He's fighting inflation, not unemployment.
Perhaps. It depends on how the legacy of the '58 recession plays out in Nixon's mind as president during the sixties. In OTL, out of office, he blamed the anti-inflation hawks for deepening that economic downturn, hurting the GOP in the midterms, & ultimately contributing to his loss against Kennedy.
RogueBeaver said:
Who said he sent OTL troop levels to Nam, because Nixon didn't.
We are talking about an ATL here. A President Nixon who presides over the Gulf Of Tonkin resolution & after isn't the man who is coming into office to clean up the mess of 'Democrats' wars'.
I'm surprised you haven't considered the possibility that Nixon going fullterm from '60 onwards sees a more desperate presidency vis-à-vis SE Asia. With LBJ we had a man who was continually putting off the inevitable, who went with the Pentagon's 'light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel' myths right through to his last year in office, while all along believing that he could get another term in office with which to settle the Vietnam issue. Even McNamara's resignation didn't move him--it took Tet and McCarthy's insurgency to force him to face reality.
(Seriously, RE the prospects & stratagies for an early end to the war in Vietnam, you've never thought that a lame duck Nixon (
or a lame duck JFK for that matter) might be a little desperate by the end of 1966? It's not like either of those presidents have a possible third term. After all, both of them would be dedicated foreign policy wonks, presumably not overwhelmed by the situation as Johnson was.)
Anyway, my scenario about the effects of a sixties Nixon administration goes way beyond a bad political environment for first-time candidate Ronald Reagan in AH California, 1966.
Consider: Fourteen straight years of relatively moderate Republican rule in Washington, with the possibility of VP Lodge leading the push for Civil- and Voting-Rights legislation, with Nelson Rockefeller manoevering to become Nixon's successor?
This is a midterm nightmare for the GOP in 1966, regardless of whatever gains they've made in '64.
Though it may not be a particularly good environment for those Democrats who want their big tent to fully adopt Civil Rights as party orthodoxy.
Now, Dem candidates who can appear to straddle the divide (like Pat Brown?) will do very well in that environment. GOP conservatives like Ronald Reagan? Not so much. At least not outside of a few Southern districts where old Dixiecrats are retiring & the local elites are willing to give friends of Goldwater & Thurmond a go (with help from a few pork-barrelling inducements from the sitting president, of course).