I wonder if Reagan will run against McGovern in 1976. I think he probably will.Until 1976
McGoverning
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markus meecham
Banned
If he gets the timing right he can get his sucessor elected with his bloody shirt.
Let me know if you do, is it still on Netflix? Might have to check that out this weekend.Never actually finished it.
I have thought about doing some wikiboxes that follow this "McGovern Spring" in authoritarian states through its ups and downs a little more. But right now I'm busy trying to finish (and I do mean finish not "finish really means partway-through") the Middle East material. I've decided to try and be thematic about chapters, as I have done partly by default so far. So, as we come off the "McGovern Spring" stuff we'll next get that perpetual graveyard of idealism the Middle East and some interesting changes there. Then we'll come back for two (or possibly three depending how I structure the finished material) chapters on McGovern and domestic policy, both making the legislative sausage and trying to clean up the political-legal mess they've inherited. After that will come a pair of great-power diplomacy/national security chaps that are mostly done already and have been a long time because I liked drafting them, but they need to await developments in the interval otherwise There Would Be Spoilers. So, an effort to follow themes (the campaign, getting to grips with governing, McGovernite ripples overseas, McGoverning at home, Mr. McGovern And The Cold War, etc.)
Mileage varies. Don't get too attached in the early pages because things have evolved over time. Even quite recent digressions of mine are ever-evolving things. But, there's a strong overall structure in place (and, Jesus, way too much depth of detail because that's the only way I roll) within which fiddling may be done without compromising the Great Work.
Just finished catching up on this TL, and I have to say, it's probably the best TL I've ever seen on this site. The election update was so engrossing that I decided to make a little wikipedia infobox for it.
Awesomesauce! That's a kind and thoughtful wiki-gift, I appreciate it very much. I'd like to draw attention to that "States Carried" line because, poor George, even when he's winning he's losing...
Never underestimate the unexpected. By the same token, even a win in '76 could be a "catastrophic success" in some ways, if winning '72 wasn't already.Until 1976
Also: hi gang, hard at work both on Real Main McGoverning Material (I have one of my eyeballs that deep in 1970s developing-economy economics and Alawite clan politics and wars that didn't happen IOTL but easily could have and the macroeconomics of the decade and ... just lots of stuff) and what I'd call supplemental materials. But since I noticed a flutter on the thread thought I'd stop by, answer a few comments, and generally check around the place. My hope is to have the either one or two (looking at structure right now) Mideast chaps up this coming week. I have an interval just at the moment where I can charge through and see that done (and even some other things too) if I don't get too fond of hanging out in the thread in the meanwhile.
There is a small army of people who can and probably will make plans to run against George come the Bicentennial. Even just the likeliest candidates, who have the strongest changes (however relatively-slim they may be) runs to just about double digits. As a piece of racing form this is just off the top of my head, as of the situation in McGoverning around 1973-74:
Congresscritters
Charles Percy Everybody thinks one day Chuck Percy will run for president, except maybe Chuck Percy. If he does at any point, really the '76 cycle is his time. He was reelected in '72 so has plenty of time to prepare. He's been in the Senate long enough. This might be a good moment for his blend of anti-"McGoverning" and ideological caution. Certainly he is a favorite most people will play in their office pools and he should probably get on to that.
Howard Baker As one Marshall Mathers once said, you may have one shot, one opportunity - this is Howard's. For a similar constellation of reasons to Percy (Baker is almost assured of reelection in '74) if this other guy everybody assumes will run for president one of these days is going to do it, it should be now. Against a deeply polarizing Democratic incumbent he can even play the uniter-not-a-divider card with some assurance. That and a winning smile could do well in a crowded field.
Ed Gurney A much bigger horse in this race than many amateur touts would guess. The tall, distinguished Mainer won in Florida on a full 190-proof Southern Strategy platform. He has senatorial looks right out of central casting. A deep, resonant voice. A stellar war record. Also he was Richard Nixon's senatorial champion in McGoverning much as he was IOTL so when The Dick looks for favorites to play he might play that one.
Barry Goldwater He won't run if Reagan gets in. But if anything stopped Reagan from running, I do believe Barry would saddle up and go at it again on a "see? I told you" platform.
Bob Dole He needs to win reelection in '74 first. But as long as he does Dole might run as the war hero/Old Right hatchet man he was at this point in his career and take a leaf from his ideological-enemy-but-personal-friend George McGovern's - successful, I hasten to add - playbook and build a good ground crew then look for an opening.
