Jimmy Two: America in Carter's Second Term
- Thread starter Vidal
- Start date
Isn’t this almost exactly the same as the shenanigans Nixon have pulled to keep South Vietnam from engaging in peace talks right before the 1968 election?BTW this article just dropped on NYT about how Reagan helped screw over Carter in OTL to get the presidency
A Clandestine Trip and a Four-Decade Secret: An Untold Story Behind Jimmy Carter’s Defeat
Nearly 43 years later, a prominent Texas politician said he was an unwitting part of a mission to sabotage President Carter’s campaign.web.archive.org
This has been a long time theory and rumor.BTW this article just dropped on NYT about how Reagan helped screw over Carter in OTL to get the presidency
A Clandestine Trip and a Four-Decade Secret: An Untold Story Behind Jimmy Carter’s Defeat
Nearly 43 years later, a prominent Texas politician said he was an unwitting part of a mission to sabotage President Carter’s campaign.
Hmm...I had just read the article. It is an interesting article, that make me understand more in regards to the rumours that were first mentioned in the notes in chapter 7. Well, it is interesting to see how big actually is the operation to sabotage the talks, seeing that Connally was also being involved IOTL (but definitely not ITTL considering how pissed he still is).BTW this article just dropped on NYT about how Reagan helped screw over Carter in OTL to get the presidency
A Clandestine Trip and a Four-Decade Secret: An Untold Story Behind Jimmy Carter’s Defeat
Nearly 43 years later, a prominent Texas politician said he was an unwitting part of a mission to sabotage President Carter’s campaign.
P/s: Is the Kemp kerfuffle had a potential (albeit extremely minor) influence in the decision of the (Islamist fundamentalist) Iran leadership optics wise to ensure that any agreement would have to be done before a likely Reagan administration ITTL?
Edit: I forgot that the rumours in regard to this was actually already being mention before.. so the previous version of the post were quite a brain fart for me.
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I always strongly suspected Reagan's team sabotaged the negotiations, just like Nixon with the Paris Peace Talks in '68. Assuming the the theories are true, both efforts were monumental crimes and demand a prominent place in the public memory. Infuriating.
I was out of town for a month & only just caught up on.Jimmy Two, and thus your Turtledove award win. Heartfelt Congratulations, Vidal!!!
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You might think this a crazy idea Vidal, but please hear me out. I just finished reading Right Side Up by Polish Eagle, & I wondered if it could be combined with your Jimmy Two! I saw that Carter made a brief speech after the maiden voyage of the Space Lifter in Right Side Up, and I didn't see any reference to the space program in Jimmy Two! Just think about this. If you think they can be combined, that's fine. If not, that's fine too. It's just an idea that came into my head.
Not really, our PoD for Right Side Up is under LBJ in the late 60s, and the major divergence starts under Nixon in '71. The late 70s, a couple years before the first orbit of the Space Shuttle, is awfully late to be revising the design from scratch. I've actually talked to Vidal a bit about space stuff, and my take is that given the PoD, the odds of significant notable departures in spaceflight within Carter's second term are pretty low.
Glad you enjoyed Right Side Up, though!
And we had that WI thread on what might have happened if Carter had NOT "saved' the Shuttle with the special budget allowance because he heard the Soviets were 'scared' of the Shuttle
(Nobody expected Cater/Mondale to lift a finger to help the Shuttle ) Randy
Will Nixon be making an appearance in this TL? I would be interested in seeing what he thinks of Reagan’s failure, the struggle for the GOP, as well as Carter’s foreign policy.
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Vidal
Donor
I don't really have plans for him during Jimmeh's second term, but it's possible that I could work him into the sequel
Vidal
Donor
Potentially. I have a vision for it, but I am not sure if I'll actually get in the chair and write it. I can't imagine doing it right after J2 concludes. In my estimation, this project won't be done until November of 2024.
What's considered the sequel to Jimmy Two, is the the Presidency that follows Carter and subsequent elections? Or is it a completely new project?
I don't want to get too far ahead of myself here, but I wonder: with Carter reelected, are the nuclear war movies of 1983 (think The Day After, WarGames, Testament, and Special Bulletin) still made? My guess is maybe not - after all, my understanding is that those movies were made amid the all-pervasive atmosphere of heightened tension between the US and the Soviet Union, to which OTL President Reagan's bellicose rhetoric (along with the Russians' paranoid reaction to it) was a major contributing factor. With Reagan butterflied away, perhaps things are less tense and those movies aren't made - but then again, maybe some of them still are.
Also, on a related note, does the "Petrov incident" of September 26, 1983 still happen? My guess is that it still does, given the fact that it was caused by the natural phenomenon of sunlight reflected off clouds being mistakenly recognized as a missile launch by the computer software in the bunker. I suppose the main difference would be that, amid a less tense relationship (if that is indeed true), the Russians would be more willing to admit that the system made a mistake, and thus the incident might well be known to the wider world right away, or at least within a month or two (in real life, it was unknown in the West until the late 90's, after the Soviet Union fell). At least, I think that would be true if the Korean airliner weren't shot down a few weeks prior (and such an event seems less likely if the Russians aren't as paranoid as they were in real life, which again was largely a reaction on their part to Reagan).
Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter - I'd like to see what you think!
Also, on a related note, does the "Petrov incident" of September 26, 1983 still happen? My guess is that it still does, given the fact that it was caused by the natural phenomenon of sunlight reflected off clouds being mistakenly recognized as a missile launch by the computer software in the bunker. I suppose the main difference would be that, amid a less tense relationship (if that is indeed true), the Russians would be more willing to admit that the system made a mistake, and thus the incident might well be known to the wider world right away, or at least within a month or two (in real life, it was unknown in the West until the late 90's, after the Soviet Union fell). At least, I think that would be true if the Korean airliner weren't shot down a few weeks prior (and such an event seems less likely if the Russians aren't as paranoid as they were in real life, which again was largely a reaction on their part to Reagan).
Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter - I'd like to see what you think!
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I think détente was already fraying before Carter left office, so a deterioration in the 80's is probably inevitable. That said, without Reagan it may very well not go quite into the depths of OTL.