The World Without Watergate

Realpolitik

Banned
Hm... some comments and musings. I don't believe in rankings much, it depends on what you want to rank.

Lincoln is the first for me, than FDR. Lincoln is the closest to any President that I will believe a "myth" about-he overcame so much personally(in a way even FDR with polio didn't), he stepped into the greatest crisis, and I truly believe could have healed the nation, in a way that didn't happen when he was shot. Truman and TR are very high up as well. In my opinion, Truman did more than any other President to help end the Cold War-weird as that may sound. TR is the most personally appealing to me, in an intellectual sense. He was truly a Renaissance man.
Like usertron says, Washington is up there by virtue of the fact that he kept it all together. The other Founders must be given their dues. I think John Adams is underrated.

I just think Grant was too corrupt to merit a top spot... but granted, I need to study him more.

Poor LBJ. Did so much, tried so much, yet is always remembered for his (admittedly huge) mistake, and was always never accepted or loved like the Kennedy family. Just as Nixon happened to be around when the bill of the "Imperial Presidency" was due, so was LBJ when it came to Vietnam and the simmering cultural/racial tensions bubbling beneath the surface of "happy America". With the exception of FDR, NOBODY handled Congress better-he turned it into an art, lawmaking. Unfortunately, his woes in foreign policy(not just Vietnam) prevent him from being in the tip-top rung, but he is up there in my book. Those little brats on the streets(I understand the race riots that year and can't be too irrationally mad at that, but for some reason the Yippies and their ilk really anger me.), with the "hey, hey" comments killed him-he committed slow motion suicide when he went back to Texas. He was so aware of what he did, and what could have been... When he did far more for the oppressed than they ever did. I'm glad Obama did that speech at the library, he is getting some long overdue love.

I'm not a Kennedy hater. Neither am I a Camelot believer. It seems that those are the only two options, if you look around(like Reagan, really). I think JFK was good. Cuba will guarantee him a good rank. I think JFK had the potential to be great-and also had the potential to be bad-before he was killed. I think he was becoming a better President as time went by. But he made his mistakes, could be as flat out amoral/cruel as LBJ or Nixon was at times, and was no demigod either, looking back on it. In the end, we need to judge on what was, while taking into account what could have been. Sort of like Nixon, I feel that this is something that I cannot truly understand on the emotional as posed to intellectual level-and I understand the fact that I DO NOT understand it.

Bush II is lower in my book, believe it or not. I do think his response to 9/11 was commendable. And I don't-like other Presidents-believe or can debunk the more "fantastic" claims about him made by his enemies-that he was racist in response to Katrina, that he fought Iraq simply for oil rather than being simply naive(his associates are a different matter), or that he knew about 9/11 beforehand... He was like a kid who destroyed everything he was given, and what he was given was a LOT. I'm sure he is a decent enough guy, but... *ugh* Buchanan is the worst though, for me. Pierce too.

Bush I and Clinton deserve their dues, in my opinion, as I have mentioned earlier.

Reagan... I have very mixed feelings about him. He wasn't as bad as what his detractors say and did some very important things-the most important of which was making America believe in itself again, which was sorely needed-but what he spawned domestically... He isn't top 10 in my book, but neither is he bottom 10. Like JFK-he had the ability to "make people see the stars", which although I will confess to sometimes getting irritated at the sheer importance this takes, I will acknowledge, insofar as importance. I think its important to know that certain ideologies or approaches work well at certain times. Times change. In the 70s, the New Deal consensus and economic policies were becoming hopelessly outdated. Reaganism, in turn, worked very well in the 80s and 90s, but not so well in 2008. These things go in cycles.

I've explained enough about Nixon. I could go on for a long time, given how I've studied him. It's a sense of overwhelming sadness really, considering what could have been, with that mind if he had used it for some more good, if his lighter side won out. Not to mention that Nixon's fall also corresponded, to varying degrees, with the annihilation of the moderate wing of the GOP, polarization of politics, and the watchdog media. I understand how people who were around might feel. But I cannot share the feelings. I wasn't there, I wasn't betrayed, and I'm just way too used to both studying past "dirty laundry" through a variety of administrations and seeing the present-the reality I know-to get overly morally outraged like people were over Watergate. The reasons why Watergate became "big", when it did, were very complex, and not all of it even tied to Nixon directly.

Does this excuse him? No. Watergate forms a huge part of his legacy, and deservedly so-in the end, it was his fault for ripping the nation apart. He, and only he, put us through such a thing. But it should be taken into account when discussing him. There is more to Watergate than Nixon, and more to Nixon than Watergate.
 
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I see a a Democrat winning in 1976 ITTL. nNot only is the economy bad but the Republican candidate is probably Ronald Reagan. dDemocrats, who unlike when they ran against Reagan OTL don't have to play defense and can paint him as an extremist. The Democrat won't be Jimmy Carter. He needed Watergate to get the nomination. I am hoping for Morris Udall. I think John Connally is Agnew's replacement. wWithout Watergate he is not as controversial and he was Nixon's first choice. tThe bribery charges drive him from office in August 1974. tThe Conally scandal and the bad economy make 1974 a good Democratic year but not as big a landslide as OTL. gGary Hart and Christopher Dodd still win.
 
As of today:

1] Lincoln, won Civil War
2] Washington, got too many things right the first time to be anywhere else
3] FDR, deduct one place setting for the Nisei:(
4] Jefferson, the Louisiana Purchase alone gets him that, no higher because he savaged the US Navy
5] LBJ, 5th domestic, only Bush II worse on foreign affairs
6] TR, good domestic POTUS, foreign mixed
7] JFK, saved the world at Cuba, not around long enough to do more
8] Truman, lower due to his savaging the whole military post-WWII
9] Grant, finally recognized as the greatest Civil Rights POTUS save LBJ
10] Polk. Hate him or hate him,:mad: he got us our Southwest and Texas.

Garfield and William Henry Harrison not counted due to brevity of time in office.
Not qualifying Reagan, I'm too prejudiced against the man personally, I know he was better than I feel he was.

Nixon betrayed my faith in him.:mad: I believed in him until the day of his resignation. Looking back, I see myself as the young boy who beseeched Shoeless Joe Jackson to tell him that the stories of his taking bribes were false.

