Challenge: Pat Brown wins reelection in '66

Ronald Reagan must be the GOP gubernatorial nominee and not be killed. There's an excellent chapter on this in Nixonland, but basically themes of entitlement and traditional values- not to mention box office popularity.
 
The absolute simplest way?

Lame duck second term President Richard Nixon. (Heh, you didn't give a POD. And a POD in 1960 is still a good start for an eventual Reagan campaign for the governor's mansion).

Civil Rights legislation is either only just moving into the '64 phase of OT, or it's a victim of gridlock and is stalled.

Doesn't matter if President Nixon saved the world/avoided the Missile Crisis--Vietnam is now his quagmire.

It doesn't matter if he has a super-duper plan to 'Abrams-Petraeus-Surge' America to victory in SE Asia (I know you're one of the people here who lean towards that particular story arc), the rising level of casualties is beginning to demoralise middle America. The campuses are still beginning to erupt.

The ghetto is also still beginning to erupt (and it's probably worse, seeing Civil Rights aren't as advanced on the national stage as it was in OT.)

All of this is before we get to the economy. F'rinstance, has the White House spent the last half-decade fighting inflation, or unemployment? How much has Dick allowed the congressional Democrats to talk him into expanding government programmes?

In this scenario Reagan is going down. Like a post-Pete Wilson GOP conservative (to draw a Californian political analogy from a much later era.)
 
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).
 
Thanks for the advice- might need this in the future. If Diem lives, presumably things stabilize a bit if he reforms. Presumably Nixon, and definitely JFK, would pressure him. Whoever succeeds him is uncertain, and it wouldn't be Thieu/Ky, because they led rebel units in '63 IOTL.
 
Thanks for the advice- might need this in the future. If Diem lives, presumably things stabilize a bit if he reforms. Presumably Nixon, and definitely JFK, would pressure him. Whoever succeeds him is uncertain, and it wouldn't be Thieu/Ky, because they led rebel units in '63 IOTL.

Well, this is a bit OT, but Diem living isn't a problem.

Diem living and being able to continue presiding/trusted to continue as president? That is a problem.

Anyway, a serious question to you, RB: Have you ever considered the efficacy of a sixties POTUS adopting an early version of the Powell Doctrine, and avoiding committing to fighting Vietnam as per OTL levels?

All this 'Diem could have won' or 'Abrams could have won' makes for some desperate handwaving, IMHO.
 
Yes- all my TLs involve Vietnamization and improval of ARVN morale. The reason why I prefer to keep Diem is that he has the nationalist creds that no one else had. Even Ho acknowledges that- "I can't believe the Americans would be so stupid."
 
Yes- all my TLs involve Vietnamization and improval of ARVN morale. The reason why I prefer to keep Diem is that he has the nationalist creds that no one else had. Even Ho acknowledges that- "I can't believe the Americans would be so stupid."

I think a lot of Buddhist nationalists in the RVN would've have disagreed about his having 'nationalist creds'.

Anyway, maybe I've been brainwashed by mainstream historiography, but wasn't Ngo Dinh Diem a bit, well, mentally disturbed? And if that wasn't the case, and Diem was actually a very stable individual, what does it say about the motivations of the US government to want to discredit him?

(Seriously, every one of your TLs has the exact same 'Vietnam chapter'? Don't believe in the theory of the multiverse, eh?)
 
Well, who else is there to lead SVN? The country was under Catholic minority rule for the entire history, and that made it untenable in the long run. Who do you think should run the country and how? Just curious.
 
Reagan attacked the infrastructure projects such as UCal, water, etc. IOW, "he built it, but the hippies don't appreciate it. Vote Reagan!"
 
Well, who else is there to lead SVN? The country was under Catholic minority rule for the entire history, and that made it untenable in the long run. Who do you think should run the country and how? Just curious.

Off the top of my head, there were some actual democrats in the national assembly.

Dennis Warner, an Australian journalist and friend of Kissinger, brought several of them to Australia in the early seventies to plead their case. He introduced the leader of the group to Arthur Calwell, the strongly anti-war former leader of the Labor Opposition--Calwell was so impressed by the man he told Warner that he might have reconsidered his opposition to the war in the first place if the RVN had been led by men such as him.

But it wasn't. It was led by the erratic Diem, then by the tinpot junta that replaced him. Maybe 'Big' Minh could have been an effective military dictator, if the regime hadn't been too dysfunctional for someone as rational as himself.

Maybe the South Vietnamese could have produced an authoritarian as capable as Ho or General Giap, but without the personality defects of the Diem brothers.

Maybe Vietnam would have been better off if Taft had been POTUS in the mid fifties & he'd refused to set up the Southern republic...
 
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