DBWI: Later Reagan, Bush, and Clinton Presidencies

In OTL, President Ronald Reagan was elected in 1976 and re-elected in 1980, succeeding a Democratic President (I can't remember what his name was). Reagan's Former Secretary of State George H. W. Bush (1979-1983) became his heir apparent when Vice President Richard Schweiker declined to run for the nomination. Bush was elected in 1984 as Reagan's third term, but was defeated for re-election in 1988 by the young Governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton and his running mate Senator Al Gore of Tennessee. Clinton-Gore won re-election in 1992, defeating Senator Bob Dole of Kansas and his running mate Former HUD Secretary Jack Kemp. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton was elected a United States Senator from Illinois in the US Senate Election in Illinois of 1996, succeeding Senator Paul Simon. What if these three presidencies took place four years later than OTL?
 
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Clinton is pretty easy, seeing as how he was the youngest President in OTL. Plenty of time for him to win later.

Reagan would be hard - he was pretty old for a first term by 1980. Bush four years later is easy enough if Reagan was also four years later. Plus after 16 years of JFK-LBJ-HHH-Ed Muskie, Democrat fatigue was just too locked in. No way were the Democrats getting a fifth straight term, especially with the 1974 oil shock and the fall of Saigon in 1976. Even sympathy for Humphrey (who resigned in late 1975 due to cancer) wasn't going to save Muskie.

MAYBE if a different Republican wins in 1976, performs well and avoids scandal, but doesn't run in 1980 due to health reasons, Reagan can take the nomination in 1980 and win. Otherwise your POD would have to be Nixon winning in 1968, a Democrat winning in 1972 or 1976, and the late 1970s going badly due to scandal or a worse hostage situation at the Kabul embassy.

One big difference: Reagan and Bush, rather than Clinton, would get credit for winning the Cold War - although Reagan does deserve credit for opening up China in 1977 after Mao's death.
 
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I mean, you can push back that obscure Democrat to 1976 and have him fuck up Iran in the late 70s as opposed to the military dictatorship we got. Maybe if Watergate breaks later or doesn’t break at all, Nixon hangs on to get re-elected. And maybe if the Dems don’t bungle the mid-70s and shatter America’s faith in government...though that probably averts Reagan.

And Clinton doesn’t get elected in ‘92 with all the sexual harassment scandal; he only got a second term - barely - because he handled Iraq like a champ and stimulated the economy. That and he made Iraq cede Kurdistan just so he could turn it into an American ally and headquarters for a fuckton of American businesses.
 
A later Reagan presidency could prove troublesome. Ronald Reagan's Alzheimer's disease would become a factor. In our timeline he retired from public life in 1986.
He would be into his second term when the Alzheimer's started to take effect.
 
Also, does this butterfly President McCain and his curb-stomp of al-Qaeda after the embassy bombings? And the eventual split with the evangelical base, which is now about 50-50 between parties?
 
Also, does this butterfly President McCain and his curb-stomp of al-Qaeda after the embassy bombings? And the eventual split with the evangelical base, which is now about 50-50 between parties?

Hard to see a major change in evangelical votes. Moving the same OTL presidents four years later isn't going to create enough of a cultural shift to align evangelicals with one party or the other.
 
. . . especially with the 1974 oil shock . . .
And with an abrupt rise in the price of a major input, of course the overall economy can do less! And yet, people somehow found this mysterious, never understood this part.

Anyway, resulting recession (brief as it may be) doomed Muskie in ‘76.

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I’m going to cast a dissenting vote and says Reagan wins in 1980 even if he had lost in ‘76. He was a young, healthy 69-year-old and perceived that way by the public. :)

(The Alzheimer’s symptoms were more than half a decade away.)
 
Hard to see a major change in evangelical votes. Moving the same OTL presidents four years later isn't going to create enough of a cultural shift to align evangelicals with one party or the other.

I thought so too, but with evangelicals alienated from the more moderate GOP, they ended up divided - one side was more concerned with social issues and the other with environment and climate change concerns.
 
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