The American System: A Henry Clay TL
- Thread starter TheHedgehog
- Start date
Cameron has a enemies list of those who have 'wronged' him. Expect the to have their personal and business taxes audited, will not receive any government contracts or promotions etc.
The Societist Party had some success in the 1910s but largely collapsed as the Whigs embraced dirigism. There's some small prohibitionist and agrarian parties but nothing that's really gained traction
Very accurate description...
The Liberal Union is just the umbrella electoral coalition of the Democrats, it's not a party.
It won't quite get rolled back...
Thanks!
There is for sure an Enemies List, and some Executive Mansion plumbers always on call.
I’ve been reading this timeline and it is one of the best alternate history timelines I’ve ever read. Anyway, here are my predictions for what is going to happen next: I believe that Cameron is going to get involved in some sort of watergate scandal in his third term which will lead to him being impeached and his vice president will assume control and try to win in in 1952 but he will loose to the aviator guy who will run as the democratic candidate. I imagine that as the democrats will start to become more supportive of civil rights that the whigs will attempt TTLs version of the southern strategy as they seem to be gaining strength in the south.
Also about scandals.
Would in TTL USA be some analogue of the Radium Girls incident? Or The Tuskeege Study analogue?
And yes, I also interested about medicine level in TTL 1940s. What about Penicillin? Salvarsan? And, witout USSR - who was the wolrd leader of smallpox vaccination?
And, well, without WWII and Cold War - what would be with Nuclear Weapons, Rockets and Computer Development?
Would in TTL USA be some analogue of the Radium Girls incident? Or The Tuskeege Study analogue?
And yes, I also interested about medicine level in TTL 1940s. What about Penicillin? Salvarsan? And, witout USSR - who was the wolrd leader of smallpox vaccination?
And, well, without WWII and Cold War - what would be with Nuclear Weapons, Rockets and Computer Development?
I started reading this thread two days ago and just got caught up. I’m interested to see how this world keeps getting worse
Great update! As much as I hate him and what he's done to American democracy, Cameron is a fascinating character.
I'm curious about the status of American Catholicism. We are approaching the time that in OTL saw the Second Vatican Council and liturgical reforms, and while increased use of the vernacular in the Mass would be hard to prevent, if Latin remained the language of the Church it would partially explain why some modern Whigs like Marshall are still so hopped up on that sweet, sweet anti-Popery.
I'm curious about the status of American Catholicism. We are approaching the time that in OTL saw the Second Vatican Council and liturgical reforms, and while increased use of the vernacular in the Mass would be hard to prevent, if Latin remained the language of the Church it would partially explain why some modern Whigs like Marshall are still so hopped up on that sweet, sweet anti-Popery.
As I can understand, Vatican TTL is butterflued away.
Also, there was mentioned, that there was no Catholic US Presidents until XXI century at least.
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Thanks so much, glad your enjoying it!
I can neither confirm nor deny your predictions haha, but I think you will find that 1952 is a bit premature for the aviator guy
Definitely, especially the Tuskegee Study given how terrible race relations are in the south TTL.
Penicillin and the like are still developed, though probably a few years behind schedule.
TTL probably China is the leader in smallpox vaccines given their modernization drives.
Thanks so much and welcome aboard!
Thanks!
Cameron's been fun to write, so I'm glad people are enjoying him.
That's an interesting point, and one I haven't thought too much about. I could see the latin mass retained for several decades more, maybe until a Pope Francis type introduces the vernacular formally. A reformist pope like that could even come earlier than OTL, due to the more progressive cultures of Catholic countries like Italy and Argentina
And it would definitely give me the justification to drag anti-Catholicism kicking and screaming into the 21st century lol, although TTL anti-Catholicism does take on more of a racial component as suspicion shifts from the well-established Irish, Polish, and Italian communities towards more recent Hispanic immigrants
question- does anyone else pull off a third term TTL? and how important is the speaker to politics, since the whigs otl were generally in favor of congressional supremacy in the beginning
Cameron's the only one, after his time in office is over, an amendment is passed limiting the president to two terms.