33] Nixon (Say it ain't so, Dick! Say it ain't so!:(:eek:)
34] Bush II, too many reasons to count
35] Fillmore, Civil War midwife
36] Pierce, Civil War midwife
37] Hoover, Great Depression enabler
38] Coolidge, Great Depression midwife
39] Harding, rates higher in my book due to his own innocence
40] Benjamin Harrison, stolen election
41] Hayes, MAJOR stolen election
42] Buchanan, Civil War enabler, tried to launch a genocidal war against the Mormons and suffered a humiliating defeat

Your top 10 for as of today is pretty much the same as mine. On Reagan, I think that Nixon was honestly a better president than him when it came to concerning Domestic issues. That being said Regean would be in my top 10, replacing Grant. Nixon's Watergate scandal doesn't seem that big of a deal to me, especially when compared to the NSA scandal. On Bush 2, this might be an unpopular opinion on this forum, but I think he was a good President. I think history will be kind to him 50 years from now.
 

Realpolitik

Banned
Well, looks like I'll get an update in after all, a short one...

"What a strange creature was Richard Nixon. Even in his triumphs, he had to engage upon dirty tricks, and this reverberates throughout history. Congress resented his heavy handed ways, his New Federalism aimed at enriching himself, which made them inevitable. For how can a man who cannot reach out and see the best in people truly create consensus. The illusion of consensus is not the same."
Stanley Kutler-Nixon, 1973-1976[/I]


White House tapes: July 6th, 1974. Richard Nixon, John Ehrlichman

Nixon: I trust you have heard about the recent problems we have seen in the Senate with the FAP. Moynihan came all the way from India last year[1] and kept pestering me to try it again with my increasing success and reputation with the American people, and with the health care plan getting through, I couldn't resist. That Moynihan really knows how to make you think the way he wants. Like in 1970 and 1972, it got through the House after months of struggle, but even with the changes, it is having problems in the Senate. We got the SSI through in 72, but couldn't get the big one.[2]

Ehrlichman: The increased payments as well as the extending of stipends to non-families-students in particular-should have bought off enough liberals. But the emphasis on "workfare" won't make them budge. Annual guaranteed payments are of little use, apparently, when the bastards have to work or be in school or training or doing something other than sitting around, burning down houses and voting Democratic.[3]

Nixon: The social workers, those goddamned fools in the bureaucracy. They provide Congress with a lot of power.[4] The people want it. They wanted it in 69, for Chrissakes! Well, we are going to get it through this time. Church and Fulbright and the rest keep forgetting who has the mandate. And then they team up with Jackson to meddle in the Soviet economic deals... that is crossing the line. The bureaucrats are always leaking and Congress is spinning the media for their benefactors-they forget that two can play that game. We just need a little more against a few select targets... Initiate Operation Bonanza against the list I gave you!

Ehrlichman: Yes, sir.



"A week later, Nixon was in Moscow with Brezhnev. With the Americans expanding influence in the Middle East and recognizing Mao, Soviet leaders recognized the necessity of remaining in the good graces in the USA. That being said, Soviet leaders were facing trouble from their own hardliners and those that worried that Nixon was slowly isolating them from the world. Luckily for them, Nixon was in a powerful mood-with the success of the Middle East plan in part due to Soviet pressure on Syria, and Nixon giving them credit for this, the detente fervor was alive and well in the US.[5] Oh, certainly, the perennial enemies in the eyes of the Kremlin-Senator Jackson, Richard Perle, the Pentagon, the Israel Lobby-were trying their best to tie the impending economic deals to their issues, now that blocking them, with that Jackson-Vanik amendment, was running into a lack of support from the administration. Even more important than the nuclear treaty, however, were those economic deals. The Soviet economy was far weaker than anyone would imagine.[6] Brezhnev would invite Nixon to Moscow, and disguise this need well enough as they agreed on the meeting for SALT II... 1974 would prove to be the high point for detente."



Conrad Black-Nixon, A Life.


brezhnev_nixon_2.jpg

Brezhnev: So, as stated, SALT II has some details to be worked out still by our groups in Finland. But we will meet in Vienna on November 27th to sign it. Then, we shall head to Vladivostok for another meeting.

Nixon: Yes, this sounds good.

Brezhnev: The grain deals, I assume, will pass through your Congress?

Nixon: Heheh... trust in me. The Senate will be going along with me over the next couple months. But in regards to immigration...

Brezhnev: Pah! As far as I'm concerned, let their God take them. We have bigger worries-we must destroy this evil that we created with the arms control treaty. We must make a world that cannot create another Tanya Savicheva.[7] Now, then, what were you saying about character?

Nixon: As people get richer, they lose their "hunger", their will to go and create and conquer. They become decadent and fat. I worry about this in the US, as I see it... Mr. Kissinger recommended this book to me-Decline of the West, and when I-[8]

Brezhnev:kissingheart:interrupts* Agreed. Psychologists in the Soviet Union are studying the problem. People get obsessed about comfort, every abstract idea, and... the problem is about character. Obstructing what needs to be done by comfort. Andropov seems to believe this a lot, and he said...[9]





[1]-In 1973, Nixon gave Moynihan the ambassadorship there.

[2]-In fairness, it is partially Nixon's fault for not trying to persuade Congress more. FAP was in OTL and is an ATL going to receive a lot more resistance than CHIP(where Congressional Democrats would be willing to compromise without the frenzy of Watergate, recognizing the slow burning power of the right), because a lot of people suspect-correctly-that Nixon want to also get rid of the social workers and undercut enemies. And even with the work requirements-which liberals perceived as an offense in and of itself-the conservatives don't like the idea of direct cash payments to anyone.

[3]-It's the Nixon tapes, people. No need to guess what group Ehrlichman is referring to.

[4]-Wanting to keep your job is not normally un-foolish.

[5]-Unlike OTL. The crucial part of SALT II and the economic deals taking off is that detente is not a dirty word ATL. Anatoly Dobrynin states very explicitly in his diaries that the Soviets wanted detente in early 1973.

[6]-Except Reagan. Here, Nixon for once doesn't quite get it-he believes the Soviets are stronger than they are. On a side note, the Soviets need not worry about any of the deals in the US Senate dying, Nixon has plans...

[7]-The Soviet Anne Frank, which Nixon cleverly brought up in his address in May 1972 to the Soviet people. As a side note, this is based off a real conversation that Nixon and Brezhnev had in his dacha outside the Black Sea. It's really amazing-the creator of the Brezhnev doctrine and the author of Watergate talking about character and Spenglerian decline. Truly shows the generation split.

[8]-Kissinger urged Nixon to read Spengler.

[9]-Oh, really?


So, they get SALT II off earlier ATL.

