Tail-Gunner in the Pilot's Seat 2.0

Wolfpaw

Banned
Historico said:
Jesus, Mary and Joseph...Are there any flattering pics of Tailgunner, the man looks so drunk that he can hardly stand(and that's all the time seems like:p)
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Well, he did like drinking . . . ;)

Anyways, that's one of the few pictures that exists where he looks (passably) dignified/not creepy, isn't sitting behind a microphone in some Senate committee room, doesn't have Cohn hovering around him, or isn't smiling jovially as that would be highly inappropriate given the context.
 
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Medicus

Cohn's definitely a prick, but I can kind of see his reasoning behind "get[ting] back to work." They still need to run the country.

Or am I totally wrong?:p
 
RogueBeaver

RogueBeaver

IIRC the new Chairman of the Government Operations Committee is Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin. I think it's safe to assume RFK is working for John McClellan, who virtually adopted him as a surrogate son IOTL. But Wolfpaw can always correct me if I am mistaken. ;)
 

Rediv

Wolfpaw said:
I'm not sure. I found that clip on a rather grim site I stumbled upon that dealt solely with death and creepy burial practices of leaders. Here's the link.
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Hmm, that's more than a little strange and macabre. Thanks for passing it on, though -- it's often surprising just how much great historical info and such are buried away in obscure corners of the internet.

Wolfpaw said:
Yeah, but he's the guy you love to hate :D
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So true. Where would this TL be without good ol' Roy?
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Medicus said:
Cohn's definitely a prick, but I can kind of see his reasoning behind "get[ting] back to work." They still need to run the country.

Or am I totally wrong?:p
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Why can't it be both? ;)
RogueBeaver said:
IIRC the new Chairman of the Government Operations Committee is Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin. I think it's safe to assume RFK is working for John McClellan, who virtually adopted him as a surrogate son IOTL. But Wolfpaw can always correct me if I am mistaken. ;)
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Bobby's fate will be made clear very soon. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about you, Rogue :p
Rediv said:
So true. Where would this TL be without good ol' Roy?
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Passed out in a ditch on the side of the road.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
RogueBeaver said:
Might we also assume JFK defeated Lodge for Senate?
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Well, I think that if nothing else, this thread teaches you to take nothing for granted ;)


That being said, we should take Kennedys getting elected pretty much for granted. Yes, JFK beat that milquetoast Lodge
 
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RogueBeaver

RogueBeaver

Good. Now, McCarthy will have to wait for another 4 years for a VP, or enact the 25th Amendment (as the 23rd ITTL) 14 years earlier than OTL. Might we see Tricky Dick make a comeback? :cool: Along with his 2 fellow Cabalites.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
It is hereby expressed as the intent of the Congress that the authority granted by
this Act is to be regarded as approval by the Congress of continuing appointments
of military men of the rank of General of the Army, Fleet Admiral, or General of
the Air Force to the office of Secretary of Defense in the future. It is hereby expressed
as the sense of the Congress that the continued appointment of military men to that
office shall be approved.


 —Public Law 83-284, passed August 15, 1953

 
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pnyckqx

Banned
Wolfpaw said:
It is hereby expressed as the intent of the Congress that the authority granted by
this Act is not to be construed as approval by the Congress of continuing
appointments of military men to the office of Secretary of Defense in the future.
It is hereby expressed as the sense of the Congress that after General MacArthur
leaves the office of Secretary of Defense, no additional appointments of military
men to that office shall be approved.


 —Public Law 83-284, passed August 15, 1953
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Got into this discussion elsewhere, and i don't want to rehash that. Still it seems as if exceptions would have to be made for anyone attaining five star rank. As the law currently exists --have to check the evolution of that law--, five star flag officers never officially retire. The solitary exception to that was General Eisenhower upon becoming POTUS. Even then, his commission was restored by congress after he left office.

Perhaps a rewrite of the act above to recognize the unique situation of five star flag officers?
 

Historico

Hmm...Giving McArthur an exclusionary rule, is pretty cool...should makes some very big waves in foreign policy...Keep it comming
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
pnyckqx said:
Got into this discussion elsewhere, and i don't want to rehash that. Still it seems as if exceptions would have to be made for anyone attaining five star rank. As the law currently exists --have to check the evolution of that law--, five star flag officers never officially retire. The solitary exception to that was General Eisenhower upon becoming POTUS. Even then, his commission was restored by congress after he left office.

Perhaps a rewrite of the act above to recognize the unique situation of five star flag officers?
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Well seeing as how they had to pass a special public law waiver for Marshall to serve as SecDef, I'd assume the same would have to be done for MacArthur, seeing as how they were bothfive star generals at the time of their confirmations. Still, you raise a good point, so I think I'll do a quick edit of that public law.
 
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Wolfpaw

Banned
Of course, by then I had moved to Washington. I don’t know if I’d impressed Bill Knowland with my work out there on the floor, or if he just felt sorry for me after Nixon stabbed us in the back, but he offered me a spot on his staff. I would have had to be off my nut turning down a gig like that. Besides, I didn’t have a whole lot keeping me in California anyways. Well, not after Suzy left, anyways.

So I packed up and moved to D.C. I’ll be honest when I say that I was a little intimidated at first. Washington politics make California politics look like a tea party. But once I got into it, well…[Chuckles] I was like a pig in slop. I mean, working for the Senate Majority Leader is a pretty nice spot to be in when the GOP’s got the Congress and the White House.

Yeah, things were swell. For a while, at least. [Frowns] Then May rolled around. I remember the day. I was having lunch at the Mayflower with some buddies. Anyways, some guy runs in looking all out of breath and makes a beeline straight for our table. Turns out he’s in the press corps and is real buddy-buddy with one of the folks I was eating with. We ask him what’s the scoop and he says, “It’s the President! He’s got cancer!”

The table went dead. Then it exploded, everybody talking at once. “How bad is it?” “What’s going to happen?” “Did he know when he ran?” Every question you could think of. Then my pal Doug let out the big one: “What if he dies?”

There were two reasons we nominated McCarthy back in ’52. First, he could stir up a crowd in ways Taft and Stevenson could only dream of doing. Second, those of us who didn’t like him thought it would shut him the hell up. Old Jack Garner once said that the V.P. slot wasn’t worth a bucket of warm piss, and a lot of us took that to heart. I mean, who’d ever even heard of Harry Truman till Roosevelt keeled over?

Boy did we ball that one up. Since he’d been elected, McCarthy hadn’t missed a beat. Every day he was at the Capitol, except now he was President of the Senate instead of just some pain in the ass from Wisconsin. He’d been doing everything he could to turn the Hill into his own personal manor.

[Shakes head] You know it’s funny in a nasty sort of way. We thought McCarthy and his little rat Cohn were bad back then. None of us thought…hell, none of us wanted to think what would happen with McCarthy in the Oval Office. And seeing as how things turned out…I mean, can you blame us?

—James “Jim” McEvoy, quoted in Better Dead than Red: An American Memoir by Studs Terkel
 
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Arachnid

I see Cohn has a dreadful reputation in the GOP, one wonders what the rest of the country thinks of him. And that foreshadowing is scary.
 
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