For me, I think as I got older, I noticed the formula each show followed, and began to realize how exactly that worked. In a way, that's how I found out the same thing happens most episodes of Psych (Not the first person they meet, but one of the first).
That Wacky Redhead
- Thread starter Brainbin
- Start date
For me, I think as I got older, I noticed the formula each show followed, and began to realize how exactly that worked. In a way, that's how I found out the same thing happens most episodes of Psych (Not the first person they meet, but one of the first).
It wasn't always true, though. For example in the episode The Hassle in the Castle, the gang didn't meet anyone before unmasking the ghost (OK that means that the villain was the first person they met, but it doesn't really fit the formula).
Edit: Also, in Foul Play in Funland, there isn't really a villain to unmask, but rather a robot that has gone out of control.
Cheers,
Nigel.
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Thande
Donor
I think I noticed it myself eventually, though it didn't stand out as much to me because I also read some of the comics which were rather more in-depth and detailed than the show and lacked the formulaic aspects so much. (This is also why I tend to mentally picture Scooby-Doo as being more sophisticated than the cartoon was).
Parodies in the UK seem to focus more on "the villain is always Mr. Jameson, The Fairground Owner" (sometimes used in a parody setting which isn't a fairground, for added surreality) than it being the first person they meet.
I never noticed it either! Both watching them when I was young and later when watching with my sons who both went through a Scooby stage
My favourite parody is a two panel cartoon I saw online somewhere explaining the difference between Scooby-Doo and Doctor Who:
Scooby Doo:
"Well, gang, it looks like this 'alien' was Mr Jameson the whole time!"
Doctor Who:
"Well, gang, it looks like 'Mr Jameson' was an alien the whole time!"
My favorite Scooby Doo Parody was a X file Parody that started with Scully complaining that all of their adventures were recycled Scooby Doo plots.
Mulder say's "Don't be ridiculous Scully. Here have a Scully snack.
and it ended with the Scooby Doo unmasking.
"I would have gotten away with it except for you meddling FBI agents"
Okay, you said during editing that if I wanted more detail, I'd have to wait until somebody asked in the thread, so I'll bite if nobody else will: Relative quality of the Star Trek Holiday Special compared to the Star Wars Holiday Special of OTL (memetically terrible), the OTL Star Trek TOS Halloween special ("Catspaw", mediocre and silly, but a cool alien puppet at the end), and an actual god piece of television that happens to be set or themed with a holiday (Die Hard, say)?
Or it could be even worse:
"Captain's Log, Star Date 46379.1. We have arrived at the planet Kashyyyk in time to celebrate Life Day with the Ewoks. Senator Jar-Jar Binks is about to beam aboard..."
Cheers,
Nigel.
Once again, Scooby-Doo rises from beneath the depths to abscond with this thread!
Progress on the next update continues apace. It's very exciting for me - finally I get to make good use of a map I devised a long time ago...
The current favourite for the role of Khumalo is Blu Mankuma - unfortunately, he didn't get into voice acting until a bit later IOTL, and he was based in Vancouver instead of Toronto, but I feel I'm in the right ballpark. I like Dorn in theory - even though Khumalo is a bit of a jive turkey and quite a different part than the Star Trek role for which he's well known IOTL, I have no doubt that he could pull off the role if it ever piqued his interest. However, I don't think he would be interested in traveling to Toronto to audition, though I have no doubt he's as big a Trekkie ITTL as IOTL.
Note that they meet the robot before they meet anybody else as well - therefore (technically) following the "rule" just as "The Hassle in the Castle" does.
This is my question: does anyone know why it's Mr. Jameson? I ask because the fairground owner (featured in "Foul Play in Funland") is actually Mr. Jenkins - and for added irony points, Jenkins is in fact innocent. There is indeed a Jameson in Where Are You! (who appears in the show's first episode, no less!), but he's the victim, not the perpetrator.
I like how this really hammers home the core theme of each series - and how Scooby-Doo eventually violating the eponymous principle really knocked it off-kilter.
Although it obviously won't be as terrible as the Star Wars Holiday Special (after all, what is?), I can definitely see some of the plot elements being lifted. Another inspiration will be the OTL Garfield Christmas Special, given Evanier's involvement (I can even see him taking the lead on writing this thing). For obvious reasons, the "holiday" won't be Christmas but a "Life Day" for some alien planet, which is in crisis due to a civil war or something of that nature. Little Jimmy (Tiny Jim, if you will) reminds everyone of the same moral explicitly stated by Garfield in the special: "It's not about the giving, or the getting, it's about the loving". I can see some (subtle) satire in the exchange of elaborate gifts as part of the ceremonial ritual for "Life Day", a knock against the commercialization of Christmas.
Progress on the next update continues apace. It's very exciting for me - finally I get to make good use of a map I devised a long time ago...
Appendix B, Part X: Faster than a Speeding Bullet Train
Appendix B, Part X: Faster than a Speeding Bullet Train
John Glenn may not have been the first American in space [1], but he was the first astronaut to have ever served in Congress, and the first to become President. [2] (Sadly, and unlike his fellow Ohioan President, William Howard Taft, he had no plans to join the judiciary and complete the trifecta.) He was the latest in a long line of chief executives to hail from the Buckeye State – indeed, his inauguration would make Ohio the state to have produced the largest number of Presidents, with seven. [3] Glenn was the first Democrat among these – five of his six predecessors had been Republicans. (The first President from Ohio, William Henry Harrison, had been a Whig.) However, despite Ohio’s large population, and the “favourite son” effect enabling him to clinch the political bellwether state, Glenn’s victory over the incumbent President Reagan in 1980 had been rather narrow, despite the unpopularity of the administration’s policies and the economic woes plaguing the United States (and the world) at the time, but psephologists explained this by pointing out that both minor parties (the AIP and Senator William Proxmire’s Earth Party) largely leached votes from the Democrats, who in turn reduced the Republicans to their core voter base, with the addition of perhaps a few voters who were personally drawn to Reagan, whose likeability ratings and charisma remained very high.
Both the American Party and the Earth Party were in very different places by 1984 than they had been in 1980. Proxmire was aware that his act of open rebellion against the Democratic machine would have repercussions on his own chances for reelection in 1982, and indeed lost the Democratic Party’s nomination for Senate that year. Ideally, he would have sought to run on a “fusion ticket” of his Earth Party (which he kept active as a pressure group attempting to influence the Democrats from without) and the Democratic Party, but this electoral tactic had been disallowed in the state of Wisconsin. [4] He therefore sought – and received – the Earth Party’s nomination for Senate in 1982. He also promoted Earth Party machines not only within his home state, but elsewhere, touting the “progressive tradition” of the Upper Midwest, which had backed Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, had produced Robert M. La Follette in 1924, and had resulted in the Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota and the Non-Partisan League of North Dakota. Unsurprisingly, then, the Earth Party would run candidates for Congress and the state legislatures throughout the Upper Midwest, most notably in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Michigan. The other target region for the Earth Party was the Northeast (particularly New York City, Boston, and Northern New England), and there they performed especially well in Vermont (which was traditionally Republican, but had never been crazy about Reagan’s conservatism).
The coalition of Midwestern rural progressives and Northeastern urban liberals who had given the Earth Party 5% of the national vote in 1980 had remained in place for 1982, though not in the same numbers. Ultimately, the party would win no seats in the US Congress – Proxmire himself lost his seat to the Republican candidate, who came up the middle to win with less than 40% of the vote. However, he was vindicated in that he finished second, with over a third of the vote – the only Earth Party candidate for Senate who did (a number of Earth Party candidates for House finished second, but only because they ran in seats where the Democrats would have finished with supermajorities, or otherwise run unopposed). In spite of these limited successes for his new party, Proxmire declined to carry the torch in future election cycles, entering a lucrative second career as a political commentator, emerging as one of the strongest left-wing critics of the Glenn administration. Though he praised the “Invest in America” program’s focus on infrastructure, he (naturally) vehemently and vocally opposed any further investment in the space program – President Reagan reducing NASA’s budget during his term was one of the few policies for which he had praised the Gipper. However, Proxmire could only do so much from outside Congress. Glenn had new allies in both Houses who supported the space program, from every section of the Democratic Party’s big tent. And to be fair, investment in the space program was very much a sideshow within the context of the broader Invest in America initiative, which focused largely on infrastructure and business development, and which Proxmire did support.
In contrast to the slow and gradual decline of the Earth Party, the American Party flamed out in spectacular fashion. Like the Earth Party, the American Party had been the pet project of one man with a vision and a personality cult – and a former Democrat who left that party only to insist that the party, instead, had left him (a viewpoint shared by Democrat-turned-Republican Ronald Reagan, no less). However, George Wallace was welcomed back to the Democratic fold with open arms, if only because he continued to lead a numerically significant cadre of Congressmen despite his party’s decline (in contrast to Proxmire’s one-man operation). Although Wallace had not run for President in 1976 or 1980, he remained a highly visible and vocal backer of the American Party in the media and on the stump – until the Deal with the Devil went through. As was the case with many political organizations that had endured past the galvanizing issue of their formation had been resolved, the American Party had been forced to develop a more comprehensive agenda beyond support for segregation and opposition to further civil rights legislation. This was especially true in the states where they had taken control of the legislature, or of the Governor’s mansion. In general, many of their policies had been consistent with those of the Southern Democrats who had preceded them (or whom they had previously been themselves), and a “big tent” gradually emerged (as was the case for the Democratic and Republican parties, giving political commentators the opportunity to deride Washington as a “three-ring circus”). Wallace was the ringmaster; his authority alone kept the factions united through the 1970s, and once it had disappeared, each faction rapidly asserted itself and fought with the others for dominance.