Now, what is "Operation Bonanza"? You'll see. The Senate will pass the new and improved FAP(receiving more support from moderately liberal Democrats thanks to Nixon's concessions on amount of money and who receives it), but the "few select targets" will not be happy at being pressured, and can engender some resentment later.
 
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Realpolitik

Banned
As I mentioned before, Watergate is swept "under the rug" thanks to Hoover. It took a lot of events for it to snowball, and said events are never touched off-one or two happened in isolation, like Woodward suspecting there was something there to discover and (to his credit) investigating, but without everything else, it just becomes like other pieces of "dirty laundry" in history. If it does come out during the rest of the Nixon years, there will be bigger things people are concerned about when it comes to Nixon-the reaction will be, to quote someone else, "what a dickish thing to do", and that's it. Similarly for historians-there will be other pieces of Nixon to discuss, good and bad, that are more important ATL. Watergate, by itself, simply will not have the same impact, years later. People won't suspect so much that the 1972 election was fixed, which was the immediate response OTL.

Watergate was sleazy, illegal, and impeachable. But it was also a coverup of a petty burglary, which Nixon did not order and can easily distance himself from if investigators are less dogged-very easy to conceal if conditions work out differently. By the time the connection MIGHT be revealed... the impact potential is no longer quite there. It was not a coup attempt or five "wars" like Woodstein would have it. Now, Watergate wasn't the only illegal thing Nixon's administration did-far from it-but it was the thing that got people to investigate Nixon's other "activities", and with Hoover around, that isn't happening. The momentum doesn't have the chance to develop... Yet. Something else can fulfill that.

The resignation doesn't happen if the wheels come off in 1975 or 1976, as you might have guessed, but that doesn't mean that the "dirty laundry" doesn't come out. Being the "only resigned President" is another big part of Watergate's significance. It's bound to, given what the USA had been through for the last decade and a half, and the vast change of perception on part of the people and the media regarding the government.
 
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You might want to start branching out onto other world crises and events around this time, after Nixon's main first section is finished of course. For instance, handling Cambodia, the end of Nam and Iran. Guys help me out here. Socio-cultural changes are nice too.
 
Lincoln is the first for me, [1] then FDR. Lincoln is the closest to any President that I will believe a "myth" about-he overcame so much personally(in a way even FDR with polio didn't), he stepped into the greatest crisis, and I truly believe could have healed the nation, in a way that didn't happen when he was shot. Truman and TR are very high up as well. In my opinion, Truman did more than any other President to help end the Cold War-weird as that may sound. TR is the most personally appealing to me, in an intellectual sense. He was truly a Renaissance man. [2]

1] Any American who doesn't rate Lincoln #1 is either a pure troll or has a Confederate battle flag on his front lawn, bumper-stickered on his Ford pickup truck, and tattooed on his left shoulder.:rolleyes:

2] He was pretty much a Medieval man to the people of the Philippines.

Like usertron says, Washington is up there by virtue of the fact that he kept it all together. Same with the other Founders. I think John Adams is underrated. [3]

3] Alien & Sedition Acts. Adams drops from the upper echelons for that alone. Created the US Navy, tho.:)

I just think Grant was too corrupt to merit a top spot... but granted, I need to study him more.

If you do you will find that most of the corruption in his administration was by others. He was a political "innocent", like Harding. Not a crook, like much of the other Gilded Age and Antebellum (Jackson to Buchanan) presidents.

Poor LBJ. Did so much, tried so much, yet is always remembered for his (admittedly huge) mistake, and was always never accepted or loved like the Kennedy family. Just as Nixon happened to be around when the bill of the "Imperial Presidency" was due, so was LBJ when it came to Vietnam and the simmering cultural/racial tensions bubbling beneath the surface of "happy America". With the exception of FDR, NOBODY handled Congress better-he turned it into an art, lawmaking. Unfortunately, his woes in foreign policy(not just Vietnam) prevent him from being in the tip-top rung, but he is up there in my book.

Unfortunately he practically invented micro-management, and all the problems that that entails. The Leader of the Free World staying up into the wee hours in the basement of the White House picking individual bombing targets in North Vietnam!? That's the job of a lieutenant colonel!

Those little brats on the streets (I understand the race riots that year and can't be too irrationally mad at that, but for some reason the Yippies and their ilk really anger me.), with the "hey, hey" comments killed him-he committed slow motion suicide when he went back to Texas. He was so aware of what he did, and what could have been... When he did far more for the oppressed than they ever did. I'm glad Obama did that speech at the library, he is getting some long overdue love.

IMO part of the problem back then was that the voting age was still 21. Millions of American boys being drafted to go off and fight and die in a hellhole they wanted no part of, and had no say in. People at the time who supported the war bitterly complained about Canada's "Open Door Policy". But the truth was, it helped to take some of the political pressure off, [4] by allowing those who were ready to give up their American citizenship to do so.

4] Think of what the Antebellum South would have looked like without the Underground Railroad.

I'm not a Kennedy hater. Neither am I a Camelot believer. It seems that those are the only two options, if you look around (like Reagan, really). I think JFK was good. Cuba will guarantee him a good rank. I think JFK had the potential to be great-and also had the potential to be bad-before he was killed. I think he was becoming a better President as time went by. But he made his mistakes, could be as flat out amoral/cruel as LBJ or Nixon was at times, and was no demigod either, looking back on it. In the end, we need to judge on what was, while taking into account what could have been.

Yeah, I suppose people at the time might have said the same about William McKinley.

Sort of like Nixon, I feel that this is something that I cannot truly understand on the emotional as posed to intellectual level-and I understand the fact that I DO NOT understand it.

I don't think he ever got over the deaths of his mother and favorite brother. So too his miserably poor upbringing, a tremendous source of frustration on how the media took to JFK's being the "champion of the poor", when he had never worked a day in his life, while Nixon was a completely self-made man.

Bush II is lower in my book, believe it or not.

Why wouldn't I believe you? About the only people left who genuinely believe W was a great president is his immediate family and Sean Hannity.:rolleyes:

I do think his response to 9/11 was commendable.

At least it was better than his Katrina flyover.

And I don't-like other Presidents-believe or can debunk the more "fantastic" claims about him made by his enemies-that he was racist in response to Katrina, that he fought Iraq simply for oil rather than being simply naive (his associates are a different matter), or that he knew about 9/11 beforehand...