Gerry Ford Given that he's not VP here a lot of people might write off the guy who played too much football without a helmet. But consider a couple of things. As Hugh Scott gets ever closer to retirement and starts to phone it in over in the Senate, Gerry is the closest thing the whole GOP has (not just one of the big factions) to a parliamentary leader of the opposition against President McGovern. That will get his mug on the news a lot and get him a metric crapton of speaking engagements. Also his mix of old school small-c conservatism (now with extra 1920s budget orthodoxy to soothe the National Chamber of Commerce...) and social moderation could make hi a serious player.
John Ashbrook A wingnut of the finest wing and purest nuttiness, the guy who thinks Goldwater might be a closet liberal and hangs out with politically... colorful Italian crypto-fascists may just huff enough of his own vanity to get in.
Governors
Ronald Reagan Well, yeah. Saint Ron is the New Right's king over the water and has been since at least 1968. Likewise, since '68 Reagan has been waiting for this chance. This is his time to take up the banner of the Goldwaterites and ride in on a pony. It would take Big Damn Butterflies (probably gene-spliced with twenty percent Space Bat) to keep him out. That's not the same as saying he'll win, though. At the same time, McGovern Derangement Syndrome is very much A Thing on the American right as McGoverning percolates.
Nelson Rockefeller A lot depends on how Rocky exits Albany ITTL. But, yeah, he's Nelson Frigging Rockefeller and only an earlier ... secretarial incident could keep him from at least thinking seriously about what looks like his last real shot at the big chair.
Robert Ray He's from Iowa, I get that. But he's also probably the most entrenched and powerful GOP governor not named Reagan or Rockefeller at this point in McGoverning, so at the very least he could do a neat job of "running for veep" in the early primaries and snag himself a two-spot.
Other Folks
John Connally He doesn't have an elected office at the moment but that never stopped Big Bad John from doing a thing if he wanted to do a thing. Certainly he is Richard Milhous' very favorite man-crush/Nixonian Third Way candidate, especially if and as long as he can wash his hands of the damn milk money.
William Westmoreland Cup your hand to your ear and listen to the butterflies. If the good (ex)general can get himself a political platform, probably back in the South Carolina GOP owned and operated by Strom Thurmond Enterprises, and a wave of angry white male reaction peaks around the Bicentennial, then if some of the big names stumble or eviscerate each other to the point where they're no longer viable, a man on a white horse could look worryingly attractive. (Yes I know everyone loves Al Haig for the role. I get that - even Sideshow Bob wants America's Pinochet to rule him like a king. But right now in McGoverning Haig is stuck fidgeting in uniform in the service of a McGovern White House so the attack ads against him write themselves.)
That's really just the most plausible candidates in every category and we've already hit twelve. There could be anywhere from two to five Butterfly Candidates too. It's a crowded damn bus over there in the Beat McGovern lane.
Westmoreland would certainly be an interesting (read: pants-crappingly terrifying) candidate. But I guess I'd have to see McGovern's approvals on his handling of Vietnam in order to really come to a conclusion about whether or not a "shaking a fist in the general direction of Le Duan" campaign would really be effective outside the Republican primaries. The safe money is on Reagan, but then, the safe money was on Muskie, too. Dole, Baker, Percy... all of 'em have solid shots if they care to take them. I don't think Jerry would go for it, though. He always wanted to be Speaker, and if he gets it, he'd be content to stay there. I could totally see Connally and Rocky running with high confidence and then burning out almost immediately. All of this is pure speculation, of course, although if a gun was put to my head, however, I'd say that Reagan/Gurney would be the ideal/demonic ticket for the Grand Old Party.
I like the way you think. That's not an endorsement/confirmation of anything, but I do like the way you think. Certainly a Reagan/Gurney ticket could be right-GOP fanfic (or possibly a Jack Chick tract...) in McGoverning in advance of 1976. Also it's something Richard Milhous could probably live with from his lair, somebody with brains to run things while Reagan smiled and waved.
And Now For Something Completely Different...
