The Main Event: A TLIALW

Round 12

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Republican primary contestants: John Engler, Charles “Charlie” Crist, Willard “Mitt” Romney, James “Jim” DeMint, John Cornyn, Jon Kyl, Thomas “Tom” Corbett

Democratic primary contestants: Harvey Gantt, Paul Wellstone, Mark Warner

If Jeb Bush had entered office a controversial president, thanks to the nature of his election, John McCain was downright unexpected. It was sheer luck (together with state-level strong-arming of the system) that had brought him this far, and McCain was at once inclined to believe in his own luck and deeply grateful for it, because this was the job he had sought, in private thoughts or on the campaign trail, for the last quarter of his life. Now that he had it McCain, the oldest elected President by two years over Reagan’s re-election age, took to it with a young man’s enthusiasm. And between a Republican Party thrilled he had managed to squeak through against the party’s growing structural and demographic disadvantages in national elections on one hand and a fan-club national press on the other, his enthusiasm was at first returned.

McCain thought of himself first and foremost as Commander-in-Chief but it was domestic issues that first intruded on him. The economy still lagged and many of the voters who had so narrowly put McCain in office were more concerned with jobs and wages and futures for their kids than they were with overseas wars or the diplomatic chessboard. Here McCain moved ahead quickly with a series of tax breaks and corporate incentives following the Republican formula to get business moving again. But beyond that he espoused a broader, almost Kempian vision of what he liked to call (borrowing a phrase from the late Baroness Thatcher) an “ownership society.” Flush with the opportunities the presidency offered, McCain set out to reshape Americans’ relationship with economic opportunities and public services in market terms. He offered up rafts of legislation for school vouchers, pre-tax funds for Americans to invest in the financial markets, government insurance for reverse-mortgages, large designs for privatizing NHIPA’s public-option coverage through vouchers and personal accounts, and more of the same for a percentage of individuals’ Social Security payroll taxes. The ideas were broader, more creative, and more aggressive when they owed to McCain’s vice president and powerful domestic-affairs deputy John Engler, a social conservative and privatizer of advanced ideology and creative legislative formulas. Engler in particular preached a return to budget orthodoxy through paring back social-services agencies both in their spending and their structure. When right-wing Congressmen sometimes found the scope and zeal of their proposals challenged by qualms from McCain, they knew they had a strong and influential ally in Engler.

McCain’s own priorities in the Oval Office began and remained out past American shores. Foreign and especially national-security policy was his wheelhouse, and the son and grandson of admirals took his command of the world’s most powerful military-intelligence complex in earnest. In particular McCain desired and designed an exact reversal of several Gantt administration policies. US forces took on a far more aggressive role in pursuing and attacking Mahdist forces in Libya and Yemen, and in the latter the commitment of American personnel almost doubled. McCain and his advisors were far more suspicious of Syrian intervention in western Iraq and rolled back both active and tacit support. American policy in the Levant turned back to full-throated support for Israeli policy and, for McCain, a personal friendship with Israeli’s slowly-dying but still mighty prime minister Ariel Sharon. And, seeking a break in the long arc of increased oil prices, Washington realigned itself with the Saudis and, with McCain’s personal insistence, against the fragile but moderating Iranian government. New fronts opened in the anti-Mahdist conflict as well, as McCain sought a much closer relationship with Pakistan in order to open up supply lines and flight lanes to attack terrorist groups in Afghanistan, a process that drew in more aircraft carriers, Air Force resources, and paramilitary projects of the CIA in the first two years of his presidency. With sparkling conviction McCain laid out who he believed stood on the side of the angels in the Middle East’s conflicts and who did not, and doubled down on American commitment to the former.

McCain’s belief that the United States was the world’s indispensable nation, and that American action was the defining influence on crises overseas, was sorely tested. As Islamist violence spread out into the fringes of the Middle East Russia escalated existing border conflicts in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Angered by what he saw as Russian repression of free peoples, McCain soured on diplomacy with Moscow; as he expressed more public and diplomatic support for the embattled small republics on the Russian fringe, including American aid, a hardened chill descended. As oil prices helped the Russian economy climb out of the disastrous conditions of the early 2000s, Russian ire with American economic and diplomatic policy led to competition that observers feared was the start of a new Cold War. When Mahdist forces counterattacked Syria in a shocking master-stroke that assassinated most of the Assad family, the Syrian succession struggle touched off civil war between rival ethnic and religious groups. As the Khilafa al-Mahdi joined in the fight McCain pressed for American aid for rival Syrian forces and the establishment of a no-fly zone over Syria: hard on overstretched US forces in the region, dangerous thanks to Syria’s indigenous air defenses, and another blow to relations with Russia.

