Dick Cheney runs in 2008?

[ersatz-york]

I've wondered what Dick Cheney running for the Presidency in 2008 might look like. Though he had terrible approval ratings when he left office, he was, IIRC, still pretty well respected by the Republican base.

Specifically, my questions are-

Can he win the nomination, and what do the primaries look like?

Assuming he does win the nomination, what are his chances going into the general? Who is his VP? Does Darth Cheney lose in a landslide, or are things not as bleak as they look?

Assuming that Cheney loses in the general, what do the 2012 GOP primaries look like? Does McCain get the chance to run in a better environment, or is he too old/bested by someone else?

If, by some odd chance, Cheney wins, what is the state of the Empire over the next four years? What does 2012 look like?

 

[AYC]

He loses, really, really badly to Obama. Aside from his unpopularity, it's almost impossible for a Republican to win in 2008 unless the Great Recession is butterflied away (and even then it's a stretch). Anti-incumbency sentiment was probably at its strongest since 1980.

 

[ersatz-york]

He loses, really, really badly to Obama. Aside from his unpopularity, it's almost impossible for a Republican to win in 2008 unless the Great Recession is butterflied away (and even then it's a stretch). Anti-incumbency sentiment was probably at its strongest since 1980.

So, what does 2012 look like? Would McCain do better in '12 than Romney did historically?

 

[AYC]

So, what does 2012 look like? Would McCain do better in '12 than Romney did historically?

I'm not sure what effect Cheney running will have on Obama's second term. The Tea Party likely forms as OTL, but as McCain is a stronger candidate he might have a better shot at winning in 2012.

Still an uphill battle though. He'd do better in the Electoral College than Romney did, but I'm not sure by how much.

 

[ersatz-york]

I'm not sure what effect Cheney running will have on Obama's second term. The Tea Party likely forms as OTL, but as McCain is a stronger candidate he might have a better shot at winning in 2012.

Still an uphill battle though. He'd do better in the Electoral College than Romney did, but I'm not sure by how much.

That's what I'm thinking. Cheney's run won't have any effects on Obama's term, of course, but I just think that McCain running in '08 was an enormous waste of a candidate. If McCain would have run in 2012, I think he would have won. McCain is a war hero and a maverick; Romney got branded as a Wall Street vulture from the left and a Massachusetts moderate from the right. McCain would probably take some flak (or maybe a few surface-to-air missiles) from the Tea Party and such, but both his policies and his personal background make him much more amenable to moderates and independents.

 

[Paul V McNutt]

I am not sure he wins the nomination.

 

[Andrew T]

2012 really wasn't that close. There were three states Obama won by 4% or less: Florida (29 EV, Obama won by 1%), Ohio (18 EV, 3%), and Virginia (13 EV, 4%). If Alt-McCain 2012 were to flip those and win all of OTL Romney's votes, he would still come up short, 272-266 EV. To win the election, Alt-McCain 2012 would need to shift the popular vote nationwide by 5.4%, thus putting fairly reliably blue states Colorado (9 EV) and Pennsylvania (20 EV) into play. That might not seem like a lot, but to put it into context: a shift of just 4.7% would have re-elected George Bush in 1992. A shift of 7.8% would have elected Dukakis in 1988.

Ultimately, I don't see how an alt-McCain can shift over 5.4% of voters in the Obama coalition; most of the people who were persuadable away from Obama already were persuaded away from Obama by Romney in 2012.

It's kind of funny that you see McCain as a good candidate who got wasted; I see Romney in much the same way. Here was a centrist governor in a deep blue state, a smart grownup from a long-standing political family, and a guy who successfully and competently implemented a better version of Obamacare before Obama did it. Of course, our Romney was forced to pretend that Obamacare (and by extension, Romneycare in Massachusetts) was some sort of Satanic ritual devised by Bill Ayres in Kenya, so of course he got "branded as a Wall Street vulture" -- because Romney literally could not talk about his entire time in elective service. I mean, why nominate a Governor if you're going to force him to pretend that he never set foot in the state he governed?

Anyway, in much the same way that another Presidential nominee from Massachusetts got nowhere by declaring "this election is not about ideology; it's about competence," I can kind of imagine an alt-Romney not forced to cater to Tea Party idiots doing much better than OTL's Romney did.

