Give Peace A Chance: The Presidency of Eugene McCarthy
- Thread starter The Lethargic Lett
- Start date
Chapter Eight - War (What Is It Good For?)
“The most disturbing thing I saw was one boy and this is what haunts me … A boy with his arms shot off, shot up and hanging on and he just had this bewildered look on his face like what did I do, what’s wrong… he couldn’t comprehend.”
With the first year of the McCarthy Administration coming to a close, Press Secretary Seymour Hersh hadn’t especially been an outstanding figure of the White House. Certainly, he was effective, but his skills had always lain more with ear-to-the-ground investigations and journalistic pursuits rather than covering for the President from those same investigations. Seymour Hersh’s luck would change, as it happened, with fate giving him a last hurrah of impartial journalistic accomplishment before being sucked into the swamp of partisanship.
After moving up from McCarthy’s Campaign Press Secretary to McCarthy’s White House Press Secretary, Hersh had left much of his research and contacts on Vietnam to his friend, mentor, and fellow anti-war journalist, I. F. Stone. Stone had been following up with Hersh’s investigations, and got a tip of an American lieutenant named William Calley of the 23rd Infantry Division getting court martialed for killing civilians. Several extensive interviews (with Calley and others) later, and Stone was able to prove the existence of massacres of civilians by American soldiers in South Vietnam. The most documented example was in the village of Son My, known to American topographers as My Lai.
Several villages were razed and between 347 and 504 South Vietnamese civilians were killed by US soldiers in the My Lai Massacre.
Now, I.F. Stone was a political outsider, and he would be releasing the story of My Lai in his newsletter, I.F. Stone’s Weekly, regardless of what the President thought of it. From there, it would almost definitely get picked up by larger distributors. But, as a show of courtesy, he sent the story to Hersh before sending it to print [1]. In turn, Hersh showed the story to the President. As it turned out, Stone wouldn’t need to displease the President; in fact, Gene McCarthy was ecstatic. Being a man who delighted in vindication, the cover-up of a massacre was just the thing he needed to publicize to end public support for the Vietnam War.
And so it was that the same day the subscribers of I.F. Stone’s Weekly were reading of the My Lai Massacre that President Eugene McCarthy held a special press conference revealing that American soldiers had been killing civilians in South Vietnam. The story spread like wildfire, not only for its contents, but by the fact that the office of the President guaranteed its truthfulness by bringing it to the attention of the press.
To say it caused an uproar would be an understatement.
Anti-war activists were finally starting to see public opinion sway in their direction, while pro-war hawks screamed bloody murder. Representative L. Mendel Rivers of South Carolina, a George Wallace supporter who had since returned to the fold of the Democratic Party, was the most critical of them all. The Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) and self-proclaimed “Granddaddy of the War Hawks,” Rivers denounced McCarthy's use of the President's office to drag the respectability and reputation of the US Armed Forces through the mud. Rivers publicly speculated that the My Lai Massacre had never really happened, and instead had been concocted by anti-war radicals to fool the public into backing down from the war. Unfortunately for Rivers, his scepticism was used against him when Speaker Mo Udall had a motion put forward to establish a special committee to investigate the veracity of the My Lai Massacre: a special committee that would not be under the control of L. Mendel Rivers.
L. Mendel Rivers: Dixiecrat, HASC Chairman, and "Granddaddy of the War Hawks."
Earlier in the year, Congressman Udall had heard rumblings of My Lai, and had requested Rivers and the HASC to either open an investigation or have the Pentagon open one. Nothing had come of it, but where Congressman Udall had failed, Speaker Udall could succeed. The vote to form the special committee passed by a respectable margin, but with vocal opposition coming from War Hawks, Southern Democrats, and sticklers for Congressional proceedings who felt the investigation should’ve been handled by the HASC. Robert Leggett, an anti-war Democratic Representative from California who was also on the HASC, was made Chairman of the Special Committee to Investigate My Lai, which was composed of an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, and with membership being roughly even between Hawks and Doves. Although the cat was already out of the bag, the Committee to Investigate My Lai would confirm the accusations of the President and I.F. Stone, and would provide dozens of testimonials to the military court handling William Calley’s court martial case [2].
Ultimately, William Calley, and his direct superior, Captain Ernest Medina, would both serve life in prison. Others, like Colonel Oran Henderson and Captain Eugene Kotouc received lighter prison sentences. Major General Samuel W. Koster, the highest ranking officer to be implicated, was demoted to Brigadier General and stripped of a distinguished service medal, while others involved in the initial cover-up, such as Major Colin Powell, were given demerits on their record [3].
Despite McCarthy’s public proclamation that brought My Lai national attention in late October of 1969, the legal system moved fairly slowly compared to politics, and the public awaited the results until mid-1970, when the sentencing was released. When that happended, McCarthy would also award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Hugh Thompson Jr. - a helicopter pilot who provided one of the most damning testimonials on My Lai, and had tried to prevent the massacre - as well as to his crew.
In the meantime, another bombshell was dropped.
A whistleblower named Daniel Ellsberg had illegally duplicated classified documents that revealed that, for years, the US government had known that the Vietnam War was likely unwinnable, and that the office of the President had deliberately lied to Congress and the American public about the extent of the war, American involvement in the coup that killed former South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, and the ulterior purposes of the war. Rather than being a just fight to bring democracy to the people of Vietnam, it was for the most part, part of a geopolitical strategy to contain the People’s Republic of China and keep it in a precarious international position.
Emboldened by the McCarthy Administration’s ‘owning up’ of My Lai, Ellsberg contacted Secretary of State Fulbright and asked him to show the findings either to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or to the President. Fulbright didn’t show any interest in the document, and decided not to pass on the information for “national security reasons.” Senator George McGovern showed some interest, but didn’t want to divulge state secrets without the Executive Office leading the charge. It was ultimately National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski who did anything with the information [4].
Brzezinski brought the Pentagon Papers to the attention of the President, who was less than pleased that Fulbright hadn’t seen fit to inform him. McCarthy met with Brzezinski, Ellsberg, and Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Frank Church (who had replaced Fulbright in his old Senate position). Although Brzezinski was opposed to bringing the Pentagon Papers to the public while negotiations with North Vietnam were still in progress, McCarthy went ahead with his and Ellsberg’s plan anyway: as it was illegal for a Senator to be prosecuted for anything to read or recounted while on the floor of the Senate, Frank Church would read the Pentagon Papers aloud, then McCarthy would corroborate the story and denounce the intentions of past Presidents’ Administrations [5].
Fulbright wasn’t consulted or informed of the plan.
Daniel Ellsberg making a press statement. Ellsberg would ultimately be given a full pardon by President McCarthy for the illegal means in which he obtained the Pentagon Papers, further dividing public opinion.
