Who do you want to win the 1916 election in my TL?

Who's got your vote?

  • President Woodrow Wilson (D-NJ)/Vice President Thomas Marshall (D-IN)

    Votes: 6 7.6%
  • Associate Justice Charles Evans Hughes (R-NY)/Former Vice President Charles Fairbanks (R-IN)

    Votes: 73 92.4%

  • Total voters
    79
Wilson was an anglophile, but he definately didn't try to get the U.S. into WW1, he was actually elected in 1916 on a platform of keeping us out of the war. It was unrestricted submarine warfare and the German's trying to ally with Mexico that brought us in.
 
Wilson was an anglophile, but he definately didn't try to get the U.S. into WW1, he was actually elected in 1916 on a platform of keeping us out of the war. It was unrestricted submarine warfare and the German's trying to ally with Mexico that brought us in.


It wasn't a case of trying to get in, but perhaps of not trying hard enough to keep out.

In any case, though, I fear it is academic by the time of the 1916 election. Unless Hughes' victory causes Berlin to have a last minute rethink about USW (conceivable but unlikely) it is probably too late for him to avoid war.
 
Trend

Wooh! I started a trend, now it is only matter of time before Wilson caches up to and aventually everwhelms Hughes. After all it requires is the grand total of:51 votes to tie up the election.
 
Wilson all the way!

It wasn't a case of trying to get in, but perhaps of not trying hard enough to keep out.
You might have a point there, but I seriously doubt that Hughe's election would change that, who the American's hundreds of miles away choose as their leader has no bearing on the German's public policy. What you need to consider is the post-war position. With no Wilson you get no League of Nations, which means that there won't be any system in place to offer even token resistance to the rise of the Fascist states. That means a stronger Japan, and a stronger Germany at the start of WW2. Wilson was simply the right man for the job, he had a vision for the future that was simply ahead of its time.
 
You might have a point there, but I seriously doubt that Hughe's election would change that, who the American's hundreds of miles away choose as their leader has no bearing on the German's public policy. What you need to consider is the post-war position. With no Wilson you get no League of Nations, which means that there won't be any system in place to offer even token resistance to the rise of the Fascist states. That means a stronger Japan, and a stronger Germany at the start of WW2.

How? Mussolini's successful defiance of the LoN was a big boost to his prestige, so in that sense its existence helped him. And nothing it did had the slightest effect on Germany or Japan.

Wilson was simply the right man for the job, he had a vision for the future that was simply ahead of its time.

How does having a vision make him the right man for the job, if no practical benefits result? Men who see visions are to be avoided like the plague when choosing political leaders.
 
How? Mussolini's successful defiance of the LoN was a big boost to his prestige, so in that sense its existence helped him. And nothing it did had the slightest effect on Germany or Japan.

How does having a vision make him the right man for the job, if no practical benefits result? Men who see visions are to be avoided like the plague when choosing political leaders.

It isn't the actual effects of the League of Nation, it's the idea of the leaders of the World meeting to make it a better place that's so powerful. Was it actually useful? No, the U.S. refusing to join because of post-war fatigue and ressurected isolationism cripplied it from it's infancy. However, the concept behind the LoN led to the current U.N. which, at least as a theatre for all nations to meet in concert, has proven to be quite affective. Added to that, Wilson actually held back England and France at the Treaty of Varsailles, without him in office things could have easily been much worse, and you can't tell me that would've turned out well. Personally, a man with a vision is the ONLY kind of person I want leading me, if you don't know where your country and your globe are heading, why are you in charge?
 
Hughes, Hughes all the way! :D Because:

a) He seems like an interesting guy really

b) I, too, regard Wilson as the anti-airship really... Maybe I'm just prejudiced against Klan sympathisers...

and

c) I remember Mr Stone's TL "Mr Hughes Goes to War" over on shwi, which I thought was kind of awesome. :)
 
It isn't the actual effects of the League of Nation, it's the idea of the leaders of the World meeting to make it a better place that's so powerful. Was it actually useful? No, the U.S. refusing to join because of post-war fatigue and ressurected isolationism cripplied it from it's infancy. However, the concept behind the LoN led to the current U.N. which, at least as a theatre for all nations to meet in concert, has proven to be quite affective. Added to that, Wilson actually held back England and France at the Treaty of Varsailles, without him in office things could have easily been much worse, and you can't tell me that would've turned out well.


Turned out worse than OTL? How exactly?

Offhand, I don't see why you even need a Hughes, never mind a Wilson. Supposing that someone like Bryan, or even Harding, had represented the US in 1919, is there any real reason to suppose that the course of the next twenty years would have been changed, for better or worse, in any major way? Germany might have lost a bit more land in East Prussia and/or Silesia, and the reparations bill might have been larger on paper, before the Dawes and Young Plans revised it as OTL, but nothing of long tem significance.

Note that the only World War One peace treaty which can be called a success, the 1923 Lausanne treaty with Turkey, was drawn up without Wilson, or indeed any American, being present. Nor did the League of Nations figure in it much. This didn't matter a jot.

The whole thing recalls a story about Ferdinand, the feeble-minded Austrian Emperor deposed in 1848. Eighteen years on, watching the triumphant Prussians march into the heart of the empire, he plaintively asked "Why was I got rid of. I could have achieved this just as well as my nephew." You don't need a visionary just to draw up a botched peace. Any fool can do that. QUOTE]
 
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