H.W Bush/Dole 1980 (Collaborative Thread)

I'm not sure. After some more users post and we get further into this tl, then it'll become easier to plan this.
Okay. Here are some PODs for the USSR:

February 3 1981: USSR General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev suffers a massive heart-attack while in his office. He is rushed to the nearest hospital, but passes away in a manner of hours.

February 6 1981: Mikhail Suslov assumes the office of General Secretary of the USSR.
 
Alright, here's a few more political dates to set the stage for the Bush presidency moving forward. Hopefully they can provide food for thought for someone to chew on. Let me know what you think. I'll try to refrain from posting for the time being unless absolutely no one else wants to contribute.

February 11 1981: In his first public appearance as General Secretary, a visibly aged yet seemingly hale Mikhail Suslov reaffirms the Soviet commitment to spreading the doctrine of Communism and in providing aid in the struggle against imperialism and capitalism. The United States is not mentioned by name, but it is clear Suslov has drawn a hard-line against the US and her allies.

February 12 1981: In a speech to Congress, President Bush responds to Suslov's declaration by affirming the United State's own commitment to liberty and democracy in the face of Soviet expansionism. However, he privately admits to his cabinet a strong desire to reach out to the USSR and its leaders.

March 10 1981: Richard Nixon is confirmed to the position of US ambassador to the USSR after agreeing to take the position at the request of President Bush.

March 18 1981: “He's a Damned Crook!” declares an enraged Hunter S. Thompson in the first line of his article in the newest edition of the Rolling Stone. He spends the next two pages railing against Richard Nixon and the President's decision to appoint him as ambassador to the USSR.

May 16 1981: President Bush travels to the United Kingdom to meet with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
 
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Alright, here's a few more political dates to set the stage for the Bush presidency moving forward. Hopefully they can provide food for thought for someone to chew on. Let me know what you think. I'll try to refrain from posting for the time being unless absolutely no one else wants to contribute.

February 11 1981: In his first public appearance as General Secretary, a visibly aged yet seemingly hale Mikhail Suslov reaffirms the Soviet commitment to spreading the doctrine of Communism and in providing aid in the struggle against imperialism and capitalism. The United States is not mentioned by name, but it is clear Suslov has drawn a hard-line against the US and her allies.

February 12 1981: In a speech to Congress, President Bush responds to Suslov's declaration by affirming the United State's own commitment to liberty and democracy in the face of Soviet expansionism. However, he privately admits to his cabinet a strong desire to reach out to the USSR and its leaders.

March 10 1981: Richard Nixon is confirmed to the position of US ambassador to the USSR after agreeing to take the position at the request of President Bush.

March 18 1981: “He's a Damned Crook!” declares an enraged Hunter S. Thompson in the first line of his article in the newest edition of the Rolling Stone. He spends the next two pages railing against Richard Nixon and the President's decision to appoint him as ambassador to the USSR.

May 16 1981: President Bush travels to the United Kingdom to meet with the Prime Minister.

How about we wait 20 minutes and if no one else posts, perhaps you could add some more? You're doing well with this.
 
June 7, 1981: Operation Opera, Eight Israeli F-16s, escorted by F-15s, are shot down by anti-aircraft missiles over Razzaza Lake (Lake Milh/ بحيرة ملح‎‎, meaning Sea of Salt) in Iraq, before they were able to reach Osirak, an Iraqi nuclear reactor under construction near Baghdad, which Israeli military intelligence believe is built, under orders of Saddam Hussein for the purpose of plutonium production to further Iraqi nuclear weapons program.

June 9, 1981: President Saddam Hussein, sends four Mirage F1EQs to perform interception and ground attacks over Jerusalem, although no politicians are killed, 423 civilians were killed, with around another 1,400 injured. The death toll also includes a high number of infants and new mothers in the maternity hospital, among these areAmerican-born citizen, Shelley Hershlag, and her few hours old baby Neta-Lee Hershlag (OTL Natalie Portman)
 
June 7, 1981: Operation Opera, Eight Israeli F-16s, escorted by F-15s, are shot down by anti-aircraft missiles over Razzaza Lake (Lake Milh/ بحيرة ملح‎‎, meaning Sea of Salt) in Iraq, before they were able to reach Osirak, an Iraqi nuclear reactor under construction near Baghdad, which Israeli military intelligence believe is built, under orders of Saddam Hussein for the purpose of plutonium production to further Iraqi nuclear weapons program.