When Frank Church did his public reading, all Hell broke loose. The War Hawks, already upset with McCarthy’s role in revealing the My Lai Massacre, were absolutely livid with the President's collaborating to reveal state secrets to the public. Even plenty of moderates in the Senate felt that McCarthy had gone too far in revealing state secrets, and besmirching the intentions of Kennedy and Johnson. Many future historians would wonder aloud if McCarthy had released the Pentagon Papers due to his opposition to the Vietnam War, or more so as a chance to throw shade on his old nemeses.
Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Frank Church (right) being interviewed on Meet the Press after his reading of the Pentagon Papers.
McCarthy had won a moral victory by doing irreversible damage to public support for the Vietnam War, at the expense of his own legitimacy, and that of his office. It would be an unfortunate side-effect of his brutal honesty that far right conspiracy theorists claim to this day that the My Lai Massacre was a false flag operation, and the Pentagon Papers were communist fabrications designed to demoralize the God-fearing American people. The legacy of L. Mendel Rivers hasn't disappeared so quickly.
With the chaos of the 1960s finally behind America, it was up to Eugene McCarthy to go into the next decade and bring a decisive end to the Vietnam War, push through his extensive domestic policies, and generally bring about world peace, after having alienated most of Congress.
What could possibly go wrong?
“I was the best news I’d had gotten all day.”
[1] IOTL, after McCarthy lost his Presidential bid, Seymour Hersh returned to independent journalism, and sold the story of the My Lai Massacre to the Dispatch News Service International. He went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Journalism for his coverage.
[2] IOTL, the Congressional investigation into My Lai was handled by L. Mendel Rivers and the HASC. In an attempt to protect Calley and the other defendants, Rivers called all major witnesses to testify before the committee, then refused to release the testimonies to the military court, thereby preventing them from being used as admissible evidence. ITTL, all testimonies have been provided to the military court by the special committee.
[3] In part because of the “lack” of testimony and evidence created by Rivers, IOTL, William Calley was the only participant in the My Lai Massacre who was court martialed and found directly responsible, and would ultimately only serve three and a half years of house arrest before being paroled, thanks to intervention by the Nixon Administration.
[4] IOTL, Ellsberg offered the Pentagon Papers to Fulbright, McGovern, and Henry Kissinger, but nothing came of it from any of them.
[5] IOTL, the Pentagon Papers were suppressed by the Nixon Administration, and only became public knowledge in 1971 due to coverage from the press. ITTL, the Pentagon Papers are revealed in 1969, on purpose, by the office of the President.
- Fred Wilmer of ‘Charlie Company,’ on the My Lai Massacre
With the first year of the McCarthy Administration coming to a close, Press Secretary Seymour Hersh hadn’t especially been an outstanding figure of the White House. Certainly, he was effective, but his skills had always lain more with ear-to-the-ground investigations and journalistic pursuits rather than covering for the President from those same investigations. Seymour Hersh’s luck would change, as it happened, with fate giving him a last hurrah of impartial journalistic accomplishment before being sucked into the swamp of partisanship.
After moving up from McCarthy’s Campaign Press Secretary to McCarthy’s White House Press Secretary, Hersh had left much of his research and contacts on Vietnam to his friend, mentor, and fellow anti-war journalist, I. F. Stone. Stone had been following up with Hersh’s investigations, and got a tip of an American lieutenant named William Calley of the 23rd Infantry Division getting court martialed for killing civilians. Several extensive interviews (with Calley and others) later, and Stone was able to prove the existence of massacres of civilians by American soldiers in South Vietnam. The most documented example was in the village of Son My, known to American topographers as My Lai.
Several villages were razed and between 347 and 504 South Vietnamese civilians were killed by US soldiers in the My Lai Massacre.
Now, I.F. Stone was a political outsider, and he would be releasing the story of My Lai in his newsletter, I.F. Stone’s Weekly, regardless of what the President thought of it. From there, it would almost definitely get picked up by larger distributors. But, as a show of courtesy, he sent the story to Hersh before sending it to print [1]. In turn, Hersh showed the story to the President. As it turned out, Stone wouldn’t need to displease the President; in fact, Gene McCarthy was ecstatic. Being a man who delighted in vindication, the cover-up of a massacre was just the thing he needed to publicize to end public support for the Vietnam War.
And so it was that the same day the subscribers of I.F. Stone’s Weekly were reading of the My Lai Massacre that President Eugene McCarthy held a special press conference revealing that American soldiers had been killing civilians in South Vietnam. The story spread like wildfire, not only for its contents, but by the fact that the office of the President guaranteed its truthfulness by bringing it to the attention of the press.
To say it caused an uproar would be an understatement.
Anti-war activists were finally starting to see public opinion sway in their direction, while pro-war hawks screamed bloody murder. Representative L. Mendel Rivers of South Carolina, a George Wallace supporter who had since returned to the fold of the Democratic Party, was the most critical of them all. The Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) and self-proclaimed “Granddaddy of the War Hawks,” Rivers denounced McCarthy's use of the President's office to drag the respectability and reputation of the US Armed Forces through the mud. Rivers publicly speculated that the My Lai Massacre had never really happened, and instead had been concocted by anti-war radicals to fool the public into backing down from the war. Unfortunately for Rivers, his scepticism was used against him when Speaker Mo Udall had a motion put forward to establish a special committee to investigate the veracity of the My Lai Massacre: a special committee that would not be under the control of L. Mendel Rivers.
L. Mendel Rivers: Dixiecrat, HASC Chairman, and "Granddaddy of the War Hawks."
Earlier in the year, Congressman Udall had heard rumblings of My Lai, and had requested Rivers and the HASC to either open an investigation or have the Pentagon open one. Nothing had come of it, but where Congressman Udall had failed, Speaker Udall could succeed. The vote to form the special committee passed by a respectable margin, but with vocal opposition coming from War Hawks, Southern Democrats, and sticklers for Congressional proceedings who felt the investigation should’ve been handled by the HASC. Robert Leggett, an anti-war Democratic Representative from California who was also on the HASC, was made Chairman of the Special Committee to Investigate My Lai, which was composed of an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, and with membership being roughly even between Hawks and Doves. Although the cat was already out of the bag, the Committee to Investigate My Lai would confirm the accusations of the President and I.F. Stone, and would provide dozens of testimonials to the military court handling William Calley’s court martial case [2].
Ultimately, William Calley, and his direct superior, Captain Ernest Medina, would both serve life in prison. Others, like Colonel Oran Henderson and Captain Eugene Kotouc received lighter prison sentences. Major General Samuel W. Koster, the highest ranking officer to be implicated, was demoted to Brigadier General and stripped of a distinguished service medal, while others involved in the initial cover-up, such as Major Colin Powell, were given demerits on their record [3].
