John F. Kennedy Assassinated in Berlin, June 1963

Epilogue, Part IV: Richard Nixon, the day after his acceptance speech at the Republican Convention, stood at a podium with San Francisco Bay and the still-devastated Golden Gate Bridge behind him. Nixon was introduced by his surprise running mate, Governor John Connally of Texas, a conservative Democrat who'd been allied with the now-broken former President, Lyndon B. Johnson. Nixon had angered many in his party when he chose Connally, but he knew what they didn't: Connally was not a fan of the liberal Humphrey, and thought him weak. Because of that, and Connally's popularity in Texas, Nixon believed he could make the state go Republican, and that would likely sink Brown and the Democrats. Furthermore, Connally's experience as Secretary of the Navy gave him defense knowledge if, God forbid, any catastrophe happened. After the past year, such a thing was far more likely than it ever had been before.

In his speech, Nixon promised that the Bridge would be rebuilt by the end of his first term, just like he would rebuild the rest of the nation. He repeatedly claimed he would carry out a foreign policy of peace, and swore that he would carry out JFK's pledge to put a man on the moon by decade's end. The man once known as "Tricky Dick" was putting forth proposals that were concrete, and he was answering the questions of reporters with something that neared charm. His running mate, meanwhile, was debonair and gregarious, adding personality to a campaign that would have seriously lacked it otherwise. Connally was also brilliant at the art of advance work, something quite new to Nixon, and which he took to quickly when he was introduced to the concept by Connally during their two-hour meeting before Nixon announced his choice for Vice President.

The former Vice President was salivating at the chance to take on Pat Brown again, as he had a clear command over matters of national security that Brown lacked. Humphrey was somewhat more seasoned, but overall, both men were domestic policy specialists. Considering this campaign was being fought over a mix of concerns on both ends, it was a toss-up as to who would have the advantage in this heavyweight political donnybrook. Brown's campaign began in Boston, where Bobby and Ted Kennedy turned out for the Governor, who showed his deep knowledge of infrastructure building, dashing off figures like a mathematician in a Harvard lecture hall. The reporters were impressed at his record, and rightfully so. Brown had built highways, dams, and overseen a massive water project that improved water delivery across California. Despite this, when asked about his plan in Vietnam, where American advisers still remained, Brown was unable to give a coherent response. He was then asked about proposals by some in Europe for breaking apart NATO, since it no longer had a mission in lieu of the Treaty of Bonn. Brown answered, "We are stronger together than we are apart. I do not believe now is the time to separate our bonds." Pressed on the question, Brown would not give a more detailed question. Brown's nimble communications director for the campaign, Bill Moyers, quickly got Brown away from the podium. News coverage the next day was scathing, while reporters on the trail with Nixon filed glowing reports.

Humphrey stepped in at this point, telling Brown that they needed to take a few days and do a crash course on foreign affairs so they wouldn't be caught with their pants down again. Brown agreed to this proposal, and the pair slipped into the White House complex, where President McCormack made his staff available to both men to brief them. To avoid the press, which mingled in the West Wing lobby daily, the briefings were held in the Old Executive Office Building, where prying eyes were few. On the flip side of that issue, Richard Nixon feverishly studied domestic policy proposals every night and worked out his "Southern Strategy," a plan to ensure full civil rights for all Americans while winning the South to his side. Connally was part of that, a ploy to win Texas. The next part was to tune his pitch, and that meant finding careful ways to slow-pedal integration of the schools and other areas that were thorns in the side of white Southerners. Nixon made a call to LBJ mentor and leader of Southern Democrats, Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, and promised him Secretary of Defense in return for his cooperation with Nixon's plan. The two former colleagues discussed the "Southern Strategy," Nixon explaining that he wanted equality under the law for all races. "Richard, you don't have to love them, and I'm not going to make you tear apart your schools to force in X number of Negroes. Treat them equally, stop this lynching bullshit, let them vote. They don't have the numbers to stop most of you anyway in a ballot box, so why kick up a fuss? I'll help you keep your neighborhoods and schools intact. I want you to get your people in Georgia to calm down, and talk to Stennis about helping to do the same in Mississippi. There's no need to be this goddamn ugly with them. Kill them with kindness, and the furor for integration will die down, and the lawsuits will dry up. Give them enough rights to feel equal, and you can keep the neighborhoods and schools of the South safe." Russell was impressed with Nixon's plan, and he became the first crack in the wall of the Solid South. After consulting with Senator John Stennis and Governor Ross Meredith in Mississippi, they also broke ranks and supported the Nixon-Connally ticket.