Agreed with all save one: Saddam tried to kill his daddy, and the Bushes were every bit as pathological as the Kennedy Clan when it came to "Family, Above All". If W wanted to be made to feel welcome at Thanksgiving Dinner at Kennebunkport, he would have to present Saddam's head:eek: as the turkey stuffing. Mission Accomplished.:rolleyes:

He was like a kid who destroyed everything he was given, and what he was given was a LOT. I'm sure he is a decent enough guy, but... *ugh*

Silver Spoon mentality without the Kennedy/Roosevelt discipline. If not for Laura, I think his behavior would have gone completely off the rails. Imagine if he had married someone like Joan Kennedy!

Buchanan is the worst though, for me. Pierce too.

For all his Southern sympathies, at least Our Worst President Ever did not Go South.

Bush I and Clinton deserve their dues, in my opinion, as I have mentioned earlier.

Agreed on both. Bush I for proving he was as much a foreign policy master as his son was a noob, and Clinton (from my POV) for being able to ju jitsu every one of his political enemies in the Clinton Wars.

Reagan... I have very mixed feelings about him. He wasn't as bad as what his detractors say and did some very important things-the most important of which was making America believe in itself again, which was sorely needed-but what he spawned domestically... He isn't top 10 in my book, but neither is he bottom 10. Like JFK-he had the ability to "make people see the stars", which although I will confess to sometimes getting irritated at the sheer importance this takes, I will acknowledge, insofar as importance. [5] I think its important to know that certain ideologies or approaches work well at certain times. Times change. In the 70s, the New Deal consensus and economic policies were becoming hopelessly outdated. Reaganism, in turn, worked very well in the 80s and 90s, but not so well in 2008. These things go in cycles. [6]

5] Reagan would be appalled at the way Hate Radio, Fox, and the Tea Party have deified him while at the same time denouncing policies that he supported and supporting policies that he would have fought tooth-and-nail.

The only Ronald Reagan THEY recognize is the one giving a recorded speech at the 1964 Goldwater GOP Convention, where he demanded actions that would have completely deconstructed the entire New Deal. But this was at a time when all he'd ever done was be an actor and a labor union leader. After time as both governor and president, his positions had changed drastically. He moved with the times.

6] Frex, tax cuts.

In JFK's day, when the federal government consumed a large part of the GNP, tax cuts were good ways to infuse the national economy with cash to provide ready growth. Provided, that is, that it isn't TOO much, which would be inflationary.

But now, with the federal government being only a tiny sliver of the GNP (6% IIRC), tax cuts only starve the government, while tax cuts for the rich only go into inert bank accounts and the rest of the tax cuts have only a tiny effect on the economy.

I've explained enough about Nixon. I could go on for a long time, given how I've studied him. It's a sense of overwhelming sadness really, considering what could have been, with that mind if he had used it for some more good, if his lighter side won out. Not to mention that Nixon's fall also corresponded, to varying degrees, with the annihilation of the moderate wing of the GOP, polarization of politics, and the watchdog media.

This was the inevitable result of Nixon's (and later Reagan/Atwater's) Southern Strategy. By embracing and converting the Dixiecrats, you drive out the Progressive Republicans. The last significant one being Senator (and later Governor) Lowell Weicker. Now the Progressive Republicans are Blue Dog Democrats or Independents.

I understand how people who were around might feel. But I cannot share the feelings. I wasn't there, I wasn't betrayed, and I'm just way too used to both studying past "dirty laundry" through a variety of administrations and seeing the present-the reality I know-to get overly morally outraged like people were over Watergate.

I for one will never forgive him.

Does this excuse him? No. Watergate forms a huge part of his legacy, and deservedly so-in the end, it was his fault for ripping the nation apart. He, and only he, put us through such a thing. But it should be taken into account when discussing him. There is more to Watergate than Nixon, and more to Nixon than Watergate.

It all came down to John Mitchell. He was breaking the law as Attorney General before anyone else, as early as the Summer of 1969. All Nixon had to do to save himself was throw Mitchell under a bus, but Nixon would never have done that. Were it not for Mitchell, Nixon would never have been President.

I see a a Democrat winning in 1976 ITTL. Not only is the economy bad but the Republican candidate is probably Ronald Reagan. Democrats, who unlike when they ran against Reagan OTL don't have to play defense and can paint him as an extremist. The Democrat won't be Jimmy Carter. He needed Watergate to get the nomination. I am hoping for Morris Udall. [6] I think John Connally is Agnew's replacement. [7] Without Watergate he is not as controversial and he was Nixon's first choice. The bribery charges drive him from office in August 1974. The Conally scandal and the bad economy make 1974 [8] a good Democratic year but not as big a landslide as OTL. Gary Hart and Christopher Dodd still win.

6] Mo Udall had never won state-wide office, and was holding on by his finger nails for much of the primaries. Carter was basically running in every state that didn't have a "favorite son" status. Carter's operation was a war machine (like Obama's), while Udall's was at best like Hillary's, too scattershot.

7] As the OP has made clear, and quite correctly IMO, Rockefeller has far too many enemies by now.

8] Its also a Sixth Year, incumbent party fatigue has been a killer since the Era of Good Feelings passed us by.

As I mentioned before, Watergate is swept "under the rug" thanks to Hoover. It took a lot of events for it to snowball, and said events are never touched off-one or two happened in isolation, like Woodward suspecting there was something there to discover and (to his credit) investigating, but without everything else, it just becomes like other pieces of "dirty laundry" in history. [9] If it does come out during the rest of the Nixon years, there will be bigger things people are concerned about when it comes to Nixon-the reaction will be, to quote someone else, "what a dickish thing to do", and that's it. Similarly for historians-there will be other pieces of Nixon to discuss, good and bad, that are more important ATL. Watergate, by itself, simply will not have the same impact, years later. People won't suspect so much that the 1972 election was fixed, which was the immediate response OTL. [10]

9] So what happened to Mark (Deep Throat) Felt ITTL?

10] Not fixed so much as sabotaging the primary campaigns of the lesser lights running for the Democratic nomination, so that Nixon would get the opponent he wanted. Let me tell you, the prairie populists McGovern had surrounding him were determined to PROVE that a hard left candidate could be elected President, even though it never happened before.

NOTE:
If every person who put on the "Don't blame me, I voted for McGovern" button had actually voted for him, President McGovern would have enjoyed a fifty state landslide!:p

Watergate was sleazy, illegal, and impeachable. But it was also a coverup of a petty burglary, which Nixon did not order and can easily distance himself from if investigators are less dogged-very easy to conceal if conditions work out differently. By the time the connection MIGHT be revealed... the impact potential is no longer quite there. It was not a coup attempt or five "wars" like Woodstein would have it. Now, Watergate wasn't the only illegal thing Nixon's administration did-far from it-but it was the thing that got people to investigate Nixon's other "activities", and with Hoover around, that isn't happening. The momentum doesn't have the chance to develop... Yet. Something else can fulfill that.