The most dangerous and perhaps most costly crisis of these four years was the collapse of North Korea in early 2011. An attempted purge of rival factions from the military by Kim Il-Sung’s latest grandson-heir produced a counter-coup. With the ruling family displaced the isolated, economically broken state teetered into civil war. The long-feared conflict with the South was only a few muffled exchanges while rival factions decided whether they should declare against the capitalists to gain support or gain a southern ally. Then, just over a week into the bloody uncertainty, South Korean and US radar picked up two medium-range rockets launched from a site near the Kim family’s military compound outside Pyongyang. One was tracked and destroyed in the air by ballistic-defense missiles, the other tumbled down into the great South Korean port of Incheon, where it erupted in nuclear fire half the size of the Hiroshima bomb. The world was shocked into fear and silence, and held its breath as fence-sitters in the civil war turned on the hard-liners, fearing nuclear retaliation. The resources of many nations were rushed to aid the dead and irradiated in Incheon. McCain’s response was harsh: it took hours to talk him out of a targeted nuclear strike in response, and instead he launched a plan to destroy the hard-liners’ command with carpet bombing and two divisions of American marines. Instead of plaudits, the aggressive – and bloody – US assault faced condemnation, first from South Korea who were trying desperately to establish an alliance with the rebel forces and peace terms towards unification. More dangerous was China’s response, mobilizing its military and accusing McCain of needlessly escalation that played into the hard-liners’ hands. With Marines dying on the bloody road towards Pyongyang, South Korean investors pouring out of damaged American markets in protest, and a dangerous military escalation with China, McCain’s steely-eyed enthusiasm for settling the crisis with force looked less heroic and more rash by the day. Foreign trust in US policy, already on edge with McCain’s taste for interventionism, reached new lows as Seoul, Beijing, and even Tokyo sidelined Washington in much of the reconstruction and recovery effort.

Cold War-style great power crises and another (briefer) bloody conflict abroad could not have come at a worse time for McCain. Already in the midterms Democrats had turned out voters still angry over the economy, skeptical of what “ownership” would do for them, and of seemingly endless wars abroad. Then came the Korean crisis which, after the initial shock of Incheon, divided Americans on partisan lines as to whether it was a heroic cause or a frightening escalation. But the damning blow at home came from the financial sector. The market shocks of the Korean crisis damaged growth. Without that growth covering a vast network of shady debentures and trillions in overvalued derivatives that moved through unregulated commercial banks, a margin call loomed. It came in May, and tore through the “shadow banking” sector like wildfire. In what were effectively bank runs, major American, British, German, and French financial houses toppled and some fell directly to ruin. Private lending constricted and then collapsed. Global markets, it seemed, were on the edge of another Depression. And here, of all places, the McCain administration seemed frozen. Desperate for more detail, anxious not to act too soon lest it set off more market panics, McCain delayed direct action in the crisis for over a week. The image of a White House that seemed paralyzed, when set against McCain’s instinct to charge into international crises, sat badly with the public. When he did act, it seemed McCain had no good options. When the White House all but nationalized shaky institutions and offered relief funds there were howls of outrage from populists and the orthodox right wing of the Republican caucus. As McCain leaned heavily on Vice President Engler for domestic crisis management, Engler’s efforts to restart lending with further tax breaks and his opposition to new regulations caused fire to rain from the Democratic side of the aisle. In the autumn the political bloodletting continued, as Engler – more than McCain, which did not help the president’s reputation for decisive command – became involved in a bitter Senate fight over a “Cash for Clunkers” bill introduced by Midwestern Democrats led by the dean of Democratic progressives Paul Wellstone, designed to keep the automakers of Engler’s native Michigan alive with federally-backed deals for new car purchases.