The speaker is fairly important, but the Whigs have shifted towards embracing the imperial presidency, which has only intensified under Cameron
honestly a bit of a shame. while term limits are probably good OTL, i do think it's underexplored in fiction if we got more 3-termers
I had considered a few other 3-termers, but I couldn't really justify them not imposing term limits after everything with Cameron
109. First, the Homeland
109. First, the Homeland
“As Howard Cameron prepared to move back into the Executive Mansion, the tone of his presidential transition was markedly different from that of 1936-37. In 1936, there were many factions of the party whose interests had to be balanced, and powerful anti-Cameron figures that had to be placated. Twelve years later, Cameron had effectively silenced his most powerful intraparty foes. The party chairman was, while not a loyalist, so weak and powerless that Cameron held the position de facto. Speaker Norris had, despite surviving the 1947 challenge to his leadership, chosen to retire ahead of 1948, and Cameron lobbied heavily to have Joseph Holcombe, a Kentucky congressman and loyalist, take up the gavel. Holcombe was widely regarded by his peers as a skilled negotiator, but “without ambition or an independent agenda.” In his time as Speaker, Holcombe often introduced legislation written by Cameron and his cabinet unaltered and was viewed as a puppet of the administration.
In the Senate, Cameron relied on three powerful Whigs to control the caucus: John Asbury of Kansas, Hugh Ervin of Alabama, and a National Democrat, Charles Lambert of Louisiana. This Gang of Three dispensed large sums of appropriations money to keep the caucus in line, and Cameron steered significant federal investments to their home states in return for their support for his agenda. Cameron’s cabinet was filled with his most trusted, most loyal associates, with former congressman Victor Spellman, one of the first Whigs to break the Solid South, appointed as Secretary of Agriculture. In one of the most contentious confirmation battles, Cameron nominated his old friend Clarence Dern to return to the Department of Industry and Planning. Democrats and even some Whigs opposed Dern for his interventionist policies and close ties to several wealthy businessmen, whose businesses had flourished during his tenure.
Dern was ultimately confirmed to his post by a vote of 43 to 39, the closest cabinet confirmation vote in decades. Five Whigs broke party ranks to oppose him, a shocking display of disunity. Following this incident, Cameron went to great lengths to ensure a façade of unity for the public, including using what legislators called the “Cameron Treatment,” involving anything from bribery, to promises of local investment, to threats and intimidation. With his cabinet established, Cameron charged ahead with sweeping proposals to re-invigorate Industry and Planning’s regulatory powers, as well as new subsidies for emerging industries. At the behest of Senator Asbury of Kansas and congressman Campbell Munro of Nebraska, Cameron agreed to steer significant subsidies towards new computing companies in Kansas and Nebraska, as well as the new computing and electronics research divisions at the University of Kansas and the University of Nebraska.
These sorts of quid pro quo appropriations came to define the third and fourth Cameron terms, as government funds and subsidies were traded for votes on key bills. While pork-barrel spending greased the wheels of Congress, Clarence Dern used the broad regulatory scope of the Department of Industry and Planning to reimpose the price controls and sections of the Fair Standards Code that Richard Nelson had suspended. More notoriously, Dern’s tenure saw regulations tailored to benefit large businesses, and, as a 1954 investigation revealed, directed the DIP’s powerful enforcement division to overlook code violations from companies on a “Blue List”, which supported Cameron both publicly and financially. As a result of this growing closeness between government and business, Cameron began to drift away from his previous support for labor unions. While he had granted unions significant input in candidate selection across the Midwest and welcomed their support in his 1936 and 1940 campaigns, he began to grow suspicious of them. He had seen President Nelson bend under the threat of a strike and became fearful of emboldening labor too much. More importantly, he saw their growing influence in the party as a threat to his personal control, and his industrialist benefactors were also influencing him against the labor movement.
