Worst possible justifiable VP?
- Thread starter HammerofWar
- Start date
Agree with this, and have some suggestions under this criteria
1.
John Edwards. Had Kerry won Edwards' personal life would likely have come under even greater scrutiny and his affair would probably have come to light earlier than in OTL.
John Connally?
2.
Andrew Johnson
3.
Thomas Eagleton, the whole Eagleton affair undoubtedly harmed McGovern
James Stockdale, "Who am I? Why am I Here?"
Henry Cabot Lodge? Not so much that Lodge was an awful running mate, but had Nixon opted for Rockefeller it would probably have been a net benefit for the ticket, and in a close election like 1960 might have proven decisive
Anglocalvinist67
Banned
FDR could have gone with Wallace again in 1944.
Byrnes would have been bad too.
Byrnes would have been bad too.
Was Carroll Campbell considered a running mate for Bush 41? I know he was considered for Dole in 1996.
Let's see:
Rumsfeld for Reagan in '80 (especially if Bush is in the administration and Reagan's health is less stable)
Levi Morton for McKinley in 1896: There were fears that having a gold and silver ticket would jeopardize the party's chances.
Albert Beveridge for Taft in 1908: Beveridge was fairly progressive until late in his life but was a big imperialist and fairly racist. If Taft is assassinated in Mexico ittl, Beveridge might start a war with Mexico.
Bryan for Wilson in 1912: Wanna make Wilson's first term more interesting/awful?
Worse than Coolidge for Harding in 1920:
William H. Hays: corrupt, holier than thou and has no qualms with censorship.
Kansas Governor Henry Allen: Admired Mussolini's style and wanted to implement it here.
Henry Anderson: relationship with the Queen of Romania.
Jeter Pritchard: Died a month after he would have taken office.
Let's see:
Rumsfeld for Reagan in '80 (especially if Bush is in the administration and Reagan's health is less stable)
Levi Morton for McKinley in 1896: There were fears that having a gold and silver ticket would jeopardize the party's chances.
Albert Beveridge for Taft in 1908: Beveridge was fairly progressive until late in his life but was a big imperialist and fairly racist. If Taft is assassinated in Mexico ittl, Beveridge might start a war with Mexico.
Bryan for Wilson in 1912: Wanna make Wilson's first term more interesting/awful?
Worse than Coolidge for Harding in 1920:
William H. Hays: corrupt, holier than thou and has no qualms with censorship.
Kansas Governor Henry Allen: Admired Mussolini's style and wanted to implement it here.
Henry Anderson: relationship with the Queen of Romania.
Jeter Pritchard: Died a month after he would have taken office.
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George Smathers is sometimes talked about as an alt-history VP for JFK due to his personal friendship with the President. As President, Smathers would probably have opposed the Civil Rights legislation that LBJ championed, but been just as bad on Vietnam.
Stuart Symington likely would have cost the Democrats' important votes down south due to his refusal to speak in front of segregated audiences and other pro-civil rights actions.
Bankhead in OTL died in June 1946, so if FDR dies in spring 1945 followed by Bankhead a year later, then the presidency would fall to whoever was Secretary of State at the time. Which was... James F. Byrnes, another Southern segregationist. Bankhead would probably appoint him like Truman did.
Really, any segregationist would be a horrible choice for FDR's VP in 1944. Henry Wallace was a kook and naive on the Soviet threat, but at least he stood up for civil rights.
Byrnes was not only hostile to civil rights, but also to organized labor. Had he succeeded FDR, then the post-WWII labor unrest in the US could have been much worse, with perhaps a federal crackdown on strikes. The unrest would lead to even larger Republican gains in the 1946 midterm elections, and Byrnes would sign the Taft-Hartley Act into law without objections. Byrnes would also not desegregate the military like Truman did.
Ultimately, there would be a Republican victory in the 1948 presidential election, with a strong likelihood of a split in the Democratic vote between Byrnes (if he's renominated) and a liberal third party campaign (maybe Henry Wallace's Progressive Party run is more successful by attracting disaffected liberals, labor unions, and people of color, which means he wouldn't have to cozy up to far-left elements for support). Strom Thurmond and other Dixiecrats would stick with the Democratic Party if Byrnes was the nominee.
Jesse Helms was one of Ronald Reagan's early supporters. If Reagan had decided to reward him with a spot on the ticket, and if Hinckley's aim had been a little bit better...
Seriously though...
It would be interesting to see a Chief Justice Nixon, untethered by any Southern Strategy-type political requirements. Even some of the judges he appointed as president(eg. Powell and Blackmun, even Burger on a few issues) ended up being more liberal than he was, and I wonder how far he actually woulda gone as Chief in bucking the overall zeitgeist of the 1960s.
Obviously, I know he had been a red-baiting asshole in the 1950s, but then, so was Bobby Kennedy.
It would be interesting to see a Chief Justice Nixon, untethered by any Southern Strategy-type political requirements. Even some of the judges he appointed as president(eg. Powell and Blackmun, even Burger on a few issues) ended up being more liberal than he was, and I wonder how far he actually woulda gone as Chief in bucking the overall zeitgeist of the 1960s.
