Poll: what next US timeline?

What next TL?

  • Franklin Pierce dies in a train wreck

    Votes: 10 9.3%
  • The John Wilkes Booth Plot fully succeeds

    Votes: 15 13.9%
  • Third-termer Teddy

    Votes: 21 19.4%
  • Wood '20

    Votes: 2 1.9%
  • La Follette '24

    Votes: 11 10.2%
  • Willkie '40

    Votes: 7 6.5%
  • La Guardia '40

    Votes: 9 8.3%
  • Rocky for President

    Votes: 12 11.1%
  • Gregory Peck for Governor of California

    Votes: 4 3.7%
  • Perot '92

    Votes: 17 15.7%

  • Total voters
    108
  • Poll closed .
I actually started up a Perot '92 TL a while back, but considering I haven't updated it in seven months, I'm considering it dead. Good luck with it, if that ends up being your next TL.
 
Either 3rd term Teddy or Wood in '20. I was really torn between the two. I find the 1920's a very fertile ground for possibilities, but everyone loves Teddy.
 
My vote: a Third Term for Teddy BUT

I'd also like to see what you'd do with La Follette or LaGuardia as Prez.
La Follette's career as a Progressive is a wet dream of what Obama could be doing but isn't. It depends on when you make Bob La Follette Prez anywhere from 1900-1915 he'd have had a tremendous impact as to trust-busting, consumer rights, the list goes on.
LaGuardia would have been aces at domestic stuff, though the big question mark is whether he gets foreign affairs savvy quick enough to weld an alliance that could beat Hitler. We could annoy the Germans and vice versa. Fully mobilized, we'd be able to whip Germany by itself, but not fully mobilized occupied Europe. Go in half-assed, and it's the Dieppe raid writ large. Cue either a thirty-year Cold War or Europe getting so thoroughly trashed you barely could grow daisies on it.
We act like the "special relationship" between FDR and Churchill was a given no matter who was US prez or UK PM when in most certainly was not. We act like the realpolitik involved with US Lend-Lease to the Soviets was a given but it wasn't.
LaG could've looked at China as a contest between Chinese tyrants and Japanese warlords and let them duke it out, screw the missionary lobby. We wouldn't have cut off oil and scrap to the Japanese if it weren't for the China lobby crying about the Rape of Nanking and other atrocities. No embargo, no Pearl Harbor, America doesn't get into WWII
for another year, a lot more reluctantly and half-assedly if at all, and there's a whole butterfly migration from that POD alone.
Of course, I don't know enough about Fiorello LaG to comment on whether he'd have done then, I'm just saying successful US participation in WW2 required a lot of the above.
Of course, there's the possibility he's actually around long enough to put his own stamp on the New Deal, get us universal health care during/after WWII, and go railroads vs highways as a public-works deal which edits out most of the postwar suburban sprawl, but who knows?
 
So, after one week of tremendous voting, here are the last and definitive results, by increasing order:

8th and last: the President Leonard Wood TL, by only two votes, defeated by the 7th, on Governor Gregory Peck.

The 6th has almost the same amount of voting: the President Willkie TL, with 5 votes.

5th exaequo are, with 6 votes for each one, the Rockefeller dynasty TL and President La Follette's; they follow very closely the two timelines that share the 4th place with 7 votes, the death of Franklin Pierce and President La Guardia.

The 3rd place is taken by the John Wilkes Booth plot TL, with 12 votes. No XIXth Century TL, then.

The 2nd place went, with 14 votes, to Ross Perot; no timeline on recent times either.

The First Place, and the next TL I will begin to publish on this forum as soon as I will end its preparation, goes to the awesome Theodore Roosevelt, who you shall see running for a third term in 1908, by the decision of 20 voters.

I'm eagerly looking for contributors and idea-givers centered on American politics of this period, even if I have already some ideas. In order to avoid the defaults of my earlier TL, butterflys will fly. Please send me a PM if you're interested.
 
Willkie '40. Both he and his running mate died before the end of their term. In the middle of WW2, that would have been a very interesting series of events leading to President Sam Rayburn, at least for a few months.
 