I'm not asking you to change anything. I'm just agreeing to disagree. Its just that ITTL it appears that J. Edgar Hoover [11] came from a far away planet with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.:D

11] BTW, he wasn't gay. He was addicted to horse race betting. The Mob gave him the winners, and if Hoover lost anyway, they covered his losses. That's why in Hooverworld There Is No Mafia.

The resignation doesn't happen if the wheels come off in 1975 or 1976, as you might have guessed, but that doesn't mean that the "dirty laundry" doesn't come out. Being the "only resigned President" is another big part of Watergate's significance. It's bound to, given what the USA had been through for the last decade and a half, and the vast change of perception on part of the people and the media regarding the government.

IDK. Andrew Johnson was only relatively months away from leaving office, but that didn't stop the Radical Republicans from going hog wild to impeach and remove him anyway. So too I would imagine the GOP would have been happy to impeach Clinton in the same (timed) circumstances if they could.
 
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Realpolitik

Banned
1] Any American who doesn't rate Lincoln #1 is either a pure troll or has a Confederate battle flag on his front lawn, bumper-stickered on his Ford pickup truck, and tattooed on his left shoulder.:rolleyes:

2] He was pretty much a Medieval man to the people of the Philippines.:rolleyes:

I know a couple o' trolls then... :D

Yeah, pretty much. The times were different. I can choose what to admire and what to deplore.

3] Alien & Sedition Acts. Adams drops from the upper echelons for that alone. Created the US Navy, tho.:)

Forgot that. Still underrated. Maybe not top.

If you do you will find that most of the corruption in his administration was by others. He was a political "innocent", like Harding. Not a crook, like much of the other Gilded Age and Antebellum (Jackson to Buchanan) presidents.

I will. Sort of like Mayor Daley, then.

Unfortunately he practically invented micro-management, and all the problems that that entails. The Leader of the Free World staying up into the wee hours in the basement of the White House picking individual bombing targets in North Vietnam!? That's the job of a lieutenant colonel!

Like I said, LBJ didn't take very naturally to foreign policy and warmaking.

IMO part of the problem back then was that the voting age was still 21. Millions of American boys being drafted to go off and fight and die in a hellhole they wanted no part of, and had no say in. People at the time who supported the war bitterly complained about Canada's "Open Door Policy". But the truth was, it helped to take some of the political pressure off, [4] by allowing those who were ready to give up their American citizenship to do so.

I guess. I apologize if I seem insensitive-I wouldn't have been back then. Certainly the draft ending helped take a lot of wind out of the anti-war movement. But the fact is, they hurt their own party more than they helped in Chicago. They were the ones who were creating disorder-the police merely preserved it, to quote Hizzoner. The ones who could have voted, but chose not to vote for Humphrey, in my view, have no right to complain. And... the sheer obnoxiousness and self righteousness of some of them rubs me bad. They didn't strike me as actually "doing" much for the oppressed. I can't help it.

There are differences, I'll admit. Some of the Gene McCarthy people were very different from Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.

Also, most of these kids were in no danger of going to Vietnam anyway. An awful lot of them just protested because they wanted to be against "the man" or be "in with it". That doesn't mean there wasn't anything to protest about. But... I just don't view them as romantic heroes. Maybe it is a little because they are so often portrayed as such(outside the right wing, which perpetuate their own myths about the era that are even more distasteful).


Yeah, I suppose people at the time might have said the same about William McKinley.

I don't quite think it was the same impact.

I meant the intense passion and love and (sometimes) hate some feel for JFK. I understand it intellectually but not at a gut level-you know what I mean?


I don't think he ever got over the deaths of his mother and favorite brother. So too his miserably poor upbringing, a tremendous source of frustration on how the media took to JFK's being the "champion of the poor", when he had never worked a day in his life, while Nixon was a completely self-made man.

Father and two brothers died young. Mom in the 60s, just before he was President :( . If you are referring to Nixon, right?

From Nixon(Stone):

NIXON
Goddamn Kennedy! Goes to Harvard.
His father hands him everything on a
silver platter! All my life they been
sticking it to me. Not the right
clothes, not the right schools, not
the right family. And then he steals
from me! I have nothing and he
steals.
(softly, lethal)
And he says I have "no class." And
they love him for it. It's not fair,
Murray, it's not fair.

This was not being irrational. Bitter, yes. But not irrational. Imagine hearing the gossip in places like Georgetown or Boston or Hollywood. "Well, if voter fraud occurred, it was for a good cause!". 1960 had a VERY negative impact on Nixon. And Nixon was many things in office, but he was not some "tax-cuts for the rich" guy.


Why wouldn't I believe you? About the only people left who genuinely believe W was a great president is his immediate family and Sean Hannity.:rolleyes:

PM.

At least it was better than his Katrina flyover.

I think he honestly did well with the kids in that Florida school and the grief-comforting the nation. Being a kid myself at the time...

I'd trade that for a better policy after the fact, though.

Agreed with all save one: Saddam tried to kill his daddy, and the Bushes were every bit as pathological as the Kennedy Clan when it came to "Family, Above All". If W wanted to be made to feel welcome at Thanksgiving Dinner at Kennebunkport, he would have to present Saddam's head:eek: as the turkey stuffing. Mission Accomplished.:rolleyes:

Silver Spoon mentality without the Kennedy/Roosevelt discipline. If not for Laura, I think his behavior would have gone completely off the rails. Imagine if he had married someone like Joan Kennedy!

Definitely agree with you about the pathology. I agree that what Saddam did to his Dad probably had some subconscious role in it, but I don't think that's the major reason. I just think he was dumb, not overtly amoral. In some ways, that's even more dangerous in a position of power. Consider amoral bastards like JFK, LBJ, and Richard Nixon, and compare them to personally moral paragons Jimmy Carter, GWB II, and Herbert Hoover. Not to mention Barry Goldwater and George McGovern.

You mean like a Teddy Kennedy Presidency? ;) Yes, thank God for Laura.


For all his Southern sympathies, at least Our Worst President Ever did not Go South.


5] Reagan would be appalled at the way Hate Radio, Fox, and the Tea Party have deified him while at the same time denouncing policies that he supported and supporting policies that he would have fought tooth-and-nail.

