"Hipster" PMs and Presidents Thread
- Thread starter Comisario
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There was one on AHWiki, which wasn't bad (for AHWiki standards). Watergate nearly had one in 1980 as well, but alas, we had to have Scoop Jackson.
Deleted member 87099
James N. "Nikki" Rowe of McAllen, Texas (note: the Wikipedia article says his nickname was "Nick", but the high school named after him is James "Nikki" Rowe High School) was one of the few Vietnam POWs to escape captivity and a designer of the Army SERE course, as well as a staunch Republican who ran for Texas Comptroller in 1974 but lost, partly due to Watergate. Had he won, or not been assassinated by the NPA in the Phillippines in 1989, he could have become fairly prominent.
Good call on Rowe, he still has a special conjuring power with the hard-line end of the retired special ops community. And Texas would be fertile ground for him anytime but '74 (there was also the Sharpstown banking scandal then, that Dolph Briscoe rode into the governor's mansion.) Rowe could make a good Jeremiah Denton alternative (and indeed Denton himself is hipster-but-for-Rumsfeldia.)
Ooh, Sharpstown puts me in mind of another name, Ben Barnes, the young, charismatic, intelligent, and extremely well-connected lieutenant governor at the time (the job with the real power -- the Governor of Texas is a glorified ribbon-cutter, it's why they let people like Dubya and Rick Perry do the job, only a few particularly relentless souls like Alan Shivers and John Connally have carved real power out of it, and to a lesser degree Ann Richards) who went down in flames with Sharpstown. If he'd kept his fingers out of that pie, he was next in line to run for governor and after that at the very least he makes a highly attractive VP candidate by the end of the Seventies, if not running in the primaries himself.
Ooh, Sharpstown puts me in mind of another name, Ben Barnes, the young, charismatic, intelligent, and extremely well-connected lieutenant governor at the time (the job with the real power -- the Governor of Texas is a glorified ribbon-cutter, it's why they let people like Dubya and Rick Perry do the job, only a few particularly relentless souls like Alan Shivers and John Connally have carved real power out of it, and to a lesser degree Ann Richards) who went down in flames with Sharpstown. If he'd kept his fingers out of that pie, he was next in line to run for governor and after that at the very least he makes a highly attractive VP candidate by the end of the Seventies, if not running in the primaries himself.
Two hipster Southern choices from the Clinton-Gore era that I don't think have been mentioned: Ray Mabus, governor of Mississippi (and lately in his old age Obama's Secretary of the Navy) who, if he had been reelected instead of narrowly defeated, might have been an alternative charming reformist Southern governor to the Arkansan who couldn't keep his commander-in-chief in his pants. Also Max Cleland, triple-amputee Vietnam war hero who was secretary of state of Georgia for a very long time: he might have made a play for higher office sooner than the late Nineties (when he was a US senator for a term), and though I see him more in a two-spot on a ticket, he would be a very attractive possibility for any non-Southern Democratic nominee throughout the Nineties.
Here's a serious stretch: Kenneth Arnold, the pilot who made the first widely publicized UFO sighting and introduced the phrase (via a newspaper misquote) "flying saucer" into the lexicon, later went on to attempt a political career in his native Idaho. He ran for Lieutenant Governor as a Republican in 1962, lost to the Democratic incumbent by a modest margin, and became a Goldwater campaigner in 1964. I don't imagine he'd ever be President, but it could be fun to have him prominent in national politics in the conspiracy-minded 60s and 70s.
And thus, the Reptilian plan comes to fruition. (Although either Carter would have to be pretty old or Kucinich pretty young, for both to run in the same election.)
Kucinich did have a very long career, first winning office in 1968, and narrowly lost in 1972 for a House seat. Kucinich then runs for Governor in 1982. Carter doesn't run in 1976, and beats Talmadge in the 1980 Senate primary. Both run in 1988.
That's interesting about Kucinich - I'd assumed he was a lot younger than he was.
And IIRC he had a particularly bad reputation as a race baiter around that time.
Wayne Cryts - A 39 year old Missouri farmer, who have previously been jailed for leading a collective effort to take grain back from an allegedly corrupt storage company, runs for Congress on a populist platform and loses to the republican incumbent by an almost razor-thin margin. 1894? 1932? No, Cryts ran in 1986, and his campaign (which was managed by David Axelrod, of all people) had at least some connection to Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coaltion. I'd like to think that something interesting could be done with him assuming he makes it to D.C.