WI Challenge: Have Reagan impeached over Iran-Contra

WI Iran-Contra went differently. Have it become a big enough scandal that Reagan ends up impeached. What would happen after that?
 
A succesfull impeachment, which isn't that big of a reach, would keep the republicans out of the White House for a couple of cycles. US support for rightist dictators would dry up soon and the SU would have a media field-day.

Other than US politics I don't think it would change much. Maybe, more conspiracy theories, and the guy that sprung it wouldn't have committed suicide, he might even be the next Woodward.

All in all, I don't see any major changes.

Regards,
Rhysz
 
If Bush Sr. doesn't go down along with Reagan, it would be interesting to see what he would do as President a few years before he took power OTL (IE, mid 80's and not late).
 
If Bush Sr. doesn't go down along with Reagan, it would be interesting to see what he would do as President a few years before he took power OTL (IE, mid 80's and not late).

i don't think Bush would get elected if Reagan was impeached. (Btw that would have shown how far his Alzheimer's would have progressed) Let's say Reagan would have been impeached succesfully, what would the election look like?

Regards,
Rhysz
 
i don't think Bush would get elected if Reagan was impeached. (Btw that would have shown how far his Alzheimer's would have progressed)

He wouldn't need to get elected. Reagan's term ended in 1988. Bush was Vice President. If Bush wasn't impeached as well, he would ascend to the Presidency and finish out Reagan's term.
 
A succesfull impeachment, which isn't that big of a reach, would keep the republicans out of the White House for a couple of cycles. US support for rightist dictators would dry up soon and the SU would have a media field-day.

Other than US politics I don't think it would change much. Maybe, more conspiracy theories, and the guy that sprung it wouldn't have committed suicide, he might even be the next Woodward.

All in all, I don't see any major changes.

Regards,
Rhysz

So, Clinton, Ross "Big Ears", or who in 1988?
 
So, Clinton, Ross "Big Ears", or who in 1988?

Probably neither. Clinton was a second tier candidate in '92 who won only because big name democrats sat out that election, which would not be the case if a democrat (perhaps Dukakis, Biden, Gore, Tsongas) won the '88 election. Perot ran in '92 only to feed his ego and bring Bush down, so his '92 & '96 candidacy is probably butterflied away.

At any rate, I do not think the Democrats had the votes necessary to impeach, let alone convict RR for Iran-Contra offenses. Attempting it would have backfired on the Democrats as much as, if not more then the impeachment of Clinton did on the GOP.
 
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At any rate, I do not think the Democrats had the votes necessary to impeach, let alone convict RR for Iran-Contra offenses. Attempting it would have backfired on the Democrats as much as, if not more then the impeachment of Clinton did on the GOP.

Inclined to agree here. Reagan went through so many scandals and so many corruptions of allegation against so many officers in his Administration. There were people polled who admitted that they knew the President was repeatedly lying to them, but they still liked him and would vote for him if he had been able to stand for a third term. Reagan was a confidence boost to the USA at a time when everything had been going badly since the early 1970's.

I am currently writing a timeline involving Reagan and I am looking at the future of Reagan right at the moment. I broke down the Iran-Contra Affair into two different scandals: the Irangate Affair and the misleading of Congress over the contras, for which I am factoring in a 2-3% change in voting public. I am assuming that, by Reagan having been under very high levels of stress for considerably longer, that it would produce an acceleration of his condition and that his health would lead to a resignation, after which the Republicans could laud him as the Great Leader who gave his all for the nation and give the Administration a facelift before it has to face the country some time down the track.

How successful Bush is in doing that would determine who contested the 1988 election.
 
you seem to be looking for a way to curtail the rise of republicans in the 80's by having Reagan leave in disgrace as a result of the Iran Contra scandal. However I think you're looking at the wrong event, like it has been said before, reagan was horribly popular in spite of the Iran Contra scandal, and he more or less turned the american political landscape upside down, and realigned it toward the right. In fact things for the Democrats were so bad that they wouldn't recover for over a decade(longer if you are thinking of the Reign of Bush junior)

The event I think you really want is the Iran Hostage Crisis which allowing for a successful rescue of the hostages may very well have saved the reelection chances of Jimmy carter who mind you for a breif time enjoyed 60% approval ratings as a result of the desire of the public to show solidarity in a time of chrisis, much like the approval of Bush Junior right after 9/11. Especially with the Hostage Crisis happening so close to election time, a successful rescue would have come as perfectly timed to save the Carter Presidency. I would bet that conspiracy theory nuts would have gone crazy with the idea that the whole thing was a hoax perpetrated by the US government to garner public support for a lame duck president.