The faction to which Wallace himself had ostensibly belonged, and the oldest in the party, was the segregationist, or “traditionalist”, faction. All AIP senators belonged to this faction, which allowed the leader of the party in the upper chamber to double as the de facto head of that faction. After 1982, this was Trent Lott, the junior senator from Mississippi, who had always been considered a moderate – no doubt to appear more “palatable” to the general public. The second faction had emerged later in the 1970s, as part of the emergence of religious conservatism as a political force. The “evangelical” faction, as it was known, actually comprised both evangelical Christians (typically Baptists) and charismatic Christians (typically Pentecostals) – the two major theological movements in the South (though both enjoyed popularity in much of the United States). Many popular televangelists, who proselytized their sermons across the airwaves, were affiliated with this particular faction of the American Party, and many within this faction felt that their ideals were the future for the party. The third and final major faction were the labour unions who had affiliated themselves with the American Party, a legacy of Wallace having aggressively courted working-class voters (the “Archie Bunker vote”, as it was known at the time) in 1968 and 1972. Many within this faction were religious – though generally more of the Mainline Protestant or Catholic persuasion. Many were socially conservative and had reservations about the repercussions of desegregation, but generally considered that a sideshow to the bread-and-butter issues often tackled by labour unions. A common criticism of the “union” faction – from within and without the American Party – was that it had links to organized crime.
All three factions would forward their own candidates for President in the 1984 election: although both remaining US Senators were approached to run, both declined, focusing on their uphill reelection campaigns as opposed to what amounted to vanity runs. Eventually, Arnold Thibodeaux, who had served for eight years as a Congressman from Louisiana before he was defeated in 1982, was chosen to represent the traditionalist faction in the American Party primaries. Of the candidates representing the factions, Thibodeaux was the only one with political experience. Unfortunately, he was also a Grand Wizard at his local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, and did not shy away from this association, making him highly unpalatable to all but the truest of true believers.
More charismatic – in more ways than one – was the chosen candidate from the evangelical faction, the Rev. Ted Murray, a charismatic preacher and televangelist (originally belonging to the largest Pentecostal church in the country, the Assemblies of God, before separating to form his own congregation), whose syndicated series, Miracles, was a veritable institution in much of the South. It was known for its spectacle – Murray, like many televangelists, spoke in tongues, promoted direct revelation, and practiced faith healing, all live on the air. This was purely a vanity run for Murray; he did not even suspend the filming of his series during his campaign, though he did end each episode with a plea for his viewers to donate to his campaign fund – until the FCC ruled this illegal in mid-1984 (he could only ask for donations to his church, as the registered not-for-profit organization which was sponsoring the broadcast). Unsurprisingly, his campaign was beset by financing scandals. Many of his fellow televangelists accused him of vanity, pride, and various other Biblical sins, for seeking glory for himself as opposed to taking the traditional tack of influencing government from without.
The third candidate was Tony Russo, a public-sector union agitator with long-suspected (but never confirmed) mob ties, who was controversial within the wider labour movement for his social conservatism and perceived unwillingness to “fight the good fight” on behalf of his workers (earning him the derisive nickname “Brother Tony”). The union faction rallied behind him largely due to their opposition to both other candidates: though many held what might charitably be called “traditional” views on race relations, endorsing a Grand Wizard of the KKK was beyond the pale; likewise, the many Catholics within the Union faction felt little affinity for a radical Protestant televangelist (who himself was not averse to indulging in hoary anti-Catholic rhetoric when the mood struck him). Russo attempted to take advantage of this “wedge” factor to emerge as a compromise candidate for the wider American Party, or at the very least a kingmaker; however, the bosses within the party, desperate to cling to their dwindling legitimacy as a major force in American politics, were loathe to select as their candidate a man who had never won (or sought) the votes of anyone beyond the few hundred members of his local.
Ultimately, the American Party could not unite behind any of the three candidates, and fractured along factional lines. All three candidates would appear on the ballot, running variously on tickets labelled “American Party”, “American Independent Party”, “American Democratic Party”, “Populist Party”, “American Populist Party”, “Independent Populist Party”, “Christian Party”, “American Christian Party”, or “Independent Christian Party”, depending on the state – indeed, all three candidates would use a party label in at least one state used by a rival candidate in another state.
And then there was the main opposition to the incumbent Democratic administration: the Republican Party. In the GOP, the question of who would earn the chance to oppose President Glenn in 1984 were directly contingent on the incumbent’s popularity. His approval ratings had begun to recover as 1983 wore on and the economy continued to improve; by the end of the year, it was clear that nobody had any serious chance to defeat him. As a result, many popular state Governors – or former Governors – sat out the campaign, not eager to deplete the goodwill in their favour for a vanity run. As a result, the “elder statesmen” of the Republican Party decided to indulge their egos with vanity runs of their own – at the end of the day, in addition to their legislative accomplishments, they could also say that they were their party’s nominee for President. And in the unlikely event of Glenn becoming vulnerable during a campaign, they would be excellent fallback choices for disillusioned swing voters – experienced, responsible, and mature candidates standing in opposition to the reckless cowboy astronaut currently in office. (Republicans had stopped disparaging Glenn as “Captain Kirk” once their market research and polling advisors informed them that making such comparisons consistently improved his likeability numbers.)
The three titans of the contest were all members of the upper chamber: Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, Sen. George Bush of Texas, and Sen. Howard Baker of Tennessee – the Senate Majority Leader. All three were perceived as moderates – a shift in direction from the conservative Reagan, and a reflection of the moderate wing of the party resuming control of its upper echelons following their 1980 loss. (It helped that Reagan had few likely successors within the party’s fiscon wing – his most obvious heir, Sam Steiger, the Junior Senator from Arizona, was deemed unelectable as President because he was Jewish). Many pundits felt that Sen. Bush had the edge over the other two: he had been elected three times in one of the most populous and economically powerful states in the Union (granted, all three times had been in good years for the GOP nationally), but despite the cultural conservatism of the Lone Star state, was relatively moderate – but unlike Howard Baker, not excessively so, nor exceptionally conciliatory towards the opposition, a common criticism within the party’s grassroots as regarded Baker’s tenure as Senate Majority Leader. Bush also had an edge over Baker (whose power base was restricted to the South) and Dole (likewise limited to the Midwest) in that his family was originally from New England (indeed, his father had been a US Senator from Connecticut) and still maintained a summer residence there (in their family compound in the small seaside town of Kennebunkport, Maine). Crucially, this enabled him to gain an edge in the critical first primary of the election season, which was held in New Hampshire, on February 28, 1984. [5] This followed on the heels of his narrow victory over Dole in the Iowa caucus, and rather improbably saw him march to a near-sweep of the states (Dole and Baker won their home states of Kansas and Tennessee, respectively).
The 1984 Republican National Convention was held in July, by which time Bush had long since sewn up the nomination – accordingly, the event was treated as a coronation for him. Dole and Baker both spoke at the convention, as did former President Reagan and Vice-President Nixon. The event received a great deal of media coverage only to determine who Bush would select as his running-mate. Being a Texan from New England, many pundits predicted a running-mate from the Midwest or West Coast to balance the ticket. He ultimately chose Houston I. Flournoy, the former Governor of California (who had served from 1975 to 1983), creating the fifth consecutive Republican ticket with a candidate from the West Coast. [6] Republican operatives fretted that Flournoy, who had worked with then-Governor Reagan as State Controller, might be too closely associated with the Gipper by the general public – however, Flournoy (unlike Reagan) was a moderate and had governed as such. Conservatives within the party were annoyed at an all-moderate ticket, but the fiscon faction continued to be in shambles from their comprehensive defeat in 1980. Flournoy, who had retired voluntarily in 1982 (though he likely would not have won re-election if he had run), had initially planned to retire from politics altogether, but (unlike many Vice-Presidential candidates) saw the perceived uselessness of the office of Vice-President as a benefit, not a drawback – it would give him plenty of opportunity to focus on other pursuits, or so he thought.
And then there was the incumbent Democratic ticket. As was typical for incumbents in the 20th century (aberrations such as 1968 notwithstanding), President John Glenn faced no serious opposition for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 1984, the many caucuses and primaries serving largely as a coronation. He would be elected unanimously at the Democratic National Convention in August, 100% of delegates having been pledged for him as a result of the primaries, where he received over 98% of the vote. [7] He re-selected Vice-President Jimmy Carter as his running-mate. Carter, like Vice-President Mathias before him, was chosen to appeal to an ancient and formerly integral but increasingly marginalized segment of his party. In the case of Mathias, it had been the liberal Rockefeller Republicans, and in the case of Carter, it was the Southern Democrats. Carter being an evangelical Christian enabled him to attempt to appeal to the religious conservatives who were increasingly alienated from an increasingly liberal and secular society, and in this respect he was very successful.
Indeed, Carter played as large a part in the collapse of the American Party as George Wallace – Wallace swayed the elected representatives of that party, whereas Carter swayed its membership. In many respects, however, Carter was very similar to President Glenn, particularly in terms of ideology. Both were economic and social moderates. To this end, Glenn allowed his Vice-President (who, as past Governor of Georgia, had more executive experience than he did upon taking office) considerable powers, and an office in the West Wing of the White House itself. [8] Indeed, by 1982, political commentators were already describing Carter as the most powerful Vice-President in the nation’s history, more powerful than even Richard M. Nixon, the last man to be bestowed with that sobriquet, had been. In addition, Carter viewed himself as an ambassador of the Glenn administration, and his folksy, down-home charm informed his many appearances in the media. Polls consistently ranked him as the most popular member of the Glenn administration – even the First Lady, Annie Glenn, placed below him. Carter no doubt hoped to follow the lead of the late Hubert H. Humphrey, who in 1968 had been the first sitting Vice-President to be elected to the Presidency since Martin Van Buren in 1836. [9]
Carter’s popularity throughout the South, coupled with the American Party implosion, convinced Democratic Party strategists to set the objective of winning every state east of the Mississippi – something no Presidential ticket had ever done. During the early years of the Republic, not all territories east of the Mississippi had yet achieved statehood, and in all the elections since, even in landslides, there were always holdouts for one side or the other. In the case of Republican landslides, the Solid South had always held firm for the Democrats; in the case of Democratic landslides, at least some of the Republican bastions in New England could be counted on to come through for the GOP. But Glenn was polling well in New England, and Carter ensured that the Democrats had restored much of their Southern support, so the possibility was a very real one. There was a setback once Bush – the only Republican candidate who had any ties to New England – was chosen as the Presidential nominee, but Democratic strategists continued to be optimistic. By 1984, they finally had reason to be. After a slow start, the Invest in America program was finally beginning to pay dividends.
