Who Really Was "The Greatest President We Never Had?"

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Why no love for Rocky?
 
Nationalist-era John C. Calhoun would be very interesting, and he had the potential to be a great president if he maintained his independence from South Carolina.

Sectionalist-era John C. Calhoun would be very painful, although this is pretty much ASB if the Jackson/Calhoun feud and nullification crisis still occurs.
 
No one going for a Huey Long?
A man of god like popularity in the 1930's.

Suffice it to say his godlike popularity wasn't due to his tremendous leadership skill and foreign policy competence. Huey would have been a massive, massive disaster. His ego was huge, his sphere of knowledge limited, his misunderstanding of that sphere dangerous.

In 1936, especially, but even in 1932, Huey Long would have taken the US from a relatively isolationist standpoint to one actively disinterested, not in intervention, but in other people, in any way, shape, or form.

Can't imagine that doing any harm to the US buildup in the face of an oncoming war, though, so it'd work out alright for everyone not already in the military. Until the bombs started coming.
 
Adlai Stevenson (he's pretty much the last governor of Illinois who didn't go to jail) and Al Gore would be my picks.

Stevenson was very, very smart, and would probably have dealt with the leadup to Vietnam War better than Eisenhower or Kennedy (remember he ran in 1960 as well). He might have begun some version of LBJ's Great Society programs earlier as well.

Yeah but did he have the political support and power that LBJ did to take on intractable issues like civil rights? LBJ's arm-twisting and insanely strong political savvy was nearly without equal in his time. It was what basically let him keep what was left of FDR's New Deal coalition together before he finished it permanently with civil rights.

Also Vietnam turned into a huge fuck-up because of the exodus of advisors brought on by McCarthy and his anti-communist hysteria. A president Stevenson probably wouldn't have been able to significantly curb McCarthy any more than Eisenhower, who both opposed McCarthy and shared a party. McCarthy would have turned it into a partisan squabble if Stevenson tried to challenge him. We'd still our advisors and we'd still probably have a costly boondoggle abroad. The best hope for a more successful Vietnam is to support Ho Chih Minh early on when he was fighting the French occupation and before he turned to the Soviets and communist ideology in general for assistance, Stevenson might not have politically been able to stir the pot and do that, not with Hooveresque types who started to see communists behind every anti-colonial movement everywhere.


Edit: I'd have liked to have seen a President Al Gore... or Howard Dean, perhaps none of that stupid "I have a scream" fuss.

A Few I'd Liked To Have Seen...

Samuel Tilden instead of worthless Hayes
Al Smith
Bobby Kennedy
(Mildly ASB given the time but...) Frances Perkins or another New Dealer.
Although theoretically I would be happy with a garden shovel replacing President Andrew Johnson I would have to venture to guess that William Seward is a favorite of mine, Ice Box for President!
 
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2000 McCain
Jeb Bush (from what I've heard, he'd have done better than W, pity W soured that familiy's name)



As for Goldwater, would he really have been as nuke happy as LBJ's 'daisy' ad made him out to be?
 
He advocated the use of tactical nukes in Vietnam. Goldwater's problem was that his classical liberalism was being pushed at the high-water mark of the New Deal consensus and the Great Depression was fresh in the minds of anyone over 30. Nor did he express his ideas well, but was just as bombastic as Palin or Bachmann in his statements: saying that the TVA should be privatized in Southern states, talking of "this administration's Medicare hoax" and SS privatization in Florida, etc. He went rogue before Palin was born.
 
Great men...

John Glenn, bless him.
RFK maybe.

But you'd better compile a list of Worst US Presidents - Jimmy Carter and Clinton were even worse than Richard Milhouse Nixon...
 
Horace Greeley would have been a better man leading reconstruction than the too-trusting President Grant. Greeley would also call the Southern Bluff of a insurgency, although his mental health might be too limited to last.

An aside: in OTL, Horace Greeley was dead by inauguration day.
 
An aside: in OTL, Horace Greeley was dead by inauguration day.

Hmm, more trivia facts to add to the library :D

That said, this being a sight full of AH folks I think we can find a way to un-killify Mr. Greeley in time for him to serve a respectable term or two as president.
 
Charles Evans Hughes, most likely. The guy was brilliant and excelled in every government position he was placed in. He wasn't as deranged as Wilson and was much more flexible, which would have made him an altogether better leader for shaping the post-World War I world. On the domestic front, he took a hard stand in support of women's suffrage and hated anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, and the Ku Klux Klan. Great man. :D

That reminds me, I started up that Hughes timeline a while back and never got around to continuing it. Would anyone want to see an update of it? :confused:
 
I think Wendell Willkie, Earl Warren, and Nelson Rockefeller are all good choices, but I think Thomas Dewey rarely gets the attention he deserves.
 

NothingNow

Banned
1)Eugene V. Debs
2)Al Gore
3)Earl Warren
4)John Glenn
5)Bill Nelson

For the Cartoonishly Evil: Rick Scott.


Jeb Bush (from what I've heard, he'd have done better than W, pity W soured that familiy's name)
No. Never in a thousand years. He's the first SOB who fucked us over this century.
 
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