McCain tumbled down into the winter of his third year in office with confrontation and more conflict abroad, galloping unemployment at home, torn between aggressive promotion of “ownership” principles and choosing against his own party caucus to intervene with government resources. And now the physical toll came. In September, bothered by issues with vision and his face muscles, McCain’s doctors confirmed he had suffered two micro-strokes at some point in the previous three months. His own determination to conduct his administration with personal drive and relentless energy began to tell against his seventy-five-year-old body. To McCain himself it mattered very little: he had a profound personal sense of duty, and a profound emotional investment in serving as President, and if the price of that service reached as far as his life, he was ready to pay. But as an election season approached Republican leaders feared the consequences of a sickly president, and personal friends who simply worried the election would kill him.

When a decision was forced on him it came in January, with the awful timing that had plagued his tenure since before the midterms. As he carried on the daily business of conducting America’s anti-Mahdist wars abroad, and searched desperately for a market-friendly solution to the economic collapse, McCain took to the campaign trail. US forces had come home from Korea, the emergency intervention his own party hated had prevented global depression by the skin of its teeth, and the president was determined to launch his reelection bid as vigorously as he did anything. It was when he returned to Washington that it struck. A stroke in full hospitalized McCain for over a week. Though he showed remarkable resilience for a man his age it still had debilitating effects on his health and, for the time being, his ability to walk, so crucial to campaigning. Rumors swirled. To McCain’s credit his answer to panicked Republican leaders who wanted his medical resignation was defiance. But his own family doubted he had a campaign in him. In the third week of January John McCain announced he would not seek reelection, and the floodgates opened. Vice President Engler quite naturally stepped into the race both as McCain’s surrogate and as the voice of Republican support for stripping down public services to inject billions back into the market economy. Republican senators tripped over themselves on the way into the race; Mitt Romney returned to the campaign at the head of a fundraising empire created for such a purpose since he’d left office; and Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett tried to outdo Engler as the right-wing innovator from a Rust Belt state. Engler had some structural advantages but these were not what they once were. Thanks to deep changes in the way the Republican Party funded itself, each major candidate had their own deep-pocketed support structure (some wags called them “pet billionaires”) who could keep their campaign afloat so long as they had the hint of a chance. Engler found himself attacked from all angles: one particularly cynical but effective approach came from Corbett, whose policy agenda nearly matched Engler’s but who attacked the Vice President (who had spent a lifetime in Michigan state politics) as a “Washington insider.” Romney parlayed money and structural connections into every state, competitive throughout, but never with enough juice to break from the pack. Dewhurst again fell flat but for money. The surprise, if there was one, was Jon Kyl, whose Western rectitude about fiscal responsibility and opposition to immigration reform played well with voters who liked the idea of a man of principle. Romney, sensing the man he needed to beat, attacked the seventy-year-old Kyl’s age; Kyl parried asking if this disqualified President McCain and Romney never fully recovered. As the campaign wound on Engler turned victories in Wisconsin and Corbett’s neighboring Maryland into a lead. Seeking the vice presidency, Romney dropped out and endorsed Engler. Kyl continued to perform well further west, winning Texas among others, but Engler’s victory in California appeared to seal the issue. This was set in stone when Engler comfortably double-crossed Romney and sought instead for Kyl to join him on the ticket, which balanced regions and paired decades of combined experience and commitment to Republican orthodoxy.

The real weight and force of the campaign season, however, lay on the other side of the aisle. After some months of shock and mourning at the surprise of 2008, as the wars abroad carried on and the economy did not, a single question dominated Democratic politics: would former President Gantt, like Ronald Reagan before him, try to return to office? Gantt remained deeply involved in public life, and even published a memoir on his life as a civil-rights pioneer teasingly titled Not Done Yet, but as time passed there was no clear indication he wanted to complete the presidency so many Democrats thought unfinished. Time wore on through the Korean Crisis and the Credit Crash without an answer. At least one substantial Democrat – the handsome, neoliberal former governor-turned-senator from Virginia Mark Warner – formally entered the contest. Then, in a speech before a partisan crowd in Maryland at the end of 2011, Gantt with a wide smile suggested he “might like [his] old job back” and launched into a declaration of candidacy to an earthquake of applause. This would not be a campaign like those to which Democrats had become accustomed since 1968 however. Gantt’s entry sidelined a variety of competitors, though not Warner who some suggested was now reduced to auditioning for Vice President, and with the country in crisis the party establishment rallied around the former president. But few competitors was not none: into the race came the dean of Senate progressives, longtime Minnesota senator Paul Wellstone. Wellstone’s own age and health (after years of battling multiple sclerosis, mostly with success) told against him, but his creative energy, fierce speechmaking, and political platform seemed to weigh in his favor. In his own words he ran to drive the party in a direction as much as to put himself in the White House; Wellstone scored several surprising victories against Gantt, particularly in the hard-hit Midwest. His popularity with young voters and union members indicated both the dire economic condition of the country and how much voters wanted the Democratic candidate to address it with far more scope and imagination than the McCain administration. To his credit Gantt listened and tacked smoothly in Wellstone’s direction, cutting down the challenger’s vote and drawing ever more delegates. As a gesture of unity and reconciliation, however, Gantt made Wellstone an instrumental part of the process of selecting a vice-presidential candidate. In the end the two men and their advisors settled on a Democrat who had made a career out of fighting Republicans where they were strongest and finding ways to succeed: the second-term governor of Texas Cecile Richards. Richards, daughter of Ann, had left a safe (Austin) seat in Congress to defeat Neil Bush in 2006 when he faced corruption charges, and won reelection helping to lead the 2010 wave. Far more liberal than the median of her state and a two-fisted feminist, Richards was like her mother a sharp-tongued and effective campaigner.