The cornerstone of the Invest in America agenda had always been infrastructure, for the simple reason that it best enabled future growth in other sectors. To this end, the most visible and highly-touted accomplishment of the program had been the development of the high-speed rail network, whose tendrils gradually spread from the central nexus points in various conurbations coast-to-coast, to increasingly distant terminus points. President Glenn, his Secretary of Transportation, and Congress had carefully arranged for many marquee lines to be operational in time for the election, and indeed, by the autumn of 1984, they were ready on schedule – which was, in and of itself, a crowning accomplishment. Investors from all across the country were eager to reap the potential benefits from transporting passengers along these lines, and the most eager of these were the casino resort hotel operators in Las Vegas.
Thanks largely to their investments, the Los Angeles-to-Las Vegas rail line – which, due to its length, was considered a second- or third-tier priority – was on track to be completed far ahead of schedule, and with considerable private funding. In fact, the LA-to-Vegas line had the largest proportion of private-to-public funding of any line being built in the country – even more than the LA-to-Anaheim spur partly funded by Disney and Gene Autry. The objective was clear – bring in more gamblers to Vegas. The HSR line, once completed, would likely be cheaper than air travel, and certainly less inconvenient. Contrary to stereotype, however, the moguls and mobs who ran Sin City tended to hedge their bets; therefore, the city would eventually develop into both a flight hub and a rail junction – with plans to build lines to Los Angeles, San Francisco (via Reno), Phoenix, and Salt Lake City, though many of these lines were years from commencing, let alone completion. Still, that didn’t stop Vegas impresarios from dreaming of inviting daytrippers, overnighters, and weekenders from coast to coast to visit their famed showgirl revues… or their strip clubs. The seediness of Vegas additionally made for a delightful contrast with the wholesomeness of Anaheim, which unlike Vegas was already part of the HSR grid.
The increasingly nationwide HSR grid was connected to the nationwide power grid, a decision made by the Glenn administration as part of what was touted as the “holistic approach” of the Invest in America program, in contrast to more ad hoc, piecemeal public works projects of eras past. The Secretary of Energy focused on several alternative sources of power generation: natural gas, abundant in the United States, unlike primarily imported crude oil; hydroelectric power, to take advantage of the plentiful waterways in the vast American countryside; and, most prominently, solar power. Solar panel technology had taken a great leap forward in the 1970s, thanks largely to the necessity to develop it for use in the infamously failed “microwave power” experiment. At least some good could be derived from that white elephant in reusing the panels developed for it on terra firma instead. The largest solar plant to be built was capable of generating 50 megawatts of electricity, and was located in perpetually sunny Phoenix, Arizona; the panels were fabricated in the “Glass City” of Toledo, Ohio. The Buckeye State, unsurprisingly, saw an influx of high-tech manufacturing jobs under the Invest in America initiatives, being not only a key swing state but also the President’s home state.
However, the star of the Glenn administration’s plan for the energy sector was the lowly atom. Anti-nuclear activism had been a cornerstone of the hippie and later environmentalist movements, due in large part to its association with the bomb and with the (negligible) risk of a catastrophic meltdown, respectively. However, the former concern was discredited with the constructive use of nuclear-powered carriers and submarines, and the part they played in the relief efforts in Argentina following the war in that region; the latter concern was (temporarily, but critically) overshadowed by fear of the microwaves “cooking” unsuspecting earthbound victims, as memorably dramatized in The Greenpoint Dilemma. It was just enough for hysteria to shift in that direction for a few years, for just long enough that Invest in America cleared the funding for the continued construction of almost forty additional nuclear power plants, almost half of which went into operation throughout Glenn’s first term. Continuing breakthroughs in safety and efficiency (with particular emphasis on thorium and molten salt reactors) convinced many in Congress (particularly within the GOP) and in the White House that the future of American energy rested upon the atom – nuclear fission was more than adequate to meet the needs of the American people until fifty years hence, when fusion power might finally become a reality. In the meantime, switching to nuclear (alongside other alternative power sources) would ideally end dependency on foreign fossil fuels, which since the Oil Crisis a decade before had proven a perilous strategy. In addition, the high-speed rail lines would be powered by these nuclear plants, and would in turn reduce consumer dependence on automobiles powered by gasoline, itself refined from crude oil. [10]
The goal of reduced reliance on foreign oil formed a powerful undercurrent of the Glenn administration’s approach to foreign policy. Traditionally strong relations with Saudi Arabia grew increasingly strained as American diplomats felt more free to agitate for liberalization of their oppressive regime – in turn, Saudi ambassadors became less inclined to conceal their displeasure at US recognition of and support for the state of Israel. [11] However, no country in the Middle East felt the brunt of US political pressure more than Libya, which had formerly (as the Kingdom of Libya) been a US ally, but had undergone a violent revolution in 1969, and was now under the leadership of the brutal and flamboyant dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, often derided as “Gaddafi Duck” in US media. Argentina had provided a vivid example of what could happen when a tin-pot dictatorship pushed their limits too far, and Libya – being in the Mediterranean – was much closer to the NATO heartlands than far-flung Argentina. Not to mention that Spain and Portugal, which had recently joined NATO, were eager to put their own aircraft carriers (currently under development) to bear against an easily-defeated enemy – alongside Italy (which was too close to effectively ignore any threat from Libya) in addition to Britain, France, and the United States. As a result, Libya was frequently lampooned in the media as a classically ineffectual third-world state – neither the Soviets nor Red China wanted much to do with Gaddafi’s regime either. Even other pariah states looked down on him.
By contrast, US relations with the two Communist Great Powers were in a better place, though not without their growing pains. Relations with Red China were tense, but by the same token, relations actually existed. Ironically, the very fact that relations now existed between the United States and Red China resulted in a downturn between the two superpowers – the détente that had existed between the United States and the Soviet Union under Humphrey and then Reagan did not fade entirely, but the situation was considerably more tense than it had been in a time when the Soviet Union had actually voted YEA to a proposal by NATO-led forces to invade Argentina. This was reflected in the popular culture of the day, where China (along with Japan) gained increasing prominence at the expense of Russia and the Soviet bloc. With regard to more traditional US allies, Glenn personally got along well with many foreign leaders, including Prime Minister Stanfield in Canada, Prime Minister Whitelaw in the UK, and President Mitterrand in France, all of whom found him more their style than his predecessor. Glenn was widely liked and admired at home as well.
Although he was often compared to Captain/Commodore James T. Kirk and other “space cowboys” of his ilk, perhaps the most pertinent comparison made of Glenn was to President Eisenhower. Like Eisenhower, Glenn served in World War II, though as a low-ranked officer in the Marine Corps (he had been promoted to Captain – equivalent to the Naval rank of Lieutenant – just before the end of the war), fighting mostly in the Pacific – as opposed to Eisenhower, who fought in North Africa and Europe and reached the rank of General of the Army and Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces stationed in those theatres. Like Eisenhower, even during and subsequent to his Presidency, he would be remembered in the popular imagination largely for his career before entering politics; in Glenn’s case, it was his time as an astronaut which would define him most vividly. Eisenhower and Glenn also resembled each other in their domestic policies; both Presidents focused heavily on infrastructure, particularly transportation infrastructure. Eisenhower created the Interstate Highway System; Glenn spearheaded the high-speed rail network which, it was hoped, would criss-cross the country by the year 2000. His goal was for it to be more convenient and comfortable to cross the country by rail than by plane, and faster and more economical than to do so by car. The interstates would ideally be the province of the shipping and hauling industries – in addition to Eisenhower’s intended purpose, that of facilitating transport of troops and materiel. It was unlikely that an eventuality of true mutual exclusivity would ever come to pass, but it did allow for high-speed rail to focus solely on passenger transportation going forward.
It was along these battle lines that the election was ultimately contested in the autumn of 1984. Fittingly, for the first time since Eisenhower’s reelection in 1956, the campaign was fairly quiet and without much controversy on either side. Bush made the decision early on to attempt to demonize his opponent; Glenn, already intimately familiar with smear attempts by past opponents, chose to run a “high road” campaign, avoiding directly challenging Bush in his campaign materials and advertising. To this end, his most famous campaign commercial, entitled “A Brand New Day is Dawning for America”, featured the popular 1982 Don Henley song of the same name (officially titled simply “Brand New Day”). [12] Henley, a devout Democrat, allowed Glenn’s campaign to use his song free of charge. He also memorably performed “Brand New Day” at the Democratic National Convention that summer, in which he did indeed add the lyric “for America” to his refrain “a brand new day is dawning”. In the end, the GOP could not hope to compete with this message of optimism against the backdrop of a stable and improving economy. It became clear by mid-1984 that the Republicans would struggle to maintain the 27 states and 215 electoral votes that Reagan had won in 1980, even notwithstanding that the reapportionment of the most recent census had meant that many states had a different number of electoral votes than had previously been the case. The election results on the evening of November 6, 1984, would ultimately confirm the futility of their challenge.
Nationwide, the Republicans ran ahead of the Democrats only in the Great Plains states, including Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho. Bush led in his home state of Texas, but by a far closer margin than the state’s robust conservatism might otherwise imply (after all, the Democrats had won the state as recently as 1972, without a native son on the ticket nor in the White House). Because Bush had been forced to retrench to traditional Republican strongholds, Glenn was able to fill the void he had left behind and conduct a fifty-state campaign, often appearing with prominent figures local to each state to celebrate whichever specific Invest in America initiative had brought home the pork for the local electorate. Hollywood, naturally, served as the epicentre of this demonstration – the 1984 Democratic National Convention was held in Los Angeles, after all, and among those who held court on the stage of the Forum were Senator Marlin DeAngelo and Rep. George Takei, both of whom played key roles in working to seize control of Congress back for the Democratic Party. However, though 1984 was a good year for the party, it was not without setbacks.
The Democrats ultimately regained control of the House of Representatives, eking out an absolute majority of elected seats for the first time since 1972 – their control of the 97th Congress having been secured only through the controversial defection of Wallace’s faction of the American Party. Even not taking those Congressmen (Alabama’s entire Democratic delegation) into account, the Democrats still won enough seats to form a majority – though they still remained under the 240-seat threshold – a once-reliable minimum for the size of party caucus through the 1960s. Far more of their gains in this election came from the American Party, who (in the face of fractionalization at the Presidential level) lost every seat in the lower house, leaving them shut out for the first time since 1972. This allowed the Republicans to remain over 200 seats, allowing for a robust and vigorous minority caucus; the Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill (resuming the position he had briefly held from 1981 to 1983) saw fit to eliminate the distinction between “Opposition Leader” and “Minority Leader” which the Republicans had introduced in the 1970s to divide and conquer between the Democrats and the Americans.