Despite McCarthy’s public proclamation that brought My Lai national attention in late October of 1969, the legal system moved fairly slowly compared to politics, and the public awaited the results until mid-1970, when the sentencing was released. When that happended, McCarthy would also award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Hugh Thompson Jr. - a helicopter pilot who provided one of the most damning testimonials on My Lai, and had tried to prevent the massacre - as well as to his crew.
In the meantime, another bombshell was dropped.
A whistleblower named Daniel Ellsberg had illegally duplicated classified documents that revealed that, for years, the US government had known that the Vietnam War was likely unwinnable, and that the office of the President had deliberately lied to Congress and the American public about the extent of the war, American involvement in the coup that killed former South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, and the ulterior purposes of the war. Rather than being a just fight to bring democracy to the people of Vietnam, it was for the most part, part of a geopolitical strategy to contain the People’s Republic of China and keep it in a precarious international position.
Emboldened by the McCarthy Administration’s ‘owning up’ of My Lai, Ellsberg contacted Secretary of State Fulbright and asked him to show the findings either to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or to the President. Fulbright didn’t show any interest in the document, and decided not to pass on the information for “national security reasons.” Senator George McGovern showed some interest, but didn’t want to divulge state secrets without the Executive Office leading the charge. It was ultimately National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski who did anything with the information [4].
Brzezinski brought the Pentagon Papers to the attention of the President, who was less than pleased that Fulbright hadn’t seen fit to inform him. McCarthy met with Brzezinski, Ellsberg, and Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Frank Church (who had replaced Fulbright in his old Senate position). Although Brzezinski was opposed to bringing the Pentagon Papers to the public while negotiations with North Vietnam were still in progress, McCarthy went ahead with his and Ellsberg’s plan anyway: as it was illegal for a Senator to be prosecuted for anything to read or recounted while on the floor of the Senate, Frank Church would read the Pentagon Papers aloud, then McCarthy would corroborate the story and denounce the intentions of past Presidents’ Administrations [5].
Fulbright wasn’t consulted or informed of the plan.
Daniel Ellsberg making a press statement. Ellsberg would ultimately be given a full pardon by President McCarthy for the illegal means in which he obtained the Pentagon Papers, further dividing public opinion.
When Frank Church did his public reading, all Hell broke loose. The War Hawks, already upset with McCarthy’s role in revealing the My Lai Massacre, were absolutely livid with the President's collaborating to reveal state secrets to the public. Even plenty of moderates in the Senate felt that McCarthy had gone too far in revealing state secrets, and besmirching the intentions of Kennedy and Johnson. Many future historians would wonder aloud if McCarthy had released the Pentagon Papers due to his opposition to the Vietnam War, or more so as a chance to throw shade on his old nemeses.
Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Frank Church (right) being interviewed on Meet the Press after his reading of the Pentagon Papers.
McCarthy had won a moral victory by doing irreversible damage to public support for the Vietnam War, at the expense of his own legitimacy, and that of his office. It would be an unfortunate side-effect of his brutal honesty that far right conspiracy theorists claim to this day that the My Lai Massacre was a false flag operation, and the Pentagon Papers were communist fabrications designed to demoralize the God-fearing American people. The legacy of L. Mendel Rivers hasn't disappeared so quickly.
With the chaos of the 1960s finally behind America, it was up to Eugene McCarthy to go into the next decade and bring a decisive end to the Vietnam War, push through his extensive domestic policies, and generally bring about world peace, after having alienated most of Congress.
What could possibly go wrong?
“I was the best news I’d had gotten all day.”
- President Eugene McCarthy on being told of the My Lai Massacre
[1] IOTL, after McCarthy lost his Presidential bid, Seymour Hersh returned to independent journalism, and sold the story of the My Lai Massacre to the Dispatch News Service International. He went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Journalism for his coverage.
[2] IOTL, the Congressional investigation into My Lai was handled by L. Mendel Rivers and the HASC. In an attempt to protect Calley and the other defendants, Rivers called all major witnesses to testify before the committee, then refused to release the testimonies to the military court, thereby preventing them from being used as admissible evidence. ITTL, all testimonies have been provided to the military court by the special committee.
[3] In part because of the “lack” of testimony and evidence created by Rivers, IOTL, William Calley was the only participant in the My Lai Massacre who was court martialed and found directly responsible, and would ultimately only serve three and a half years of house arrest before being paroled, thanks to intervention by the Nixon Administration.
[4] IOTL, Ellsberg offered the Pentagon Papers to Fulbright, McGovern, and Henry Kissinger, but nothing came of it from any of them.
[5] IOTL, the Pentagon Papers were suppressed by the Nixon Administration, and only became public knowledge in 1971 due to coverage from the press. ITTL, the Pentagon Papers are revealed in 1969, on purpose, by the office of the President.
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Awesome Update. Since Vietnam is now unpopular, I think we won’t be seeing too much left of that. I also feel maybe Wallace and the American Independent Party aren’t going to die soon. Also on. A bit of a side note, with Mo Udall getting so much attention, I feel we may see President Udall at some point. Well good update.
A Presidential run is definitely in the cards, but it remains to be seen how successful Udall will be. And you're right: although the American Independent Party hasn't evolved past being George Wallace's method of choice for raising Hell, it isn't rapidly disintegrating either. Yet.
McCarthy's support for Ellsberg has certainly opened up the idea of whistleblowing becoming more mainstream, but it was still a highly polarizing decision. In the longterm, American military whistleblowers will be less 'locked up with the key thrown away and threatened with death' as OTL, and more 'blacklisted from their profession and ostracized by large parts of society.'
He deserved it, both IOTL and ITTL; at least here, he'll be better regarded (he should have been IOTL, of course)...
Hahahahahaha.
Speaker Morris K. Udall and his one eye is going to be the most effective parliamentarian since LBJ in the Senate in the 1950s. Like yeah sure Udall I love him, I’m writing a timeline on him—the amazing Charles P Pierce way back in 1976 worked for him, so did Al Franken—but dude was a master. He literally wrote the book. The University of Arizona has an essential collection of his papers.
Everyone loved that man, and he was shockingly fantastic at winning over the other side. He even turned McCain from a common Republican nut job into a man capable of winning a Senate race.
Speaker Morris K. Udall and his one eye is going to be the most effective parliamentarian since LBJ in the Senate in the 1950s. Like yeah sure Udall I love him, I’m writing a timeline on him—the amazing Charles P Pierce way back in 1976 worked for him, so did Al Franken—but dude was a master. He literally wrote the book. The University of Arizona has an essential collection of his papers.
Everyone loved that man, and he was shockingly fantastic at winning over the other side. He even turned McCain from a common Republican nut job into a man capable of winning a Senate race.