The only Ronald Reagan THEY recognize is the one giving a recorded speech at the 1964 Goldwater GOP Convention, where he demanded actions that would have completely deconstructed the entire New Deal. But this was at a time when all he'd ever done was be an actor and a labor union leader. After time as both governor and president, his positions had changed drastically. He moved with the times.

6] Frex, tax cuts.

In JFK's day, when the federal government consumed a large part of the GNP, tax cuts were good ways to infuse the national economy with cash to provide ready growth. Provided, that is, that it isn't TOO much, which would be inflationary.

But now, with the federal government being only a tiny sliver of the GNP (6% IIRC), tax cuts only starve the government, while tax cuts for the rich only go into inert bank accounts and the rest of the tax cuts have only a tiny effect on the economy.

So true. Agreed. I think all of them are better than what the WORST of their critics say. That's politics, really.

Thanks for the economic comments-not a well known area of mine. Interesting.

Yes. Reagan was pragmatic and actually had ideas. There is a reason he was a workable President, unlike those who claim his name. For what it is worth, Reagan always said he never betrayed the New Deal, and he didn't-he raised taxes-gasp-to pay for the military and social programs at the same time. He started the process of government downsizing, that's true enough... and the coalition finally croaked in the 80s.

This was the inevitable result of Nixon's (and later Reagan/Atwater's) Southern Strategy. By embracing and converting the Dixiecrats, you drive out the Progressive Republicans. The last significant one being Senator (and later Governor) Lowell Weicker. Now the Progressive Republicans are Blue Dog Democrats or Independents.


The Southern Strategy first off, evolved over time. I don't think racism was AS BIG (not to be confused by none) in it as stated when it came to the non-Deep South as commonly claimed by many-the sociopolitical situation in the USA regarding the "Silent Majority" was far too complex. It started off as a "Border State" idea to be in between Humphrey and Wallace-offer some coded claims to the blue collar workers and Dixiecrats that "we aren't going let them to profit off your backs"(no guesses as to who the "them" were), but also make clear that Jim Crow isn't coming back and you aren't Wallace(and he wasn't), so that you are somewhat tolerable to the middle class and the "establishment". Nixon only won the Deep South-not to be confused with the Virginias and Floridas and the West where newly empowered "Silent Majority" folk were migrating to-when Wallace got shot and McGovern was the only alternative, and in this, the South wasn't different from the rest of the nation save Massachusetts and DC. The Dixiecrats wanted a New Deal, FDR, style Democrat who would uphold the racial status quo-if Goldwater actually had a chance in hell of winning in 1964, I doubt they'd actually VOTE for him. Wallace was these things, hence they voted for HIM in 1968. Nixon was largely to prevent McGovern-most of them were not pleased with his racial policies. 1976-Carter was a Southerner... you get the idea. It was only as time when by, at the South got richer, that they began to embrace Reagan and the "ideas"(nationalism, tax cuts, etc.) more.

This is in an era of major race riots, when you keep seeing burning neighborhoods on TV-no matter how much it is pent up grievance causing it. Social engineering was, in the eyes of many, the last thing we needed in 1968. Large sources of sentiment, no matter how wrong or sickening, in a democratic nation, will have to be domesticated and absorbed, or else... I'm not saying this is RIGHT, for the love of God-what it is is reality. It also had a lot to do with Civil Rights becoming less about laws and more about economic issues/actually working the SYSTEM-and this is in an economy that is beginning to decay for the first time in decades. The issue had to cool. The reddening of the nation also was not just limited to the South-on the Presidential level, at least. Nor was it simply racism, full stop. It was against the "Eastern Establishment", the "kids", those that looked down on you.

Interestingly enough, look at Nixon's trajectory himself-he went from being quite liberal on Civil Rights in the 50s and early 60s, when it was polite marchers and a matter of laws and people being brutally beaten up. A lot more black and white, no pun intended. When economics came into the equation and the ghettoes went up in flames... he changed and the latent beliefs came to the surface. Same with a lot of ordinary white Americans.

Reagan I think made it a little more explicit, but by then, it was easier to paint it in terms of class rather than race. The two were heavily intertwined. Again, there are a lot of reasons Reagan was elected with huge margins, and not all of it is the Southern Strategy.

As for Nixon leading to polarization or the Reagan Revolution? They have connections. There was a good chance, thanks to that. That isn't the same as causing it. That doesn't mean the Tea Party or even the rise of Reagan was guaranteed in 1968. Nor did it mean that once in office, Nixon always or even the majority of the time gave into the Southerners. Affirmative action (dual benefit of being helpful to split Democrats), desegregation in the South, etc. Whatever Nixon's views in private and rhetoric might have been, what he did in office was different. Was it all sincere? Maybe not. But the important thing was that it was done-and that the rioting and chaos stopped. Bigotry was a tool he used to get into office-there, Nixon showed it no more loyalty than any other group or ideal. He did some things to appease them-the courts, condemning busing, condemning using the South as a "whipping boy" for the nations socio/racial woes-but most of the time, went with the tide, and did his own thing.

It could have been better, Nixon's record on Civil Rights. But he deserves credit where it is due. It could have been a LOT worse as well.

I for one will never forgive him.

I never expected you, or anyone alive at the time, to forgive him. I get it, even if I don't agree with it.

It all came down to John Mitchell. He was breaking the law as Attorney General before anyone else, as early as the Summer of 1969. All Nixon had to do to save himself was throw Mitchell under a bus, but Nixon would never have done that. Were it not for Mitchell, Nixon would never have been President.

True on Mitchell. First off, it was not in Nixon's nature to fire people-like Eisenhower-unless he felt like he had to or unless he could have someone else do it.

If you are referring to the Chennault affair*, then that I disagree with-there were a lot of reasons Nixon was made President in 1968. In a weird way, 1968 was made for him. The resentment of the Silent Majority. The backlash against the "Eastern Establishment". Race relations. The hatred and fear engendered in a lot of VOTING Americans of the "kids" and the counterculture. You name it.

9] So what happened to Mark (Deep Throat) Felt ITTL?

10] Not fixed so much as sabotaging the primary campaigns of the lesser lights running for the Democratic nomination, so that Nixon would get the opponent he wanted. Let me tell you, the prairie populists McGovern had surrounding him were determined to PROVE that a hard left candidate could be elected President, even though it never happened before.