The Senate, however, remained more elusive. The GOP won 51 seats in the upper chamber; just enough to prevent the Democrats from gaining control there (had there been a 50-50 tie, Democratic Vice-President Jimmy Carter would have been able to cast tiebreaker votes). Both remaining incumbent AIP Senators (Trent Lott of Mississippi, and James Waggoner of Louisiana) were up for re-election, and their neighbouring states enabled to campaign together with relative ease – both were members of the same faction of the party (the traditionalist, segregationist faction), which enabled them to support Thibodeaux for President, and allowed him to campaign with them as well. In the end, however, it didn’t do either Lott nor Waggoner much good – in Mississippi, Lott finished second behind Rep. Thad Cochran, a Republican, who won with the support of the state’s black population (the most Republican black voters in the country), giving the state two Republican Senators for the first time since Reconstruction. It was the only Senate race in the country where the Democrats finished third. However, the Democrats did win Louisiana, the only Senate race in the country where the Republicans finished third. The AIP was shut out from the Senate, and except for the independent Henry Howell of Virginia (a former Democrat who caucused with his old party, and who had faced no Democratic opponent in the election in exchange for his support), the Senate of the 99th Congress would have no members who did not belong to either the Democratic or Republican parties.
The Democrats were frustrated at not winning total control of Congress, but many Americans were satisfied – after the extreme polarization, dramatic shifts, and hyper-partisanship of the 1970s – that no one side had total control of the US government. Howard Baker, the popular, moderate, and congenial Senate Majority Leader, stepped down in 1984 after losing the Republican nomination for President – his successor would be another failed candidate for the Presidency, Bob Dole. (Bush briefly entertained the notion of attempting to parachute into the position, but ultimately decided against it.)
The relatively close results in the races for Congress belied the more decisive result in the race for the Presidency. Glenn didn’t merely echo Eisenhower in terms of his career history, nor in terms of his governance, but also in terms of his electoral results: the 1984 election echoed 1952 and 1956, in that Glenn – like Eisenhower – won by a landslide in the popular vote, and a lopsided victory in the Electoral College; in 1952 and 1956, the Democrats under Adlai Stevenson were reduced to their core bastions in the “Solid South”, which in 1984 the Glenn/Carter ticket swept for the first time since FDR four decades before. [13] Likewise, in this election the Republicans were reduced to their core bastions in the Great Plains, producing an electoral map not dissimilar to their showings in the 1940s. Senator Bush narrowly avoided humiliation by winning his home state of Texas, which provided the GOP ticket with 28 electoral votes. In all, his ticket would carry twelve states – a number which would belie the small population in many of them. Only seven of those twelve states had more Congressmen than Senators, and only Texas had an electoral vote count in the double-digits. However, Bush’s strength in New England – as was, once again, traditional among Republicans – enabled him to narrowly win New Hampshire, preventing the Glenn/Carter ticket from pulling off the first sweep of every state east of the Mississippi. Nonetheless, Glenn could take comfort in having won Vermont – he was only the second Democrat ever to do so, after LBJ in 1964. The only state which went to the Republicans in both 1964 and 1984 – and therefore, the most Republican state in the nation – was Arizona, which had last voted Democratic in 1948. [14]
More importantly, for the first time since 1964, not a single state had been won by a third-party ticket – all told, the three AIP candidates received just over 1% of the popular vote. The remaining third-party candidates won less than one-half of one percent of the vote; the two major party candidates, between them, won 98.6% of the popular vote, the largest such share since 1964. It appeared that the surprisingly long and tenacious tenure of the AIP had finally come to an end. Then again, there might yet be a possibility for the turkey to arise, like a phoenix, from the ashes…
…but probably not.
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[1] For whatever reason, although popular culture consistently remembers John Glenn as the first American in space, he was actually the first American to orbit the Earth – an important distinction. Glenn was actually the third American in space; Alan Shepard was the first – although at least Shepard reached the moon (on Apollo 14, IOTL and ITTL), and became the first to golf thereupon. (The second American in space was Gus Grissom, who tragically died in the Apollo 1 fire, again IOTL and ITTL.)
[2] IOTL and ITTL, though OTL has a technicality in that Sen. Jake Garn (R-UT), who was inaugurated three days before John Glenn (on December 21, 1974) flew aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery (while still a sitting US Senator!) as a Payload Specialist in April of 1985. This makes Garn the first person to serve in Congress who would fly in space during his lifetime. (Not to be outdone, Glenn also flew in space while serving in Congress, in late 1998, by which time Garn had retired from the Senate).
[3] There have been six Presidents IOTL whose home state was Ohio, and these were, in order: William Henry Harrison (1841); Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-81); James A. Garfield (1881); William McKinley (1897-1901); William Howard Taft (1909-13); and Warren G. Harding (1921-23). Apart from Harrison, all were Republicans. Notably, none of these six Presidents served two full terms, and indeed, a whopping four of the eight Presidents (50%) to have died in office (and two of the four Presidents to have been assassinated) hailed from the Buckeye State. Consider that, ITTL, the Curse of Tippecanoe has yet to be broken, and that Glenn – elected in 1980 – is from Ohio, and the superstitious are understandably leery of his chances for serving those two full terms, even if he is re-elected.
[4] Electoral fusion – the practice of a single candidate running on the line of more than one party – was outlawed in many states in the early 20th century, and Wisconsin is among these states. (It remains legal in a handful of states, including New York, where it is widely practiced.)
[5] IOTL, in the most directly comparable set of GOP primaries (held in 1980), George Bush won 32% of the vote in the Iowa caucuses, narrowly beating the frontrunner, Ronald Reagan (with 30%), and declared that he had “the Big Mo”, which lasted one month and five days before Reagan crushed him in the New Hampshire primary (50% to 23%). Given that New Hampshire was in New England and Bush had connections to two other states in the region (Maine and Connecticut, both of which he did win), a better showing for him was expected. Ultimately, he won only six of 50 states, and New Hampshire would prove a thorn in his side in 1988 and 1992 as well (though he ultimately won the Granite State both times).
[6] This is just another one of those peculiar streaks associated with Presidential tickets – IOTL, for example, every winning Republican ticket since 1928 has had either Richard Nixon or a Bush on it.
[7] It bears noting that no incumbent Democratic President has ever received so large a share of the primary vote in the modern era: Jimmy Carter fended off a strong challenge from Ted Kennedy in 1980; Bill Clinton in 1996 and Barack Obama in 2012 each won a relatively modest 89% of the primary vote. (By contrast, Ronald Reagan won 98.8% of the primary vote in 1984 IOTL.)
[8] This honour was first bestowed IOTL by Jimmy Carter upon his own Vice-President, Walter Mondale.
[9] Richard Nixon narrowly thwarted Humphrey’s attempt to turn the trick in 1968 IOTL, of course, which was payback for his own attempt to do so having been thwarted by JFK in 1960. IOTL, the first (and to date, the only) sitting Vice-President since Van Buren to be elected President was George Bush, in 1988.
[10] Electric cars, deriving their power from rechargeable batteries (along with hybrids, which have supplement their internal combustion engines with battery power as needed), are considered a medium- to long-term solution to the problem of gas guzzlers at this point ITTL, with the research needed to develop their viable manufacture and usage deemed decades away at the time of the Oil Crisis, and not much sooner in the early 1980s, when the Transportation Department funded a comprehensive study on the matter.
[11] Relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia IOTL, on the other hand, have always been very strong, which has had decidedly mixed results.
[12] The “Brand New Day” commercial is, of course, based on the OTL “Morning in America” commercial for Reagan’s 1984 campaign. Reagan also memorably used “Born in the USA” as a campaign theme (briefly) before both the subtlety of the lyrics drowned out the anthemic chorus and (more importantly) Springsteen himself vehemently protested the use of his song by the GOP (this seemingly happens every election cycle – old-school rockers naturally don’t tend to get along with “the Man”, and yet “the Man” always tries to co-opt one of their anthems).
[13] IOTL, no Democratic candidate for President has won every state in the Old Confederacy since FDR in 1944. Truman in 1948 lost four states in the Deep South to Strom Thurmond’s splinter “Dixiecrat” ticket; Stevenson lost three states to Eisenhower in 1952 and four in 1956; JFK lost three to Nixon and two to Harry Byrd in 1960; LBJ lost four to Goldwater in 1964; Humphrey lost five to Nixon and five to Wallace in 1968 (carrying only Texas); Nixon swept the South (and everywhere else, except Massachusetts) in 1972; even Carter still lost Virginia in 1976 (by 1.34%), and that’s the closest any Democrat has come to sweeping the Old Confederacy since FDR (he also lost Oklahoma, not yet a state in the 1860s but generally regarded as having been Confederate territory, by 1.21%).
[14] Although Arizona voted all four times for FDR, and quite decisively for Truman in 1948, it has been a solidly Republican state ever since – favourite son Barry Goldwater won it in 1964 (his only win outside the Deep South) – with one curious aberration: Bill Clinton carried the state in 1996, despite having lost it in 1992; along with Florida, it was one of two states the Republicans won in the earlier election only to lose in the later one. ITTL, the GOP wins Arizona partly due to Goldwater’s legacy and partly due to the staunch support of the state’s other Senator, Sam Steiger.
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Thanks to e of pi for assisting with the editing, as usual. Thanks also to vultan for his help with the preliminary planning for this update, all those eons ago, and to Asnys for his advice regarding nuclear power. I hope you all enjoyed this last US Presidential election to be covered in That Wacky Redhead! Who will run in 1988? Sadly, the world will never know…
John Glenn may not have been the first American in space [1], but he was the first astronaut to have ever served in Congress, and the first to become President. [2] (Sadly, and unlike his fellow Ohioan President, William Howard Taft, he had no plans to join the judiciary and complete the trifecta.) He was the latest in a long line of chief executives to hail from the Buckeye State – indeed, his inauguration would make Ohio the state to have produced the largest number of Presidents, with seven. [3] Glenn was the first Democrat among these – five of his six predecessors had been Republicans. (The first President from Ohio, William Henry Harrison, had been a Whig.) However, despite Ohio’s large population, and the “favourite son” effect enabling him to clinch the political bellwether state, Glenn’s victory over the incumbent President Reagan in 1980 had been rather narrow, despite the unpopularity of the administration’s policies and the economic woes plaguing the United States (and the world) at the time, but psephologists explained this by pointing out that both minor parties (the AIP and Senator William Proxmire’s Earth Party) largely leached votes from the Democrats, who in turn reduced the Republicans to their core voter base, with the addition of perhaps a few voters who were personally drawn to Reagan, whose likeability ratings and charisma remained very high.