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Those are some interesting links. Also, I didn't know Udall only had one eye. You can bet that every chapter with Udall as the focus will have a title named after an eye-themed song now.
I hope you're all ready for a big pile of policy substance. Images will be added to the next chapter later today, as I can't do that right now.
Chapter Nine - We've Only Just Begun
“As we move into this new decade and towards the two-hundredth anniversary of the United States, we have already begun the moral purification of America, free from unjust war. Now, we must look to home to build a new, Greater Society. The War on Poverty has ended, but the Crusade Against Poverty has just begun.”
It was time for McCarthy to take stock.
As 1969 turned to 1970, McCarthy began to push through his domestic agenda, branded as the "Greater Society" and the “Crusade Against Poverty.” In the House, Mo Udall was Speaker, and could be relied upon to keep things under control, but McCarthy didn’t have the best relationship with the House Democrats’ Majority Leader, Carl Albert. Albert had been the Chair of the Democratic National Convention of 1968, and had none-too-subtly tried to tip things towards Humphrey and Johnson. Although McCarthy would have liked someone else as Majority Leader, he would have to wait until the midterms were behind him at least, and wasn’t as if he had the political capital to reshuffle the House’s leadership even if he wanted to. As for the Democrat’s House Whip, Hale Boggs, he had been a Johnson man too, and so remained outside of McCarthy’s inner circle, despite their shared interest in reigning in America's national security and secret service agencies, such as the CIA, NSA, and FBI.
Although the Senate had been Johnson’s domain, Democratic leadership there was more sympathetic to McCarthy than that of the House. McCarthy had earned the ire of President Pro Tempore Richard Russell by trying to circumvent him in Senatorial seniority, but he still had the support of Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, and the new Senate Whip, Ted Kennedy. Hubert Humphrey had become the Senior Senator for Minnesota upon McCarthy’s ascension to the Presidency, while Minnesota Representative (and McCarthy endorser) Donald Fraser had become the Junior Senator to replace Walter Mondale, who had joined McCarthy’s cabinet. Although McCarthy and Humphrey had their obvious differences, Humphrey became one of the leading ‘foot soldiers’ of progressive causes in the Senate.
Post-Nixon Republican Leadership: House Minority Leader Gerald Ford (left) and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott (right). Republicans were divided on if Nixon had campaigned as too conservative, or not conservative enough.
With McCarthy beginning to push forward his domestic initiatives, he decided to test the waters. The My Lai Massacre and the Pentagon Papers had alienated much of Congress, and so, McCarthy began with a (relatively) non-divisive issue as far as major landmark legislation went: healthcare reform.
The Medicaid (which helped cover the health insurance of those with low income) and Medicare (which covered the young and the elderly) programs had been introduced by Johnson in 1965, and since then, most Democrats, and plenty of liberal-to-moderate Republicans, had at least a passing interest in reforming or expanding the system. Some of the most liberal Congressmen, such as Senate Majority Whip Ted Kennedy, wanted a full, single-payer universal healthcare system. Some wanted to keep the system more or less as it was, while others wanted to roll back Medicaid and let the free market handle health insurance. Regardless, whatever path McCarthy took with healthcare reform, he would have to get it past Wilbur Mills, the fiscally conservative-leaning Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Mills kept a tight grip on the federal purse, but had previously served a large role in creating Medicare, and was open to the idea of further social spending as long as the budget remained balanced.
In all honesty, McCarthy wasn’t that interested in healthcare reform, and basically left it to Ted Kennedy and Mo Udall to work it through Congress. In the meantime, McCarthy returned to dealing with the Vietnam negotiations and doing a whistle-stop tour of the country to promote the end of the war, as well as to do some groundwork for the midterm elections. There wasn't much that McCarthy loved more than an adulant crowd. McCarthy spent the most time in California, where he promoted his protégé, George Brown Jr, in the California Democratic Senate Primary over the Kennedy-esque centrist candidate, John V. Tunney.
Senate Majority Whip Ted Kennedy showcasing his ill-fated single-payer healthcare plan.
Back in Congress, Ted Kennedy’s sponsored bill to implement a universal healthcare system had passed in the Senate, but had been stopped in the more conservative House. Wilbur Mills was unwilling to allow the expanded medicare bill to dip into the social security trust to fund it, and his obstruction in the Ways and Means Committee, along with opposition from most of the Republicans and almost all Southern and conservative Democrats, had killed the bill. Upon McCarthy’s return, he decided to come to a compromise: he needed some major legislation, and he didn’t exactly care how effective it would be in the long term. Meeting with Mills, Udall, Republican House Minority Leader Gerald Ford, and Secretary of Treasury Russell Long, McCarthy agreed to a watered down bill that would be able to pass through the House. In the new bill, Medicare expanded coverage to different illnesses and slightly expanded the age eligibility, while Medicaid was expanded to give a broader and better coverage to more Americans by subsidizing healthcare providers, creating health coverage tax credits, and a government funded multi-payer healthcare initiative [1].
Shortly after, the Medicare and Medicaid Expansion Act passed through both houses of Congress. The amount of moderates brought over in the House and Senate was more than enough to make up the difference of the small number of liberal defectors, most prominently Ted Kennedy himself, who voted against the new bill in protest of McCarthy giving up so easily on his original single-payer healthcare bill. The act was almost entirely paid for by slashing funding to the Vietnam War, and foreign aid to the South Vietnamese government.
With the Medicare and Medicaid Expansion Act passed by Congress, McCarthy decided to move on to his pet project. McCarthy, the intellectual, cosmopolitan, urbane social democrat, considered himself something of a Jeffersonian agrarian.
Growing up in rural Minnesota, the young and religiously devout Gene McCarthy pined for an idealized version of the Feudal era, where pious knights protected the lower classes, most of the population lived off the land on self-sustaining farms, and Christian generosity acted as a social security net. Shortly after getting married, the city slicker McCarthys tried (and horribly failed) to start their own farm, but Gene never fully abandon his romantic vision of the rural lifestyle.
And so, from a mix of McCarthy’s romanticism, a desire to expand the Food Stamp program, and an attempt to sustain rural support for the Democrats, the proposed Farmer Advancement Act was born. The act would heavily boost agricultural subsidies, give very low interest loans to families who moved to the country to start a farm (with the land sold by the government at a low-ball price), expanded Medicare to cover farmers, and continued to cover costs for farmers to purposefully limit their crop growth to prevent an oversupply of grains; a buffer stock scheme known as the ‘Ever-Normal Granary’ that had been in place since Henry Wallace had been Secretary of Agriculture in 1933 [2].