Willkie '40. Both he and his running mate died before the end of their term. In the middle of WW2, that would have been a very interesting series of events leading to President Sam Rayburn, at least for a few months.

I believe the law at the time was that the Secretary of State took over after the President and the Vice President died.
 
I believe the law at the time was that the Secretary of State took over after the President and the Vice President died.

You are correct. Forgot the current Presidential Succession Act wasn't adopted until 1947. Well, for that matter, it makes the timeline potentially even more interesting...
 
After the poll is officially closed, we've got:

1. Teddy for Prez, that will be available on Late September-Early October, hopefully
2. Perot '92
3. The Booth Plot
4. The Rockefeller Dynasty
5. La Follette '24
6. Franklin Pierce
7. La Guardia '40
8. Willkie '40
9. Peck for Governor
10. President Wood
 
What about a little trailer?

"While we were playing judo, the President suddenly told me: "Please tell me, William: do you think that if he hadn't been so old, George Washington would've run for a third term?" "

"Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that the President has just been shot..."

"I will vote Democrat on Tuesday because I don't want my son to die for France..."

"Count von Brockdorff-Rantzau and the Earl Curzon have met yesterday in Stockholm to discuss the terms of a peace treaty between Germany and Great Britain..."

"I officially declare the opening of the First Congress of the Third Internationale..."

"Yesterday, October 12th, 1939, a date that will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan."


"In the new world that has emerged from the Second Great War, the United States of America can not remain neutral, but they can not either accept some conditions."

"I'm proud of bearing this American flag on my bike, because I'm not only fighting for the independance of Cameroon, but I also believe in America!"

"Mr. Ambassador, don't you think the German supplyings to the Brazilian coupsters are thus an obvious violation of the Monroe Doctrine?...Don't wait for the translation! Answer "yes" or "no"! "

"It's an honour to receive, here in Petrograd, Secretary of State Nixon and other American officials..."

"My name is Theodore Robert Bundy, and I announce my candidacy to the Presidency of the United States of America!"

"...Our experts have therefore concluded that Senator LaRouche of New Hampshire and Governor Blanchard of Michigan are on the top of the shortlist for Vice President..."

STANDING AT ARMAGEDDON
What if Theodore Roosevelt had run for his own succession in 1908?
A timeline by Masked Pickle
Scheduled for January 2011
 
Let me suggest another one: Robert Heinlein doesn't get sick and have to leave the USN in the late 1920s; his career skyrockets because he's smarter than just about anyone else. Rear Admiral Heinlein becomes a great hero of the war in the Pacific and then, promoted, commands the U.S. amphibious landings in Korea during the Korean war. He resigns to run successfully for Governor of California, then defeats JFK for the Presidency in 1960. U.S. into space! Strong civil rights voting act is passed in 1963 as necessary for defeating communism. J. Edgar Hoover tries to blackmail Heinlein with pictures of the Pres taken at a nudist colony. Bob laughs, fires Hoover on the spot, and calls a press conference to release the pictures to the public. What's wrong with a little nudity among Americans? he asks. Reelected by a landslide in 1964.


I'd pay to see that.
 
You thought this was abandoned?

Fort_Stevens_shell_crater%2C1942.jpg

California National Guard volunteers contemplating a Japanese shell crater near Atascadero, California, 1939

220px-19700202-wernher-von-braun-nasa.jpg


Peenemunde Raumflugkontrollzentrum (Space Operations Centre) Wernher von Braun in front of the replicas of the Walküre series spaceships in his office (1967)

Nixon-depart.png


Secretary of State Richard Nixon coming back in triumph from St. Petersburg where he met Russian Vozhd Andrei Vlassov (1972)

Lyndon_LaRouche_Keynotes.jpg


Senator Lyndon LaRouche (D-NH) on the campaign trail (1992)


_49743534_-1.jpg


Gov. Julian Castro (R-TX) on the campaign trail during the 2012 Republican presidential primaries

And many more coming in...

NO TIME FOR A SAFARI
From Theodore Roosevelt's third term to the 2020 presidential election
(1908-2020)
A Worldwide TL by Frenchman Masked Pickle
Scheduled for Early 2011
 
Top