McGoverning

Watching the Cohen testimony, I kinda wondered (as I occasionally do) how Yes would write about present historical figures and events. The great vortex of history obviously hasn't rendered its judgment on anything yet, but it'd still be better than any UPI copy.
 
So re-reading this, I had a couple of thoughts - first, that I hadn’t even realized before how much focus this TL has had on world events and US FP, meaning we really must going to be getting a lot of Domestic Policy goodness with the next update. Seriously, there’s the farm law, native nations policy, some brief mention of veterans, and that’s about it. @Yes has already confirmed that we’ll be seeing a Supreme Court nomination, and reaction to the oil embargo (with likely ties into energy and environmental policy), with tax and welfare reform pretty much guaranteed (given its prominence whenever priorities were discussed). We still have yet to see if the administration has time for health care reform in all of this.

The other thing that sticks with me - even as we are still a ways off from 1976, I can’t shake the feeling that the real prize, TTL as OTL, will be 1980 (40 year cycles and all that).

CONSOLIDATE: Additional quick question - have you given any thought to when we start seeing pop culture effects? (Like, for example, something on the 45th Academy Awards? If you want, I could offer something on that.)
 
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@Yes Additional quick question - have you given any thought to when we start seeing pop culture effects? (Like, for example, something on the 45th Academy Awards? If you want, I could offer something on that.)

Should be very interesting. Maybe we can have "The Godfather" win more than 3 Awards. It deserved Best Supporting Actor, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Score.
 
So re-reading this, I had a couple of thoughts - first, that I hadn’t even realized before how much focus this TL has had on world events and US FP, meaning we really must going to be getting a lot of Domestic Policy goodness with the next update.

In the words of the late Ed McMahon, you are correct, sir!


Seriously, there’s the farm law, native nations policy, some brief mention of veterans, and that’s about it.

Well, a little more than that, and that includes some big stuff from a McGovernite perspective, but yes. We've mostly just seen "hundred days" stuff and the chapter around the corner is MADE OF TASTY TASTY POLICY GOODNESS. After delving into that graveyard of hopes the Middle East (and also backing up to make sure I ran over some of those hopes again just to make sure), it's actually been delightful researching and editing the Legislative Sausage-Making stuff. Truly the early Seventies were a "failed to turn" point for a lot of big things in US public policy, we were a lot closer to getting some version of things that loom as large now as universal health care policy (the ACA is essentially a version of Nixoncare which was the most conservative option at the time), basic income, universal child care, and several other things. IOTL the answer to "what happened next?" is pretty much THANKS, WATERGATE with a soupcon of the Nixon Shock thrown into the economics of it. But we are on different terrain here at McGovening Acres so butterflies flit about.


@Yes has already confirmed that we’ll be seeing a Supreme Court nomination, and reaction to the oil embargo (with likely ties into energy and environmental policy), with tax and welfare reform pretty much guaranteed (given its prominence whenever priorities were discussed). We still have yet to see if the administration has time for health care reform in all of this.

This stuff also! Clark Clifford is already at work in the background prying his old friend "Wild Bill" Douglas' pernickety and often self-destructive fingers from Douglas' SCOTUS seat and we shall see shortly what happens next.

The other thing that sticks with me - even as we are still a ways off from 1976, I can’t shake the feeling that the real prize, TTL as OTL, will be 1980 (40 year cycles and all that).
Its good to see that The Readers take the long view. The long view is often useful in all sorts and conditions of history, the alternate kind included. Not always, but quite often.

@Yes Additional quick question - have you given any thought to when we start seeing pop culture effects? (Like, for example, something on the 45th Academy Awards? If you want, I could offer something on that.)

Thanks! If you check the last threadmark (thus far) in the thread you'll find some McGoverning SPORTSBALL outcomes of different sorts, and a few posts back of that IIRC I made some brief mention of the (44th and 45th? Well, 1973 and 1974 in any case) Oscars when prompted by an interesting party. But as time goes on and the TL matures we will definitely see both in background and foreground, pop cultural ripples in the McGoverningverse.


Also,

Let me take a few moments to do two things.

First, I want to thank, with humbled, slightly befuddled, but very very deep gratitude, all the kind folks who first nominated and then actually went and voted for what goes on around here this Turtledoves season, both in part (Best Character and Best Quote, the former a guy who likes to be in the middle of things and the latter a sentimental favorite) and for the whole kit-and-kaboodle in Best Cold War to Contemporary. The Readership here are smart, they are vibrant, they pay attention, they have good manners and great humor, and they're good eggs. Thank you all.

Second, I want to point out that voting is still afoot in all Turtledove categories so, whatever it is that steams your personal wontons, go vote for it! It's part of what gives this board that special extra something of actual community - and, as you might have guessed, a guy writing with wistful vigor about the last charge of social-democratic Democrats is kind of big on community :) (On that front let me also say an especially large thank you to the shockingly large number of folks who backed me, That Guy With That TL With the Really Long Chapters, for a Perkins of all things. I am Just This Guy but greatly and gladly in your debt.)

There's great stuff out there! And some really really cool things done by The Readership and Friends of McGoverning Acres generally. I mean there's @President Lincoln's outstanding Blue Skies in Camelot, there's @Gentleman Biaggi's Twists and Turns which is both twisty and tasty in its wikiboxed goodness, and there's lots more besides from spaceflight to milspec to potboilers with Nazis to the Hashemite Hejaz (I am always up for some enterprising Hashemites) and loads of other goodness. Also, PSA: PRE-1900 EXISTS AND IS PRETTY COOL.