In these early days, Cameron projected an optimistic mood, and while his inaugural address contained a fair amount of gloating at his victory over the antipersonalists, he mostly stuck to his message that the good times of his first administration were just around the corner. “The common man’s crusade continues,” he vowed on the steps of the newly expanded Capitol to the cheers of the audience. However, as the next six years would show, the crusade had drifted so far from its initial goals as to be effectively over.”
-From ALL THE KING’S MEN: THE SECOND CAMERON ADMINISTRATION by Lawrence Everly, published 2019
“President Cameron’s actions last week, particularly his talk on wages and prices, are confused and muddled, like the man who attempted to ride his horse in all directions.
On the one hand, the Administration is following a policy of inflation. Secretary Clarence Dern has announced the injection of $50,000,000 worth of subsidies into the industrial economy, these funds directed to sectors as diverse as the inchoate computing business and the steel mills. President Cameron himself has made such spending a centerpiece of his economic policy, and reports from Congress suggest that he has traded further subsidies to lawmakers in exchange for promises of support on other initiatives. Secondary to this direct federal spending is what former president Richard Nelson termed “the invisible dead weight of non-competition,” as federal regulations have allowed a handful of large industrial cartels to dominate whole sectors of the economy, reducing competition, depressing wages, and raising prices.
The basic causes of inflation are the growing budget deficit and anti-competitive economic policy, which leads up to the creation of more bank credit, more currency, and higher prices. That deficit was last estimated to be some $50,000,000,000. The first duty of a government determined to combat inflation would be to reduce the budget and decrease prices. Yet, last week Congress passed a bill cutting taxes by nearly $5,000,000,000, removing over 7,000,000 taxpayers completely from the rolls. This course of action need not lead to further inflation if the government also planned to cut public expenditure by an amount greater than the reduction in tax revenue.
No such economic program has been put forward by the Administration. Speaker Holcombe has introduced scores of new spending bills, with much government pressure being exerted to ensure their passage. The President is pushing for a bill increasing federal compensatory spending to guarantee a full employment economy, which could lead to indefinite spending by the Government to create jobs. He has also declared his support for proposals to increase the salaries of civil service workers by 25 percent and double the salaries of all Senators and Representatives. The amount of money required to finance these raises would exceed the entire tax revenue collected in 1937. And these policies are being pursued at the same time as the Government is selling a huge bond issue to “fight inflation.”
On top of these inflationary programs, the President is encouraging demands by labor for increased hourly wages, having ordered Secretary Snow of the Labor Department and Secretary Dern of Industry & Planning to begin negotiating with the NCLU on “reasonable” wage adjustments. The labor movement, whose handpicked representatives make up some one-third of the Whig House caucus, has also emerged as one of the loudest blocs in favor of full employment and subsidies, which can only lead to more inflationary spending. President Cameron has refused to properly define this term, but government statisticians and NCLU analysts have produced estimates showing that general wage increases could range from 10 percent or greater.
Even after pouring billions of dollars’ worth of purchasing power into the economy and encouraging a new wave of labor demands, the Administration purports to fight inflation by preventing its own policies from ever reaching their end results. “We must above all else,” declares Mr. Cameron, “hold the line on prices.” If wage increases wipe out profit margins, business is expected to wait some six months before relief materializes, incidentally further bolstering the industrial cartels friendly to the Administration. Thus, the Administration plans to take everything from the flesh of small and medium-sized business profits.
The result of this policy, unless it is promptly revised, must be to incite a new wave of labor unrest, to impose unworkable and odious wage increases, to drive marginal producers and small businesses out of operation, to discourage people from becoming employers, to prevent existing employers from expanding, and ultimately to congeal the economy into a handful of hardy and uncompetitive cartels. There seems to be a notion in Washington that there is a special class of people who must be forced to provide employment for others, whether they benefit from the arrangement or not. The end result of the Government’s policy can only be to discourage existing minor employers and concentrate more economic power in the hands of the cartels. This is fundamentally an anti-labor policy in the long run, as much as the President insists on the benefit to the “common man.”
