Landslide Victims Who'd Make Good Presidents

Which of these tickets would've had the best outcome

  • Alton B Parker/Henry G Davis(1904)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • James M Cox/Franklin D Roosevelt(1920)

    Votes: 7 6.4%
  • John W Davis/Charles W Bryan(1924)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Al Smith/Joseph T Robinson(1928)

    Votes: 5 4.6%
  • Alf Landon/Frank Knox(1936)

    Votes: 2 1.8%
  • Wendell Willkie/Charles L McNary(1940)

    Votes: 7 6.4%
  • Adlai Stevenson II/Estes Kefauver(1956)

    Votes: 13 11.9%
  • Barry Goldwater/William E Miller(1964)

    Votes: 16 14.7%
  • George McGovern/Sargent Shriver(1972)

    Votes: 30 27.5%
  • Walter Mondale/Geraldine Ferraro(1984)

    Votes: 12 11.0%
  • Michael Dukakis/Lloyd Bentsen(1988)

    Votes: 10 9.2%
  • Bob Dole/Jack Kemp(1996)

    Votes: 2 1.8%
  • John McCain/Sarah Palin(2008)

    Votes: 5 4.6%

  • Total voters
    109
Alternate presidents is a popular what if question. However there are some who, short of a miracle or a POD a fair bit before they ran, who had no hope of winning. This isn't an alternate history challenge. Rather it's to ask the question of, if these candidates who lost badly won instead with minimal divergence beyond the election, would have made good or great presidents. Just because they lost badly doesn't seem they would've run the country poorly. You could also say the opposite is true in some cases, coughwatergatecough. The rules for this is that it has to be a Democratic or Republican, and that they can't have ever served as president IOTL. Also, they must not have had a close election before or after this. So T.R, Bryan, Taft, Hoover and Dewey are out. If there were multiple landslides, then the worst performance is the POD. Lifespans of the candidates are the same as in IOTL, so no looking to an excuse for the failed VPs. I'm looking at you Governor Cox
 
Would Willkie have picked a good secretary of state?

There was speculation it would be Henry R. Luce. Of course he had been born in China, and while I think most lawyers then and now would agree that the children of American citizens are "natural born citizens" in the constitutional sense even when born abroad, there would no doubt be those who challenged that interpretation...
 

SsgtC

Banned
On that list, Wendell Wilkie, Adlai Stevenson and John McCain would have made good-to-great Presidents. Not necessarily better than the men they lost to, but good in their own right
 
Basically got to be McGovern given what the Nixon administration was like, although I still suspect the 1970s would have been miserable in a lot of areas.
 
I read this initially thinking this has to be the most niche category of politicans ever until I realized "landslide victims" was being used in a different context...
 
George McGovern would be a terrible President whose relationship with Congress - controlled by his own party - would make Jimmy Carter's look like a sewing circle. He was a self-righteous, self-important fool who somehow managed to piss off the labor unions in the worst possible time to do so and didn't have the good sense to try to win them back.
 
On that list, Wendell Wilkie, Adlai Stevenson and John McCain would have made good-to-great Presidents. Not necessarily better than the men they lost to, but good in their own right
The problem is that he probably wouldn't have survived his term considering the stress of the presidency and his own declining health OTL... which means the office would inevitably go to...
 

SsgtC

Banned
The problem is that he probably wouldn't have survived his term considering the stress of the presidency and his own declining health OTL... which means the office would inevitably go to...
I think he'd be fine for his time in office. He's likely to only be a one term President. If for no other reason than voter fatigue. After 12 years of Republican control of the White House, he'd have one hell of an uphill climb to get reelected
 
Ok, I'm an idiot. I legitimately thought this was going to be about people who died in landslides who would have been good if they lived and ran for office. I....I need a nap.
 
I chose McGovern. Not because I think he would've made a good President (I don't, and he probably would've lost in 1976). But had he somehow beaten Nixon, America could've been spared the Watergate scandal and the poor management of the withdrawal from Vietnam. So by depriving Nixon of a second term, a McGovern victory would've had the best outcome.

But in terms of which of those choices would've made the best President (which I believe is different from what the poll is asking for), I'd say Adlai Stevenson.
 
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In Irving Stones book They Also Ran, Stone rated Cox as superior in every way over Warren Harding, claiming the former would have made a much better president; he argued that there was never a stronger case in the history of American presidential elections for the proposition that the better man lost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_M._Cox#Bid_for_presidency
To be fair, just about anyone with a spine would have made a better president than Harding. That man's one of the most incompetent president in American history (not necessarily worst simply because the situation never arose and probably his incompetency actually would have mitigated some of the effects if said conditions arose)
 
Mondale, the last New Deal Liberal. Ferraro would've proven to be a weight around the Presidents neck, but everyone else here would've had a worse outcome. Dole, foreign policy aside, would've been George W. Bush 4 years earlier, McCain would've been decent if he won in 2000, but bad had he won in 2008. McGovern would've been the worst of Jimmy Carter without any of the good.
 
Mondale, the last New Deal Liberal. Ferraro would've proven to be a weight around the Presidents neck, . . .
I wrote a whole timeline on Mondale, think he’s a pretty first-rate individual.

WI: Ford wins re-election in '76, Mondale-Bumpers highly successful from '81-'89
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...-bumpers-highly-successful-from-81-89.368315/

I also think Geraldine Ferraro is first-rate, although slightly inexperienced in 1984.

* Bumpers mean Vice-President Dale Bumpers.
 
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