1953-1957: Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower (R-KS*)/Sen. Richard M. Nixon (R-CA)
1957-1958: Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower (R-KS*)†/Sec. Robert B. Anderson (R-TX)
1958-1959: VP Robert B. Anderson (R-TX)☞/Vacant
1959-1961: Rep. Sam Rayburn (D-TX)/Vacant
1961-1965: Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX)/Sen. Thomas Dodd (D-CT)
1965-1969: Fmr. Sec. Oveta Culp Hobby (R-TX)/Gov. Nelson Rockefeller (R-NY)
1969-1973: Fmr. Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX)/Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI)
1973-1977: Sec. John B. Connally (D-TX)/Gov. Sargent Shriver (D-MD)
1977-1981: Pres. John B. Connally (I-TX)/Sec. Dixy Lee Ray (I-WA)
1981-1985: Gov. Bill Clements (I-TX)/Rep. Dick Cheney (R-WY)
1985-1986: Pres. Bill Clements (R-TX)/Rep. Dick Cheney (R-WY)†
1986-1986: Pres. Bill Clements (R-TX)/Vacant
1986-1987: Pres. Bill Clements (R-TX)☞/Sec. John Tower (R-TX)
1987-1988: VP John Tower (R-TX)☞/Vacant
1988-1989: Rep. Jack Brooks (D-TX)/Vacant
1989-1993: Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-TX)/Gov. Paul Wellstone (DFL-MN)
1993-1997: CEO H. Ross Perot (U-TX)/Mayor Peter Navarro (U-CA)
1997-2001: Gov. Jim Hightower (D-TX)/Gov. Ben Nelson (D-NE)
2001-2005: Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX)/Gov. John Engler (R-MI)
2005-2005: Gov. Ann Richards (D-TX)/Gov. John Edwards (D-NC)☞
2005-2006: Pres. Ann Richards (D-TX)†/Vacant
2006-2006: Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX)/Vacant
2006-2007: Pres. Tom DeLay (R-TX)‡/Sen. John E. Bush (R-AK)*
2007-2007: VP John E. Bush (R-AK)*/Vacant
2007-2013: Pres. John E. Bush (R-AK)*/Fmr. Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MI)
2013-2021: Sen. Selena Quintanilla-Pérez (D-TX)/Gov. Jim Hood (D-MS)
2020: Sen. Rick Perry (D-TX)/Mayor Ayanna Pressley (D-IL)
vs. Sen. Liz Warren (R-TX)/Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA)
vs. Gov. Robby O'Rourke (I-CA)*/CEO Mark Cuban (I-TX)
*Born in Texas
† Dead ☞ Resigned ‡ Impeached
I know I'm going to have to explain myself at some point. Now is not that point.
Okay, here goes:
Eisenhower chooses to dump Nixon from the ticket in 1956, giving his spot to
Robert Anderson. Eisenhower dies of a heart attack soon afterward, and Anderson is undone both by the stress of conflict overseas, in Suez and along the China-USSR border, and his own scandals at home. This rockets Speaker of the House
Sam Rayburn to the top job for a little over a year, and Rayburn in turn passes the baton to his protegé, Texas Senator
Lyndon B. Johnson. Absent Kennedy's charisma or finesse in foreign policy, the Cuban Missile Crisis lasts significantly longer, and that coupled with his VP's scandals mean that even passing an expansive Civil Rights Act isn't enough to prevent a victory by former HEW Secretary and 11th-hour compromise candidate
Oveta Culp Hobby. Hobby has the bad fortune to face sexism, conflict overseas in Indonesia and Southern Africa, and race riots all at the same time, pulling former President Johnson ahead (though still a quarter-million behind in the popular vote) in a nailbiter rematch.
Johnson's second term is largely successful: universal healthcare, civil rights legislation, and troops coming home tend to do that. His protegé, Commerce Secretary
John B. Connally, has his own ideas. He throws himself into new projects - a permanent base on the Moon, tearing up decades of antitrust policy, the University of the United States - while very publicly abandoning ideas like desegregation on the neighborhood level. This leads to conflict between him and the Democratic Party, so he leaves the party, and leaves it to the next link in the chain: former drilling-company CEO and Governor of Texas
Bill Clements. Clements was unlike Connally in many ways. Personality was one of them: Connally was the showman rancher, a spellbinding orator honed in the UT Curtain Club. Bill Clements, on the other hand, was the solid manager you called in to keep things running and put out fires. But they were also different in ideology. Connally combined a fierce nationalism and the simultaneous beliefs that the business of America was business, especially big business, and that government was a tool that could be used for good into an ideology that few actually shared. Clements, on the other hand, was a relatively standard conservative ideologically with a deeply independent streak personally, and his selection of House Minority Whip Dick Cheney reflected that. Clements' first term is still generally remembered positively, but his second term was chaotic: his Vice President died of a sudden heart attack, leading him to appoint Secretary of Defense
John Tower to the top job despite personal enmity, then he was implicated in some dodgy financial dealings related to SMU, where he had served on the Board of Regents before his election as Governor, then he resigned, then Vice President Tower resigned over his alcohol issues and his own dodgy deals, propelling Speaker
Jack Brooks, longtime advocate for civil rights and labor rights, to the Presidency for a short time.