More too from our readership: I want to give a shout out among The Readers to the invaluable @wolverinethad's Protect & Survive Miami: End of Watch, which I find the smartest and most engaging of the P&S progeny that still walk among us, and his criminally underread (really, The Readers, go get some) Texas Two-Step which is a delightfully detailed and charmingly jaded romp through my own temporal stomping grounds in the company of the Nixon Crew and also Big Bad John Connally and a cast of other compelling folk besides (it's a hell of a lot of fun what you can do by setting down Leon Jaworski on the other bench, I'll say no more.) And @Expat's wonderful Playing With Mirrors - come for the richly textured Anderson Administration goodness and snappy-as-all-hell dialogue, stay for AL AND HASHIM because they're irreplaceable. Really. These too have been highlights of Turtledoves season. It's a pleasure to share the board with these folks. So read widely, discover cool new stuff, and vote vigorously!
 
Well, a little more than that, and that includes some big stuff from a McGovernite perspective, but yes. We've mostly just seen "hundred days" stuff and the chapter around the corner is MADE OF TASTY TASTY POLICY GOODNESS. After delving into that graveyard of hopes the Middle East (and also backing up to make sure I ran over some of those hopes again just to make sure), it's actually been delightful researching and editing the Legislative Sausage-Making stuff. Truly the early Seventies were a "failed to turn" point for a lot of big things in US public policy, we were a lot closer to getting some version of things that loom as large now as universal health care policy (the ACA is essentially a version of Nixoncare which was the most conservative option at the time), basic income, universal child care, and several other things. IOTL the answer to "what happened next?" is pretty much THANKS, WATERGATE with a soupcon of the Nixon Shock thrown into the economics of it. But we are on different terrain here at McGovening Acres so butterflies flit about.

HOW MUCH LONGER?
 
PRE-1900 EXISTS AND IS PRETTY COOL.

Hope you don't mind if I continue the digression, but if readers are looking for pre-1900 works that are also masterpieces and also big on community, I hope everyone has checked out Malê Rising. Might tide some of us McGovernites over while we wait (patiently) for the sausage-making!
 
Hope you don't mind if I continue the digression, but if readers are looking for pre-1900 works that are also masterpieces and also big on community, I hope everyone has checked out Malê Rising. Might tide some of us McGovernites over while we wait (patiently) for the sausage-making!

Easily one of my five or so favorite TLs... ever. I marathon-read it over a few days last summer whenever I had free time.
 
'Lo all,

(1) Malê Rising is one of the absolute, indisputable treasures of the board. Towering work by a brilliant, sweet guy.

(2) We're gettin' there folks! I lie low at the moment (other than this) in part because I need to get some work done (details, details...) but also (the part the collective "you" cares about) so I can finish revising the energy and SCOTUS sections of the No Fooling Next Chapter and actually get that out this week. I am now hell-bent to get there. (Whiskey bound is also possible, but not before it's done. After, yeah probably.)

(3) A PSA for those kind souls out there who have actually voted for McGoverning-related nominations in this year's Turtledoves: the vote for Best Quote closes tomorrow and there I note Yr. Hmbl. TL & C. is actually in a two-candidate footrace for the nod. So if you have an inclination, stop by that poll and cast a ballot for this absolute sweetheart of a man:
X_dc_mtp_harts_110214.blocks_desktop_large.jpg

Because who doesn't have a thing for Phil? Objectively the second-best Hart in the administration just half a step behind his extraordinary wife Janey.

(4) Speaking of Phil Hart, here's a brief but wonderful clip from his time on OTL's Church Committee, in the very same temporal stretch as where McGovening is now. Really gives a full sense of the man, and why it would have been in character for him, thus confronted with the "X File," to deliver That Line:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4600693/senator-phil-hart-fbi-surveillance-programs

If anything of urgency or interest pops up in the thread I'll stop by but otherwise I mean to be back chapter in hand before the week is out.
 
'Lo all,

(1) Malê Rising is one of the absolute, indisputable treasures of the board. Towering work by a brilliant, sweet guy.

(2) We're gettin' there folks! I lie low at the moment (other than this) in part because I need to get some work done (details, details...) but also (the part the collective "you" cares about) so I can finish revising the energy and SCOTUS sections of the No Fooling Next Chapter and actually get that out this week. I am now hell-bent to get there. (Whiskey bound is also possible, but not before it's done. After, yeah probably.)

(3) A PSA for those kind souls out there who have actually voted for McGoverning-related nominations in this year's Turtledoves: the vote for Best Quote closes tomorrow and there I note Yr. Hmbl. TL & C. is actually in a two-candidate footrace for the nod. So if you have an inclination, stop by that poll and cast a ballot for this absolute sweetheart of a man:
X_dc_mtp_harts_110214.blocks_desktop_large.jpg

Because who doesn't have a thing for Phil? Objectively the second-best Hart in the administration just half a step behind his extraordinary wife Janey.

(4) Speaking of Phil Hart, here's a brief but wonderful clip from his time on OTL's Church Committee, in the very same temporal stretch as where McGovening is now. Really gives a full sense of the man, and why it would have been in character for him, thus confronted with the "X File," to deliver That Line:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4600693/senator-phil-hart-fbi-surveillance-programs

If anything of urgency or interest pops up in the thread I'll stop by but otherwise I mean to be back chapter in hand before the week is out.
“Conscious of the Senate” indeed.

Also is it just me or does Phil Hart look like George H.W. Bush but with a beard in that picture? lol
 
A suggestion for when Phil Hart (sadly) dies: Jimmy Carter. Or Daniel Inouye. Or Ron Dellums. Anyways, if Reagan runs in '76, and there's nothing to say that he won't, I hope he loses.
 
I also like how this administration is breaking the shameful streak of clean-shaven executives in this country. Let’s have more of that going forward!
 
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