In the West, there was another pitched battle for California, forcing Governor Brown to devote more resources towards his home state than he would've liked. New York was another ominous sign, as Rockefeller decided it was better to have his voice on the inside with Nixon than be shut out, and so he vigorously campaigned across the state, driving Democrats there as well. Multiple places that were once solidly Democratic had been slowly changing, beginning in the Eisenhower years, and then opening up further with the fissures of the past year. Nixon had his own weaknesses of course, mainly in having to try and win over states to his column that had high percentages of labor voters, like Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The Republican Party didn't have the best of relationships with labor, and Nixon was in a corner of his own making when it came to the labor vote. The son of a grocer, who'd bootstrapped himself up to every job he'd held, was portrayed as big business friendly, because of his alliances with Eisenhower backers and California businessmen, all of whom were staunch conservatives. Furthermore, Nixon had practiced law in New York City, working with and befriending PepsiCo chairman Don Kendall. This everyman, this gruff, hardworking, driven man, was the victim of his own successes in life. That was an image he would need to shake, and his first opportunity would be in the forum that tripped him up four years ago: the televised debates.

(In Part V, the debates, the election, and the finish to this timeline!)
 
Epilogue, Part V: The only presidential debate of 1964 was slated for Lincoln, Nebraska, where a brief memorial would be held for the victims of the Omaha nuclear attack. Omaha was still declared an Exclusion Zone, with the consequences still being dealt with. One of the greatest was the massive fallout deposited in the Missouri and Platte Rivers, which meet right next to the now-former Offutt Air Force Base. That fallout had drifted all the way through Iowa and into Minnesota, though it had depleted by then. The timing of the war and that fallout wrecked a substantial portion of the corn and wheat crops, along with killing many farm animals who weren't sheltered in time, and rationing had to be introduced again during the winter months of 1963, which really didn't go over well with America. Drinking water and irrigation were a major issue, with the states downstream of the Missouri River having their water constantly tested, and the government decided the best way to resolve the issue was to build reverse osmosis plants downstream in multiple locations, helping to reduce and remove the radiation. Back in Nebraska, the biggest fight was over whether to rebuild Omaha or not. Parts had survived, and those residents were allowed to gather their belongings and move in an orderly manner. Apartment buildings were hastily constructed in the nearby suburbs, under eminent domain rulings that the courts swept through with little argument. Nobody wanted to get in the way of the federal government after a nuclear war. The citizens of Omaha that survived still tried, though, especially the small business owners. They were especially displeased at the order barring them from continuing their businesses where they'd built them, but the National Guard was sent in, and M48 tanks had a way of bringing about compliance. Those enforcing the order chafed at having to do these things to people, but it was drilled into each soldier that without this evacuation, more people would die from lack of basic services, since clean water, sewerage, etc was no longer providable in Omaha.

Lincoln, however, boomed as a result of Omaha's death. William Levitt, the historic builder of the Levittown communities in the Northeast, swooped into Lincoln and bought up huge tracts of land on the north side of Salt Creek, which was largely undeveloped, and went to work, building homes with federal loan money, while Omaha residents received compensatory payments for their homes they'd been evicted from and, if they needed it, interest-free mortgages from a government agency set up to assist displaced residents. Roughly 20,000 people moved into Lincoln, substantially increasing its tax base and its business community. The University of Nebraska saw tremendous growth, as the University of Omaha had been destroyed. All in all, despite the many dead and displaced, Nebraska found a way to thrive.

At the debate, Richard Nixon was prepped and ready. He'd spent hours with Connally, who helped Nixon polish his image and facial expressions. This time, Nixon accepted the television makeup without argument as well, preventing the five o'clock shadow that had made him look like an old, angry man (even though he wasn't) to America four years prior. The former VP had done debate preparation, sparring with old friend Henry Cabot Lodge while Connally made notes. The answers became chippier, shorter, more punchy, and all of Nixon's old friends who'd joined up for this campaign were astounded at how much better they made him look. Meanwhile, Pat Brown might be gregarious, but he was almost ten years older than Nixon, and what had hurt "Tricky Dick" four years ago now worked in his favor. He was the younger candidate, and he was in his realm, while Brown was not. The questions were centered around reconstruction of affected areas and how to prevent such an event from happening again. Brown was more detail oriented around construction, while Nixon was more expansive on how to keep the peace in a world that had seen it shattered. The Soviet Union was only functional within certain areas, while the rest had become near-anarchic, especially in the East, where moderate to heavy fallout and bomb damage had severed the rail links in the center of the nation, and the ports were destroyed, making it impossible for supplies to get to Siberian towns and outposts. Nixon took the opportunity, when asked how and why he would assist the Soviet Union, to give an answer nobody expected.

