Alright, it's my turn to try fleshing out a somewhat plausible, and equally cursed, alternate timeline for the Presidency. Here, instead of portraying El Presidente Rubio on national television, Alec Baldwin gets the real deal. IRL he did mull over running, at times, for the NYC mayoralty and the governorship, so I decided to write out a brief wikibox and summary about if the actor had a bit more interest in the political sphere. This
is an unfinished project, so feel free to point out any discrepancy and do please enjoy this slightly cursed timeline. *Mario voice* Here we goooooo!
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Alec Baldwin (born on April 3, 1958) is an American politician, television personality, and the current President of the United States.
Born in Amityville, New York, to a high school teacher and a homemaker, Baldwin attended Massapequa High School as a teenager, from where he graduated in 1976; while there, he was school treasurer and the head of the student theater department. Baldwin then went on to New York University, from where he gained his Bachelor of Arts in theater in 1980.
Alec Baldwin first came onto the TV scene in the early 1980s with appearances on several series, including The Doctors (1963) and Knots Landing (1979), before securing feature film roles in Forever, Lulu (1987), Beetlejuice (1988), Working Girl (1988), Married to the Mob (1988) and Talk Radio (1988). In 1989, on the back of his newfound name recognition and reputation, Baldwin was elected the vice-chair of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, a post he would hold until 1993. In 1990, Baldwin appeared in the first on-screen adaptation of the "Jack Ryan" character created by Tom Clancy. The film, The Hunt for Red October (1990), was a box office and critical success, with Baldwin notably appearing alongside Sean Connery. Unfortunately, Baldwin fell out with Paramount Studios over future scripts for "Jack Ryan", and subsequent Ryan roles went to Harrison Ford.
Baldwin instead went to Broadway to perform "A Streetcar Named Desire", garnering a Tony nomination for his portrayal of "Stanley Kowalski" (he would reprise the role in a 1995 TV adaptation). Baldwin won a Tony for his portrayal of a lowlife thief pursued by dogged cop Fred Ward in Miami Blues (1990), met his future wife Kim Basinger while filming the Neil Simon comedy, The Marrying Man (1991), starred in the film adaptation of the play, Prelude to a Kiss (1992) (in which he starred off-Broadway), and made a famed ten-minute cameo as a hard-nosed real estate executive laying down the law in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992). He also made a similar tour-de-force monologue in the thriller, Malice (1993), as a doctor defending his practices, in which he stated, "Let me tell you something: I am God"; this line would later be used in his future campaigns for the Presidency (and also the focus of some concern).
Demand for Baldwin's talents in the 1990s saw more scripts come his way, and he starred alongside his then-wife, Kim Basinger, in a remake of the Steve McQueen action flick, The Getaway (1994), brought to life the comic strip character, The Shadow (1994), and was a contender for the role of an assistant district attorney in the civil rights drama, Ghosts of Mississippi (1996). Baldwin's distinctive style of showmanship, his verbal skills, and political aspirations saw him leave the big screen, however, when he was approached to become the Clinton Administration's interim director of public relations in 1994. Although he then voiced some US-aired episodes of the highly popular UK children's show, Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends (1994), in the meantime (as he was technically not yet a government employee), Baldwin left the film industry for good when he was appointed the White House's Director of Intergovernmental Affairs, an office for which he was by most accounts a good hand at until he resigned in 1995. Following a two-year-long hiatus from politics and government, Baldwin won a closely-fought election for New York's 18th congressional district in 1997. He then won the Democratic nomination for the New York governorship in a close race with Kings County District Attorney Charles Hines, but was defeated in the 1998 general election by incumbent Governor George Pataki.
In the early 2000s, Baldwin and Basinger endured an acrimonious break-up that quickly became tabloid fodder but, while his divorce was high-profile, Baldwin still managed to win New York's special election for Senator Patrick Moynihan's vacant Senate seat (2001), following the death of frontrunner and First Lady Hillary Clinton onboard Air France's Flight 4590. As a Senator, Baldwin notably pushed for greater transparency in government, culminating in the Halt Official Business-led Bribery in the Interests of Transparency (HOBBIT) Act in 2003, and served as a junior member of the Senate Subcommittee on the Judiciary. Senator Baldwin also played a critical role in beginning the extension of Congressional oversight into the White House in potential conflict-of-interest affairs, ultimately leading to the narrowly unsuccessful impeachment trial of Vice President Dick Cheney over charges of profiteering and obstruction of justice in 2003.