The bill was primarily sponsored in the Senate by Humphrey, who wanted to use the expected growth in food production to expand the Food Stamp Program, and Senator (and Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs) George McGovern, who supported it both to aid the farmers of his home state of South Dakota, and to use it as a method to potentially end hunger in America. The bill was also supported in the McCarthy cabinet, particularly by Secretary of Agriculture Fred Harris, and Secretary of the Interior Ernest Gruening. Gruening, who was something of a Mexiphile, encouraged adding policies undertaken in Mexico by the agronomist Norman Borlaug to the bill.
Secretary of the Interior Ernest Gruening (seated) had a fascination with Mexico and Norman Borlaug's 'Green Revolution,' and advocated for similar government land policies in the United States.
Ultimately, the Farmer Advancement Act would see the least opposition of all of McCarthy’s major legislation. It got nearly unanimous support from the Midwest, quite heavy support from liberals on the West Coast and in the North-East, and even sizable support from the South, where Southern Democrats’ desire for a nice bit of pork barrel legislation superseded their ever-growing disdain for President McCarthy.
Although the Farmer Advancement Act was highly popular in both Congress and in America at large, its long term benefits were questionable at best: factory farms began to out-compete family farms regardless of McCarthy's subsidies, the farmer population still shrank from 4.6% of the workforce in 1970 to 4.0% in 1980 [3], most enthusiastic families who came from the cities to start a farm found themselves ill-equipped to actually run a farm, and went back to the city with their tail between their legs, and environmentalists complained that much of the land the government sold to new farmers were formerly protected federal land. On the other hand, the act did increase food production, leading to a successful expansion of the Food Stamp Program, with a record low number of Americans living without a reliable source of food.
Agrarian idyll: McCarthy had a soft spot for the farmer's lifestyle, and toured several farms in the Midwest while the Farmer Advancement Act was working its way through Congress.
With two pieces of major legislation under his belt and negotiations to end the Vietnam War approaching their conclusion, it seemed that McCarthy had done well going into the midterms, and yet, the ultimate success or failure of his Presidency remained to be seen.
“Just another Kennedy causing trouble.”
[1] In a more partisan time, it might’ve been called ‘McCarthycare.’ The Medicare and Medicaid Expansion Act is more or less OTL’s Affordable Care Act with more government involvement, oversight, and subsidies into the healthcare industry.
[2] IOTL, Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, ended the Ever-Normal Granary, instead encouraging farmers to “get big or get out.” This in part led to the beginning of the decline of the family farm, and the rise of massive, industrial agriculture corporations.
[3] IOTL, farmers made up 3.4% of the total workforce by 1980, so McCarthy has indeed delayed the collapse of the family farm and improved food production for the Food Stamp Program, but overall, it’s a wasteful piece of legislative spending.
- Excerpt from President McCarthy's, State of the Union Address, 1970
It was time for McCarthy to take stock.
As 1969 turned to 1970, McCarthy began to push through his domestic agenda, branded as the "Greater Society" and the “Crusade Against Poverty.” In the House, Mo Udall was Speaker, and could be relied upon to keep things under control, but McCarthy didn’t have the best relationship with the House Democrats’ Majority Leader, Carl Albert. Albert had been the Chair of the Democratic National Convention of 1968, and had none-too-subtly tried to tip things towards Humphrey and Johnson. Although McCarthy would have liked someone else as Majority Leader, he would have to wait until the midterms were behind him at least, and wasn’t as if he had the political capital to reshuffle the House’s leadership even if he wanted to. As for the Democrat’s House Whip, Hale Boggs, he had been a Johnson man too, and so remained outside of McCarthy’s inner circle, despite their shared interest in reigning in America's national security and secret service agencies, such as the CIA, NSA, and FBI.
Although the Senate had been Johnson’s domain, Democratic leadership there was more sympathetic to McCarthy than that of the House. McCarthy had earned the ire of President Pro Tempore Richard Russell by trying to circumvent him in Senatorial seniority, but he still had the support of Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, and the new Senate Whip, Ted Kennedy. Hubert Humphrey had become the Senior Senator for Minnesota upon McCarthy’s ascension to the Presidency, while Minnesota Representative (and McCarthy endorser) Donald Fraser had become the Junior Senator to replace Walter Mondale, who had joined McCarthy’s cabinet. Although McCarthy and Humphrey had their obvious differences, Humphrey became one of the leading ‘foot soldiers’ of progressive causes in the Senate.
Post-Nixon Republican Leadership: House Minority Leader Gerald Ford (left) and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott (right). Republicans were divided on if Nixon had campaigned as too conservative, or not conservative enough.
With McCarthy beginning to push forward his domestic initiatives, he decided to test the waters. The My Lai Massacre and the Pentagon Papers had alienated much of Congress, and so, McCarthy began with a (relatively) non-divisive issue as far as major landmark legislation went: healthcare reform.
The Medicaid (which helped cover the health insurance of those with low income) and Medicare (which covered the young and the elderly) programs had been introduced by Johnson in 1965, and since then, most Democrats, and plenty of liberal-to-moderate Republicans, had at least a passing interest in reforming or expanding the system. Some of the most liberal Congressmen, such as Senate Majority Whip Ted Kennedy, wanted a full, single-payer universal healthcare system. Some wanted to keep the system more or less as it was, while others wanted to roll back Medicaid and let the free market handle health insurance. Regardless, whatever path McCarthy took with healthcare reform, he would have to get it past Wilbur Mills, the fiscally conservative-leaning Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Mills kept a tight grip on the federal purse, but had previously served a large role in creating Medicare, and was open to the idea of further social spending as long as the budget remained balanced.
In all honesty, McCarthy wasn’t that interested in healthcare reform, and basically left it to Ted Kennedy and Mo Udall to work it through Congress. In the meantime, McCarthy returned to dealing with the Vietnam negotiations and doing a whistle-stop tour of the country to promote the end of the war, as well as to do some groundwork for the midterm elections. There wasn't much that McCarthy loved more than an adulant crowd. McCarthy spent the most time in California, where he promoted his protégé, George Brown Jr, in the California Democratic Senate Primary over the Kennedy-esque centrist candidate, John V. Tunney.
Senate Majority Whip Ted Kennedy showcasing his ill-fated single-payer healthcare plan.
Back in Congress, Ted Kennedy’s sponsored bill to implement a universal healthcare system had passed in the Senate, but had been stopped in the more conservative House. Wilbur Mills was unwilling to allow the expanded medicare bill to dip into the social security trust to fund it, and his obstruction in the Ways and Means Committee, along with opposition from most of the Republicans and almost all Southern and conservative Democrats, had killed the bill. Upon McCarthy’s return, he decided to come to a compromise: he needed some major legislation, and he didn’t exactly care how effective it would be in the long term. Meeting with Mills, Udall, Republican House Minority Leader Gerald Ford, and Secretary of Treasury Russell Long, McCarthy agreed to a watered down bill that would be able to pass through the House. In the new bill, Medicare expanded coverage to different illnesses and slightly expanded the age eligibility, while Medicaid was expanded to give a broader and better coverage to more Americans by subsidizing healthcare providers, creating health coverage tax credits, and a government funded multi-payer healthcare initiative [1].
