in ‘68, we were fed up with the lack of a voice for us under Romney and Bush, whom we feared were too centrist, too liberal, too willing to keel over to Democratic demands. To make matters worse, Senator Barry Goldwater (R - AZ), long our champion in Congress and across the nation, was growing older, and had failed to attract the massive support our movement required to succeed. What we needed was a leader, someone to keep conservatives like me in the Republican Party and grow our brand by attracting new subscribers. It turned out that we would find two. Actors hailing both from the sunny, Golden State of California: Ronald Reagan and Shirley Temple.”
Buckley’s comments and Reagan and Temple’s surging popularity in the party were reflective of a change within the Republican ranks. Though there were plenty in the GOP who preferred moderation, and the path of Romney, Rockefeller, and Bush, a growing number, seemingly by the day, preferred paleoconservatism. Loosely defined, paleoconservatism was the intellectual brainchild of Buckley, Goldwater and other like minded thinkers, who believed in strong support for civil rights, but were moderate to conservative on their other positions regarding the social order. Staunchly anti communist without veering into the excess of the John Birch Society, paleoconservatives believed in the need for rolling back or at the very least, severely limiting the growth of the size and scope of the Federal Government, and in the value of individual rights and support for business. In many ways fundamentally libertarian, the philosophy’s foreign policy ranged from interventionists like Buckley, who felt that the United States should play an active role in stopping the spread of communism abroad, to those like future congressman Ron Paul (R - TX), who were more isolationist in their outlook. Tracing their heritage back to Edmund Burke and Thomas Jefferson, Buckley and his paleoconservatives craved a revolution to “take back” their Republican Party. With Reagan running the roost on the West Coast, Temple attracting media attention in the House, Ohioan Robert Taft Jr.’s recent election to the Senate, and elder brother James Buckley’s Quixotic Senate race in New York setting him up for a real shot in 1970, it seemed that this revolution was close at hand.
Hoping to nip these divides in the bud before they grew out of hand, House Minority Leader Gerald Ford (R - MI) and Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen (R - IL) met with President Romney and Vice President Bush on January 21st, the day after the inauguration, to work out an agenda for the President’s first 100 days in office. Romney, a Republican former Governor of a Blue-leaning swing state and ardent moderate, was accustomed to negotiation and bipartisanship and was eager to work with Democrats and his fellow Republicans alike on a sweeping legislative slate to continue the war on poverty and the fight for equality for all. To Romney, the Buckley brand of Republicanism was “extremism in disguise” and did not address the reality of the needs of many Americans. Dirksen and Ford both agreed with this parliamentarian style of governance, though they and Vice President Bush encouraged Romney to pursue fiscal restraint and tax cuts to use up the surplus, rather than increased spending. Their support already shaky, they could not risk alienating the Buckley wing of the party. Not wanting to rock the boat too much in an already tense and combative political atmosphere, the new Administration spent its first several weeks in office completing the transition and getting their cabinet appointees approved by the Senate.
The Romney Cabinet:
Secretary of State: Richard M. Nixon
Secretary of Treasury: Nelson Rockefeller
Secretary of Defense: Omar Bradley
Attorney General: John N. Mitchell
Postmaster General: Winton M. Blount
Secretary of the Interior: Wally Joseph Hickel
Secretary of Agriculture: Earl Butz
Secretary of Commerce: Maurice Stans
Secretary of Labor: George P. Shultz
Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare: Robert Finch
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development: Hiram Fong
Secretary of Transportation: John A. Volpe
Chief of Staff: Leonard W. Hall
National Security Adviser: Henry Kissinger
UN Ambassador: John A. Scali
The picks were unique for several reasons, starting with Fong at HUD. The first Asian-American to serve in the cabinet, Fong brought years of legislative experience and a new perspective to the relatively young department he would be heading. Several of the picks, notably Transportation Secretary Volpe, as well as Rockefeller at Treasury and Nixon at State were a sort of “team of rivals” with the new President showing his desire to place talent and merit above political cronyism among his advisers. Romney made it clear from the beginning of his administration that his staff had been hired to “lead, as effectively as possible, the nation; not to boost my ego or make me feel good.” He didn’t under any circumstances want to surround himself with sycophants or yes men, even when it came to contentious issues like foreign affairs. Running his cabinet like the business executive he’d been years before, Romney encouraged his underlings to pursue their own policy initiatives, then bring them to him for review and approval. “Your business is the running of the country.” He told his staff at their first meeting. “Mine is to give you all direction, cross the t’s, dot the i’s.” This independent style suited his picks for the oldest departments well, as Rockefeller contented himself with becoming familiar with the nation’s monetary policy and Secretaries Nixon and Bradley began to work on a comprehensive strategy in Cambodia.
As Romney prepared to take office, the airstrikes on guerrilla supply lines initiated by the Kennedy administration months before were beginning to pay off, as Communist offensives were becoming shorter and increasingly anemic and Pol Pot’s soldiers retreated from their conquered villages to the safety of their jungle abodes. Combined with the help of the staunchly pro-U.S. government in Thailand, Kennedy’s attacks, run by pilots such as George W. Bush, were effectively choking the life out of the insurgency until late November, when North Vietnamese comandos began sneaking supplies into the Cambodian jungles through branches of the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos. Well dug in and protected from direct strikes by the dense jungle canopy and a network of underground tunnels, the insurgents were fed, but effectively trapped with no way out. Secretary of Defense Kennedy and his elder brother left office by recommending to their successors that the United States cease military operations in the country and allow the Prince’s government to take over responsibility for keeping the Communists stuck in the jungle. “As the President and I have always insisted,” Secretary Kennedy said in a memo to the new Administration. “This is their war. We can help them, we can aid them, but we cannot fight it for them. There is no ‘winning’ to be had in Cambodia.” Secretary Nixon and National Security Adviser Kissinger had different plans, however.
Wanting to save face after spending all of election season decrying the Democrats as “weak on foreign policy”, it would seem, in Nixon’s machiavellian mind, utterly unacceptable and hypocritical to about face and end or limit American involvement in Cambodia. Instead, a ramping up of combat operations was what was required. It would help the new President’s opinion polls to give the American people an enemy, something they could rally against, and who better, in the still frosty grip of the Cold War, then the godless foreign reds? In a series of closed door meetings at the Pentagon, Nixon and Kissinger convinced newly minted Defense Secretary Bradley of the need for U.S. ground forces against the Khmer Rouge. Their argument was that the Cambodian Prince and his army had already proven themselves incompetent in matters of containment and thus must be bypassed if the “communist problem” in Indochina was ever going to be resolved. Bradley, the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in American History and a five star general, a specialist in tactical and strategic matters through and through, wanted to defend the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh in the South, and felt somewhat uncomfortable trying to pass judgement on the geopolitical situation in Southeast Asia. He decided to take Nixon and Kissinger at their word. Papers were filed, the President briefed, and congressional authorization promptly secured. On February 12th, 1969, President Romney informed the American people that in accordance with “the recommendations of our nation’s top military strategists”, 100,000 American marines, naval personnel, and soldiers were to be shipped, over the next three months, to Cambodia to help defeat the communists there. Romney, admittedly no expert on foreign affairs, decided to trust Nixon’s appraisal, and hand the reins of decision making on this matter to his Secretary of State. Little could the President have known that in following the advice of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, he was opening up a pandora’s box that would bleed the jungles of Southeast Asia for years to come.
Next Time on Blue Skies in Camelot: The Turbulence Grows Around the World
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An update on Cambodia will be coming up soon! First we're spending a few chapters checking in with the rest of the world.