WI: Representative Gore Vidal (D-NY)

According to Wikipedia:

As a political activist, in 1960, Gore Vidal was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for Congress, losing an election in New York's 29th congressional district, a traditionally Republican district on the Hudson River, encompassing all of Columbia, Dutchess, Greene, Schoharie, and Ulster Counties to J. Ernest Wharton, by a margin of 57% to 43%.[41] Campaigning with a slogan of "You'll get more with Gore", he received the most votes any Democrat in 50 years received in that district. Among his supporters were Eleanor Roosevelt, Paul Newman, and Joanne Woodward; the latter two, longtime friends of Vidal's, campaigned for him and spoke on his behalf.

But what if Vidal managed to buck the Republican incumbent? What kind of political future could he hold, and what would the butterflies be for American politics and culture?
 
I'm not sure, but this could increase the acceptance of homosexuals in politics. (Vidal was at least reputed to be homosexual by then, I think.)
It might also effect the Vietnam War. Vidal was an America Firster and has had a dim view of interventionism all his life. If he's in office in 1964, he might join Grunening and Morse as opponents of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
I think this would butterfly away a number of his works as well...
 
Wiki suggests Vidal would have won that district if he'd stood in 1962, but he has to get around a sitting Dem congressman who was standing for election within the newly drawn boundaries based on the 1960 census.

I think this would butterfly away a number of his works as well...

Not moving to Europe in 1961 is a massive thing for Vidal, it stops him from immediately pursuing novel writing as his fulltime career (with movie scriptdoctoring for international productions as his sideline).

IOTL, before the congressional bid he's most successful as an entertainment industry writer who's also written some novels and essays: afterwards he's a novelist and essayist who dabbles in entertainment. And these post-'61 novels/essays are written by a man who's totally removed the gloves. He becomes a serious literary bomb thrower thanks to the break he's made with polite US society.

Serving in the US House from '63 to '67 is a diversion compared to that. I don't know how well he uses his time as a representative (and the time immediately after the Republicans dispatch him in the wave election of '66), regardless of how radicalised he is because of Vietnam.

To be blunt, I don't think he has it in him to become an important leader of the anti-war movement like Dr Spock or assorted RC priests did, merely because he's been able to speak and vote against the escalation on the Hill. I don't know if he's capable of becoming one of that movement's chroniclers, either, i.e. like Mailer did.

His major efforts in political agitprop are actually more of a post-'72 thing, not a peak-rebellion-era thing, strangely enough.
 
His major efforts in political agitprop are actually more of a post-'72 thing, not a peak-rebellion-era thing, strangely enough.

Yes, he's always marched to his own drummer, and is not really associated, in the public's mind, with the 1960s New Left. I think I've seen a couple of interviews where he speaks disparaginly of the Beats and their preoccupation with drugs and whatnot.

I also recall an interview where he mentioned that, earlier on, he had been an "off-hand Zionist", basically going along with the flow of the times. I'm not sure when he switched sides, but assuming he follows the same trajectory in the alternate time-line, he'd almost certainly be one of the most anti-Israel members of congress.

I could see him maybe launching a primary challenge to one of the Democratic presidents, similar to what Kennedy did in '79, except unlike Kennedy, who attacked Carter for being anti-Israel, Gore would be approching that issue from the other side. Though post-Seven Day War, the only sitting Democrats he would have been able to challenge in primaries woulda been Carter himself, and Clinton. He'd likely be too old to go after Obama.

Other than that, he'd probably be a reliable liberal vote in the House, probably to the left of Kennedy, but with less influence. Any hope for upward political advancement would probably be thwarted by his habit of making controversial remarks, unless he toned it down for political expediency. He'd probably want to forego being pen-pals with Timothy McVeigh, for example.
 
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