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President Wallace may be the most decisive President of the modern age. Taking office in 1976 among a flurry of good will, before seeing defeat at the hands of an angry and bitter public in 1980, Lurleen Wallace is doomed to be forgotten for her time in office as a whole, and remembered purely for being the First Woman, and Widow (Her husband George, also a former Governor of Alabama, was killed by an assassin in 1968) in the White House. My question is, however, what if she never became President? Even with her unremarkable Presidency, she took control at a crucial time- People were distrustful of the Republicans, economic despair ran rampant as the economy was in stagflation, NATO was on the brink of falling apart, and Crime was an inevitable part of daily life. Whilst she was able to hold NATO together and saw a steady decrease in Crime, her Economic record was poor, and abroad, her Administration took hits in Iran and Europe. Her Presidency, whilst seen poorly, was as important as the next, and significantly affected the America we see today.

My question is, what if she never took the helm? What if, like many have wished before and since her passing in 2001, she never became President? What could have been done to stop her meteoric rise? Who would have been President instead, and what would they have done differently?
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