Both the American Party and the Earth Party were in very different places by 1984 than they had been in 1980. Proxmire was aware that his act of open rebellion against the Democratic machine would have repercussions on his own chances for reelection in 1982, and indeed lost the Democratic Party’s nomination for Senate that year. Ideally, he would have sought to run on a “fusion ticket” of his Earth Party (which he kept active as a pressure group attempting to influence the Democrats from without) and the Democratic Party, but this electoral tactic had been disallowed in the state of Wisconsin. [4] He therefore sought – and received – the Earth Party’s nomination for Senate in 1982. He also promoted Earth Party machines not only within his home state, but elsewhere, touting the “progressive tradition” of the Upper Midwest, which had backed Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, had produced Robert M. La Follette in 1924, and had resulted in the Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota and the Non-Partisan League of North Dakota. Unsurprisingly, then, the Earth Party would run candidates for Congress and the state legislatures throughout the Upper Midwest, most notably in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Michigan. The other target region for the Earth Party was the Northeast (particularly New York City, Boston, and Northern New England), and there they performed especially well in Vermont (which was traditionally Republican, but had never been crazy about Reagan’s conservatism).
The coalition of Midwestern rural progressives and Northeastern urban liberals who had given the Earth Party 5% of the national vote in 1980 had remained in place for 1982, though not in the same numbers. Ultimately, the party would win no seats in the US Congress – Proxmire himself lost his seat to the Republican candidate, who came up the middle to win with less than 40% of the vote. However, he was vindicated in that he finished second, with over a third of the vote – the only Earth Party candidate for Senate who did (a number of Earth Party candidates for House finished second, but only because they ran in seats where the Democrats would have finished with supermajorities, or otherwise run unopposed). In spite of these limited successes for his new party, Proxmire declined to carry the torch in future election cycles, entering a lucrative second career as a political commentator, emerging as one of the strongest left-wing critics of the Glenn administration. Though he praised the “Invest in America” program’s focus on infrastructure, he (naturally) vehemently and vocally opposed any further investment in the space program – President Reagan reducing NASA’s budget during his term was one of the few policies for which he had praised the Gipper. However, Proxmire could only do so much from outside Congress. Glenn had new allies in both Houses who supported the space program, from every section of the Democratic Party’s big tent. And to be fair, investment in the space program was very much a sideshow within the context of the broader Invest in America initiative, which focused largely on infrastructure and business development, and which Proxmire did support.
In contrast to the slow and gradual decline of the Earth Party, the American Party flamed out in spectacular fashion. Like the Earth Party, the American Party had been the pet project of one man with a vision and a personality cult – and a former Democrat who left that party only to insist that the party, instead, had left him (a viewpoint shared by Democrat-turned-Republican Ronald Reagan, no less). However, George Wallace was welcomed back to the Democratic fold with open arms, if only because he continued to lead a numerically significant cadre of Congressmen despite his party’s decline (in contrast to Proxmire’s one-man operation). Although Wallace had not run for President in 1976 or 1980, he remained a highly visible and vocal backer of the American Party in the media and on the stump – until the Deal with the Devil went through. As was the case with many political organizations that had endured past the galvanizing issue of their formation had been resolved, the American Party had been forced to develop a more comprehensive agenda beyond support for segregation and opposition to further civil rights legislation. This was especially true in the states where they had taken control of the legislature, or of the Governor’s mansion. In general, many of their policies had been consistent with those of the Southern Democrats who had preceded them (or whom they had previously been themselves), and a “big tent” gradually emerged (as was the case for the Democratic and Republican parties, giving political commentators the opportunity to deride Washington as a “three-ring circus”). Wallace was the ringmaster; his authority alone kept the factions united through the 1970s, and once it had disappeared, each faction rapidly asserted itself and fought with the others for dominance.
The faction to which Wallace himself had ostensibly belonged, and the oldest in the party, was the segregationist, or “traditionalist”, faction. All AIP senators belonged to this faction, which allowed the leader of the party in the upper chamber to double as the de facto head of that faction. After 1982, this was Trent Lott, the junior senator from Mississippi, who had always been considered a moderate – no doubt to appear more “palatable” to the general public. The second faction had emerged later in the 1970s, as part of the emergence of religious conservatism as a political force. The “evangelical” faction, as it was known, actually comprised both evangelical Christians (typically Baptists) and charismatic Christians (typically Pentecostals) – the two major theological movements in the South (though both enjoyed popularity in much of the United States). Many popular televangelists, who proselytized their sermons across the airwaves, were affiliated with this particular faction of the American Party, and many within this faction felt that their ideals were the future for the party. The third and final major faction were the labour unions who had affiliated themselves with the American Party, a legacy of Wallace having aggressively courted working-class voters (the “Archie Bunker vote”, as it was known at the time) in 1968 and 1972. Many within this faction were religious – though generally more of the Mainline Protestant or Catholic persuasion. Many were socially conservative and had reservations about the repercussions of desegregation, but generally considered that a sideshow to the bread-and-butter issues often tackled by labour unions. A common criticism of the “union” faction – from within and without the American Party – was that it had links to organized crime.
All three factions would forward their own candidates for President in the 1984 election: although both remaining US Senators were approached to run, both declined, focusing on their uphill reelection campaigns as opposed to what amounted to vanity runs. Eventually, Arnold Thibodeaux, who had served for eight years as a Congressman from Louisiana before he was defeated in 1982, was chosen to represent the traditionalist faction in the American Party primaries. Of the candidates representing the factions, Thibodeaux was the only one with political experience. Unfortunately, he was also a Grand Wizard at his local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, and did not shy away from this association, making him highly unpalatable to all but the truest of true believers.
More charismatic – in more ways than one – was the chosen candidate from the evangelical faction, the Rev. Ted Murray, a charismatic preacher and televangelist (originally belonging to the largest Pentecostal church in the country, the Assemblies of God, before separating to form his own congregation), whose syndicated series, Miracles, was a veritable institution in much of the South. It was known for its spectacle – Murray, like many televangelists, spoke in tongues, promoted direct revelation, and practiced faith healing, all live on the air. This was purely a vanity run for Murray; he did not even suspend the filming of his series during his campaign, though he did end each episode with a plea for his viewers to donate to his campaign fund – until the FCC ruled this illegal in mid-1984 (he could only ask for donations to his church, as the registered not-for-profit organization which was sponsoring the broadcast). Unsurprisingly, his campaign was beset by financing scandals. Many of his fellow televangelists accused him of vanity, pride, and various other Biblical sins, for seeking glory for himself as opposed to taking the traditional tack of influencing government from without.
The third candidate was Tony Russo, a public-sector union agitator with long-suspected (but never confirmed) mob ties, who was controversial within the wider labour movement for his social conservatism and perceived unwillingness to “fight the good fight” on behalf of his workers (earning him the derisive nickname “Brother Tony”). The union faction rallied behind him largely due to their opposition to both other candidates: though many held what might charitably be called “traditional” views on race relations, endorsing a Grand Wizard of the KKK was beyond the pale; likewise, the many Catholics within the Union faction felt little affinity for a radical Protestant televangelist (who himself was not averse to indulging in hoary anti-Catholic rhetoric when the mood struck him). Russo attempted to take advantage of this “wedge” factor to emerge as a compromise candidate for the wider American Party, or at the very least a kingmaker; however, the bosses within the party, desperate to cling to their dwindling legitimacy as a major force in American politics, were loathe to select as their candidate a man who had never won (or sought) the votes of anyone beyond the few hundred members of his local.
Ultimately, the American Party could not unite behind any of the three candidates, and fractured along factional lines. All three candidates would appear on the ballot, running variously on tickets labelled “American Party”, “American Independent Party”, “American Democratic Party”, “Populist Party”, “American Populist Party”, “Independent Populist Party”, “Christian Party”, “American Christian Party”, or “Independent Christian Party”, depending on the state – indeed, all three candidates would use a party label in at least one state used by a rival candidate in another state.
And then there was the main opposition to the incumbent Democratic administration: the Republican Party. In the GOP, the question of who would earn the chance to oppose President Glenn in 1984 were directly contingent on the incumbent’s popularity. His approval ratings had begun to recover as 1983 wore on and the economy continued to improve; by the end of the year, it was clear that nobody had any serious chance to defeat him. As a result, many popular state Governors – or former Governors – sat out the campaign, not eager to deplete the goodwill in their favour for a vanity run. As a result, the “elder statesmen” of the Republican Party decided to indulge their egos with vanity runs of their own – at the end of the day, in addition to their legislative accomplishments, they could also say that they were their party’s nominee for President. And in the unlikely event of Glenn becoming vulnerable during a campaign, they would be excellent fallback choices for disillusioned swing voters – experienced, responsible, and mature candidates standing in opposition to the reckless cowboy astronaut currently in office. (Republicans had stopped disparaging Glenn as “Captain Kirk” once their market research and polling advisors informed them that making such comparisons consistently improved his likeability numbers.)
The three titans of the contest were all members of the upper chamber: Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, Sen. George Bush of Texas, and Sen. Howard Baker of Tennessee – the Senate Majority Leader. All three were perceived as moderates – a shift in direction from the conservative Reagan, and a reflection of the moderate wing of the party resuming control of its upper echelons following their 1980 loss. (It helped that Reagan had few likely successors within the party’s fiscon wing – his most obvious heir, Sam Steiger, the Junior Senator from Arizona, was deemed unelectable as President because he was Jewish). Many pundits felt that Sen. Bush had the edge over the other two: he had been elected three times in one of the most populous and economically powerful states in the Union (granted, all three times had been in good years for the GOP nationally), but despite the cultural conservatism of the Lone Star state, was relatively moderate – but unlike Howard Baker, not excessively so, nor exceptionally conciliatory towards the opposition, a common criticism within the party’s grassroots as regarded Baker’s tenure as Senate Majority Leader. Bush also had an edge over Baker (whose power base was restricted to the South) and Dole (likewise limited to the Midwest) in that his family was originally from New England (indeed, his father had been a US Senator from Connecticut) and still maintained a summer residence there (in their family compound in the small seaside town of Kennebunkport, Maine). Crucially, this enabled him to gain an edge in the critical first primary of the election season, which was held in New Hampshire, on February 28, 1984. [5] This followed on the heels of his narrow victory over Dole in the Iowa caucus, and rather improbably saw him march to a near-sweep of the states (Dole and Baker won their home states of Kansas and Tennessee, respectively).