The only solution is to abandon political efforts to dictate wages and prices and to abolish the cartel economy in favor of a free, competitive market economy.”
-From FIGHTING AND FORCING INFLATION, The Brooklyn Sun-Herald, November 7th, 1949
“Two years into his third term, President Cameron remained personally incredibly popular, but his leadership only further divided the Whig party. As 1950 dawned, the anti-personalist faction began selecting its own candidates to challenge Cameronist dominance, in direct defiance of the Whig central committee’s efforts to consolidate selection and nomination under its auspices. New York’s Whig party repudiated Cameron’s decision to stand Nelson Hillyer for Governor, instead nominating the state party chairman and 1948 presidential candidate Sam Wolcott for the office. Hillyer was forced to run as an independent, along with dozens of congressional and local candidates rejected by the anti-personalist dominated state party.
Cameron also began to alienate the National Congress of Labor Unions, as he stated that the latest round of collective bargaining arrangements would “be the last for the foreseeable future,” eliciting strong rebukes from union leadership. He threatened to forcibly suppress possible autoworkers strike in the spring of 1950, which prompted a schism in the NCLU. Union president J. Thomas Carson, a prominent supporter of Cameron, was ousted by anti-personalists, leading to pro-Cameron unions withdrawing to form the NCLU-Loyalists, while the remaining unions elected the anti-personalist Lucas Brice to lead the NCLU-American. The bulk of NCLU organizing power and political heft remained with Brice’s NCLU-A, as much of the congress’s allied politicians refused to follow Carson’s schismatics. The Whig National Committee decided to award the NCLU-L the labor movement’s traditional share of candidate nominations, leading to many incumbents standing for re-election as either independents, ‘Intransigent Whigs’, or members of the Labor party.
These splinter parties’ fortunes were raised by the growing unpopularity of Congress – while President Cameron was still popular, congress was viewed unfavorably for its heavy spending, perceived corruption, and frequent infighting. As a result, Cameron’s favored candidates struggled, especially as the economy began to gradually worsen. President Cameron campaigned across the country for vulnerable allies, but his efforts were not enough. Although the Whig party as a whole only lost thirteen seats to the Democrats, the internal civil war yielded 140 seats for the anti-personalists and 118 for the Cameronists, a stinging rebuke for the president. In other races, Sam Wolcott won election to Governor of New York in a landslide, and anti-personalist gubernatorial candidates also won in Pennsylvania and Missouri. The unofficial leader of the House anti-personalists, Raymond Johnson of Pennsylvania, announced his intention to challenge Speaker Holcombe for the gavel, splitting the party.
With the anti-personalists joining the Democrats in voting against Holcombe, he lost the Speakership vote on January 3rd, forcing Cameron to negotiate. He refused to abandon Holcombe, rendering a deal with the anti-personalists impossible, so the President entered into negotiations with the Democrats. The Democrats, still fractured between the liberal east-coast faction and the more personalist, machine-driven midwestern state parties, were initially hostile. However, Cameron promised to appoint some Democrats to patronage positions, as well as guaranteed generous government spending into the home districts of Democrats who voted for Holcombe and gave vague promises to rein in spending. This was enough to sway a number of midwestern, southern, and western Democrats, ultimately securing 113 Democratic votes, more than enough to secure Holcombe’s re-election.