Anyways a second Carter term may very well have aborted the Republican resurgence of the 80's before it started and you may very well be looking at a much different global political picture. For instance no Reagan presidency may well have meant no major defense spending which forced the Russians to spend into bankruptcy to keep up thus delaying the fall of the Soviet Union for another five to ten years, which is not necissarily a bad thing.

The Iraq war would have been fought differently, or may not have been fought at all or maybe just been delayed a few years or happened a few years early.

Also with a more liberal thinking American public there may have been such things as a legalization of marijuana by 2000, or even legalized gay marraige around the turn of the century.

The point is that whether or not you like him, Ronald Reagan was responsible for some major changes in American world views, and the world political scene.

PS I will say however that if enough public anger over the scandal had come about as a result of maybe irrefutible evidence implicating RR then you might have seen a major change in the political climate at the time, maybe even enough to get Reagan Impeached or cost the Repuclicans their majorities in either congress or the senate.
 
Except that Carter's moronic plan never had the slightest chance of working and the early collapse with eight Americans dead may have prevented a greater tragedy. All you need to know about Carter's administration is that they adopted a plan requiring the US to set up a base on a major Iranian highway for more than 24 hours when Iran was already at war with Iraq and on high alert, trusting that no one in Iran would notice the communications, the radar signals...the ever growing number of vehicles never reaching their destination as the US troops kept stopping them.:rolleyes:

Iraq attacked Iran during Carter's term, not Reagan's.

The GOP did lose the Senate in 1986 and never had a majority to lose in the House under Reagan.


Of course, Reagan has the ultimate defense: He had no idea what was going on and he has several years of testimony from virtually every top Democrat in support of this claim!:D
 
Except that Carter's moronic plan never had the slightest chance of working and the early collapse with eight Americans dead may have prevented a greater tragedy. All you need to know about Carter's administration is that they adopted a plan requiring the US to set up a base on a major Iranian highway for more than 24 hours when Iran was already at war with Iraq and on high alert, trusting that no one in Iran would notice the communications, the radar signals...the ever growing number of vehicles never reaching their destination as the US troops kept stopping them.:rolleyes:

Iraq attacked Iran during Carter's term, not Reagan's.

The GOP did lose the Senate in 1986 and never had a majority to lose in the House under Reagan.


Of course, Reagan has the ultimate defense: He had no idea what was going on and he has several years of testimony from virtually every top Democrat in support of this claim!:D

I would have thought that the professional soldiers in the US military would have developed the rescue plan not Carter personally.
 
well my point was not about the details of the rescue attempt, but that the rescue attempt itself would be the POD which means that the whole thing could have been different. Besides , Congressional or Senatorial numbers aside, the election in which Ronald Reagan won the Presidency the first time marked the beginning of a strong right swing in American politics, it was the first time in something like thirty years that the republicans held a majority in the senate. And it is hard to dispute the fact that the majority of the American public has been considered openly conservative since the early 80's. Also the failure of the rescue attempt was due mostly to mechanical problems with the helicopters used which caused the whole thing to be aborted before they even got to their landing zones in the first place.
 
They kept the plan going after losing the third helicopter, which meant they no longer had the capacity to pull everyone out.
 
The election in which Ronald Reagan won the Presidency the first time marked the beginning of a strong right swing in American politics, it was the first time in something like thirty years that the republicans held a majority in the senate. And it is hard to dispute the fact that the majority of the American public has been considered openly conservative since the early 80's.