Shortly after, the Medicare and Medicaid Expansion Act passed through both houses of Congress. The amount of moderates brought over in the House and Senate was more than enough to make up the difference of the small number of liberal defectors, most prominently Ted Kennedy himself, who voted against the new bill in protest of McCarthy giving up so easily on his original single-payer healthcare bill. The act was almost entirely paid for by slashing funding to the Vietnam War, and foreign aid to the South Vietnamese government.
With the Medicare and Medicaid Expansion Act passed by Congress, McCarthy decided to move on to his pet project. McCarthy, the intellectual, cosmopolitan, urbane social democrat, considered himself something of a Jeffersonian agrarian.
Growing up in rural Minnesota, the young and religiously devout Gene McCarthy pined for an idealized version of the Feudal era, where pious knights protected the lower classes, most of the population lived off the land on self-sustaining farms, and Christian generosity acted as a social security net. Shortly after getting married, the city slicker McCarthys tried (and horribly failed) to start their own farm, but Gene never fully abandon his romantic vision of the rural lifestyle.
And so, from a mix of McCarthy’s romanticism, a desire to expand the Food Stamp program, and an attempt to sustain rural support for the Democrats, the proposed Farmer Advancement Act was born. The act would heavily boost agricultural subsidies, give very low interest loans to families who moved to the country to start a farm (with the land sold by the government at a low-ball price), expanded Medicare to cover farmers, and continued to cover costs for farmers to purposefully limit their crop growth to prevent an oversupply of grains; a buffer stock scheme known as the ‘Ever-Normal Granary’ that had been in place since Henry Wallace had been Secretary of Agriculture in 1933 [2].
The bill was primarily sponsored in the Senate by Humphrey, who wanted to use the expected growth in food production to expand the Food Stamp Program, and Senator (and Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs) George McGovern, who supported it both to aid the farmers of his home state of South Dakota, and to use it as a method to potentially end hunger in America. The bill was also supported in the McCarthy cabinet, particularly by Secretary of Agriculture Fred Harris, and Secretary of the Interior Ernest Gruening. Gruening, who was something of a Mexiphile, encouraged adding policies undertaken in Mexico by the agronomist Norman Borlaug to the bill.
Secretary of the Interior Ernest Gruening (seated) had a fascination with Mexico and Norman Borlaug's 'Green Revolution,' and advocated for similar government land policies in the United States.
Ultimately, the Farmer Advancement Act would see the least opposition of all of McCarthy’s major legislation. It got nearly unanimous support from the Midwest, quite heavy support from liberals on the West Coast and in the North-East, and even sizable support from the South, where Southern Democrats’ desire for a nice bit of pork barrel legislation superseded their ever-growing disdain for President McCarthy.
Although the Farmer Advancement Act was highly popular in both Congress and in America at large, its long term benefits were questionable at best: factory farms began to out-compete family farms regardless of McCarthy's subsidies, the farmer population still shrank from 4.6% of the workforce in 1970 to 4.0% in 1980 [3], most enthusiastic families who came from the cities to start a farm found themselves ill-equipped to actually run a farm, and went back to the city with their tail between their legs, and environmentalists complained that much of the land the government sold to new farmers were formerly protected federal land. On the other hand, the act did increase food production, leading to a successful expansion of the Food Stamp Program, with a record low number of Americans living without a reliable source of food.
Agrarian idyll: McCarthy had a soft spot for the farmer's lifestyle, and toured several farms in the Midwest while the Farmer Advancement Act was working its way through Congress.
With two pieces of major legislation under his belt and negotiations to end the Vietnam War approaching their conclusion, it seemed that McCarthy had done well going into the midterms, and yet, the ultimate success or failure of his Presidency remained to be seen.
“Just another Kennedy causing trouble.”
- President Eugene McCarthy, on Ted Kennedy voting against the Medicare and Medicaid Expansion Act
[1] In a more partisan time, it might’ve been called ‘McCarthycare.’ The Medicare and Medicaid Expansion Act is more or less OTL’s Affordable Care Act with more government involvement, oversight, and subsidies into the healthcare industry.
[2] IOTL, Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, ended the Ever-Normal Granary, instead encouraging farmers to “get big or get out.” This in part led to the beginning of the decline of the family farm, and the rise of massive, industrial agriculture corporations.
[3] IOTL, farmers made up 3.4% of the total workforce by 1980, so McCarthy has indeed delayed the collapse of the family farm and improved food production for the Food Stamp Program, but overall, it’s a wasteful piece of legislative spending.
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I enjoyed that update. Maybe universal healthcare could be passed unless some unfortunate event before midterms hurts Democrats down ballot.
Chapter Ten - Bridge Over Troubled Water
"Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification."
As the 1970 Midterms approached, uncertainty was in the air. McCarthy's rapid winding down of the Vietnam War was met with great approval, although the methods used were polarizing. McCarthy had certainly passed base-appeasing legislation, but the South and conservative Democrats remained politically wary of him. Polling indicated that the Democrats would retain control of both the House and the Senate, but the margins remained uncertain. The Republicans hoped to make their greatest inroads in the South by associating local Democrats with McCarthy, but there was no greater nation-wide strategy to unify or excite their base. The fact was, McCarthy had run an incredibly inoffensive Administration thus far, except for in the minds of the most committed progressives, fiscal hawks, and war hawks: Government spending was down while social security spending was up, civil rights continued but at a slower pace, and even inflation had dropped somewhat with the end of the war.
Regardless, Republicans hoped to push back, and take advantage of the usual gains the not-in-power party tends to make during the midterms. There were hopes amongst Republicans that their lead in the Midwest could be expanded, especially in the Senate, where they organized to hold to the seat of the late Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, and there was a strong belief the bombastic Governor of Ohio, James A. Rhodes, could carry his state's Senate seat after a razor-thin primary victory over Robert Taft Jr [1]. In New York, Charles Goddell, the Republican Senator appointed to replace Bobby Kennedy, was polling a distant third behind the Democratic contender, Richard Ottinger, and the Conservative Party candidate, James Buckley. Buckley was in a slight lead, but Ottinger had managed to siphon off the anti-war Republicans from Goddell, and was in a not-impossible position to win. On the West Coast, McCarthy protégé, George Brown Jr, had defeated centrist Democrat John Tunney in the primaries, and was gaining fast over the Republican incumbent, George Murphy [2]. In the House of Representatives, it seemed unlikely that there would be many big changes, but the Democrats were campaigning hard on the end of the war.