The 1951 speakership battle infuriated Cameron as he lost control of elements of his party, leading him to create an ‘enemies list’ of people and organizations that he would obstruct and seek revenge on. At the top of the list was Ezra Stark Jr, now a Senator from Missouri, then now-Governor Sam Wolcott, followed by dozens of anti-personalist lawmakers and public figures. A secret until his death, the enemies list is now almost synonymous with Howard Cameron, and was heavily influential on his administration’s policies and rhetoric. Joe Holcombe would continue as speaker until 1955 with the confidence of the Democrats. This unwieldy coalition was one of the defining features of President Cameron’s return, along with other, much more chaotic events and movements…”
-From THE DETROIT LION by John Philip Yates, published 2012
“As Howard Cameron prepared to move back into the Executive Mansion, the tone of his presidential transition was markedly different from that of 1936-37. In 1936, there were many factions of the party whose interests had to be balanced, and powerful anti-Cameron figures that had to be placated. Twelve years later, Cameron had effectively silenced his most powerful intraparty foes. The party chairman was, while not a loyalist, so weak and powerless that Cameron held the position de facto. Speaker Norris had, despite surviving the 1947 challenge to his leadership, chosen to retire ahead of 1948, and Cameron lobbied heavily to have Joseph Holcombe, a Kentucky congressman and loyalist, take up the gavel. Holcombe was widely regarded by his peers as a skilled negotiator, but “without ambition or an independent agenda.” In his time as Speaker, Holcombe often introduced legislation written by Cameron and his cabinet unaltered and was viewed as a puppet of the administration.
In the Senate, Cameron relied on three powerful Whigs to control the caucus: John Asbury of Kansas, Hugh Ervin of Alabama, and a National Democrat, Charles Lambert of Louisiana. This Gang of Three dispensed large sums of appropriations money to keep the caucus in line, and Cameron steered significant federal investments to their home states in return for their support for his agenda. Cameron’s cabinet was filled with his most trusted, most loyal associates, with former congressman Victor Spellman, one of the first Whigs to break the Solid South, appointed as Secretary of Agriculture. In one of the most contentious confirmation battles, Cameron nominated his old friend Clarence Dern to return to the Department of Industry and Planning. Democrats and even some Whigs opposed Dern for his interventionist policies and close ties to several wealthy businessmen, whose businesses had flourished during his tenure.
Dern was ultimately confirmed to his post by a vote of 43 to 39, the closest cabinet confirmation vote in decades. Five Whigs broke party ranks to oppose him, a shocking display of disunity. Following this incident, Cameron went to great lengths to ensure a façade of unity for the public, including using what legislators called the “Cameron Treatment,” involving anything from bribery, to promises of local investment, to threats and intimidation. With his cabinet established, Cameron charged ahead with sweeping proposals to re-invigorate Industry and Planning’s regulatory powers, as well as new subsidies for emerging industries. At the behest of Senator Asbury of Kansas and congressman Campbell Munro of Nebraska, Cameron agreed to steer significant subsidies towards new computing companies in Kansas and Nebraska, as well as the new computing and electronics research divisions at the University of Kansas and the University of Nebraska.
These sorts of quid pro quo appropriations came to define the third and fourth Cameron terms, as government funds and subsidies were traded for votes on key bills. While pork-barrel spending greased the wheels of Congress, Clarence Dern used the broad regulatory scope of the Department of Industry and Planning to reimpose the price controls and sections of the Fair Standards Code that Richard Nelson had suspended. More notoriously, Dern’s tenure saw regulations tailored to benefit large businesses, and, as a 1954 investigation revealed, directed the DIP’s powerful enforcement division to overlook code violations from companies on a “Blue List”, which supported Cameron both publicly and financially. As a result of this growing closeness between government and business, Cameron began to drift away from his previous support for labor unions. While he had granted unions significant input in candidate selection across the Midwest and welcomed their support in his 1936 and 1940 campaigns, he began to grow suspicious of them. He had seen President Nelson bend under the threat of a strike and became fearful of emboldening labor too much. More importantly, he saw their growing influence in the party as a threat to his personal control, and his industrialist benefactors were also influencing him against the labor movement.
In these early days, Cameron projected an optimistic mood, and while his inaugural address contained a fair amount of gloating at his victory over the antipersonalists, he mostly stuck to his message that the good times of his first administration were just around the corner. “The common man’s crusade continues,” he vowed on the steps of the newly expanded Capitol to the cheers of the audience. However, as the next six years would show, the crusade had drifted so far from its initial goals as to be effectively over.”