NOTE:
If every person who put on the "Don't blame me, I voted for McGovern" button had actually voted for him, President McGovern would have enjoyed a fifty state landslide!:p

The Canuck letter and the like-yeah, Nixon played dirty in 1972. Shocking. But in the end, the Democrats nominated an ideologue-like the GOP did 8 years earlier-and the "moderate majority" representing incumbent had a field day as a result. It's so interesting, watching the shift from 1964 to 1972... both times, the incumbent, through from opposite parties, was perceived as the moderate. It shows how impactful that era was.

People did think that 1972 was fixed, and that's part of why it became a big deal. We might not have had a "fair"(if they saw 1960, or 64, or 68, or other elections in all the gore and horror enabled by current technology they wouldn't be so shocked. 68, that one left a bad taste in my mouth... I know it was Nixon vs LBJ by proxy, so you shouldn't expect better, but...) election. I don't think that's really true-I think Nixon would have beaten anybody that year. But McGovern didn't help-and Nixon relished the chance to face him. The parties were polarizing though-the Democrats were probably going to choose a more "ideological" opponent after the internal reforms in the party at any rate. The quotas, the ending of the dominance of men like Daley or Meany... it was coming. And that candidate just would not be sync with a lot of America. Nixon helped, and definitely messed with the primaries, but he didn't cause the Democrats to nominate McGovern.

The ideologues on the left were a bunch of fools in 1972. They thought that in 1972, they could win with the upper middle class-the professionals-and minorities. That did work out... nearly 40 years later. Then, the numbers didn't work. They doomed it from the start-McGovern could no more repudiate Hoffman or Angela Davis than Goldwater could the John Birch Society. They were pinned with extremism from a far less moral, but far more politically clever and "with the voters" opponent, and flopped.

Yes, a 0 percent approval rating after a 49 state victory indicates something JARRING happened.

Felt isn't leaking shit with Hoover around. Even if he wanted to, if he did anything without Hoover's permission, he would have crucified Felt. He is still the #3 man at the FBI, happily wiretapping and abusing civil liberties. He hasn't been rejected for the job by Nixon yet. And with no Deep Throat, the scandal isn't as widely reported on, and doesn't snowball.

I'm not asking you to change anything. I'm just agreeing to disagree. Its just that ITTL it appears that J. Edgar Hoover [11] came from a far away planet with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.:D

Certainly. That was my point to the comments earlier-I view Watergate differently than someone who was there and doesn't have the luxury of hindsight, in 1973. People back then expected more out of government. I fully accept that in some respects, my feelings on the subject are inferior to someone who was. But I'd also like my story to be read, so I can't afford to alienate people. ;)

Edna isn't a God-if he was, Agnew would not have down. Lord knows given his views(in line with Agnew's) he would have liked to prevented it. Agnew was just too forgone. However, as head of the FBI, he could easily slow down or squelch the Watergate investigation, if tackled early enough. This was pre-Watergate politics, "Imperial Presidency" rules. He's done it before for the White House, and he'll do it again. Congressmen respect him, and fear him. Hoover doesn't care about Nixon personally, but to Edna, the Presidency is sacrosanct. Because that's where he got his power from.

He'd also probably urge Nixon to destroy the tapes if he ever Nixon reinstalled the taping system from LBJ.

As a side note, I could have easily just had Wallis not notice the tape or something. However, I thought this was something not tried before.

11] BTW, he wasn't gay. He was addicted to horse race betting. The Mob gave him the winners, and if Hoover lost anyway, they covered his losses. That's why in Hooverworld There Is No Mafia.



IDK. Andrew Johnson was only relatively months away from leaving office, but that didn't stop the Radical Republicans from going hog wild to impeach and remove him anyway. So too I would imagine the GOP would have been happy to impeach Clinton in the same (timed) circumstances if they could.


I KNOW. The whole "believing fantastic things" again... But why can't we call him Edna anyway? It's a term of endearment. ;)

The Mafia was also seen as a "lesser evil" useful for keeping certain other groups in line.

So very much agreed, assuming the GOP getting radicalized. Don't ever confuse my pointing out of the Democrats less-than-nobleness and modern day GOP like behavior toward Nixon(no matter how much some of that may have been deserved) for endorsement of the GOP.


Look, everybody, this is my first TL. That's why I'm asking for constructive criticism, remember? Especially with writing and focus of the plot. However, at no time did I do anything that was ASB or even all that unrealistic.

Anyway, I agree that this is moving a little slow, and we need to look at other parts of the world. It is the WORLD without Watergate. So, when I get the chance, I will move it in that direction. Some of our favorite dictators will be making an appearance soon in Asia. And at the Washington Post.

*-I'm willing to comment about my views on that via PM, if this is what you refer to. My views can basically be summed as-dirtiness, playing politics with peace(which the Democrats were doing too. I don't buy for a second that there was no political motivation behind the bombing halt.), and helping to sabotage (Thieu did the main work.) the Democrats. And just generally not caring about human lives(like LBJ, Ho Chi Minh, and Nguyen van Thieu weren't.). The NV and the SV both were far more aware of our domestic situation and culture than we were of theirs. That's why the NV went to the table when they did in 1968, and the SV didn't. Both wanted a certain candidate and planned accordingly.

But not sabotaging peace or treason, or really changing the war/talks. And-like in 1960-people remember the popular vote, not the electoral one. People really forget both Vietnams and how they paid attention to US politics. I don't want to derail this thread TOO much-but then again, derailing is when fun discussions start...

It is things like that that prevent my interest in politics from actually going into it, really. When you look at it from a long term, "planet Earth" perspective, it is like seeing maddened kids kicking around a ball.
 
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Look, everybody, this is my first TL. That's why I'm asking for constructive criticism, remember? Especially with writing and focus of the plot. However, at no time did I do anything that was ASB or even all that unrealistic.

Don't worry, things like this happens all the time D:
Anyway, interesting post style. Are the different fonts for emphasis or something else? :p
 

Realpolitik

Banned
Don't worry, things like this happens all the time D:
Anyway, interesting post style. Are the different fonts for emphasis or something else? :p

Yeah, I wanted to differentiate between Nixon tapes, Nixon talking with different leaders, a book looking back on it, etc.
 

Realpolitik

Banned
Update coming soon?

A combination of school and writing myself into a bit of corner with regards to certain things, especially a potential Korea/Vietnam situation(I've written on my views regarding Vietnam with no Watergate plenty), is responsible for the halt. I'm debating whether to go forward or not. I don't want to give up on my first TL, obviously.
 