 

[Just a Rube]

I am not sure he wins the nomination.

This. Cheney was actively hated by basically everyone left of center, but he wasn't particularly liked by Republicans either.

The Bush administration had lost its popularity even with most Republicans by 2008, and Cheney was also seen as soft on social issues (which was a killer for Giuliani OTL). He has little in the way of natural support, and would be recognized as an electoral disaster by basically everyone. He joins people like Fred Thompson on the also-ran list.

 

[ennobee]

If I remember it right, Cheney himself stated that he would not run for the nomination as soon as one year before the primaries and by doing so effectively made the political slugfest that was 2007-2008 possible in the first place. The main reason he gave -I think I recall- was his age and general health. He was in effect an ailing old man. His real reason I suspect is that he knew since long that he was better in getting things done while staying out of the spotlight than when bathing in it. So if he really wanted the power, he would rather play the facilitator and policy maker for another candidate then run himself. My guess however is that he just wanted to stop while he was on top. Which would have worked if not for the housing bubble bursting in 2007

 

[jmc247]

That's what I'm thinking. Cheney's run won't have any effects on Obama's term, of course, but I just think that McCain running in '08 was an enormous waste of a candidate. If McCain would have run in 2012, I think he would have won. McCain is a war hero and a maverick; Romney got branded as a Wall Street vulture from the left and a Massachusetts moderate from the right. McCain would probably take some flak (or maybe a few surface-to-air missiles) from the Tea Party and such, but both his policies and his personal background make him much more amenable to moderates and independents.

2012 was perhaps the most unserious year foreign policy wise for the American public that we have had since 1997. McCain needed foreign policy to be a real issue to win and Obama was at a point where he made a lot of mistakes in Libya, Iraq and a civil war in Syria being ignored and with Russia, but none of them had come home to roost, hence none were enough to stop America's isolationist mood where they really bought America could ignore the world without consequence or 'the 1980s are calling they want their foreign policy back' when it came to Putin's increasing belligerence.

Trump is running foreign policy wise this year a campaign that would have gone great in 2012, not so well this year I suspect.

Plainly speaking McCain would lose 2012 because McCain is the go to guy on foreign policy and Obama's mistakes he made mostly in 2011 hadn't come home to roost yet and until they did his decisions were going to be popular.

McCain needed a foreign policy election to win or at least an election evenly divided between domestic and foreign policy. That wasn't 2008 or 2012. Frankly the last election foreign policy was a core election issue was 2004.

 

[dw93]

You'd need an earlier POD for Cheney to run in 08. His health was pretty bad by 2008 and I think if for whatever reason he did run, his health would take a toll on him during the campaign trail and force him out of the race. Plus, by 2008 the Bush administration hit it's lowest point in approval, so if for whatever reason Cheney did win the nomination, he'd get trounced in the general, I think Obama would win with a margin of victory at least as big as Reagan's in 1980. John Edwards would've even beaten Cheney by a large margin.

 

[Andrew T]

McCain needed a foreign policy election to win or at least an election evenly divided between domestic and foreign policy. That wasn't 2008 or 2012. Frankly the last election foreign policy was a core election issue was 2004.

More like 1980 if you're talking about the general election. 2004 wasn't really a nationalized election, and wasn't cleanly fought on foreign policy grounds. The 2004 Democratic Primary certainly was, but the anti-war candidate (Dean) lost out to the guy who voted for the Iraq war (Kerry).

 

[ersatz-york]

Say that butterflies cause the onset of the Great Recession to be delayed for up to a few months; the crash doesn't happen until after Election Day.

Can the 2008 election then be considered a "foreign policy election"? Could McCain (not Cheney) have a shot at winning then?

 

[dw93]

Say that butterflies cause the onset of the Great Recession to be delayed for up to a few months; the crash doesn't happen until after Election Day.

Can the 2008 election then be considered a "foreign policy election"? Could McCain (not Cheney) have a shot at winning then?

I think it would be considered a foreign policy election, Iraq was the main issue of the election before the fall of 2008. With that said, McCain can beat Obama Only if he picks a running mate more qualified than Palin, but it will be an uphill battle and given how unpopular the war and Bush were, I'd still give Obama the advantage.

 

[Paul V McNutt]

I still have my doubts he wins the nomination. His opponents, I don't think he scares off anybody from running., can use his health as an issue.