-From ALL THE KING’S MEN: THE SECOND CAMERON ADMINISTRATION by Lawrence Everly, published 2019
“President Cameron’s actions last week, particularly his talk on wages and prices, are confused and muddled, like the man who attempted to ride his horse in all directions.
On the one hand, the Administration is following a policy of inflation. Secretary Clarence Dern has announced the injection of $50,000,000 worth of subsidies into the industrial economy, these funds directed to sectors as diverse as the inchoate computing business and the steel mills. President Cameron himself has made such spending a centerpiece of his economic policy, and reports from Congress suggest that he has traded further subsidies to lawmakers in exchange for promises of support on other initiatives. Secondary to this direct federal spending is what former president Richard Nelson termed “the invisible dead weight of non-competition,” as federal regulations have allowed a handful of large industrial cartels to dominate whole sectors of the economy, reducing competition, depressing wages, and raising prices.
The basic causes of inflation are the growing budget deficit and anti-competitive economic policy, which leads up to the creation of more bank credit, more currency, and higher prices. That deficit was last estimated to be some $50,000,000,000. The first duty of a government determined to combat inflation would be to reduce the budget and decrease prices. Yet, last week Congress passed a bill cutting taxes by nearly $5,000,000,000, removing over 7,000,000 taxpayers completely from the rolls. This course of action need not lead to further inflation if the government also planned to cut public expenditure by an amount greater than the reduction in tax revenue.
No such economic program has been put forward by the Administration. Speaker Holcombe has introduced scores of new spending bills, with much government pressure being exerted to ensure their passage. The President is pushing for a bill increasing federal compensatory spending to guarantee a full employment economy, which could lead to indefinite spending by the Government to create jobs. He has also declared his support for proposals to increase the salaries of civil service workers by 25 percent and double the salaries of all Senators and Representatives. The amount of money required to finance these raises would exceed the entire tax revenue collected in 1937. And these policies are being pursued at the same time as the Government is selling a huge bond issue to “fight inflation.”
On top of these inflationary programs, the President is encouraging demands by labor for increased hourly wages, having ordered Secretary Snow of the Labor Department and Secretary Dern of Industry & Planning to begin negotiating with the NCLU on “reasonable” wage adjustments. The labor movement, whose handpicked representatives make up some one-third of the Whig House caucus, has also emerged as one of the loudest blocs in favor of full employment and subsidies, which can only lead to more inflationary spending. President Cameron has refused to properly define this term, but government statisticians and NCLU analysts have produced estimates showing that general wage increases could range from 10 percent or greater.
Even after pouring billions of dollars’ worth of purchasing power into the economy and encouraging a new wave of labor demands, the Administration purports to fight inflation by preventing its own policies from ever reaching their end results. “We must above all else,” declares Mr. Cameron, “hold the line on prices.” If wage increases wipe out profit margins, business is expected to wait some six months before relief materializes, incidentally further bolstering the industrial cartels friendly to the Administration. Thus, the Administration plans to take everything from the flesh of small and medium-sized business profits.
The result of this policy, unless it is promptly revised, must be to incite a new wave of labor unrest, to impose unworkable and odious wage increases, to drive marginal producers and small businesses out of operation, to discourage people from becoming employers, to prevent existing employers from expanding, and ultimately to congeal the economy into a handful of hardy and uncompetitive cartels. There seems to be a notion in Washington that there is a special class of people who must be forced to provide employment for others, whether they benefit from the arrangement or not. The end result of the Government’s policy can only be to discourage existing minor employers and concentrate more economic power in the hands of the cartels. This is fundamentally an anti-labor policy in the long run, as much as the President insists on the benefit to the “common man.”
The only solution is to abandon political efforts to dictate wages and prices and to abolish the cartel economy in favor of a free, competitive market economy.”