As the fall came, Republicans’ greatest asset was the one they seemed now to value least, President McCain. Determined to see out his office with vigor and dignity, more willing to light out in his own political directions regardless of the party line, McCain seemed to regain some of his old energy. More expansive efforts to support middle-class Americans falling into poverty helped shore up public opinion of his administration. But very little of it spread to his political heirs. Engler and Kyl ran a determined, geographically defensive, proudly Republican campaign, with conviction that their efforts to free markets from government and carry on McCain’s anti-Mahdist wars abroad would set the country to rights again. They were outmatched. Gantt played on voters’ buyer’s remorse, on how military intervention abroad and free-marketeering at home seemed to have made nothing better, on his own optimism and determination to serve ordinary Americans by finishing what he started. Richards, a master of stemwinders, was as proudly and aggressively partisan as anyone, pointing out how badly women and minorities seemed to have fared in economic and cultural life during McCain’s term, decrying the greed and stupidity of the financial sector, and calling for a bottom-up national sense of common purpose. It was the ringing calls to something better that told and, in an ever more partisan political landscape, Harvey Gantt returned to the presidency with as much of a landslide as he was ever likely to get.

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Harvey B. Gantt (D-NC)/Cecile Richards (D-TX) def. John M. Engler (R-MI)/Jon L. Kyl (R-AZ)
 
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EPILOGUE: TEN COUNT

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Harvey Gantt returned to office driven by two kinds of momentum, both of which he intended to use to the full: the momentum of Democrats thrilled that they had regained an office most thought they had lost unfairly in 2008; and the momentum of an expectant public that wanted most of all a fresh start repairing a disastrous economy. With that momentum he planned to apply ideas shaped by the experience of his first term and its loss, a sense of what the country needed to see him do, and an understanding of just how deep the opposition to his actions would run when it came. But for the first Congress of his term at least he enjoyed a Democratic majority boosted by the wave of 2012, and that he would not waste.

Those years produced a flurry of domestic policy, on several fronts. Two massive public works programs passed through Congress: the first an infrastructure bill designed to repair highways and improve tracks and points for long-haul Amtrak routes, the second one of Gantt’s signature ideas the Renewable Energy Reemployment Act, a combination of works projects and government-backed mandates and commercial initiatives to put in place energy-efficient buildings and power-supply networks around the country, along with development projects for renewable resources of all types, all intended to put skilled workers back on the job. To this he added a comprehensive student debt restructuring program on one hand, a large program of federal supports (with repayment schedules) for the American auto industry on another, and on a third legislation intended to encourage a return to defined-benefit pension programs in corporate America, with government supports for portability. Some other bold projects like a national system for public funding of impoverished college students or union-friendly collective bargaining regulations fell short of votes, but others like a new system, and attendant Commercial Banking and Credit Regulation Commission, for governing “shadow banking” made it through the legislature. As part of the unwinding of toxic debts from the financial system Gantt also seized the moment early in his term to impose a penalty tax system, used to help support the capital debts of homeowners and small businesses. An avid supporter of urban mass transit, Gantt also used federal windfalls from supports to banking and carmakers to create a federal development fund for cities’ transit initiatives nationwide. And it was not just economic legislation the returning president shepherded through Congress. A series of new environmental protections tied to the Endangered Species Act came as well, along with a long-awaited grand bargain on federal cap-and-trade carbon regulations. But perhaps the most significant win reshaped another branch of government, as Gantt recaptured a liberal majority on the Supreme Court with the appointment of Seventh Circuit justice and constitutional scholar Barack Obama as the first African American Chief Justice.