The most notable House race was Allard Lowenstein's seat in New York 5. Lowenstein's district had been unfavourably changed by the Republican-controlled state legislature, with a former conservative district amalgamated into his riding. McCarthy's Prodigal Son, it remained to be seen if Lowenstein would still benefit from McCarthy's conduct of the Vietnam War. Meanwhile in Virginia, the Democratic Senate incumbent, Harry Byrd Jr, had become a political independent, and was in a three way race with the Democrats and Republicans.
It was at the same time that Democrats and Republicans were campaigning for the Midterms that the Vietnam War officially came to a ceasefire, with an agreement reached between the two delegations. As the final deal had been struck, it was obvious it was in favour of North Vietnam. Fulbright and the American delegation had at first dropped the demand that the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong withdraw from South Vietnam, then dropped the demand that they relinquish civilian targets, and finally dropped the demand they withdraw from military outposts. Without American military support, the majority of South Vietnam was essentially under Viet Cong control. As for new elections with American oversight, the North Vietnamese trusted those about as far as they could throw them, but they agreed regardless. Additionally, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Thieu was be forced to step down, with his ambitious Vice President, Nguyen Ky, taking his place [3].
Denouncing the American government for abandoning their allies, and the Communists for not abiding by the Paris Peace Accords (skirmishes continued well after the deadline of the ceasefire), but fearing an assassination attempt by either the CIA, the Communists, or Nguyen Ky, Nguyen Thieu fled the country with sixteen tons of gold to Taiwan in late 1970, where he became the guest of Chaing Kai-Shek, and his Taiwan-based Republic of China [4].
South Vietnamese President Nguyen van Theiu, shortly before being forced out of power by his American former allies. McCarthy and Fulbright were content to leave him to his own affairs in Taiwan.
The next South Vietnamese election was scheduled for the fall of 1971, and a reunification referendum was scheduled for 1972. Although the announcement of the end of hostilities was well received in the United States, Congress and foreign policy experts were well aware that South Vietnam had been near-completely abandon, as American armed forces were recalled from the country. A prisoner of war exchange was scheduled, and some Vietnamese personnel working for the United States were evacuated, but the ‘ideal’ outcome of a US-aligned Vietnam was dead and buried.
The official end of the Vietnam War gave a big boost to the Democrats. It was a boost that McCarthy sought to use the momentum of for one more piece of high profile politicking: the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Having remained in limbo in House Judiciary Committee for fifteen years, McCarthy pushed for a fast-track of the amendment through Congress before the 91st Congress could end, passing overwhelmingly in the House and Senate [5]. A sponsor of the ERA at various points in his House and Senate career, McCarthy was committed to seeing it through by the end of his Presidency.
End of an Era: American troops withdraw from Vietnam, after fifteen years of involvement in the war.
With the combined gains of the end of the Vietnam War and the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment through Congress, McCarthy surged in the polls. Although many said that the midterms would be a referendum on the end of, and the final deal of, the Vietnam War, McCarthy's coattails remained small. The results were about as expected, with the exception of an excellent showing by the Democrats in gubernatorial elections.
Republicans - 29 Governorships - Gained Two
Democrats - 21 Governorships - Lost Two
Republicans - 32 Governorships - Gained One
Democrats - 18 Governorships - Lost One
Democrats - 30 Governorships - Gained Eleven
Republicans - 20 Governorships - Lost Eleven
Democrats - 29 Governorships - Gained Eleven
Republicans - 21 Governorships - Lost Eleven
President Pro Tempore: Richard Russell Jr.
Senate Democrats - Mike Mansfield - 57 Seats - Lost Two
Senate Republicans - Hugh Scott - 43 Seats - Gained One
Senate Independents - 1 Seat - Gained One
President Pro Tempore: Richard Russell Jr.
Senate Democrats - Mike Mansfield - 53 Seats - Lost Four
Senate Republicans - Hugh Scott - 45 Seats - Gained Two
Senate Independents/Conservatives - 2 Seats - Gained Two
With the Vietnam War all but over, and the Midterms elections having come and gone, President McCarthy had a clear mandate for the second half of his term, though it remained to be seen if the fractured remains of the New Deal Coalition could survive the greater and more dramatic reforms McCarthy intended to pursue...
"My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over."
[1] IOTL, Taft narrowly defeated Rhodes, as the primary took place only a few days after the infamous Kent State Shootings, in which Governor Rhodes ordered state troopers to the university, and peaceful protestors (and bystanders) were fired upon. ITTL, the Kent Protests never happened, as the Vietnam War wasn’t expanded into Cambodia, ergo there was no cause for a protest.
[2] IOTL, John Tunney defeated George Brown Jr. and went on to defeat George Murphy. With support from the President’s office, Brown has overwhelmed Tunney.
[3] IOTL, Nixon also gradually dropped demands in his negotiations that allowed the Viet Cong to occupy civilian and military targets. Unlike Nixon, the McCarthy Administration has left a diplomatic ‘out’ for Thieu and the South Vietnamese leadership to either get out with their hides intact, or stay and participate in an election with communists. Thieu has obviously chosen the former.
[4] IOTL, Thieu left his gold behind in Vietnam, and it was eventually given to the Soviet Union.
[5] IOTL, the ERA wasn't passed until the 92nd Congress.
[6] ITTL, the Democrats have gained: California 7, Colorado 1, Indiana 10, Iowa 1, Massachusetts 12, Minnesota 3, Montana 1, and held New York 5
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification."
- Text of the Equal Rights Amendment, passed by Congress in 1970
As the 1970 Midterms approached, uncertainty was in the air. McCarthy's rapid winding down of the Vietnam War was met with great approval, although the methods used were polarizing. McCarthy had certainly passed base-appeasing legislation, but the South and conservative Democrats remained politically wary of him. Polling indicated that the Democrats would retain control of both the House and the Senate, but the margins remained uncertain. The Republicans hoped to make their greatest inroads in the South by associating local Democrats with McCarthy, but there was no greater nation-wide strategy to unify or excite their base. The fact was, McCarthy had run an incredibly inoffensive Administration thus far, except for in the minds of the most committed progressives, fiscal hawks, and war hawks: Government spending was down while social security spending was up, civil rights continued but at a slower pace, and even inflation had dropped somewhat with the end of the war.