Obviously, I know he had been a red-baiting asshole in the 1950s, but then, so was Bobby Kennedy.
I honestly do not know why the belief that JFK could have chosen Smathers as his running mate (either in 1960 or if it seemed necessary to drop LBJ from the ticket in 1964) is so widespread here. (FWIW, in all the books I have read concerning JFK's potential running mates, Smathers is never even mentioned as a possibility.) Maybe it stems from the fact that JFK and Smathers were friends. But presidential candidates have lots of friends whom they know it would be foolish to put on the national ticket. And in any event, according to an interview Smathers gave decades later, the JFK-Smathers friendship was strained by Smathers' decision to run as a favorite son presidential candidate from Florida in 1960. https://books.google.com/books?id=CeldDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA151 (That candidacy made it substantially less likely that JFK would win on the first ballot.)
Putting someone who had signed the Southern Manifesto on the national ticket would be incredibly risky in close northern and border states like Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, where the African American vote could make the difference. LBJ was the ideal running mate because he had southern support yet had not signed the Manifesto--indeed the southerners didn't want him to sign it because they knew that would destroy his chances of winning the Democratic presidential nomination. LBJ even got the support of some black political leaders like Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., something Smathers could never have gotten. And if LBJ declined and JFK was still insistent on a southerner, there were others less toxic to northern liberals and African Americans than Smathers--Albert Gore, Sr. of TN for example.
Florida was still a rather small southern state in 1960--it had only 10 electoral votes, no more than KY or LA. But in the very unlikely event JFK wanted to put a Floridian on the ticket, LeRoy Collins would be at least marginally more plausible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LeRoy_Collins
Also, as I wrote here a couple of years ago, "There is also the obvious fact that seems to be ignored here that LBJ, Symington, Scoop Jackson, Humphrey and the other people mentioned for the vice-presidency were all men of stature, men who could be taken seriously as president--as could Henry Cabot Lodge on the Republican side. One reason that Smathers was never seriously mentioned is that he was an obvious lightweight who could not be taken seriously as president. That might not have changed many votes, but in as close a race as 1960 not that many votes had to be changed. Nixon's claim that JFK was a frivolous immature playboy--in contrast to the more "mature" Nixon--would only be strengthened by choosing someone solely because he was a personal friend....Smathers was a pal, no doubt. But Bebe Rebozo, another Floridian, was Nixon's pal (actually it was Smathers who got them acquainted!) and I doubt that Nixon ever considered him as a running mate."
First of all, Nixon lost the 1960 election in the North, not the South. The only two southern states that he lost by less than four points--TX and SC--would not be enough to give Nixon a majority in the Electoral College or even deprive JFK of his own Electoral College majority. Even if we very dubiously assume that Symington would lead to Nixon carrying NC as well (JFK carried NC by 4.22 points), that would still not give Nixon an Electoral College majority but would at most lead to the election going into the House, where JFK would almost certainly win. Second, Symington was considered a border state moderate-liberal, not nearly as offensive to the South as, say, Humphrey would have been.
So I know it's not likely, but let's play this out.
Bill Clinton (Democratic) 1993-1998 (Impeached, removed)
James Trafficant (Democratic) 1998-2005 (Impeached, removed)
William Jefferson (Democratic) 2005-2005 (Impeached, removed)
Dennis Hastert (Republican) 2005-2006 (Impeached, removed)
Ted Stevens (Republican) 2006-2007 (Impeached, removed)
God only knows who (Whatever party if any) 2007-
In fairness, though, Breckinridge--in contrast to Buchanan--supported Douglas in 1858 despite their disagreements over the Freeport Doctrine and the Lecompton Constitution. Breckinridge in 1860 had the support of the Rhetts and the Yanceys but was not really one of them. But while he was not a fanatical secessionist (though he felt that if the South did secede, KY should go with it) he would not have offered even the limited resistance to secession that Buchanan did.
No. But Hanna, who disliked TR, wanted John Davis Long selected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Davis_Long This would have given us our only president to have translated the Aeneid into English... https://books.google.com/books?id=lFj9K61drqYC&pg=PA1
There was never any likelihood of that. If Ike wanted to replace Nixon with anyone, it was Secretary of the Treasury Robert Anderson, a conservative Texas Democrat whose abilities Ike greatly respected. See my post at
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...uring-the-1956-election.436542/#post-16485262 where i observe that "more attention should be paid to the possibility that Ike was absolutely sincere when he tried to persuade Nixon that taking a Cabinet post, and thus getting important executive experience, would be a better base for a successful presidential campaign in 1960 than remaining as vice-president. After all, the last sitting VP to be elected president (as opposed to becoming president by the incumbent president's death) was Martin Van Buren in 1836. Irwin F. Gellman makes the argument for Ike's sincerity in *The President and the Apprentice: Eisenhower and Nixon, 1952-1961,* pp. 311-313..."