Hail to the Chief- A TLIAD

Charles Lovecraft (1969-1983)

Lovecraft, the son of a New Englander journalist, he was the natural successor of Michael Tubman in terms of policy. Crucially, his white background halted accusations of favouritism. Tubman had been accused as such through his Racial Equity programme. Lovecraft continued this and Tubman's other projects, seeking to heal the racial divide.

Lovecraft also opened the United States to the world, building a stronger relationship with Germany and the Mittelbund in particular. He expanded the coverage of the Racial Equity Programme to the Phillipines and Liberia. This was cleverer than it looked as its investment based programme tied the economies of the Commonwealths firmly to that of the United States. The strengthening of the Bank of America notably increased America's power projection into these countries allowing her to compete in Southeast Asia and West and Central Africa with much greater ease.

Lovecraft was always overshadowed by Tubman, and it wasn't long before the high spending of the Radical governments began to bear unfortunate fruit. First of all the government's debt increased dramatically. While this wouldn't be an issue until the 80s, the dramatic increase in money supply led to the Dollar being devalued. Second, while the Racial Equity Programme was alleviating the situation for non-whites, and some hyphenated Americans, some minorities felt left out, and many poor whites felt that they were essentially being punished for being white, for having the same skin colour as slaveowners and such. Racial tensions increased in inner cities and new immigrants felt threatened if they fitted into racial categories where they received benefits. The very fact of racial categorisation felt threatening.

By the early 80s, the American economy was stagnating and inflation was leaving the Dollar worthless. Thousands were emigrating to the Commonwealths, and the British Commonwealth, the United States' opposite number was arming itself with ever more advanced weapons. American global prestige was faltering. When Lovecraft died, it came as no surprise when an energetic right-winger won.

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Rex Rogers (1983-2004)

Rogers is currently favourably thought of, but usually in terms of personal pity or sympathy, than much affection for his political achievements. For almost half of his Governorship, he succumbed to age related dementia, losing most of his faculties. But in the first ten years of his Governorship he rewrote the rule book and changed the United States forever.

The first Democratic Governor for almost sixty years, the Democrats had absorbed much of the old National Republicans and shifted away from their roots as a farmer's party. They had become a party of small businesses, of the little man against the massive state. Rogers had attained the leadership of the Democrats by building on his fame as a former actor, and he brought the pizzazz of Pinewood to American politics.

Taxes were sliced, spending was cut, the Racial Equity Programme's projected tenure was extended to reduce its annual spending. The last remnants of Merriweatherian policies were purged from the social and economic agenda. The free market was back in force. And it brought with it great economic growth. The Americans who had gone overseas founded businesses which contributed to Rogers' other main policy. To confront the British Commonwealth and end its global dominance once and for all.

The Cold War between the main victors of the Second Great War had gone on for a long time. The imperialist British had clung fiercely to her colonies and Dominions and while the Commonwealth wasn't explicitly racist it was certainly very conservative and opposed to either German dominated Eastern and Central Europe or the American backed Fifth Republic. While both those states also maintained substantial overseas holdings, the British alone directly controlled large swathes of the world.

Through the 1990s, Rogers expanded and modernised the American military. The British simply couldn't keep up. Their spending on the military led to a stagnating economy and in 1991, reformers got into power. They dominionised many colonies and opened up the protectionist British industries to international competition. By 1994, the Cold War was at an end. The British Commonwealth was dismantled, reduced the Commonwealth of British Nations (Britain and the White Dominions) an informal body united by the monarchy. The United States was ascendant.

Of course that same year, when Rogers was at the top of the world, he was diagnosed with early onset dementia. His wife Louise increasingly took the wheel, rather controversially. She was however a good pair of hands, and some lists record her as 'Acting Governor' from 1999 onwards. Notably, she eliminated the remaining Merriweatherian restrictions on scientific research, especially genetics. America had for a long time suffered from a backwards scientific and technological core, and had relied on German scientists for most of the Cold War. Louise Rogers pointed out that if it weren't for Merriweather, her husband might not have ended up in the state he was.

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Manuel Blah (2004-present)

A descendant of Liberian slaves, Manuel Blah became the United States' second black Governor to relatively muted fanfare. Most of the country was in mourning, even those who disliked Rex Rogers (of whom there were many) felt that his long, lingering slide into death did not befit the man. But the Radicals' return to power was somewhat inevitable as unemployment rose and it appeared that the age of robber barons had returned as corporations profits soared.

Blah is the first Governor to inherit a world under the American thumb. But his reign thus far has mostly been concerned with revolutions around the world as regimes propped up by the British have destabilised. The rise of the Empire of Japan out of the Agrarian Era has also been a major concern, its intervention into the renewed Chinese Conflict representing a substantial challenge to American supremacy.

Blah has continued many of the policies of his predecessor, and has drawn America closer to Liberia, pointing out the countries growing economy and its construction of the West African as indicative of a new paradigm of international relations. 'The Lion of Africa is stirring. And soon all the world will hear its roar'.

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