Abroad there was still war and disorder, and about that Gantt’s administration did as much as events and systemic Realist inertia in Washington allowed. Through what amounted to a series of financial and diplomatic bribes he was able to replace American forces with Arab League ones in Yemen. In Iraq, the US returned in the unexpected and ironic role of honest broker, and Secretary of State Biden ultimately won a Nobel Peace Prize (alongside Iraqi negotiators) for creating a definite peace and a clearly defined confederal system in Iraq, with (functionally) an internally independent Kurdistan that spanned northern Iraq and parts of what had been Syria, and a decisive defeat for Mahdist forces there. But there were still talks to be had, on a continuous basis, with anxious and angry Turkish governments in Ankara, and most of Syria remained a bloody vacuum from which the US pulled back the aggressive McCain-era measures, leaving instead dicey machinations by Russia and Israel who backed different factions in the civil war. In Libya Washington accepted the status quo on the ground, of a rickety state dominated by Egyptian-backed Benghazi in the east, and reduced its presence to advisors while France felt exhausted relief at the suppression of fighting in Algeria. But there were still financial costs and refugee crises rippling from the southern side of the Mediterranean, none of which did much for Europe’s painful multi-year readjustment of its economic and political bonds after the Credit Crash. The US was able to reduce dependence on Pakistan in hunting Mahdist elements operating from Afghanistan, as productive high-level talks resumed between Washington and Tehran to normalize relations; the tilt towards Iran and India however left Islamabad angry, defensive, and still nuclear-armed. And with Russia American policy was at times at sea, seeking firm grounds for stable relations but bound up midway through Gantt’s term in an anxious, even dangerous crisis over Russian strongarm tactics with the small Baltic republics, which only set diplomacy back and found American troops, finally freed from bloody, long-term deployments to the Middle East, sent to bases in allied Poland for the sake of European security.

At home, as President Gantt’s redemptive term wound past the midterms towards its end, the same process caused two entirely different outcomes within the Republican Party. As one, with only a handful of hesitant exceptions (and all of them remnants of the party’s once-mighty presence in the Northeast and New England), the party ground its heels into place to stop more legislation, particularly any bills that had the whiff of central government action about them, directed from the Oval Office. At the same time the motives of that opposition varied widely: there were devotees of what Nixon labeled his “Southern Strategy” (though they came from across the country) who hoped to stop the efforts of a black liberal in the White House at all costs; there were convinced libertarians who railed against the combination of state-making and war-making vested in the executive; there were free-marketeers determined to keep Gantt from overturning a generation’s trend away from the kind of large-scale, activist government initiatives for which Hubert Humphrey was famous. Together they shared a common enemy, but inside their party they fractured into a variety of movements, each with their own sense of importance, their own commentariat and media outlets and, crucially, each with their own ample lines of funding from well-heeled patrons. On the one hand the end goal rallied a flagging party and kept financial support flowing and a dedicated base of voters fired for confrontation. On the other, the sheer and quarrelsome range of movements within the movement, threatened to grind down the whole engine as its gears stripped each other.

On some issues, particularly where Democrats could slide benefits for heavily Republican states in as riders or allow discreet earmarks, this allowed bills to keep moving through without committee fights or senatorial filibusters, despite the determination of Republican opponents. They were most able to rally and block the last great legislative effort of Gantt’s presidency: with rising health costs and increasing friction from private insurers who had hoped the McCain administration might free them of what they saw as NHIPA’s straightjacket, Gantt had decided it was time to launch another generational assault on the problem of health care cost and availability. His plan, simply and clearly enough, was labeled Medicare For All both in legislation and media spin, and against it the GOP was able to raise up an army enough to drag consideration through committees for months, and then to unite against cloture in the Senate. It did little for their position with independents – as the economy began to settle out from its depths health care costs were a commonly cited issue of concern – but it rallied the Republican base in force. On another front, however, the determination towards unity walked them neatly into a trap; their effort in the autumn of 2015 to force down the coming budget vote produced a precipitous week of government shutdown, cutting off the very standards and services Gantt’s administration had so carefully rebuilt to public approval. What Republican legislators had sold as principle came across as dangerous grandstanding, and despite mixed media coverage the administration was successful in putting that message across to the majority of the public. As the next primary season loomed the strategy of obstruction began to look less like an opportunity and more like a millstone.