As he had some name recognition nationally as a Rockefeller-like firebrand and became well-known for his daily speeches and filibusters against the Iraq War in the Senate chamber (including one against the PATRIOT Act that lasted 8 hours), he formed an exploratory committee for a potential campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2003. Senator Baldwin dropped out of the race for the nomination in March of 2004, following a disappointing performance on Super Tuesday (largely due to his competing with Senator John Kerry for the liberal vote). Baldwin was selected by Daniel Inouye as his running mate following the Hawaii senator's nomination, and was sworn in as Vice President of the United States following the Democratic victory in the 2004 presidential election. As Vice President, Baldwin served as President Inouye's point man on education, interstate relations, and oftentimes acted as the Inouye Administration's unofficial emissary to North Korea (visiting the country three times to discuss denuclearization with Kim Jong-il). Noted for his opposition to K Street's lobbying efforts and for some measure of arms control, Vice President Baldwin helped to lead the Democratic effort to sign the Safer Schools Act II into law, as well as the ramming through of the HOBBIT Act by 38 state legislatures into the Constitution as the 28th Amendment by the end of the Kemp Administration. He also played a major role in getting the First Lady Hillary Clinton Memorial Bill passed, which did away with school vouchers and provided for an extension of Medicare benefits to poorer families, and presided over the passage of the Economy, Rejuvenation and Jobs Act of 2007, just days after the collapse of Lehman Brothers began the Great Recession. Arguably, these three bills (with their increase of government spending and oversight) did more than anything else to render President Inouye and Vice President Baldwin toxic to many moderate swing-state voters, which then led to the Republican ticket of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Lieutenant Governor Brian Sandoval of Nevada winning the 2008 presidential elections (alongside giving the GOP a supermajority in both houses of Congress).
As a private citizen, Vice President Baldwin took up work as the head of his own consulting business, Baldwin Partners, a few weeks after leaving office; he then pursued a Juris Doctor in law, which he received from New York University in 2012. The Vice President also took up a teaching position as a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy, which he held until he was sworn in as President and thus put on leave. He supported Senator Joe Biden's candidacy for the White House in 2012 and Governor Kate Brown's in 2016, and also gave a eulogy in honor of President Inouye at his Washington funeral in 2012. Occasionally, the Vice President would make campaign stops in vulnerable areas during election years, among them in California's 33rd District in 2012 and Washington's 5th in 2016.
Vice President Baldwin entered the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries on June 18, 2019; his past history as a Senator and Vice President came back to haunt him somewhat, as well as past accusations of sexual assault from some women that nearly derailed his campaign. His candidacy was controversial; his commentary on President Kemp's Afghanistan policy as "a sluice for tax dollars and the ideological sh*t of the Republitards to go straight to the defense lobby" and of the women accusing him as "no-good broads in need of a b*tch-slap" lost him support in many areas of the Democratic Party's strongholds on the coasts. He continued this strategy of attacking his foes, notably pulling a '
Rockefeller' when heckled by trans rights activists in Schenectady, New York, but won the nomination in the end against Governor
Jay Inslee of Washington due to a large upswing in support from the Rust Belt.
During the general election, Vice President Baldwin and President Kemp were relatively neck-and-neck in the polls, with the President usually holding a 5-point lead (minus the margin of error) until the Kemp Delta donations scandal and the Kemp campaign meetings with Chinese officials became public just weeks before Election Day. Largely due to this, Baldwin won the White House with 26 states plus Washington DC, 358 electoral votes, and a slight majority of the popular vote, which was later the subject of some controversy. Since President Baldwin was sworn in, his approval ratings have remained somewhat low; his handling of the delayed arrival of the 2019 coronavirus pandemic and the simultaneous arrival of the 2020 swine flu in the contiguous United States have won some plaudits, but the Baldwin Administration's handling of the tanking economy is often cited as a concern by a large majority of voters. The President's actions in office have largely been characterized as libertarian and somewhat xenophobic, often combined in the flurry of executive orders designed to drastically reduce the national debt.
President Baldwin notably signed a travel ban on Chinese travelers entering the United States during his first 90 days in office, leading some to characterize him as racist; the Baldwin Administration has also been noted for directing the DOJ to aggressively pursue antitrust and corruption cases more thoroughly during his time in office, leading to a large slump in the stock market. His foreign policy has been described, at times, as more internationalist and yet more assertive than his predecessor's, focusing largely on pressuring Hungary and Poland to abandon their states of emergency and re-institute the rule of law in those countries; under President Baldwin, the United States has also taken an increasingly involved stance in Africa, contributing to tensions between Washington and Beijing. Under his watch, the United States has pulled out entirely of Afghanistan, leading to the second Afghan civil war; the Saudi government has begun cultivating close ties with Russia, threatening the United States' energy needs, and has increased the tempo of 'freedom of navigation' exercises in the South and East China Seas, angering Beijing but encouraged by Taiwan and Brunei. Notably, a trade war with China and Russia was triggered when the Treasury began slowing down the rate at which matured bond payments were made to citizens of those countries; and the Northwest Passage boundary dispute with Canada was resolved in Canada's favor at a treaty signing in 2020. The arrest of a French telecoms executive on charges of industrial espionage for the French intelligence services, and his subsequent trial and imprisonment, have strained relations with France, although Washington's ties remain strong with the rest of the European Union (including the United Kingdom).
President Baldwin is of English, Irish, French, Scottish, and German descent. He identifies as a lifelong Democrat; originally, he felt more at home with Birch Bayh's faction of the party, but later drifted more to the center. While serving as a professor of international relations at Georgetown University, President Baldwin met his current partner, Clarisse Henneman, an adjunct professor there. They have one child, Rennie, who was born in March 2013.