Senator
Lloyd Bentsen was never expected to be President. He was old, an elder-statesman VP candidate to photogenic liberal Governor Bruce Springsteen. Then the Governor's plane crashed in the Pacific on the way to a campaign stop in Sitka, and suddenly Bentsen was in the hot seat, stuck with the sympathy vote. Bentsen's presidency was a difficult one: the left of his own party, including Vice President Wellstone, criticized his support of free trade and opposition to stronger banking regulations. Meanwhile, the Republicans went after him for a lot of other things: ethics issues and affairs in Chief of Staff Bill Clinton's office, the outreach to a democratizing People's Republic of China as student protests and the coming Hong Kong handover drove Zhongnanhai toward reforms, the administration's willingness (despite Bentsen's personal ambivalence) to reach out to LGBT- and abortion-rights activists, and a whole host of other issues, large and small. They themselves, however, had to deal with a bruising primary and a third-party campaign against eventual nominee Phil Gramm:
Ross Perot, tech-company CEO, activist for POWs allegedly still held in Monomotapa and against the Inter-American Free Trade Agreement and the Treaty of San Antonio, and eventual victor in the electoral college thanks to a few faithless electors.
There was a problem, though. Ross Perot didn't know how to govern. His initiatives stalled in Congress, and his turning of attention to foreign policy only led to American servicemen dying in Haiti to topple a democratically-elected socialist government - a conflict, his eventual successor Governor
Jim Hightower charged, that America never should have been involved in. Hightower's mild isolationism proved popular, but his focus on farm issues led to a blind spot on other areas of the economy. His intervention in the dot-com bubble and real-estate crisis was too little, too late, and saw the economy slip into recession and his presidency slip away from him, going to country-club Republican
Kay Bailey Hutchison. Hutchison's response, though, was no better, and any gains she might have gotten from reversion to the mean were lost in the scandals around Texas Republicans' ties to Ken Lay, CEO of FirstPoint Energy, and her unpopular tax cut.
Ann Richards was many things. A proven progressive, a canny political operator, and a sharp wit were just a few of them. Unfortunately, she was also a former heavy drinker and smoker, both of which are risk factors for the esophageal cancer that eventually took her life. And with her Vice President imploding in scandal, the Presidency fell to the man who had blocked her chosen successor (Senator Nancy Pelosi) for months: Speaker of the House
Tom DeLay, former pesticide salesman and longtime Republican operative. The triumvirate of DeLay, new Speaker Mike Pence, and Senate Majority Leader Don Nickles pushed through tax cuts, a federal ban on abortion (which was tied up in the courts until 2009, where a split court decided in Sebelius vs. Abbott that questions of abortion could only be resolved on the state level), and a major opening-up of federal land to mining interests. But it was the last one that led to his downfall, and his impeachment by new Speaker Harry Reid and removal by new Senate Majority Leader Harvey Gantt swept his new Vice President,
John Bush, into power.
Grandson of a Senator, son of an oil businessman and two-term Congressman, John had left Texas for Alaska to make his fortune the same way his father had left Connecticut for Texas. Once there, he had gone into real estate before becoming involved in the Republican Moderate Party of Alaska, propelled by an unusual Rooseveltian air of being not just a master of the wilderness, but a cultured patrician one, a family quarrel with President Clements, and late-breaking scandal first to Alaska's sole House seat and then to the Senate, where he cultivated a moderate air. Bush was a natural choice for the Vice Presidency, and his upright outsider air helped him forge a new Republican brand untainted by DeLay's scandals. Despite a conservative third-party run led by pilot Bob Conley, Bush romped home to re-election, and used his second term to pass immigration reform, establish the Department of Environmental Protection, and set up a nationwide school-voucher system.
Vice President Mitt Romney was expected to win the 2012 election handily. But compared to Governor
Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, in retrospect, he had no chance. He couldn't compete with her seemingly effortless charisma and charm born of decades in the public eye, and next to her he just seemed out of touch. But President Selena (as all but the stuffiest of documents refer to her) was more than just a pretty face - her presidency is likely to be remembered as quite a success, from fighting income inequality and the gender wage gap to brokering a peace deal in the Great Middle Eastern War.
The 2020 election is now upon us. The Presidency is up in the air, and it is impossible to tell who will win. Will it be
Rick Perry, a Democrat seemingly of the wrong era who made his name fighting Big Pharma and Big Tobacco, in the same breath as deregulating the oil industry and slow-walking marriage equality? Or will it be
Liz Warren, the former Secretary of Commerce whose support of "ethical capitalism" and pro-choice views might allow her to appeal to moderates? Or, perhaps, will it be dark-horse
Robby O'Rourke, the Silicon Valley CEO and former punk-rocker whose support of bank deregulation and criminal-justice reform have made him the darling of editorial pages the nation over? We'll all have to wait and see...