-From FIGHTING AND FORCING INFLATION, The Brooklyn Sun-Herald, November 7th, 1949
“Two years into his third term, President Cameron remained personally incredibly popular, but his leadership only further divided the Whig party. As 1950 dawned, the anti-personalist faction began selecting its own candidates to challenge Cameronist dominance, in direct defiance of the Whig central committee’s efforts to consolidate selection and nomination under its auspices. New York’s Whig party repudiated Cameron’s decision to stand Nelson Hillyer for Governor, instead nominating the state party chairman and 1948 presidential candidate Sam Wolcott for the office. Hillyer was forced to run as an independent, along with dozens of congressional and local candidates rejected by the anti-personalist dominated state party.
Cameron also began to alienate the National Congress of Labor Unions, as he stated that the latest round of collective bargaining arrangements would “be the last for the foreseeable future,” eliciting strong rebukes from union leadership. He threatened to forcibly suppress possible autoworkers strike in the spring of 1950, which prompted a schism in the NCLU. Union president J. Thomas Carson, a prominent supporter of Cameron, was ousted by anti-personalists, leading to pro-Cameron unions withdrawing to form the NCLU-Loyalists, while the remaining unions elected the anti-personalist Lucas Brice to lead the NCLU-American. The bulk of NCLU organizing power and political heft remained with Brice’s NCLU-A, as much of the congress’s allied politicians refused to follow Carson’s schismatics. The Whig National Committee decided to award the NCLU-L the labor movement’s traditional share of candidate nominations, leading to many incumbents standing for re-election as either independents, ‘Intransigent Whigs’, or members of the Labor party.
These splinter parties’ fortunes were raised by the growing unpopularity of Congress – while President Cameron was still popular, congress was viewed unfavorably for its heavy spending, perceived corruption, and frequent infighting. As a result, Cameron’s favored candidates struggled, especially as the economy began to gradually worsen. President Cameron campaigned across the country for vulnerable allies, but his efforts were not enough. Although the Whig party as a whole only lost thirteen seats to the Democrats, the internal civil war yielded 140 seats for the anti-personalists and 118 for the Cameronists, a stinging rebuke for the president. In other races, Sam Wolcott won election to Governor of New York in a landslide, and anti-personalist gubernatorial candidates also won in Pennsylvania and Missouri. The unofficial leader of the House anti-personalists, Raymond Johnson of Pennsylvania, announced his intention to challenge Speaker Holcombe for the gavel, splitting the party.
With the anti-personalists joining the Democrats in voting against Holcombe, he lost the Speakership vote on January 3rd, forcing Cameron to negotiate. He refused to abandon Holcombe, rendering a deal with the anti-personalists impossible, so the President entered into negotiations with the Democrats. The Democrats, still fractured between the liberal east-coast faction and the more personalist, machine-driven midwestern state parties, were initially hostile. However, Cameron promised to appoint some Democrats to patronage positions, as well as guaranteed generous government spending into the home districts of Democrats who voted for Holcombe and gave vague promises to rein in spending. This was enough to sway a number of midwestern, southern, and western Democrats, ultimately securing 113 Democratic votes, more than enough to secure Holcombe’s re-election.
The 1951 speakership battle infuriated Cameron as he lost control of elements of his party, leading him to create an ‘enemies list’ of people and organizations that he would obstruct and seek revenge on. At the top of the list was Ezra Stark Jr, now a Senator from Missouri, then now-Governor Sam Wolcott, followed by dozens of anti-personalist lawmakers and public figures. A secret until his death, the enemies list is now almost synonymous with Howard Cameron, and was heavily influential on his administration’s policies and rhetoric. Joe Holcombe would continue as speaker until 1955 with the confidence of the Democrats. This unwieldy coalition was one of the defining features of President Cameron’s return, along with other, much more chaotic events and movements…”
-From THE DETROIT LION by John Philip Yates, published 2012
Never seen a hyperinflationary US economy sketched out this well before, especially since economics is very dry reading. Well done
Well, this will be exciting. Question is, will he resign, be ousted or get killed?