The 1984 Republican National Convention was held in July, by which time Bush had long since sewn up the nomination – accordingly, the event was treated as a coronation for him. Dole and Baker both spoke at the convention, as did former President Reagan and Vice-President Nixon. The event received a great deal of media coverage only to determine who Bush would select as his running-mate. Being a Texan from New England, many pundits predicted a running-mate from the Midwest or West Coast to balance the ticket. He ultimately chose Houston I. Flournoy, the former Governor of California (who had served from 1975 to 1983), creating the fifth consecutive Republican ticket with a candidate from the West Coast. [6] Republican operatives fretted that Flournoy, who had worked with then-Governor Reagan as State Controller, might be too closely associated with the Gipper by the general public – however, Flournoy (unlike Reagan) was a moderate and had governed as such. Conservatives within the party were annoyed at an all-moderate ticket, but the fiscon faction continued to be in shambles from their comprehensive defeat in 1980. Flournoy, who had retired voluntarily in 1982 (though he likely would not have won re-election if he had run), had initially planned to retire from politics altogether, but (unlike many Vice-Presidential candidates) saw the perceived uselessness of the office of Vice-President as a benefit, not a drawback – it would give him plenty of opportunity to focus on other pursuits, or so he thought.
And then there was the incumbent Democratic ticket. As was typical for incumbents in the 20th century (aberrations such as 1968 notwithstanding), President John Glenn faced no serious opposition for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 1984, the many caucuses and primaries serving largely as a coronation. He would be elected unanimously at the Democratic National Convention in August, 100% of delegates having been pledged for him as a result of the primaries, where he received over 98% of the vote. [7] He re-selected Vice-President Jimmy Carter as his running-mate. Carter, like Vice-President Mathias before him, was chosen to appeal to an ancient and formerly integral but increasingly marginalized segment of his party. In the case of Mathias, it had been the liberal Rockefeller Republicans, and in the case of Carter, it was the Southern Democrats. Carter being an evangelical Christian enabled him to attempt to appeal to the religious conservatives who were increasingly alienated from an increasingly liberal and secular society, and in this respect he was very successful.
Indeed, Carter played as large a part in the collapse of the American Party as George Wallace – Wallace swayed the elected representatives of that party, whereas Carter swayed its membership. In many respects, however, Carter was very similar to President Glenn, particularly in terms of ideology. Both were economic and social moderates. To this end, Glenn allowed his Vice-President (who, as past Governor of Georgia, had more executive experience than he did upon taking office) considerable powers, and an office in the West Wing of the White House itself. [8] Indeed, by 1982, political commentators were already describing Carter as the most powerful Vice-President in the nation’s history, more powerful than even Richard M. Nixon, the last man to be bestowed with that sobriquet, had been. In addition, Carter viewed himself as an ambassador of the Glenn administration, and his folksy, down-home charm informed his many appearances in the media. Polls consistently ranked him as the most popular member of the Glenn administration – even the First Lady, Annie Glenn, placed below him. Carter no doubt hoped to follow the lead of the late Hubert H. Humphrey, who in 1968 had been the first sitting Vice-President to be elected to the Presidency since Martin Van Buren in 1836. [9]
Carter’s popularity throughout the South, coupled with the American Party implosion, convinced Democratic Party strategists to set the objective of winning every state east of the Mississippi – something no Presidential ticket had ever done. During the early years of the Republic, not all territories east of the Mississippi had yet achieved statehood, and in all the elections since, even in landslides, there were always holdouts for one side or the other. In the case of Republican landslides, the Solid South had always held firm for the Democrats; in the case of Democratic landslides, at least some of the Republican bastions in New England could be counted on to come through for the GOP. But Glenn was polling well in New England, and Carter ensured that the Democrats had restored much of their Southern support, so the possibility was a very real one. There was a setback once Bush – the only Republican candidate who had any ties to New England – was chosen as the Presidential nominee, but Democratic strategists continued to be optimistic. By 1984, they finally had reason to be. After a slow start, the Invest in America program was finally beginning to pay dividends.
The cornerstone of the Invest in America agenda had always been infrastructure, for the simple reason that it best enabled future growth in other sectors. To this end, the most visible and highly-touted accomplishment of the program had been the development of the high-speed rail network, whose tendrils gradually spread from the central nexus points in various conurbations coast-to-coast, to increasingly distant terminus points. President Glenn, his Secretary of Transportation, and Congress had carefully arranged for many marquee lines to be operational in time for the election, and indeed, by the autumn of 1984, they were ready on schedule – which was, in and of itself, a crowning accomplishment. Investors from all across the country were eager to reap the potential benefits from transporting passengers along these lines, and the most eager of these were the casino resort hotel operators in Las Vegas.
Thanks largely to their investments, the Los Angeles-to-Las Vegas rail line – which, due to its length, was considered a second- or third-tier priority – was on track to be completed far ahead of schedule, and with considerable private funding. In fact, the LA-to-Vegas line had the largest proportion of private-to-public funding of any line being built in the country – even more than the LA-to-Anaheim spur partly funded by Disney and Gene Autry. The objective was clear – bring in more gamblers to Vegas. The HSR line, once completed, would likely be cheaper than air travel, and certainly less inconvenient. Contrary to stereotype, however, the moguls and mobs who ran Sin City tended to hedge their bets; therefore, the city would eventually develop into both a flight hub and a rail junction – with plans to build lines to Los Angeles, San Francisco (via Reno), Phoenix, and Salt Lake City, though many of these lines were years from commencing, let alone completion. Still, that didn’t stop Vegas impresarios from dreaming of inviting daytrippers, overnighters, and weekenders from coast to coast to visit their famed showgirl revues… or their strip clubs. The seediness of Vegas additionally made for a delightful contrast with the wholesomeness of Anaheim, which unlike Vegas was already part of the HSR grid.
The increasingly nationwide HSR grid was connected to the nationwide power grid, a decision made by the Glenn administration as part of what was touted as the “holistic approach” of the Invest in America program, in contrast to more ad hoc, piecemeal public works projects of eras past. The Secretary of Energy focused on several alternative sources of power generation: natural gas, abundant in the United States, unlike primarily imported crude oil; hydroelectric power, to take advantage of the plentiful waterways in the vast American countryside; and, most prominently, solar power. Solar panel technology had taken a great leap forward in the 1970s, thanks largely to the necessity to develop it for use in the infamously failed “microwave power” experiment. At least some good could be derived from that white elephant in reusing the panels developed for it on terra firma instead. The largest solar plant to be built was capable of generating 50 megawatts of electricity, and was located in perpetually sunny Phoenix, Arizona; the panels were fabricated in the “Glass City” of Toledo, Ohio. The Buckeye State, unsurprisingly, saw an influx of high-tech manufacturing jobs under the Invest in America initiatives, being not only a key swing state but also the President’s home state.
However, the star of the Glenn administration’s plan for the energy sector was the lowly atom. Anti-nuclear activism had been a cornerstone of the hippie and later environmentalist movements, due in large part to its association with the bomb and with the (negligible) risk of a catastrophic meltdown, respectively. However, the former concern was discredited with the constructive use of nuclear-powered carriers and submarines, and the part they played in the relief efforts in Argentina following the war in that region; the latter concern was (temporarily, but critically) overshadowed by fear of the microwaves “cooking” unsuspecting earthbound victims, as memorably dramatized in The Greenpoint Dilemma. It was just enough for hysteria to shift in that direction for a few years, for just long enough that Invest in America cleared the funding for the continued construction of almost forty additional nuclear power plants, almost half of which went into operation throughout Glenn’s first term. Continuing breakthroughs in safety and efficiency (with particular emphasis on thorium and molten salt reactors) convinced many in Congress (particularly within the GOP) and in the White House that the future of American energy rested upon the atom – nuclear fission was more than adequate to meet the needs of the American people until fifty years hence, when fusion power might finally become a reality. In the meantime, switching to nuclear (alongside other alternative power sources) would ideally end dependency on foreign fossil fuels, which since the Oil Crisis a decade before had proven a perilous strategy. In addition, the high-speed rail lines would be powered by these nuclear plants, and would in turn reduce consumer dependence on automobiles powered by gasoline, itself refined from crude oil. [10]
The goal of reduced reliance on foreign oil formed a powerful undercurrent of the Glenn administration’s approach to foreign policy. Traditionally strong relations with Saudi Arabia grew increasingly strained as American diplomats felt more free to agitate for liberalization of their oppressive regime – in turn, Saudi ambassadors became less inclined to conceal their displeasure at US recognition of and support for the state of Israel. [11] However, no country in the Middle East felt the brunt of US political pressure more than Libya, which had formerly (as the Kingdom of Libya) been a US ally, but had undergone a violent revolution in 1969, and was now under the leadership of the brutal and flamboyant dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, often derided as “Gaddafi Duck” in US media. Argentina had provided a vivid example of what could happen when a tin-pot dictatorship pushed their limits too far, and Libya – being in the Mediterranean – was much closer to the NATO heartlands than far-flung Argentina. Not to mention that Spain and Portugal, which had recently joined NATO, were eager to put their own aircraft carriers (currently under development) to bear against an easily-defeated enemy – alongside Italy (which was too close to effectively ignore any threat from Libya) in addition to Britain, France, and the United States. As a result, Libya was frequently lampooned in the media as a classically ineffectual third-world state – neither the Soviets nor Red China wanted much to do with Gaddafi’s regime either. Even other pariah states looked down on him.
