Challenge: POTUS Margaret Thatcher

Hendryk

Banned
We've had questions like this asked before, i.e. "WI such-and-such figure was born in the US instead of their home country?" The problem is that if they're born in the US, as Margaret Thatcher would have to be in order to become POTUS, they grow up to be such different persons that it becomes a moot point. Okay, so you could have a POTUS named Margaret Thatcher if you want to, but she wouldn't be the Margaret Thatcher of OTL.
 
Well, Margaret Hilda Roberts is the daughter of a grocer from Grantham, Alfred Roberts who is also a Methodist lay preacher so have him take a step up in the church and then packed off to the USA to support the Methodist church there.

Interestingly enough, the Methodist strongholds in the USA are Kentucky and Tennessee so the Roberts could actually drift towards the Democrat party rather than the Republicans, particularly during the 1930s and 1940s which would be an interesting development.

Roberts might apply to somewhere like Vasser or Brown, or might end up in a Methodist sponsored college. No need to mess around with the fact she studies chemistry though. If she graduates, she will probably end up in the growing petrochemical industry.

Roberts could become Thatcher - Denis was a small business man whose firm was taken over by Castrol Oil so entered the oil industry and the two could potentially meet. Or she could meet one George Herbert Walker Bush, who knows (although he married Barbara in 1945). Either way, there's every reason to think that (through her spouse and definitely through her father), she will drift into politics.

The rest, as they say, is history.
 
This gave me an idea for another "Eastern Entrance" sort of TL. My shameless political matchmaking... :D Remember Ferdinand and Imelda? Once I finish EE, I'll take you on another round of nuptials... This one leading the US towards rollback, not containment, of the welfare state. She won't be alone either...
 
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We've had questions like this asked before, i.e. "WI such-and-such figure was born in the US instead of their home country?" The problem is that if they're born in the US, as Margaret Thatcher would have to be in order to become POTUS, they grow up to be such different persons that it becomes a moot point. Okay, so you could have a POTUS named Margaret Thatcher if you want to, but she wouldn't be the Margaret Thatcher of OTL.

You can rationalize a converging childhood and early career by saying her parents raised her in the US until the age of 3 or 4, then returned to England where Margaret would complete her schooling, get a degree in chemistry from Oxford, and begin her career as in OTL. You can have a very similar person to a point, but she would have to come to the US by the mid sixties, and there her background changes.
 
Understood, I've done that in all my TL's and will do so in the next one. I favor a "freeze", namely circumstances that prevent a person from developing into their OTL selves. But with enough butterflies to make it interesting...
 
We've had questions like this asked before, i.e. "WI such-and-such figure was born in the US instead of their home country?" The problem is that if they're born in the US, as Margaret Thatcher would have to be in order to become POTUS, they grow up to be such different persons that it becomes a moot point. Okay, so you could have a POTUS named Margaret Thatcher if you want to, but she wouldn't be the Margaret Thatcher of OTL.

Another major stumbling block is that the US was probably not ready to elect a female president in the seventies or eighties, which is when she would be about the right age to stand.

Cheers,
Nigel.
 
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