When the primaries did come, they took on a different character for both parties than either had known for a long time. On the Democratic side, the end of Harvey Gantt’s time in office should have boded for an open season in the race for the presidency, a chance for the leading Democratic politicians of the day to bloody one another in pursuit of the office and produce a candidate who might, like Gantt himself, turn out to be tough enough to see the fall race through. Instead an entirely different process took hold. Sobered by the unexpected defeat of 2008 (and, attached to that, by memories of the dubious outcome in 2000), aware that Vice President Richards was well liked already by the party’s base, the race reshaped itself as significant figures nearly tripped over themselves getting out of her way. What started with a former vice president himself, John Kerry, since then returned to the Senate, continued through a succession of governors and members of Congress, from giants like California governor Antonio Villaraigosa to rising figures like New York’s freshman senator Zephyr Teachout, as the party structure collectively chose instead to focus directly on the fall campaign. Richards then passed through the season with only nominal opposition, running not only (as vice presidents often did) for “Harvey Gantt’s third term” but also for a place in history as the first female president, and at all times as a hammer of the Republicans. The convention that anointed her was in many ways just a stop along a continuous road towards November, and though she delivered a notable acceptance speech and named distinguished Wisconsin senator Russ Feingold as her running mate she kept a keen and relentless eye on the general.

If Cecile Richards set herself up as a hammer of the opposition, in some respects the GOP spent their primary season proving they were just as capable of delivering those blows to themselves. If the Democratic primaries broke with forty-odd years’ precedent for titanic contests, the Republican season moved in the opposite direction; it took the typical business of leading party figures in battle and shattered the process into fragments, over a dozen candidates of all sorts, from the distinguished to the ridiculous, each backed by a loud and well-heeled faction, or faction of a faction, within the fragmented party. Institutional leaders tried to shepherd the process back towards considering a handful of party elders from among the slate of candidates, but primary voters themselves were deeply invested in one or another of the angry factions, and each one’s ability to generate sufficient money from donors and to carry on their politicking within closed circles of media and partisanship kept things balkanized almost to the end. Certainly Republicans with weight and seniority had joined the race, with varying degrees of success: Senate grandees like Idaho’s Dirk Kempthorne and Indiana’s Dan Quayle, or major Republican governors like Sam Brownback of Kansas and David Vitter of Louisiana. But unlike earlier election cycles the race refused to settle, and no candidate with establishment connections was able to gain enough advantage to start the process of reducing his rivals and claiming the nomination. Support remained spread among other candidates, and three outsiders in particular claimed enough support to leave the nomination in doubt en route to the convention: Colorado representative and tireless anti-immigration activist Tom Tancredo, right-wing media entrepreneur Bill O’Reilly, and the young firebrand Florida senator Ted Cruz. While political reporters delighted in the prospect of the messiest party convention since 1968, GOP leaders scrambled to build a coalition around a candidate who could bring enough divided interests together to avoid claims he had been foisted on the delegates. In the end Brownback emerged from the pack in frantic negotiations leading up to the first ballot of votes at the convention. He received endorsements from Tancredo and media personality-turned-candidate Michelle Bachmann and, in a probable bid for the vice-presidential nomination, Quayle. David Vitter found himself embroiled in an aptly timed sex scandal leading up to the convention (rumors of who had put the knife in were varied.) O’Reilly held delegates but not enough friends. Other minor candidates reacted in fury: libertarian supporters of Congressman Ron Paul walked out of the convention, while loyalists to another media-driven candidate, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, staged angry protests in the hall against what they labeled a Papist coup by the Catholic Brownback. In the event, the Kansas governor cemented his position by dishing Quayle and chose instead Ted Cruz, with strong support from the religious right, as his running mate.