It was a cold, blustery day as Al Gore stood to take the Oath of Office on January 21st, 2001. For the first time, the Reform Party would have their shot at the Presidency, breaking the stranglehold that the National Party had on US politics since the 80s. And might have had longer, had President Bush not been blown apart by an assassin's bomb in late 1995 in his third year in office, leaving Vice President Gingrich to ascend to office. Gingrich handled the job well at first, proposing his trademark Mars mission, generally conducting affairs successfully, and won in a crushing landslide in 1996.

Then the wind turned. The Reform Party had a slogan-“to dare more democracy”, taken from the SPD of West Germany. Ironic, considering that the original utterer of the slogan, Willy Brandt, was an uneasy partner in the original detente with the Soviet Union of the founder of the National Party. He represented to them the apex of National Gaullist style authoritarianism combined with the extreme hatred engendered by remnants of the Democratic Party. Once upon a time, there were two parties-Democrat and Republican. They both imploded under the weight of an assassination, an attempted firebombing of the Brookings Institution, a scandal involving a handsome serial killer working in the White House, a couple of failed Presidencies, and a desire to be a more “mature” nation. The opposite had happened in many regards, as the splinter parties grew more and more diverse. Paramilitaries and violence were commonplace, even though the US as a whole grew more stable and economically prosperous-some said too stable after the trying times of the late 70s and early 80s. Congress was widely despised after the initial weakening of Presidential power in the late 70s, thus the Imperial Presidency came back with a vengeance...

All this was helped by the... problems Gingrich had later in his term, thought John Lennon as stood the stage for a Beatles reunion.
Karl Rove, meanwhile stood in the distance. He could not believe this had happened. As one of the “spin doctors” in the administration, Rove had struck fear into political enemies. You crossed Rove lightly. He had done what he could, covering up the scandals of the Gingrich administration and the excesses of the national security state under the National Party. He had ruined a career or two. But sometimes, you couldn't fight everything. But they would be back-the Congress still had a fair amount of Nationals in them, and Gore had only won by a hair. Nearby, one of Rove's bodyguards dragged off one man who screamed he was pay him back for getting him sued for sexual harassment, ruined his career, his wife got custody of Chelsea... Rove yawned. He heard it all before. The National Party, which had seemed invincible in 1996, was fractured with mass dissent rising between different factions. The bubbling had started after the death of “the Old Man” in 1994, who many suspected (correctly, as Rove well knew from his run-in with him in '92-he had never seen someone who was less inclined to gracefully retire) was playing the subtle puppetmaster and kingmaker all along with the National Administrations in the last ten years of his life. Then came Bush's death. Some began to question the party's increasingly privatized turn with the ascenion of Gingrich, and many questioned if the party was loosing touch with what made it great, the working-class, the lower-middle class, the immigrants who had increasingly gained wealth and were beginning to question if, like in 1959, it was time to aspire to something higher.

Gore proceeded to mention American values, specifically the question of supporting American values abroad, denouncing the Syrian Army's recent suppressing of protests in Beirut. The Russian and Chinese ambassadors both looked upon him warily. While relations had gotten cooler if not openly antagonistic under the more hawkish Gingrich, they had grown accustomed to a mutually respectful and economically cooperative relationship with the Dole and Bush administrations, and it was no secret who they preferred in the election when the Reform Party began to bring up the issues of human rights.

The looks of the foreign ambassadors were tame compared to the losers of the election. Many of the Gingrichites were staring at Gore with daggers in their eyes. He was walking into a tiger pit. Gore was an acceptable choice for many National voters, as a Southerner and someone who had worked with them. Gore's fame to claim was the rise of the Internet, which he had gotten the Bush administration interested in. It was taking off. But he was a dedicated Reformer, which seemed all too much to remind them of the 60s, and what they fought against originally. The slogans at the convention halls... far too negative, openly stating what many old fighters in the party thought but weren't supposed to say. “Dope is an enemy of a strong society”. You weren't supposed to SAY that in the year 2000, you needed to just talk about stuff that got the press off your dick. What do you think that did to the younger generation who only knew prosperity?

Rove thought it was all so stupid. The leftist media was a problem, they made people think. He then surreptitiously put on a pair of headphones so he wouldn't have to hear those hippies yap. Joey Ramone was coming to join them, for Pete's sake-the singer of one of the world's most famous older rock band was a dedicated Reformer, of course... why did the damn guitarist have to get shot instead of him?

......................................................................................................

Hey, everybody. Though the good graces of Southpaw, I'm posting this. I can't obviously respond to comments or requests for clarification, but this timeline ain't dead yet.

Left a nice appropriate mixed legacy for Richard Nixon as the face of conservatism rather than Reagan-social inequality and basic governmental efficiency is less of a problem with his conservative coalition, but political freedom and paranoia/state abuses are more of a problem. And as with Otto von Bismarck's foreign policy, it all can't survive without him to a degree. Reagan was far better at this because he knew how to inspire people and bring out optimism.

As for foreign policy, well, the world is more stable, but that doesn't necessarily mean that is always a good thing for the US.

I should also mention that a lot of Nixon's ideas on New Federalism, revenue sharing, block grants, and *neutering* the DC bureaucracy, while taking a more economically conservative bent-cutting OEO/GS and the like-but shifting power to the state/local level moreso than cutting all programs wholesale and simultaneously building up the military a la Reagan, do take place under the administrations of his successors rather than in his administration, when you get more government growth and a beefed up version of Obamacare. This is lucky timing because other movements become discredited by 1984, as I'll show.

This fits in nicely with the New Democrats, who largely fit in well in the National Party, augmenting the coalition with Southern Democrats. This isn't all bad-revenue sharing still goes on and some of the excesses of privatization are avoided, while still being consistent with the conservative trend away from inefficient New Dealist policies centered in DC-this had very unintended consequences when certain states are able to abuse power in some ways. The Reform Party is going to be working back against this trend, which will have some interesting conflicts between certain members of the coalition. Note that Goldwater style libertarians ironically might have voted for Gore along with liberals, whom as you might have guessed have their bowels loosened by Nixonian "law and order" policies rather than Reagan style privatization as their grievance. "National security" is alive and well as a political excuse without Watergate, though weakened by Gingrich's upheavals, but other scandals discredit the federal government in other ways...

Politics remains dirty in the old fashioned way for a while. Instead of lobbyists/private donors, you have hitmen like Nixon's boys in the pre-1974 Republican Party (and the pre-1970 Democratic Party). But that can't hold forever, and it doesn't. The reaction to it is what is different.
 
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