Regardless, Republicans hoped to push back, and take advantage of the usual gains the not-in-power party tends to make during the midterms. There were hopes amongst Republicans that their lead in the Midwest could be expanded, especially in the Senate, where they organized to hold to the seat of the late Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, and there was a strong belief the bombastic Governor of Ohio, James A. Rhodes, could carry his state's Senate seat after a razor-thin primary victory over Robert Taft Jr [1]. In New York, Charles Goddell, the Republican Senator appointed to replace Bobby Kennedy, was polling a distant third behind the Democratic contender, Richard Ottinger, and the Conservative Party candidate, James Buckley. Buckley was in a slight lead, but Ottinger had managed to siphon off the anti-war Republicans from Goddell, and was in a not-impossible position to win. On the West Coast, McCarthy protégé, George Brown Jr, had defeated centrist Democrat John Tunney in the primaries, and was gaining fast over the Republican incumbent, George Murphy [2]. In the House of Representatives, it seemed unlikely that there would be many big changes, but the Democrats were campaigning hard on the end of the war.
The most notable House race was Allard Lowenstein's seat in New York 5. Lowenstein's district had been unfavourably changed by the Republican-controlled state legislature, with a former conservative district amalgamated into his riding. McCarthy's Prodigal Son, it remained to be seen if Lowenstein would still benefit from McCarthy's conduct of the Vietnam War. Meanwhile in Virginia, the Democratic Senate incumbent, Harry Byrd Jr, had become a political independent, and was in a three way race with the Democrats and Republicans.
It was at the same time that Democrats and Republicans were campaigning for the Midterms that the Vietnam War officially came to a ceasefire, with an agreement reached between the two delegations. As the final deal had been struck, it was obvious it was in favour of North Vietnam. Fulbright and the American delegation had at first dropped the demand that the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong withdraw from South Vietnam, then dropped the demand that they relinquish civilian targets, and finally dropped the demand they withdraw from military outposts. Without American military support, the majority of South Vietnam was essentially under Viet Cong control. As for new elections with American oversight, the North Vietnamese trusted those about as far as they could throw them, but they agreed regardless. Additionally, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Thieu was be forced to step down, with his ambitious Vice President, Nguyen Ky, taking his place [3].
Denouncing the American government for abandoning their allies, and the Communists for not abiding by the Paris Peace Accords (skirmishes continued well after the deadline of the ceasefire), but fearing an assassination attempt by either the CIA, the Communists, or Nguyen Ky, Nguyen Thieu fled the country with sixteen tons of gold to Taiwan in late 1970, where he became the guest of Chaing Kai-Shek, and his Taiwan-based Republic of China [4].
South Vietnamese President Nguyen van Theiu, shortly before being forced out of power by his American former allies. McCarthy and Fulbright were content to leave him to his own affairs in Taiwan.
The next South Vietnamese election was scheduled for the fall of 1971, and a reunification referendum was scheduled for 1972. Although the announcement of the end of hostilities was well received in the United States, Congress and foreign policy experts were well aware that South Vietnam had been near-completely abandon, as American armed forces were recalled from the country. A prisoner of war exchange was scheduled, and some Vietnamese personnel working for the United States were evacuated, but the ‘ideal’ outcome of a US-aligned Vietnam was dead and buried.
The official end of the Vietnam War gave a big boost to the Democrats. It was a boost that McCarthy sought to use the momentum of for one more piece of high profile politicking: the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Having remained in limbo in House Judiciary Committee for fifteen years, McCarthy pushed for a fast-track of the amendment through Congress before the 91st Congress could end, passing overwhelmingly in the House and Senate [5]. A sponsor of the ERA at various points in his House and Senate career, McCarthy was committed to seeing it through by the end of his Presidency.
End of an Era: American troops withdraw from Vietnam, after fifteen years of involvement in the war.
Republicans - 29 Governorships - Gained Two
Democrats - 21 Governorships - Lost Two
Republicans - 32 Governorships - Gained One
Democrats - 18 Governorships - Lost One
Democrats - 30 Governorships - Gained Eleven
Republicans - 20 Governorships - Lost Eleven
Democrats - 29 Governorships - Gained Eleven
Republicans - 21 Governorships - Lost Eleven
President Pro Tempore: Richard Russell Jr.
Senate Democrats - Mike Mansfield - 57 Seats - Lost Two
Senate Republicans - Hugh Scott - 43 Seats - Gained One
Senate Independents - 1 Seat - Gained One
President Pro Tempore: Richard Russell Jr.
Senate Democrats - Mike Mansfield - 53 Seats - Lost Four
Senate Republicans - Hugh Scott - 45 Seats - Gained Two
Senate Independents/Conservatives - 2 Seats - Gained Two
Speaker of the House: Mo Udall
House Democrats - Mo Udall - 262 Seats - Gained 19
House Republicans - Gerald Ford - 173 Seats - Lost 19 [6]
House Democrats - Mo Udall - 262 Seats - Gained 19
House Republicans - Gerald Ford - 173 Seats - Lost 19 [6]
Speaker of the House: John McCormack
House Democrats - John McCormack - 255 Seats - Gained 12
House Republicans - Gerald Ford - 180 Seats - Lost 12
House Democrats - John McCormack - 255 Seats - Gained 12
House Republicans - Gerald Ford - 180 Seats - Lost 12
With the Vietnam War all but over, and the Midterms elections having come and gone, President McCarthy had a clear mandate for the second half of his term, though it remained to be seen if the fractured remains of the New Deal Coalition could survive the greater and more dramatic reforms McCarthy intended to pursue...
"My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over."
- President Eugene McCarthy, on the end of the Vietnam War, 1970
[1] IOTL, Taft narrowly defeated Rhodes, as the primary took place only a few days after the infamous Kent State Shootings, in which Governor Rhodes ordered state troopers to the university, and peaceful protestors (and bystanders) were fired upon. ITTL, the Kent Protests never happened, as the Vietnam War wasn’t expanded into Cambodia, ergo there was no cause for a protest.
[2] IOTL, John Tunney defeated George Brown Jr. and went on to defeat George Murphy. With support from the President’s office, Brown has overwhelmed Tunney.
[3] IOTL, Nixon also gradually dropped demands in his negotiations that allowed the Viet Cong to occupy civilian and military targets. Unlike Nixon, the McCarthy Administration has left a diplomatic ‘out’ for Thieu and the South Vietnamese leadership to either get out with their hides intact, or stay and participate in an election with communists. Thieu has obviously chosen the former.
[4] IOTL, Thieu left his gold behind in Vietnam, and it was eventually given to the Soviet Union.
[5] IOTL, the ERA wasn't passed until the 92nd Congress.
[6] ITTL, the Democrats have gained: California 7, Colorado 1, Indiana 10, Iowa 1, Massachusetts 12, Minnesota 3, Montana 1, and held New York 5
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This chapter is a bit shorter than the others; I've had quite a busy week! To make up for it, it's got lots of sweet, sweet, election maps.
Next time on McCarthy: international finance, and the aftermath of the Vietnam Ceasefire.
Next time on McCarthy: international finance, and the aftermath of the Vietnam Ceasefire.
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