Purely a little diversion here. Just been wading through a combination of Life Stuff and the Magic of Petrodollars, so I thought I'd tease a little geologic core sample of one of the many, many (really, God, just so many) facets of popular culture, ordinary life, pleasant but TL-specific diversions from weighty issues of state, etc. that can be found in this particular TLverse. More than anything else it should serve in token of an answer to the question, "just how small-c catholic are the TL writer's interests here?" To which, if you didn't already know, the answer is, "like Pius The Friggin' Ninth the TL writer's interests are small-c catholic." Which is to say all-inclusive and inclined to go in all manner of odd directions. Don't even ask about music, or popcorn-level moviemaking, or arms control, or grain harvests, or the aerospace industry, or the World Cup, or a faster path to broad public use of Graphical User Interface systems -- really. For the love of me turning out McGoverning chapters, just don't.
But. It has come to my attention that Smack Has Been Talked about some of my recent head-clearing meanderings. In response, because 'tis the (sporting) season at least here in the States, and because it answers the "but do the ripples really go everywhere?" question with an affirmative "yes, friggin' everywhere," a few thoughts - teasers? Probably both - about America's newly-emergent national pastime of the Seventies (plenty of butterflies out there but this is a Trend at work) in the world of McGoverning. I could post some stuff here about paleo-punk rock, or a much earlier Minivan Revolution in the automotive industry, or what might happen if you actually upgrade your infrastructure with fiberoptic cable as soon as it's available, or what Concorde and nuclear weapons and global warming research have to do with each other, or what Stanley Kubrick's up to. But because of said Smack that Has Been Talked ... I'm gonna post about The Goddamn NFL.
By the numbers:
1) Question: what do Vice President Phil Hart, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, Treasury Secretary John Kenneth Galbraith, Coretta Scott King, and Canadian film producer and media magnate John F. Bassett have to do with each other? Answer: we'll see.
2) How might this object
represent something rather different in the world of McGoverning than it does in our universe, and in a different locale?
3) Follow me down the garden path of this causal chain for a moment, sports fans:
5) Because this one really is just so much better with visual aids I'm going to push the envelope here. Question: what do this guy
... and this guy ...
... and this guy ...
... have in common? Answer: give it time and we'll see.
Also: do you like your quarterbacking done in bulk? Say this with me five times fast, "Bobby Bowden's Buccaneer Bullpen."
6) A moment in time from a McGoverning Super Bowl, won't say which one:
7) Lastly a real teaser-like statement (and @Wolfram, this one's definitely for you):
Super Bowl XV: LONE STAR SHOOTOUT
There. That's enough for now. Back to the Serious Work that involves Serious People. I'd wiki the name "Andrew F. Brimmer" if I were you...
But. It has come to my attention that Smack Has Been Talked about some of my recent head-clearing meanderings. In response, because 'tis the (sporting) season at least here in the States, and because it answers the "but do the ripples really go everywhere?" question with an affirmative "yes, friggin' everywhere," a few thoughts - teasers? Probably both - about America's newly-emergent national pastime of the Seventies (plenty of butterflies out there but this is a Trend at work) in the world of McGoverning. I could post some stuff here about paleo-punk rock, or a much earlier Minivan Revolution in the automotive industry, or what might happen if you actually upgrade your infrastructure with fiberoptic cable as soon as it's available, or what Concorde and nuclear weapons and global warming research have to do with each other, or what Stanley Kubrick's up to. But because of said Smack that Has Been Talked ... I'm gonna post about The Goddamn NFL.
By the numbers:
1) Question: what do Vice President Phil Hart, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, Treasury Secretary John Kenneth Galbraith, Coretta Scott King, and Canadian film producer and media magnate John F. Bassett have to do with each other? Answer: we'll see.
2) How might this object
represent something rather different in the world of McGoverning than it does in our universe, and in a different locale?
3) Follow me down the garden path of this causal chain for a moment, sports fans:
- The 1972 NFL season begins after Yr. Hmbl. TL &c.'s POD. As a result, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach does not suffer a severe, season-hampering shoulder injury in a preseason game. Indeed after Staubach's performance in the preseason head coach Tom Landry says, "I'm behind Roger a thousand percent." Because that phrase hasn't gotten enough use in 1972 ITTL...
- As a result other Dallas Cowboys quarterback Craig Morton presses even harder and more vigorously to get traded. Because Butterflies Are Pretty and because Dallas likes draft picks, of the possible trades that might be made for the stalwart, underused Morton, he ends up with the Atlanta Falcons. Within a season or so he's planted roots and matured into a solid starting QB for the often hapless Falcons.
- With the crucial job of quarterback squared away now, when the 1975 NFL Draft rolls around (the last to pretty universally involve players who'd entered college prior to the McGoverning POD) the Falcons have no special interest in Cal's gifted quarterback Steve Bartkowski. Instead the noble Pole goes to the motherland, i.e. Chicago.
