WI President Reagan (1973-80)

bguy

Donor
Before we get to YK and the oil embargo, we have Chile and Wade V Roe to consider. As for the oild embargo - its very hard too see what else could have been done; what are your options ?

There is also the vexed question of busing. Which will be one of if not the dominant issue in the 1972 election.

OTL there was an attempt in 1972 to strip the federal courts of jursidiction in busing cases. IIRC it failed by a single vote in the Senate. Here depending on how the Senate races shake out in '68 and '70, there may be enough votes to pass such a bill (though there won't be enough to overcome a presidential veto.) But regardless of if the legislation dies in Congress or gets vetoed by the president, Reagan will almost certainly campaign on enacting strong anti-busing legislation and will probably have the votes needed to enact it once he is elected.

The long term consequences of setting a precedent that it is ok to take certain issues away from the federal courts will be interesting. Since a Humphrey selected Supreme Court will have a super-majority of activist liberal justices, conservatives will probably soon see the jurisdiction removal option as their only way to reign in an out of control court and will try to use it again on other issues like abortion, obscenity and capital punishment. The battles with the Supreme Court will likely be the dominant domestic issue of Reagan's presidency here.
 
Agreed with bguy. Friedman will introduce the US and the GOP at large (thank God) to monetarism, which if combined with a Reagan-advocated BBA will get the ballooning deficit under control, back to black (last surplus was in 1969 IOTL, and HHH will spend even more freely than Nixon) by the end of his presidency as was the case for Clinton. Inflation goes down too, unemployment spikes temporarily but in the long run only a blip on the scope.
 
Maybe, it's not a given but the problem is finding enough centrist and Southern Dems to get 2/3 in the Senate. In any case still push for the spending reductions required, even without the BBA.
 
We were a creditor nation up to the real Reagan administration. Since Reagan was one of the real reasons why we got an outstanding debt vs a workable one . How does him being President a few years earlier help with this?
 
RB thanks. Yes that would work. The question is what would turn him away from supply side? Coolidge believed in Supply side and Reagan always said Coolidge was one of his favorites Presidents. Having Friedman all by himself will that do the trick?
 

bguy

Donor
RB thanks. Yes that would work. The question is what would turn him away from supply side? Coolidge believed in Supply side and Reagan always said Coolidge was one of his favorites Presidents. Having Friedman all by himself will that do the trick?

I'm not sure it's really accurate to call Coolidge a supply sider. He very much believed tax cuts had to be paid for with corresponding spending cuts and was relentless in cutting federal spending.

"Everyone desires a reduction of taxes, and there is a great preponderance of sentiment in favor of taxation reform. Anybody can reduce taxes, but it is not so easy to stand in the gap and resist the passage of increasing appropriation bills which would make tax reduction impossible. It will be very easy to measure the strength of the attachment to reduced taxation by the power with which increased appropriations are resisted."- Calvin Coolidge, 1924.

That was also Barry Goldwater's position: that spending cuts must come before tax cuts (remember Goldwater voted against the Kennedy tax cuts for that very reason.) Since the Supply Side Revolution hasn't happened yet, Reagan is much more likely to stick to the path of Friedman, Goldwater and Coolidge. He'll still push for tax cuts but insist on them being off-set by matching spending reductions.
 
I am thinking that it would be very hard for Reagan to win a second term in the bad economic times of 1976.
 
Last edited:
From what I have read about the Yom Kippur War, the only reason Israel did not launch a preemptive strike was because they had grown dependent upon the United States for aid, and felt that such actions would prevent said aid from coming. If Reagan can to some level guarantee that the United States will continue to aid Israel, preemptive strikes would have been launched. However, to my knowledge those strikes had really only been planned for Syrian targets since they were considered the more immediate threat at the time. Possibly could be extended to the Egyptian Airfields and SAM installations so that they may not have to worry about them later.

Of course, the 1973 Oil Crisis is going to hit harder and faster because of this.
 
I agree with the ideas Reagan was not a great tactician. Neither was Nixon, Ford, Carter down the line to whom, but Nixon was more decisive. A pity he inherited a swamp.

So the timing was not right for the genius and special abilities of Reagan. He stood up to the Russians at a time when they were tottering from the princelings (sons of the higher leadership) ambivilence and local numbness. HHH was such a happy warrior that Vietnam would have likely been really raw with the American public by 1972. Even Nixon listened to the generals too much, and HHH would have been worse with the whole thing might have crumbled before the 6:00 evening news viewer's eyes. Most people do not realize this, but there was an agreement with Kissinger/N. Vietnam as the vise grip squeezed to withdrawl US personnel in a timely enough fashion, quote unquote.

If Reagan had interited that mess, and recall that in 1973 we marched out of Vietnam, only the embassy, CIA, hangers on (incredibly 5,000 US cheap living veteran retirees and their often common law dependents were using the px and other facillities in 1975 and had to be evacuated according to Frank Snepp I recall), and refugees were around two years later in 4.1975, then the Vietnam debacle in the public's mind would have quite likely taken until 1990's to heal, not the 1980's for our mindset. Reagan's hands would have been tied, and the animal spirits in the USSR if not the PRC would have carried the day, probably. Glasnost was a fragile enough thing as it was in the 1980's.

So I see.
 
Last edited:
As far as Roe v. Wade is concerned, that decision was handed down in 1972, which is too early for President Reagan to prevent the ruling. Anyway all of Nixon's appointments occurred in the first term which means here you have four Humphrey appointees. Ford did have the opportunity to appoint one Justice, so assuming William O Douglas doesn't bolt earlier with a Humphrey Presidency President Reagan will have the opportunity to appoint one "Pro-Life" Supreme Court Justice. I'm not sure how Roe v. Wade plays out here, but the decision probably depends a lot more Hubert Humphrey selects than on what Reagan does.

Roe v. Wade was handed down January 22, 1973, two days into the new presidential term. Had Humphrey made Nixon's appointments, it is highly unlikely that any would have been more conservative to the extent the decision changed much from 7-2. At that time, the mood of the country was very different. The Right to Life doctrine was not even established, not even yet the mostly Catholic movement by that name of the late seventies. Suppose a President Reagan replaces William O. Douglas by somebody more conservative than John Paul Stevens. That's one vote. Unless the oil/inflation situation changes, the election of 1980 signals a party change for the presidency. But Douglas was a holdout. He resigned to Ford under the condition that he would be replaced by a moderate. Had Reagan not agreed, Douglas would have stayed until his death (as eventually did Rehnquist). The seat would have likely stayed vacant until 1981. There is no impact on Roe v. Wade.
 
Top