Underused Political PODs
- Thread starter Hubert Humphrey Fan 1968
- Start date
And I think Nixon's Florida White House was originally owned by Smathers, who sold it to him. He's a womanizing, charming young politician as Kennedy, but aligned with the Conservative Coalition and Southern Democrats. He was somewhere in the background, somewhere involved, or standing right by a president (metaphorically speaking) during everything. The forum needs to do more with Smathers. To know Smathers is to know the details of the 1960s. He's like Forrest Gump.
His signing the Southern Manifesto probably eliminated any chance he would be on a national Democratic ticket, though. And he just didn't have the stuff to lead a pro-segregation third party like Thurmond or Wallace.
I think you're confusing him with Terry Sanford.... https://books.google.com/books?id=JIGcq0RXspMC&pg=PA142
Nope. George Smathers was in a similar position of a possible Johnson replaced as Terry Sanford was. At least if accounts with similar veracity to the Sanford claims are to be believed. I think the Smathers account...and frankly the Sanford account, come from Evelyn Lincoln. That being said that "possibility" in either regard is overstated. The feeling I get is that Kennedy was more testing the waters for a possibility just in case, if something blew up with Johnson or Johnson decided to quit, and potentially asserting himself and shaking Johnson's tree a bit should word get back to him. But that last bit is just my theory.
For his part, Smathers also though Johnson would have stayed on.
https://archive1.jfklibrary.org/JFKOH/Smathers, George A/JFKOH-GAS-04/JFKOH-GAS-04-TR.pdf
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Nixon losing 1960 and 1968. But coming back for a third try in 1980 and winning.
Ergo: Nixon being the Reagan of the 80s.
Ergo: Nixon being the Reagan of the 80s.
See my four-part Young Bob Beats Tail Gunner Joe:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/E7W7oekwLyY/HsjkH40BQtgJ
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/ER88zGXFw9k/CeP8cih4J8oJ
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/6KOM7ElfQUY/uxxudWzhSoMJ
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/mRTOgEp6hEI/Ijpl0ZaB1fgJ
Where is your source for this? Evelyn Lincoln's recollection that JFK proposed to replace LBJ with Sanford has been questioned, but at least she is a source. I haven't heard of any comparable source saying it would have been Smathers, and it seems unlikely to me--once JFK had committed himself to the civil rights bill, the Deep South was gone, anyway. Smathers would just have been too controversial.
It was a source in the murkiness of many on this, of which I can recall it was Kennedy in a rocking chair with a distant looktelling Lincoln that he was considering George Smathers or someone else for 1964. I tried to follow through my research trail to the writings of Lincoln after writing that, but I cannot find text from her book(s), or the passage quoted from her book in another book in that Google preview thing.
Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy and Johnson (1968) "As Mr. Kennedy sat in the rocker in my office, his head resting on its back he placed his left leg across his right knee. He rocked slightly as he talked. In a slow pensive voice he said to me, 'You know if I am re-elected in sixty-four, I am going to spend more and more time toward making government service an honorable career. I would like to tailor the executive and legislative branches of government so that they can keep up with the tremendous strides and progress being made in other fields.' 'I am going to advocate changing some of the outmoded rules and regulations in the Congress, such as the seniority rule. To do this I will need as a running mate in sixty-four a man who believes as I do.' Mrs. Lincoln went on to write "I was fascinated by this conversation and wrote it down verbatim in my diary. Now I asked, 'Who is your choice as a running-mate?' 'He looked straight ahead, and without hesitating he replied, 'at this time I am thinking about Governor Terry Sanford of North Carolina. But it will not be Lyndon.'" http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKsanford.htm I have not seen any evidence frokm Mrs. Lincoln or anyone else that JFK mentioned Smathers in this connection.
As I said, I seriously doubt that JFK intended to drop LBJ from the ticket. But if he did, Sanford would make a lot more sense than Smathers. You want to drop LBJ because he is too much of wheeler-dealer, a man with ethical problems--and you replace him with George Smathers?! Not to mention that JFK had committed himself to the civil rights bill, and was unlikely to choose an opponent of the bill (and a signatory of the Southern Manifesto) as his running mate. And If JFK was going to lead a campaign against the seniority rule, Smathers would be the last man he would want.
I have seen the reference made. It is one of those bits I've carried for years. I'm not mistaking it for Terry Sanford, although I must have mistaken where it was sourced with that Sanford entry. Now, I did not say I agree with it. I don't agree with Evelyn Lincoln on Sanford either, given that Kennedy was otherwise adamant in many sources that Johnson was staying. And frankly Sanford was not exactly a rousing candidate for the South, nor to win Texas. But Smathers is not from thin air.
For some reason, Giolitti decides that Lybia is not worth the try and doesn't even ask the Parliament for the declaration of war. The Socialist delegates that supported it OTL doesn't obviously vote it ITTL and so aren't expelled by the Italian Socialist Party, and Reformists remain the majority inside the party over the Maximalists, Giolitti is not frightened by the inevitable great electoral results that the PSI is going to take in 1913 elections and doesn't make the Gentiloni Pact with the Catholic Electoral Union. After the elections the Liberal delegates remain Progressives, and with deals with Radicals (and issue-based Socialist support) the Giolittian Age of Italy can last longer. Probably Giolitti wouldn't enter WWI. But probably WWI isn't going to happen in 1914, because without the Italo-Turkish War the Balkan states couldn't realize the catastrophic conditions of the Ottoman Empire, and probably they wouldn't attack it, so the Balkan Wars (the Second was a consequence of the First) are butterflied away. And with a so massive Ottoman presence in the Balkans, I think the Serbian nationalists could have something better to think than Austrian dominion over Bosnia, Sarajevo and Franz Ferdinand.
Thomas1195
Banned
Lloyd George embraces temperance movement to kick Asquith, a heavy drinker, out during 1915-1916, and becomes leader in a legitimate way.
McAdoo succeeds in his street car business and is never made Secretary of Treasury by Wilson. When WWI breaks out, the Treasury Secretary doesn't shut down the NY Stock Exchange which means the UK and France liquidate their US securities and convert it from dollars to gold, draining the US reserves of gold and tanking the dollar, perhaps bringing about an economic depression. This could hurt the US so much and embitter them against the Entente that they don't play favorites and stay truly neutral. This also has huge effects on the 1916 election without the possibility of entering the war as heavily in the background and Wilson's Presidency looking mostly like a failure.
I like that David T- especially because I think
you & I might be the only two people-well, two Americans @ any rate- who know who
C-B was!
What if CJ of the SCOTUS Harlan Fisk Stone
doesn't die in 1946? This could butterfly
away the Fred Vinson chief justiceship- & it
was his death in 1953 IOTL that allowed Earl
Warren to become CJ, thereby establishing
the Warren Court. Thus, Stone lives, no
Warren Court, many landmark judicial
opinions- such as BROWN v BOARD OF ED-
never happen.
doesn't die in 1946? This could butterfly
away the Fred Vinson chief justiceship- & it
was his death in 1953 IOTL that allowed Earl
Warren to become CJ, thereby establishing
the Warren Court. Thus, Stone lives, no
Warren Court, many landmark judicial
opinions- such as BROWN v BOARD OF ED-
never happen.
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I've long rather liked old C-B myself though I'm British, not American.