- What do the Falcons do instead with their very high draft pick (Morton's good but he does not constitute a fully functional team by himself) ? Anxious to broaden their offense the Falcons draft ... Walter Payton.
5) Because this one really is just so much better with visual aids I'm going to push the envelope here. Question: what do this guy
... and this guy ...
... and this guy ...
... have in common? Answer: give it time and we'll see.
Also: do you like your quarterbacking done in bulk? Say this with me five times fast, "Bobby Bowden's Buccaneer Bullpen."
6) A moment in time from a McGoverning Super Bowl, won't say which one:
7) Lastly a real teaser-like statement (and @Wolfram, this one's definitely for you):
Super Bowl XV: LONE STAR SHOOTOUT
There. That's enough for now. Back to the Serious Work that involves Serious People. I'd wiki the name "Andrew F. Brimmer" if I were you...
If you can somehow keep Burt from getting hurt playing at FSU and actually make the League, I swear I'll burn incense in front of your graven image for a week! PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZE!!
Just a few little butterflies, and (Voice of Howard Cosell) "Listen to this crowd! For the 2nd time in just under 4 years, a black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South!" (or over if you want Hank Aaron to get #715 at home int he last game of 1973 - but it has to happen it Atlanta, it's just too beautiful, and with Vin Scully calling it.) "Walter Payton has just broken the single season rushing record set by O.J. Simpson, on what is likely the last play of the Falcons' regular season."
1977 is also the year of an incredible defense that doesn't get mentioned with the greats because the offense was so bad they were .500 - with Payton there, you could argue that they might be in Super Bowl XII. SO, ironically,the Morton trade could wind up keeping Dallas from one of their 2 OTL Super Bowl wins.
Which in itself is beautiful AH irony.
I may be the only one... but I love an excessive depth of detail. Especially with prose this fine - I mean, this is publication-worthy stuff, I sincerely hope you sign on with a major publisher at some point for an original novel, I would buy it in a heartbeat.
While "be the subject of a Pacific Islands cargo cult" is actually on my bucket list, I'm afraid this particular TL starts almost twenty years too late for that. (Also, I shudder to think what a graven image of me would look like between the Hemingway/Commander Riker beard and the forehead I inherited from my half-Germanic father that is not unlike the radar dome on a 1970s Royal Dutch Navy Tromp-class destroyer, google-image that and you'll see what I mean....)
However, much as he did with OTL's spring league, here the chance to get in on the action in Tampa lures the proud South Floridian away from any loyalties to the Phins. A different, corporate (in the original sense of multiparty) ownership emerges in the wake of McCorkle's economic distress, so when the collective Not-Culverson entity makes the running in Tampa-St. Pete they realize that none of them is an instantly visible and marketable CEO like Nordstrom over with Seattle's NFL collective. So they go looking for a "face," someone who can buy in a bit but more importantly become the media's point of connection with the new franchise and also do a lion's share of the advertising.
When Bowden - still at West Virginia ITTL after more-successful-than-OTL '74 and '75 seasons - gets on their shortlist of potential candidates and sweet-talks them about his "formative" time assisting with the Seminoles, Burt puts his thumb on the scales. This, it turns out, is A Good Thing for the organization. (Also, on a point of trivia only a Seminole would love, Gary Huff has a considerably more expansive and successful time in Bowden's stable of gunslingers than with John McKay IOTL.) But if the Bucs are actually going to be good in the era of the Orange and White, somebody has to be the NFC's Tampa. No worries, there will be, but I'll save that for when I finally get around to cultural explorations. Stuff more central to the enterprise to get through first.
Also I would like to point out how broadminded, inclusive, and ecumenical all of that is given that both my parents received their bachelor's degrees in 1964 from... the University of Florida at Gainesville. Interesting alternate history is interesting alternate history, no matter who benefits...
(on one such ecumenically Floridian note, that also means John Reaves will find a coach who can help him get clean and mostly dry out, and have a respectable career in the NFL rather than That Spring League. Butterflies Are Everywhere especially in the pop culture.)You're very much on track with that last point, though dates and mileage may vary: if the Cowboys have a lot of slippage 'twixt cup and lip in the course of this TL (and they do, oh, they do) there are reasons for that. Reasons that can be explained in terms of plausible butterflies, but in this case Your Humble Author will admit they're flappin' to his tune. Whatever uniform he may be in Sweetness will continue, in the words of Lin-Manuel Miranda, to amaze and astonish. And despite the occasional outright absence of an offensive line for the Falcons at that time, a pocket passer with a cannon like Morton suits them, especially if they have a stronger rushing game. And, given that DA BERZ really care most about defense and will tolerate whatever gets it done to score points, the Noble Pole may really be able to get his Ken Anderson on in the Windy City.