"Well, Scotty," Nixon said, replying to Scotty Reston of the New York Times and the moderator, "it is in our best interests to help the Soviets. Their mass starvation and spread of disease would only further cause chaos throughout the world. Furthermore, we've fought our war, and now we've made our peace. We lost much. They lost far more, and because of that, they have little ability to fix it. We helped rebuild Germany and Japan 17 years ago, even after they'd perpetrated some of the worst crimes on Earth. Why is that? Because we've seen what happens when we try to punish nations harshly. What could we possibly do to punish the Soviet Union any more than hundreds of atomic bombs have done to them already? They lost almost as many people in a few days time as they did during the entirety of World War II, and even more of their land is destroyed. Helping them rebuild will help keep the peace. While this war was a tragedy that cannot be easily forgotten, we have it in us, that strong American spirit, to restore and grow. I believe in the people of America, and together, there is nothing we cannot accomplish." Brown was left in the position of having to agree, and he never had a chance to get any good shots in against Nixon the rest of the night. Nixon's answer made headlines around the world, and his position in the Gallup poll went from a dead heat to a ten-point lead within three days. It was a stunning feat.

As the campaign moved to a close, Brown and Humphrey worked to dump as much of Nixon's dirty laundry on his head, but Nixon did not take the bait, and wisely, he let Connally do most of the talking. The smooth-talking Texan successfully batted away most of those charges as old news, and he hit the Democrats over Chicago's votes in 1960. Connally, who'd been on the inside, said just enough about the Chicago shenanigans, while pointing out that Nixon declined a recount for the good of the country. With the nation looking for stability and security, Nixon, for all his faults, provided those things, and Connally was a link to JFK, and so it took until the West came in, but Richard M. Nixon became the 38th president of the United States, taking 29 states and 281 electoral votes to Pat Brown's 21 states (plus DC) and 257 electoral votes. Most crucially for Nixon, he won New York, which made up the disappointment of Brown narrowly taking California again, because New York's 43 electoral votes were the biggest prize in the entire race, and that was the healthy ego stroking he needed. John McCormack, the sitting President, became only the second President to return to Congress, when he won his old House seat back, and his colleagues kept to their word, re-electing him as Speaker of the House (with McCormack promising Albert and Boggs that he'd retire in 1968).

As 1965 dawned, the nation looked forward to continued reconstruction, and challenges remained on the horizon. The peace needed to still be won, Europe was in dire straits, and China needed to be brought back into the world. Richard Nixon, though, was confident in his ability to create a new world order. Whether he succeeded was in a future yet to be seen.....

THE END.
 
Congratulations on a great timeline. It was believable and gripping, which is a difficult balance to maintain. I look forward to seeing what you do next.
 
A terriffic end to the site's best nuclear war timeline. Great work overall and I'm really hoping that someday we may see a sequel in the works that could detail the Nixon Administration and the rest of the Cold War or possibly a continuation to the modern era. This TL is definitely up there for a possible Turtledove when the nominations start.
 

CalBear

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I just read through this. Excellent bit of work.

I do have one question/comment/snivel - Why were the rather primitive U.S. ABM systems (which were never really even designed to be a serious ABM, having been developed from a basic LoS SAM) much more effective than the current GDM with all of its extremely impressive advantages (for those who may not be aware, the GDM would not be able to handle the number of inbounds described in the T/L)?

Again, excellent bit of writing.
 
I just read through this. Excellent bit of work.

I do have one question/comment/snivel - Why were the rather primitive U.S. ABM systems (which were never really even designed to be a serious ABM, having been developed from a basic LoS SAM) much more effective than the current GDM with all of its extremely impressive advantages (for those who may not be aware, the GDM would not be able to handle the number of inbounds described in the T/L)?

Again, excellent bit of writing.

I just saw this, wish I'd answered before. Quite simply, nuclear bombs exploding amidst fragile missiles will succeed pretty well. There was a brute elegance to those ABMs. That's the standpoint I was coming from.
 
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