By contrast, US relations with the two Communist Great Powers were in a better place, though not without their growing pains. Relations with Red China were tense, but by the same token, relations actually existed. Ironically, the very fact that relations now existed between the United States and Red China resulted in a downturn between the two superpowers – the détente that had existed between the United States and the Soviet Union under Humphrey and then Reagan did not fade entirely, but the situation was considerably more tense than it had been in a time when the Soviet Union had actually voted YEA to a proposal by NATO-led forces to invade Argentina. This was reflected in the popular culture of the day, where China (along with Japan) gained increasing prominence at the expense of Russia and the Soviet bloc. With regard to more traditional US allies, Glenn personally got along well with many foreign leaders, including Prime Minister Stanfield in Canada, Prime Minister Whitelaw in the UK, and President Mitterrand in France, all of whom found him more their style than his predecessor. Glenn was widely liked and admired at home as well.
Although he was often compared to Captain/Commodore James T. Kirk and other “space cowboys” of his ilk, perhaps the most pertinent comparison made of Glenn was to President Eisenhower. Like Eisenhower, Glenn served in World War II, though as a low-ranked officer in the Marine Corps (he had been promoted to Captain – equivalent to the Naval rank of Lieutenant – just before the end of the war), fighting mostly in the Pacific – as opposed to Eisenhower, who fought in North Africa and Europe and reached the rank of General of the Army and Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces stationed in those theatres. Like Eisenhower, even during and subsequent to his Presidency, he would be remembered in the popular imagination largely for his career before entering politics; in Glenn’s case, it was his time as an astronaut which would define him most vividly. Eisenhower and Glenn also resembled each other in their domestic policies; both Presidents focused heavily on infrastructure, particularly transportation infrastructure. Eisenhower created the Interstate Highway System; Glenn spearheaded the high-speed rail network which, it was hoped, would criss-cross the country by the year 2000. His goal was for it to be more convenient and comfortable to cross the country by rail than by plane, and faster and more economical than to do so by car. The interstates would ideally be the province of the shipping and hauling industries – in addition to Eisenhower’s intended purpose, that of facilitating transport of troops and materiel. It was unlikely that an eventuality of true mutual exclusivity would ever come to pass, but it did allow for high-speed rail to focus solely on passenger transportation going forward.
It was along these battle lines that the election was ultimately contested in the autumn of 1984. Fittingly, for the first time since Eisenhower’s reelection in 1956, the campaign was fairly quiet and without much controversy on either side. Bush made the decision early on to attempt to demonize his opponent; Glenn, already intimately familiar with smear attempts by past opponents, chose to run a “high road” campaign, avoiding directly challenging Bush in his campaign materials and advertising. To this end, his most famous campaign commercial, entitled “A Brand New Day is Dawning for America”, featured the popular 1982 Don Henley song of the same name (officially titled simply “Brand New Day”). [12] Henley, a devout Democrat, allowed Glenn’s campaign to use his song free of charge. He also memorably performed “Brand New Day” at the Democratic National Convention that summer, in which he did indeed add the lyric “for America” to his refrain “a brand new day is dawning”. In the end, the GOP could not hope to compete with this message of optimism against the backdrop of a stable and improving economy. It became clear by mid-1984 that the Republicans would struggle to maintain the 27 states and 215 electoral votes that Reagan had won in 1980, even notwithstanding that the reapportionment of the most recent census had meant that many states had a different number of electoral votes than had previously been the case. The election results on the evening of November 6, 1984, would ultimately confirm the futility of their challenge.
Nationwide, the Republicans ran ahead of the Democrats only in the Great Plains states, including Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho. Bush led in his home state of Texas, but by a far closer margin than the state’s robust conservatism might otherwise imply (after all, the Democrats had won the state as recently as 1972, without a native son on the ticket nor in the White House). Because Bush had been forced to retrench to traditional Republican strongholds, Glenn was able to fill the void he had left behind and conduct a fifty-state campaign, often appearing with prominent figures local to each state to celebrate whichever specific Invest in America initiative had brought home the pork for the local electorate. Hollywood, naturally, served as the epicentre of this demonstration – the 1984 Democratic National Convention was held in Los Angeles, after all, and among those who held court on the stage of the Forum were Senator Marlin DeAngelo and Rep. George Takei, both of whom played key roles in working to seize control of Congress back for the Democratic Party. However, though 1984 was a good year for the party, it was not without setbacks.
The Democrats ultimately regained control of the House of Representatives, eking out an absolute majority of elected seats for the first time since 1972 – their control of the 97th Congress having been secured only through the controversial defection of Wallace’s faction of the American Party. Even not taking those Congressmen (Alabama’s entire Democratic delegation) into account, the Democrats still won enough seats to form a majority – though they still remained under the 240-seat threshold – a once-reliable minimum for the size of party caucus through the 1960s. Far more of their gains in this election came from the American Party, who (in the face of fractionalization at the Presidential level) lost every seat in the lower house, leaving them shut out for the first time since 1972. This allowed the Republicans to remain over 200 seats, allowing for a robust and vigorous minority caucus; the Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill (resuming the position he had briefly held from 1981 to 1983) saw fit to eliminate the distinction between “Opposition Leader” and “Minority Leader” which the Republicans had introduced in the 1970s to divide and conquer between the Democrats and the Americans.
The Senate, however, remained more elusive. The GOP won 51 seats in the upper chamber; just enough to prevent the Democrats from gaining control there (had there been a 50-50 tie, Democratic Vice-President Jimmy Carter would have been able to cast tiebreaker votes). Both remaining incumbent AIP Senators (Trent Lott of Mississippi, and James Waggoner of Louisiana) were up for re-election, and their neighbouring states enabled to campaign together with relative ease – both were members of the same faction of the party (the traditionalist, segregationist faction), which enabled them to support Thibodeaux for President, and allowed him to campaign with them as well. In the end, however, it didn’t do either Lott nor Waggoner much good – in Mississippi, Lott finished second behind Rep. Thad Cochran, a Republican, who won with the support of the state’s black population (the most Republican black voters in the country), giving the state two Republican Senators for the first time since Reconstruction. It was the only Senate race in the country where the Democrats finished third. However, the Democrats did win Louisiana, the only Senate race in the country where the Republicans finished third. The AIP was shut out from the Senate, and except for the independent Henry Howell of Virginia (a former Democrat who caucused with his old party, and who had faced no Democratic opponent in the election in exchange for his support), the Senate of the 99th Congress would have no members who did not belong to either the Democratic or Republican parties.
The Democrats were frustrated at not winning total control of Congress, but many Americans were satisfied – after the extreme polarization, dramatic shifts, and hyper-partisanship of the 1970s – that no one side had total control of the US government. Howard Baker, the popular, moderate, and congenial Senate Majority Leader, stepped down in 1984 after losing the Republican nomination for President – his successor would be another failed candidate for the Presidency, Bob Dole. (Bush briefly entertained the notion of attempting to parachute into the position, but ultimately decided against it.)
The relatively close results in the races for Congress belied the more decisive result in the race for the Presidency. Glenn didn’t merely echo Eisenhower in terms of his career history, nor in terms of his governance, but also in terms of his electoral results: the 1984 election echoed 1952 and 1956, in that Glenn – like Eisenhower – won by a landslide in the popular vote, and a lopsided victory in the Electoral College; in 1952 and 1956, the Democrats under Adlai Stevenson were reduced to their core bastions in the “Solid South”, which in 1984 the Glenn/Carter ticket swept for the first time since FDR four decades before. [13] Likewise, in this election the Republicans were reduced to their core bastions in the Great Plains, producing an electoral map not dissimilar to their showings in the 1940s. Senator Bush narrowly avoided humiliation by winning his home state of Texas, which provided the GOP ticket with 28 electoral votes. In all, his ticket would carry twelve states – a number which would belie the small population in many of them. Only seven of those twelve states had more Congressmen than Senators, and only Texas had an electoral vote count in the double-digits. However, Bush’s strength in New England – as was, once again, traditional among Republicans – enabled him to narrowly win New Hampshire, preventing the Glenn/Carter ticket from pulling off the first sweep of every state east of the Mississippi. Nonetheless, Glenn could take comfort in having won Vermont – he was only the second Democrat ever to do so, after LBJ in 1964. The only state which went to the Republicans in both 1964 and 1984 – and therefore, the most Republican state in the nation – was Arizona, which had last voted Democratic in 1948. [14]
More importantly, for the first time since 1964, not a single state had been won by a third-party ticket – all told, the three AIP candidates received just over 1% of the popular vote. The remaining third-party candidates won less than one-half of one percent of the vote; the two major party candidates, between them, won 98.6% of the popular vote, the largest such share since 1964. It appeared that the surprisingly long and tenacious tenure of the AIP had finally come to an end. Then again, there might yet be a possibility for the turkey to arise, like a phoenix, from the ashes…
…but probably not.
Map of Presidential election results. Red denotes states won by Glenn and Carter; Blue denotes states won by Bush and Flournoy. The Democratic ticket received 54.4% of the popular vote and 452 electoral votes; the Republican ticket received 44.2% of the popular vote and 86 electoral votes. The ten-point popular vote margin enjoyed by Glenn/Carter was the largest for any ticket since the 1964 Johnson/Humphrey landslide, as was their total of 452 votes in the Electoral College (narrowly edging the 450 electoral votes received by Reagan/Mathias in 1976).
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[1] For whatever reason, although popular culture consistently remembers John Glenn as the first American in space, he was actually the first American to orbit the Earth – an important distinction. Glenn was actually the third American in space; Alan Shepard was the first – although at least Shepard reached the moon (on Apollo 14, IOTL and ITTL), and became the first to golf thereupon. (The second American in space was Gus Grissom, who tragically died in the Apollo 1 fire, again IOTL and ITTL.)
[2] IOTL and ITTL, though OTL has a technicality in that Sen. Jake Garn (R-UT), who was inaugurated three days before John Glenn (on December 21, 1974) flew aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery (while still a sitting US Senator!) as a Payload Specialist in April of 1985. This makes Garn the first person to serve in Congress who would fly in space during his lifetime. (Not to be outdone, Glenn also flew in space while serving in Congress, in late 1998, by which time Garn had retired from the Senate).
[3] There have been six Presidents IOTL whose home state was Ohio, and these were, in order: William Henry Harrison (1841); Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-81); James A. Garfield (1881); William McKinley (1897-1901); William Howard Taft (1909-13); and Warren G. Harding (1921-23). Apart from Harrison, all were Republicans. Notably, none of these six Presidents served two full terms, and indeed, a whopping four of the eight Presidents (50%) to have died in office (and two of the four Presidents to have been assassinated) hailed from the Buckeye State. Consider that, ITTL, the Curse of Tippecanoe has yet to be broken, and that Glenn – elected in 1980 – is from Ohio, and the superstitious are understandably leery of his chances for serving those two full terms, even if he is re-elected.