As for Hank, I agree entirely that when Hank passes The Babe it is important under the Law of Narrative that he do it at Fulton County, with Scully to call the ball.
A fellow fan of G R A N U L A R I T Y - welcome aboard! You're entirely too kind but, even if the interest of a publisher (major or otherwise) would probably cause me to die of shock before I got any edits done, if I can power through this in the end (and I just mean McGoverning, not the entirety of the TL concept though I will keep at it in my GRRM-like way, writing too damned much material and loving every minute of my digressions), I would like to get an e-book together just to preserve the material. Again, thank you very kindly, don't know that I'd rate myself so highly but it means a lot to hear that this gives people enjoyment.
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I'd like to return to the tail end of this comment, which I missed doing just now because I ran down the length of one of my own tangents. Always a dangerous business there. The return comes, because the mention of the Cowboys allows me to actually tie in this pleasant little digression into the Butterfly Field as it relates to sports culture, with the actual main thrust of the TL.
We have, here in this TL, a president who is both a Democrat (whose ideology, if you were to piece one together for him, is a rather fascinating and very Great Plains/Upper Midwest mix of being The Last Capital-P Progressive and a Scandinavian-American lean in towards social democracy) and a markedly - constantly, given the mood of the mainline press - polarizing figure. A figure whose actions - more importantly, how different ideological tribes interpret those actions - seem constantly to cause people to take sides. To pick teams.
Even IOTL's more ideologically fluid 1970s, "America's Team" down there in the Metroplex was nearly a fetish object of white Sun Belt reaction. Few if any of the Cowboys' African American players were "political," nor were there notable white leftists on the squad (as there were with several other teams, an AH.com buddy sent me a great article about one with the Redskins and I was fascinated to read that the Kansas City Chiefs - from a Union town, after all - were a hotbed of McGovernites.) The ownership of course, no prizes for guessing what side Clint Murchison was on. Landry was quiet about it but very conservative. Staubach was an archly conservative Republican and a deeply conservative Catholic as well. Young, long-haired, and at the same time theologically reactionary born-again types were Cowboys fans, and so were many not-very-religious-but-very-conservative crew-cut Sun Belt suburbanites.
In the move away from big-tent parties towards more, well, tribal affiliations, those affiliations can start to blend together. So in non-election years, or years where an election hasn't gone well for Our Team, those Cowboys fans may take the whole "America's Team" thing even more seriously, in the sense that they're pretty sure who the real America is (full disclosure: deep-McGovernites are equally sure, just from their own POV, so neither side is blameless when it comes to the whole "dehumanizing the enemy" thing) and that this team in Dallas plays for that Real America. This is a thing that will crop up across a range of cultural phenomena in a much more pointed and open way than we often saw in the Seventies of OTL.
@Yes, this may be an inopportune moment to ask (to quote from the hilarious Animal House), but have you read @wolverinethad's Protect and Survive Miami: End of Watch story? It's set in Florida--mostly Miami and Fort Myers, but Bob Graham and the government of Florida evacuate to Gainesville before the war (and there are some chapters dealing with the government postwar). It's a good story, and I wonder how you would have written it (this is not taking away from @wolverinethad's accomplishment; it's a damn good worldbuilding story and it depicts how things got to where they were in the Protect and Survive-verse)…
The reason I ask is because of your mention of your parents graduating from UF-Gainesville; hell, where were you in 1983-1984?
Good TL, BTW...
The reason I ask is because of your mention of your parents graduating from UF-Gainesville; hell, where were you in 1983-1984?
Good TL, BTW...
Thanks for the tip! I will check that out. I was growing up a ways up I-95 at the time in North Carolina (though I've lived on all three coasts and various states in my time.) Yes I could see that being part of a legitimate survival plan simply because the Florida coastlines are littered with Air Force bases. My father's home town of Jacksonville would of course be long gone thanks to the Mayport naval base and ancillary facilities. Always good to get suggestions about good reading material, good stuff to read begets better writing I think.