Well, I might dispute it. :p

No, seriously, I think you can say that some Americans are very conservative and some Americans are very radical and what happened from the mid-1970's through the 1990's if that large number of both gave up on the electoral system in a trend that wasn't only American; it was consistent among the Western democracy that the old right-left dichotomy collapsed or at least was considerably weakened. It could probably be consistent that conservatives, and particularly conservative Christians, will attempt to preserve an adherence to the predominant economic political and religious paradigm longer than others. And that's why they dominated the voting public in the US for so long.
 
well my point was not about the details of the rescue attempt, but that the rescue attempt itself would be the POD which means that the whole thing could have been different. Besides , Congressional or Senatorial numbers aside, the election in which Ronald Reagan won the Presidency the first time marked the beginning of a strong right swing in American politics, it was the first time in something like thirty years that the republicans held a majority in the senate. And it is hard to dispute the fact that the majority of the American public has been considered openly conservative since the early 80's. Also the failure of the rescue attempt was due mostly to mechanical problems with the helicopters used which caused the whole thing to be aborted before they even got to their landing zones in the first place.

Actually, based on what people say they are (and that's very important because its what they say they are), 30% of Americans say they're Conservative, 12% Liberal, and the remainder Moderate. However, that's just what people say, though even by that the majority do not say they are conservative, rather they say they are moderate.

However, and here is the real test and the most scientific one, When you actually ask people what they believe in on issues, and not what they think they are in their own opinion, 70% of those who say they are moderate are actually Liberal and/or left wing across the board. So the majority are not Conservative, but Liberal or left to some degree. And the majority of Conservatives believe in at least one traditionally Social Liberal thing. So its actually very easy to dispute that because its simply not true and evidences the first test I mentioned (and incorrectly) and not the latter which is the best one to prove ideology. Though by foreign standards, American Social Liberals are quite moderate, wheareas American Social Conservatives are quite the hardliners.

So the country is, by American standards, around 60+/40- (Liberal;Left wing/Conservative;Right wing).
 
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well now you're getting into what the meaning of the words are. in that sense you could make any point you want, since having a liberal view does not make someone liberal. For instance someone who supports affirmative action and women in the military but opposes unions, capital gains taxes, and gay rights would generally fall in the conservative camp even though they have a couple liberal views.

Either way this has gotten waaaaaay off topic, so I bid you adeu in this debate.
 
Off topic a bit, yes, but its not single issue or few issue Liberalism. It is across the board. So the country is, on the whole, by far a centre-Left nation.

On Reagan, his approval ratings dropped around 30 during Iran-Contra, and really, his approval ratings were relatively lukewarm on average throughout his administration. So, he was impeachable (and arguably he would have deserved impeachment at least for Iran-Contra).
 
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Off topic a bit, yes, but its not single issue or few issue Liberalism. It is across the board. So the country is, on the whole, by far a centre-Left nation.

On Reagan, his approval ratings dropped around 30 during Iran-Contra, and really, his approval ratings were relatively lukewarm on average throughout his administration. So, he was impeachable (and arguably he would have deserved impeachment at least for Iran-Contra).

I agree with ENI on the first paragraph.

Re the second: I agree that he was impeachable, as was Clinton, as was Bush II, but the US seems to try to avoid this admission of failure at all costs. I still argue that it is the general lower level of attachment to and ownership of US political institutions which has failed the American people.

I hope the American public were serious about changing the problem, they might think about a longer presidency with no possibility of re-election. It would give more independence to the President, who wouldn't have to worry about party contributor concerns.

The initial hit in the polls during the Iran-Contra Affair was close to an average of nine percent counting all pollsters over two months (I had to research this for my timeline). However, before that, Reagan's approval ratings as President were regularly in the high 60's and low 70's. He was an immensely likeable character.

I was old enough (teenager) to be a staunch Democrat (my Mum is from Boston) and I was taught by my aunt (who have moved to Georgia by then) to hate everything he stood for :eek:. But I have to admit that I liked Reagan even then. On television, he had a very reassuring manner that made you want to like him. I had some understanding that I did not like what he stood for, but I felt, when I heard him speak, that he had the same concerns I did and had done the best job he could for me at the time. :(

I lived in the States for some months during 1987 and 1988 (late teens). So I was there during the Iran-Contra Affair and the lead up to the 1988 Presidential election and, as it was hard to find foreign news in the US at the time, I was pretty much absorbed by it and how it affected the people around me. As well, I went having the idea that the US was the representation of all that was good in the world, so it was a very interesting part of my political education.

Re sucking meat through a straw, isn't that a regular American breakfast? :p:D
 
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