WI Nixon not chosen as Veep in '52?

Let's say Ike declines to run for the GOP nomination and Nixon remains the junior Senator from CA. Could he ever be elected POTUS if he carves out a niche in foreign policy?
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
He probably would have been offered a Cabinet-level position to appease the conservative wing of the Party that's still bitter over Taft's defeat. Maybe he gets the UN ambassadorship instead of Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. I would offer SecDef, but it's such a new position and I'm not sure whether they'd want to entrust it to such a young, rhetorically hawkish (as opposed to the reality of him favoring diplomacy) and hard-line politician.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Hrmm. Nixon always had his eye on the White House, not to mention the ruthless drive and ability to get there. If he stays in the Senate, he could come to eclipse Goldwater as the leader of the leader of the Republicans' conservative wing, embodying a more mainstream-acceptable form of conservatism as opposed to Goldwater's libertarianism (which many found noxious in the 60s due to its opposition to a good deal of Civil Rights legislation).

If Nixon becomes leader of the Republicans' conservatives, maybe he pulls a Goldwater and nabs the nomination in '64, since I'm going to assume Kennedy still wins against his probable opponent, Bill Knowland (or whoever else would be Eisenhower's VP).
 
I would think he would become President, but when depends on who Ike picks as his VP. if that person wants to seek the nomination in '60, and they get it, nixon will have to wait until at least '68, so in away you could have events play out similar to the way they did.
 
If Nixon becomes leader of the Republicans' conservatives, maybe he pulls a Goldwater and nabs the nomination in '64, since I'm going to assume Kennedy still wins against his probable opponent, Bill Knowland (or whoever else would be Eisenhower's VP).
If Knowland was VP, Kennedy would lose because he would get more backing from Eisenhower than Nixon ever did. Eisenhower had serious reservations about Nixon becoming president, and so only backed Nixon late in, which boosted Nixon up to be tied with JFK. ITTL Ike would back Knowland earlier, and Knowland would win (Ike was around 60-65% approval on election day).

So Nixon might get the nomination in '68 if Knowland's VP doesn't run, but probably won't get it until '72 (if the Republican in '68 loses). Depending on what party gets the presidency in which year, Nixon could get the nomination in '76 or '80. '84 is possible, but a stretch, he would have been 71. That would have been cool though, Nixon could be president at the end of the Cold War, assuming Gorby isn't butterflied away. A Knowland presidency probably will delay Khrushchev being removed from power, but it'll probably still happen IMO, and when Brezhnev comes to power so does Suslov and therefore Gorbachev.

Now that's a TL I would want to read, a Nixon presidency from 85-93. :D He would be able to end the Cold War in his first term, and would preside over American dominance in his second term. Would be very interesting to see what Nixon will do in a post-Soviet world, he's a better politician than any president who came after him OTL and definitely would have created a "vision thing."


 
There is the other possibility--Nixon melts down earlier.

Nixon had a very fragile ego, as many narcissists do. Also, as with many narcissists, he felt the law applied to others. Nixon also was a cynic, as his choice of Spiro Agnew for his Vice-President demonstrated. I can imagine that if Nixon failed to achieve the Vice-Presidency of the United States, Nixon would become even more cynical and corrupt. This in turn could lead to him being caught doing some sort of illegal sooner than in OTL. With less power than Nixon has as a United States President and criminal acts, the end result might be that Nixon spends much of his later life in prison.
 
There is the other possibility--Nixon melts down earlier.

Nixon had a very fragile ego, as many narcissists do. Also, as with many narcissists, he felt the law applied to others. Nixon also was a cynic, as his choice of Spiro Agnew for his Vice-President demonstrated. I can imagine that if Nixon failed to achieve the Vice-Presidency of the United States, Nixon would become even more cynical and corrupt. This in turn could lead to him being caught doing some sort of illegal sooner than in OTL. With less power than Nixon has as a United States President and criminal acts, the end result might be that Nixon spends much of his later life in prison.
 
Hrmm. Nixon always had his eye on the White House, not to mention the ruthless drive and ability to get there. If he stays in the Senate, he could come to eclipse Goldwater as the leader of the leader of the Republicans' conservative wing, embodying a more mainstream-acceptable form of conservatism as opposed to Goldwater's libertarianism (which many found noxious in the 60s due to its opposition to a good deal of Civil Rights legislation).

If Nixon becomes leader of the Republicans' conservatives, maybe he pulls a Goldwater and nabs the nomination in '64, since I'm going to assume Kennedy still wins against his probable opponent, Bill Knowland (or whoever else would be Eisenhower's VP).
Nixon wasn't a conservative, though. Although his anticommunist rhetoric was often mistaken by western Goldwaterites as anti government, Nixon was really more a moderate to even a liberal in policy as we saw with his presidency.
 
I agree with His Majesty. A healthcare plan (CHIP) endorsed by Paul Krugman is hardly Goldwaterite. Of course, Nixon held up the OTL bipartisan "frontbench consensus" on social issues other than race.
 
Nixon wasn't a conservative, though. Although his anticommunist rhetoric was often mistaken by western Goldwaterites as anti government, Nixon was really more a moderate to even a liberal in policy as we saw with his presidency.
Nixon was none of these things--he was an opportunist. If Nixon had thought being the bride of the ghost of Ernst Röhm would have advanced him, Nixon would have ordered the appropriate trousseau.
 
So a mixture of Harold Wilson and Tony Blair: Rovianism with substance, but without charisma. Another apt description of Nixon is "plastic".
 
Yep, Ike was mere hours away from dropping Nixon's arse from the ticket before Dick pulled the Checkers speech out.

If Nixon goes to water, and isn't able to appear on TV (or, let's say he takes some bad advice from Murray Chotiner about how he should just film a brief segment instead of going live, & without any appearance from Pat) then it's Vice President William Knowland from '53 to '61.

Not only is he unlikely to stage a comeback, but the two best avenues he has to remake himself, running for governor of California or seeking the leadership of the GOP conference in the senate, could see him risk ending his career in politics altogether (if he doesn't resign after losing the VP nomination, that is).

And it's not as if he is important enough to become a cabinet secretary in 1953. Eisehower chose mainly people with executive experience, I don't think he made any major appointments to appease the Taftites.
 
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