The fall campaign owed a great deal to the widely different conventions. While reporters had enjoyed the Republicans’ affair immensely, angry rifts remained inside the party and the GOP’s remaining moderates were unenthused about the solidly reactionary platform passed by the coalition Brownback and Cruz pieced together. Richards, who the Brownback campaign attacked as a wild-eyed left-wing liberal, could instead run as the reasonable voice of a reasonably popular administration, the consensus candidate of the bulk of her party, and in particular the full-throated voice of women voters against the regressive policy choices of the Republican ticket. Like her mother, Richards never left a good opening without a knife in it, no Republican gaffe not the subject of barbed observation and this composed, aggressive campaign, coupled with her own substantial experience both in office and in fighting the right of the GOP at close quarters during her governorship served her well. Rather than an attack dog, Russ Feingold served as a voice of experience and judgment set against Cruz’s smiling, reactionary certainty. And, with her political ties at home and the prospect of the first Texan in the White House since Lyndon Johnson to entice swing voters, Richards could put Texas itself in play and force the Republican ticket to reallocate resources onto the defensive. It was enough; Richards took the election and the presidency with a solid win. But whether the distinctive differences of the 2016 campaign and the decisive Democratic advantage those differences created marked the end of an era, or the beginning of another, or a background noise of cause and circumstance, was too early to tell.

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Cecile Richards (D-TX)/Russell D. Feingold (D-WI) def. Samuel D. Brownback (R-KS)/Rafael E. “Ted” Cruz (R-FL)
 
Well, despite the pesky intrusions of this "real life" business, that's a wrap. I will probably revise my own copy in the fine details (never quite got a past life in textbook editing out of my system) and see if I can figure out putting it over in Finished TLs or possibly even throw it up on Amazon as an ebook since the cool kids seem to be doing that these days (priced to move, if I do.) Meanwhile I may drop a few little appendix entries in here in coming days/weeks, little details (say a list of British PMs given my anglophilia, or titles of various ITTL memoirs or official biographies, or a few chosen election maps) and local-color stuff. Meanwhile I hope more readers find and, to hope again, enjoy it.
 
OK here's a taster of extras, the bookend elections of the TL, 1968 and 2016:

genusmap.php


Humphrey/Kennedy 232
Nixon/Kirk 261
Wallace/LeMay 45

and now the other end of the business

genusmap.php


Richards/Feingold 378
Brownback/Cruz 160

 
And just as a quick bagatelle, a list of British Prime Ministers for the timeline:

Harold Wilson: 1964-74 (survived 1970 ITTL but went through a brutal late '73 election on economic and labor [sorry, "labour"] issues with Liberal confidence & supply that collapsed months later)
Margaret Thatcher: 1974-79 (stages her coup early and, oy, what a Seventies)
Denis Healey: 1979-87 (Mr. Falklands Factor, built a good 1982 majority after a snap election to capitalize on the earlier-ITTL crisis, but it all fell apart for his "it's his turn" successor Foot in a bad year for Labour in '87)
Michael Heseltine: 1987-94 (won a "khaki election" on Libya in '91 but not by as much as he wanted, economic malaise and a bitter leadership fight prompted a fatal election three years later)
Roy Hattersley 1994-99 (solid run, generally good times, his shocking wafer-thin loss at re-election was a harbinger of things to come in the US)
Michael Portillo 1999-2008 (survives his sex scandal midway through while presiding over a boom, but running on fumes by the end in a time of economic crisis)
Mo Mowlam 2008-2010 (well-loved by the public, a tower of strength trying to stem Britain's economic depression, but forced to retire because a tendency to cancer can only be butterflied so long)
Alistair Darling 2010-2014 (won a snap election on a sympathy vote for Mowlam but his diligent efforts to keep digging the UK out of its economic hole didn't win enough friends)
Theresa May 2014- (because there are more women PMs ITTL anyway and why the hell not)
 
On the same principle a quick list of Soviet/Russian leaders ITTL:

Leonid Brezhnev/Alexei Kosygin/Nikolai Podgorny: 1968-71 (the period of continued collective leadership)
Leonid Brezhnev 1971-77 (on his own, and his health collapses faster)
Nikolai Podgorny 1977-83 (outmaneuvers Brezhnev's cronies for the succession with the help of Andropov)
Nikolai Ryzhkov 1983-90
Vladimir Kryuchkov 1990-93 (just made it into January '93)
Mikhail Gorbachev 1993-2000
Viktor Chernomyrdin 2000-2004 (a compromise candidate as the first Russian Republic president, undone by the collapsing economy)
Anatoly Chubais 2004-2008 (the great privatizer, more loathed than loved)
Genaddy Zyuganov 2008-2016 (a harder-edged man ITTL and every bit as neo-Stalinist)
 
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