June 9, 1981: President Saddam Hussein, sends four Mirage F1EQs to perform interception and ground attacks over Jerusalem, although no politicians are killed, 423 civilians were killed, with around another 1,400 injured. The death toll also includes a high number of infants and new mothers in the maternity hospital, among these areAmerican-born citizen, Shelley Hershlag, and her few hours old baby Neta-Lee Hershlag (OTL Natalie Portman)

Not at all. In fact, I applaud you for having the courage to write something potentially controversial. It will stay in the timeline. This could potentially alter Bush's priorities during his Presidency, which interests me greatly.
 
May 16 1981: President Bush travels to the United Kingdom to meet with the Prime Minister.

May 16, 1981: Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, greats the newly elected President, George Bush, as they discuss close ties between the two nations.
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May 17, 1981: President Bush, meets with Queen Elizabeth II.
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Later that after noon, there was tea on the lawn of Buckingham Palace, between Queen Elizabeth II, PM Margaret Thatcher and First Lady, Barbara Bush, with The Sun newspaper, calling it "The Feminine Yalta Conference"
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Not at all. In fact, I applaud you for having the courage to write something potentially controversial. It will stay in the timeline. This could potentially alter Bush's priorities during his Presidency, which interests me greatly.
I am thinking, maybe Bush will have to deal with a Gulf War in this Presidency as well lol
Also it will become a culture shock in years to come when films with Natalie Portman, will have to cast other people.
 
May 12 1981:Former Republican presidential candidate and California governor Ronald Reagan announces that he is very sick.
 

Good stuff.

Here's some more:

March 1 1981: In an address to the nation, President Bush announces ambitious plans for a tax hike and decreased federal spending, hoping to turn the national economy around. Though the proposals are well received by many moderate Republicans, they are derided by conservatives (economist Milton Friedman calls Bush's plans “deeply misguided”) and Democrats (many say the proposals hearken back to the days of Ford administration's WIN initiative) alike.

April 1 1981: Following their much publicized engagement, Lady Diana breaks off her relationship with Prince Charles and cancels their impending wedding. A flurry of media headlines blow the incident into a scandal; matters are made worse by the confusion caused by the date of the announcement, with many believing it to be a tasteless April Fool's joke.

May 3 1981: Ambassador Nixon meets with the Soviet leadership in Moscow for the first time. Comprised of Suslov, Premier Yuri Andropov, and First Deputy Andrei Gromyko, the troika's reception is a cool one, and it seems as though little progress is made. However, Nixon notes to Bush that he suspects Suslov is less healthy than had been previously believed. He also gives a positive assessment of Andropov that contrasts with the administration's previous opinion of the former KGB chief.

May 11 1981: While Marvel Comics EIC Jim Shooter is visiting with DC editor and writer Paul Levitz, he meets Karen Berger, current editor of The Legion of Super-Heroes, and offers her a job editing Marvel's horror titles. She accepts.

July 28 1982: British comics writer Alan Moore receives a phone call from Karen Berger, who has recently become aware of his work with Marvel UK and 2000AD. She offers him scripting duties for The Hulk, which she has recently begun editing. She tells him that she wants to see a weirder, more horror-inspired take on the property and believes his talents are best suited for what she has in mind. Moore happily agrees.
 
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March 25, 1980: Bush wins Conneticut by 39%, with Kemp at 34% and Baker at 26%. This puts Bush slightly in the lead, with Baker so far having no states. In the aftermath, Bush secretly contacts Kemp and promises him the running mate job if he drops out - either of them could defeat Baker on their own and go into the national convention with a decisive majority, looking their best for the election.

March 27, 1980: Kemp drops out of the race and endorses Bush.

Read the premise of the thread. Reagan cannot run in this tl due to suffering a spinal injury. However, I will accept that as long as he suffers the injury before the primaries end.

Whoops - typo, I meant to say Bush! Fixing that now
 
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June 7, 1981: Operation Opera, Eight Israeli F-16s, escorted by F-15s, are shot down by anti-aircraft missiles over Razzaza Lake (Lake Milh/ بحيرة ملح‎‎, meaning Sea of Salt) in Iraq, before they were able to reach Osirak, an Iraqi nuclear reactor under construction near Baghdad, which Israeli military intelligence believe is built, under orders of Saddam Hussein for the purpose of plutonium production to further Iraqi nuclear weapons program.

