Excellent update as always. The amount of research put into this, as well as the effort made to capture everyone's voices, shocks me every time.
This, in particular, is an amazing thing to find and include.[9] What I love about research is how many bizarre moments you find in history — it almost begs people like us to write stories like these. The Q&A session from the Dayton, Ohio town hall actually happened. The questions are pulled from OTL, as are Carter’s responses — even the question about the Curse of Tippecanoe. The strange part is, while I can’t claim to know what another human being was thinking, of course, we do know that John Hinckley, Jr — yes, that John Hinckley, Jr — was in the crowd and presumably heard this question and Carter’s answer. It was too surreal to not include in the story, and, of course, every good author does what they can to weave a bit of foreshadowing.
"Hubert Horatio Hornblower" is such an obvious and easy thing to butterfly that I'm honestly heartened you considered including it. IMO it's one of the funniest moments in politics. I just can't get over how Carter says it with such conviction — his voice doesn't waver as he realizes he's fucked up, he firmly believes he has it right — and then awkwardly follows up with "…Humphrey!"[5] The original text of this chapter included Carter’s memorable gaffe (See below if you don’t know what I’m referring to at about 2:48), but the gaffe was a combination of Carter’s fatigue (his speech was delayed well into the night because of circumstances that would not be replicated here, and the teleprompter malfunctioned that night).