[4] Electoral fusion – the practice of a single candidate running on the line of more than one party – was outlawed in many states in the early 20th century, and Wisconsin is among these states. (It remains legal in a handful of states, including New York, where it is widely practiced.)
[5] IOTL, in the most directly comparable set of GOP primaries (held in 1980), George Bush won 32% of the vote in the Iowa caucuses, narrowly beating the frontrunner, Ronald Reagan (with 30%), and declared that he had “the Big Mo”, which lasted one month and five days before Reagan crushed him in the New Hampshire primary (50% to 23%). Given that New Hampshire was in New England and Bush had connections to two other states in the region (Maine and Connecticut, both of which he did win), a better showing for him was expected. Ultimately, he won only six of 50 states, and New Hampshire would prove a thorn in his side in 1988 and 1992 as well (though he ultimately won the Granite State both times).
[6] This is just another one of those peculiar streaks associated with Presidential tickets – IOTL, for example, every winning Republican ticket since 1928 has had either Richard Nixon or a Bush on it.
[7] It bears noting that no incumbent Democratic President has ever received so large a share of the primary vote in the modern era: Jimmy Carter fended off a strong challenge from Ted Kennedy in 1980; Bill Clinton in 1996 and Barack Obama in 2012 each won a relatively modest 89% of the primary vote. (By contrast, Ronald Reagan won 98.8% of the primary vote in 1984 IOTL.)
[8] This honour was first bestowed IOTL by Jimmy Carter upon his own Vice-President, Walter Mondale.
[9] Richard Nixon narrowly thwarted Humphrey’s attempt to turn the trick in 1968 IOTL, of course, which was payback for his own attempt to do so having been thwarted by JFK in 1960. IOTL, the first (and to date, the only) sitting Vice-President since Van Buren to be elected President was George Bush, in 1988.
[10] Electric cars, deriving their power from rechargeable batteries (along with hybrids, which have supplement their internal combustion engines with battery power as needed), are considered a medium- to long-term solution to the problem of gas guzzlers at this point ITTL, with the research needed to develop their viable manufacture and usage deemed decades away at the time of the Oil Crisis, and not much sooner in the early 1980s, when the Transportation Department funded a comprehensive study on the matter.
[11] Relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia IOTL, on the other hand, have always been very strong, which has had decidedly mixed results.
[12] The “Brand New Day” commercial is, of course, based on the OTL “Morning in America” commercial for Reagan’s 1984 campaign. Reagan also memorably used “Born in the USA” as a campaign theme (briefly) before both the subtlety of the lyrics drowned out the anthemic chorus and (more importantly) Springsteen himself vehemently protested the use of his song by the GOP (this seemingly happens every election cycle – old-school rockers naturally don’t tend to get along with “the Man”, and yet “the Man” always tries to co-opt one of their anthems).
[13] IOTL, no Democratic candidate for President has won every state in the Old Confederacy since FDR in 1944. Truman in 1948 lost four states in the Deep South to Strom Thurmond’s splinter “Dixiecrat” ticket; Stevenson lost three states to Eisenhower in 1952 and four in 1956; JFK lost three to Nixon and two to Harry Byrd in 1960; LBJ lost four to Goldwater in 1964; Humphrey lost five to Nixon and five to Wallace in 1968 (carrying only Texas); Nixon swept the South (and everywhere else, except Massachusetts) in 1972; even Carter still lost Virginia in 1976 (by 1.34%), and that’s the closest any Democrat has come to sweeping the Old Confederacy since FDR (he also lost Oklahoma, not yet a state in the 1860s but generally regarded as having been Confederate territory, by 1.21%).
[14] Although Arizona voted all four times for FDR, and quite decisively for Truman in 1948, it has been a solidly Republican state ever since – favourite son Barry Goldwater won it in 1964 (his only win outside the Deep South) – with one curious aberration: Bill Clinton carried the state in 1996, despite having lost it in 1992; along with Florida, it was one of two states the Republicans won in the earlier election only to lose in the later one. ITTL, the GOP wins Arizona partly due to Goldwater’s legacy and partly due to the staunch support of the state’s other Senator, Sam Steiger.
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Thanks to e of pi for assisting with the editing, as usual. Thanks also to vultan for his help with the preliminary planning for this update, all those eons ago, and to Asnys for his advice regarding nuclear power. I hope you all enjoyed this last US Presidential election to be covered in That Wacky Redhead! Who will run in 1988? Sadly, the world will never know…
Like that you mentioned Don Henley (especially since he's a prominent figure in another TL on this site)...
My mother would have been fond of this ticket (especially with their focus on alternative energy). IMO, Carter could have won a second term IOTL, but the winds of the late 1970s were against him...
My mother would have been fond of this ticket (especially with their focus on alternative energy). IMO, Carter could have won a second term IOTL, but the winds of the late 1970s were against him...
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Sometimes things are just so well-written, I can't stay away.
A few things are worth noting here:
1. By using a 1982 song in a 1984 campaign commercial, Glenn and Carter truly have co-opted their inner Reagan. The Gipper was, of course, famous for his efforts to capitalize on current pop culture throughout his Presidency. Despite having a considerable edge in popularity among younger voters, the Democrats have never really followed suit IOTL.
Here's one way to look at it: IOTL, the closest Democratic analogue to "Brand New Day" is almost certainly the 1992 Clinton/Gore campaign's use of Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop," a upbeat rock song that emphasized the candidates' youthful energy. Of course, "Don't Stop" had been a huge hit for Fleetwood Mac... in 1977, so the "youthful" Democrats were actually reaching fairly deep into the nostalgia bag.
Put another way: Imagine, if you will, Hillary Clinton using Pharrell Williams' "Happy" or DJ Snake & Lil Jon's "Turn Down For What" as her campaign theme next year.
2. You will not be surprised that I love this reimagining of Don Henley's career in a world in which the go-go '80s are marked by a resurgence of old-school liberalism instead of the sharp drift rightward we experienced IOTL. IOTL, Henley came out of the gate as a solo artist in 1982 with deeply bitter political songs like "Johnny Can't Read," "Them and Us," and a certain notable song protesting the state of the media that shall go nameless.
In fact, many of the songs in his '80s repertoire ranges from the wistful (songs such as "A Month of Sundays," which lamented the death of the small American farm) to the overtly political, such as "The End of the Innocence," a full-blown critique of the Reagan '80s. Even his non-political songs trended towards the sardonic, such as "All She Wants To Do Is Dance."Of course, Don Henley could do upbeat just fine, and I won't argue with you if you tell me that "Boys of Summer" is your favorite Henley song. But it's certainly the case that his entire career would have taken a very different arc here in TWR.
3. In thinking about alt-Henley, I wonder about the alternate career arcs of other overtly political '80s artists, such as Phil Collins and Don Henley's friend Bruce Hornsby. Collins might direct his political ire towards Europe, becoming a sort of proto-Bono, but it's hard to imagine an album like Hornsby's The Way It Is transformed into something like, say Back in the High Life.
Unless things get much darker in the next two years, you're looking at a race to see who can carry on the "Glenn Legacy." As with Reagan IOTL, there will be calls by Democrats in Glenn's second term to repeal the 22nd Amendment. Even assuming that Glenn avoids OTL's Reagan scandals, those are not likely to go very far. Glenn himself will be 67 in 1988 and will almost certainly look a decade older than that.
Carter is the obvious Democratic choice; he'll be just 64 in 1988, which is five years younger than Hillary Clinton will be next year. ITTL, Democrats are a bit ahead of OTL's curve in terms of the Vice-Presidency as a jumping-off point with VPs Lyndon Johnson (1964), Hubert Humphrey (1968), and Ed Muskie (1976) all becoming their party's nominee. On the other hand, like Glenn, Carter will look old for his age, and you might see some concerns that mimic OTL's concerns about Joe Biden.
Of course, all of this is pointless speculation, since Word of God tells us that we'll never know.
Anyway: congratulations on a fabulous update that marries the political and the pop-cultural in the best possible way.
Thande
Donor
Interesting update. I like the nods to the 'unimpeachable rules of presidential politics' (which of course are completely arbitrary, as XKCD pointed out) being different in TTL.
While I know a winner-only map can give a false impression if a lot of the wins are close (e.g. 1980 in OTL) I'm surprised the Republicans didn't win any state (aside from New Hampshire) east of the Mississippi. Indiana in particular has tended to be a particularly consistent win for them throughout the last century in all but the direst circumstances.
While I know a winner-only map can give a false impression if a lot of the wins are close (e.g. 1980 in OTL) I'm surprised the Republicans didn't win any state (aside from New Hampshire) east of the Mississippi. Indiana in particular has tended to be a particularly consistent win for them throughout the last century in all but the direst circumstances.
Sweet update as always BB! Although being so close to the end is bittersweet; especially since your cutoff is right before the PoD for so many pop-culture TLs (Nintendo v. SEGA.... if either of them even get into video games ITTL that is. Another question that we may never know the answer to!)
If we're casting votes for the totally-not-cannon-expanded-'verse: Buzz Aldrin/George Takei '88.
)Sorry, couldn't resist.Don Henley said:I make my livin' off the Evenin' News; just give me somethin', somethin' I can use, people love it when you lose, give us {nameless}.
If we're casting votes for the totally-not-cannon-expanded-'verse: Buzz Aldrin/George Takei '88.
Sweet update as always BB! Although being so close to the end is bittersweet; especially since your cutoff is right before the PoD for so many pop-culture TLs (Nintendo v. SEGA.... if either of them even get into video games ITTL that is. Another question that we may never know the answer to!
I think Nintendo might be TTL's Game Freak, while Sega (with Shigeru Miyamoto's talent, something I actually really liked) is a mixture of Nintendo and Sony (the latter because I think Sony owns Sega now)
I could live with that.
So the console wars would look something like: Syzygy v. *SEGA/Sony v. *Colecovision?
(Why doesn't the 'Strikethrough' code work?)
Orville_third
Banned
You may have butterflied away a Sting song ITTL. As for the most powerful VP, I'd think Henry A. Wallace had that title indirectly for a number of years.
Still, this is an amazing story! Love the details!
Still, this is an amazing story! Love the details!