June 9, 1981: President Saddam Hussein, sends four Mirage F1EQs to perform interception and ground attacks over Jerusalem, although no politicians are killed, 423 civilians were killed, with around another 1,400 injured. The death toll also includes a high number of infants and new mothers in the maternity hospital, among these areAmerican-born citizen, Shelley Hershlag, and her few hours old baby Neta-Lee Hershlag (OTL Natalie Portman)

June 9-10, 1981: Bush holds an emergency meeting with Kemp, Secretary Baker, Secretary Bennett, and his joint chief & CIA head - calls are taken during this with the ambassador to Israel, Israel's own ambassador, and later an extremely angry Prime Minister Begin. Nobody really wants to go to war with Iraq, who is handily containing Iran at the moment, but Israel is too important an ally to let this stand. Bush has the ambassador to Iraq raise serious hell but Saddam is as angry as Begin, saying he's only retaliating to an unprovoked attack. Baker argues against open war, saying Iraq could be forced to heel by the threat of it (though he reluctantly accepts Israel will want some face-saving retaliatory strikes).

On the 10th, news breaks that some citizens were American-born (Israeli government sources made sure to send this to the US press earlier than they'd have learned it). Bush decides war is going to be inevitable now. Nobody is happy about this, Baker least, but the US can't be seen, so soon after the Iranian embassy and so soon into Bush's term, to be weak against another Middle Eastern dictatorship.

While high-level talks go on - it's unclear how great the retaliation should be - USAF planes join Israeli ones in attacking Iraqi air bases and defence positions. This is the start of Operation Desert Storm.
 
June 9-10, 1981: Bush holds an emergency meeting with Kemp, Secretary Baker, Secretary Bennett, and his joint chief & CIA head - calls are taken during this with the ambassador to Israel, Israel's own ambassador, and later an extremely angry Prime Minister Begin. Nobody really wants to go to war with Iraq, who is handily containing Iran at the moment, but Israel is too important an ally to let this stand. Bush has the ambassador to Iraq raise serious hell but Saddam is as angry as Begin, saying he's only retaliating to an unprovoked attack. Baker argues against open war, saying Iraq could be forced to heel by the threat of it (though he reluctantly accepts Israel will want some face-saving retaliatory strikes).

On the 10th, news breaks that some citizens were American-born (Israeli government sources made sure to send this to the US press earlier than they'd have learned it). Bush decides war is going to be inevitable now. Nobody is happy about this, Baker least, but the US can't be seen, so soon after the Iranian embassy and so soon into Bush's term, to be weak against another Middle Eastern dictatorship.

While high-level talks go on - it's unclear how great the retaliation should be - USAF planes join Israeli ones in attacking Iraqi air bases and defence positions. This is the start of Operation Desert Storm.

This is good stuff. How will the USSR react in this situation? I know that the two nations were fairly close allies at the time, but I am not certain to what extent the Soviets would intervene on Saddam's behalf. Certainly not on a military level, I wouldn't think. I'm also interested in how this will affect Iran. Any thoughts?

As for where the Bush administration is headed, I suspect that the neoconservative elements which took root among the Republicans in the Reagan years will do the same here, while the moral/religious right will not rise to such significance as in OTL. The Reagan Doctrine will definitely appear, presumably as the Bush Doctrine. No Voodoo Economics though, which will have big ripples moving forward.
 
Can TTLs Desert Storm be renamed? It is a bit too convergent for my tastes.

What is the final result for the 1980 Presidents election? How did the other elections that year go?
 
This is good stuff. How will the USSR react in this situation? I know that the two nations were fairly close allies at the time, but I am not certain to what extent the Soviets would intervene on Saddam's behalf. Certainly not on a military level, I wouldn't think. I'm also interested in how this will affect Iran. Any thoughts?

As for where the Bush administration is headed, I suspect that the neoconservative elements which took root among the Republicans in the Reagan years will do the same here, while the moral/religious right will not rise to such significance as in OTL. The Reagan Doctrine will definitely appear, presumably as the Bush Doctrine. No Voodoo Economics though, which will have big ripples moving forward.

Yeah, I see a downplayed version of the Reagan years in this timeline. The elements that were prominent in them remain to some extent in this tl, but they're rather insignificant and only belong to the fringe Republicans, as opposed to all of them.
 
Can TTLs Desert Storm be renamed? It is a bit too convergent for my tastes.

I'm not super picky, but I agree with this.

It would be interesting if the Rajneeshees became a bigger force ITTL than OTL.

Interesting. Why do you think so? If you have a good idea, you should write something up.

Here's a bit more stuff to continue the saga of John Lennon:

January 2 1981: A healthy and smiling John Lennon is discharged from Roosevelt Hospital. With his wife by his side, he is greeted by a crowd of fans. He pauses only to deliver a few remarks before disappearing into the back of a car.

April 8 1981: John Lennon makes his first public appearance since his discharge from Roosevelt by appearing on The Tonight Show. There he shares an easy banter with Johnny Carson, revealing that, yes, he plans to continue his musical career. If anything, he tells Carson, he will be doing much more. When asked if that means The Beatles may be reuniting, he shrugs noncommittally.

May 1 1981: In an interview with Playboy magazine, John Lennon gives a detailed description of the attack upon him and his wife, and expresses incredulity and anger over Chapman's justification for the attempted murder. “I really don't understand it. Chapman wanted to kill me and Yoko because I said I didn't believe in God. Can you believe that? I can't. It's insane.”

May 10 1981: A major announcement reveals that The Beatles will be playing at a benefit concert on the Fourth of July in NYC. In a released statement, McCartney says that all four members will indeed be reuniting, and that the profits will go to benefit impoverished regions across the world.

July 4 1981: An estimated 100,000 individuals gather to hear The Beatles play in New York. The concert goes well for the most part until about halfway through, when Lennon stops and proceeds to spend the next 20 minutes ranting about Bush and the war in Iraq. The concert proceeds normally from following the rant, but afterward an angry George Harrison accuses Lennon of grandstanding, while McCartney, who hoped that the concert would remain as apolitical as possible, tells Lennon not to bother contacting him again. For his part, Lennon does not care. The Beatles split once more.

August 11 1981: John and Yoko Ono Lennon release Can You Imagine?, a virulently antiwar album which Lennon says is a thematic sequel to Imagine, but "more cynical." "The world isn't changing," says Lennon, "and maybe I'm the one that needs to change. I think we all do." The album contains a number of singles which are directly critical of Bush's war in Iraq, and of the President himself. The response to the musical quality of the album is positive; however reaction to the message is mixed.

August 20 1981: At his sentencing hearing for the attempted murder of the Lennons, Mark David Chapman reads a passage from Catcher in the Rye. John Lennon, who was invited to attend, is conspicuously absent.

October 13 1981: While visiting John Lennon in his studio, Rolling Stone contributor Cameron Crowe asks if Lennon has had any contact with the other Beatles since the July Fourth concert, to which Lennon replies, “I talk to Ringo sometimes. But George and Paul, they're done with me, and that's fine. It was fun while it lasted, but we've all gotten over it. Hopefully everyone else will too.” When pressed on whether he plans to continue his solo career, or if he has any collaborations planned with other artists, Lennon cryptically replies, “I've made some new friends in the industry and let's just say they're a lot more like me.”
 
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Also:

March 18 1981: “He's a Damned Crook!” declares an enraged Hunter S. Thompson in the first line of his article in the newest edition of the Rolling Stone. He spends the next two pages railing against Richard Nixon and the President's decision to appoint him as ambassador to the USSR.

May 6 1981: Months after his initial frenzied attack on Ambassaor Nixon, Hunter S Thompson pens a more restrained piece in which he snidely suggests that Nixon's time spent in Moscow meeting with the USSR's leadership is a golden opportunity for the former President to finally make some friends. "You know the kind of people I'm talking about; greasy f*****s just like himself."
 
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May 6 1981: Months after his initial frenzied attack on Ambassaor Nixon, Hunter S Thompson pens a more restrained piece in which he snidely suggests that Nixon's time spent in Moscow meeting with the USSR's leadership is a golden opportunity for the former President to finally make some friends. "You know the kind of people I'm talking about; greasy f*****s just like himself."

What I like about this timeline so far is that instead of containing the optimism of the Reagan era in the OTL, it continues the 70s cynicism, with moderate Republicans such as Nixon and Bush being in power instead of ideologues like Reagan. The media is much less pro-America, with an angriness that was more common in the 1960s.
 
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