List of Alternate Presidents

[Captain Chaos]

41. Warren B. Rudman (R-NH): January 20th 1989-January 20th 1993

41. first Jewish President

[Captain Chaos]

Nixon's The One

35. Richard M. Nixon (R-CA): 1961-1969
36. Hubert H. Humphrey, Jr. (D-MN): 1969-1975
37. Albert Gore, Sr. (D-TN): 1975-1977
38. Robert Finch (R-CA): 1977-1981
39. Brendan Byrne (D-NJ): 1981-1989
40. John Warner (R-VA): 1989-1997
41. Mel Carnahan (D-MO): 1997-2000
42. Hubert H. “Skip” Humphrey III (D-MN): 2000-2009
43. W. Mitt Romney (R-MA): 2009-Current

Notes:
36. Died from inoperable cancer on January 11, 1975

37. Lost to Governor Robert Finch in 1976

39. First Roman Catholic President

40. First Southerner elected President since James K. Polk in 1844. Secretary of Defense during the Finch Presidency and elected Senator in 1982

41. Died in plane crash on October 17, 2000. Succeeded by Vice President Humphrey

42. Carnahan’s name remained on the ballot as President. After the Carnahan-Humphrey ticket defeat the Republican McCain-Cheney ticket that November, President Humphrey asked the Democratic Electors to elect Senator Albert Gore Jr. for Vice President. In a special session, Congress voted to approve Gore and he was sworn in before Thanksgiving.

43. Elected to the US Senate in 1994 after Bobby Kennedy’s retirement. Elected Governor in 2002 and defeated Vice President Gore in 2008 due to recession to become the first Mormon President

[Captain Chaos]

Rocky Road

I posted a list of alternate governors of New York in a universe in which Rockefeller wins the GOP nomination and is elected President. The following list starts with the Rockefeller Presidency.

35. Nelson Rockefeller (R-NY): 1961-1969
36. Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX): 1969-1972
37. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown (D-CA): 1972-1973
38. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ): 1973-1977
39. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY): 1977-1985
40. Howard Baker (R-TN): 1985-1993
41. Mario Cuomo (D-NY): 1993-2001
42. John McCain (R-AZ): 2001-2005
43. Joseph P. Kennedy II (D-MA): 2005-Current

Notes:
36. Died in office of heart attack on 1/20/72

37. First Roman Catholic President

[Captain Chaos]

Spirit of Independents

37. Richard Nixon (R-CA): January 20, 1969-October 5, 1973
38. Spiro Agnew (R-MD): October 5, 1973-October 10, 1973
39. Carl Albert (D-OK): October 10-October 12, 1973
40. James Eastland (D, I-MS): October 12, 1973-August 9, 1974
41. Thomas P. O'Neill (D-MA): August 9, 1974-January 20, 1981
42. Fred Harris (D-OK): January 20, 1981-January 20, 1985
43. Pierre DuPont IV (R-DE): January 20, 1985-January 20, 1993
44. Paul Tsongas (D-MA): January 20, 1993-January 18, 1997
45. James Hunt (D-NC): January 18, 1997-January 20, 2001
46. Angus King (I-ME): January 20, 2001-January 20, 2009
47. L. Douglas Wilder (I-VA): January 20, 2009-Current

Notes:
37. The stresses of dealing with the Watergate scandal and the legal problems of Vice President Spiro Agnew resulted in a phlebitis attack and cardiac arrest which took President Nixon’s life.

38. Agnew’s Presidency would last only 5 days. He became the first President to resign the office after pleading guilty to tax evasion and other corruptions charges dating back to his days as Baltimore County Executive and Governor of Maryland.

39. With the Presidency and Vice Presidency vacant, Speaker Carl Albert was next in line to become President. According to Bob Woodward’s biography published in 1981, Albert intended to nominate House Minority Leader Gerald Ford for Vice President and resign the Presidency once Ford was inaugurated. But that never became reality as Albert’s drinking problems contributed to his death after only two days as President, the shortest tenure of any Presidency. The House of Representatives did not yet elect a new Speaker when President Albert died. Thus giving us the Presidency of…

40. James Eastland became the first Senate President Pro Tempore to move up to the Presidency. An unreconstructed, bigoted segregationist, Eastland had his work cut for him. In his first official act as President, Eastland fired Henry Kissinger as Secretary of State and nominated retired General Curtis Le May. The Senate declared that nomination dead on arrival. His attempts to nominate a new Vice President were no better. Congress refused to confirm Richard J. Daley, Lester Maddox (which got Eastland kicked out of the Democratic party), William Westmoreland and Meldrim Thompson. Many prominent Democrats and Republicans pleaded with President Eastland to pick Gerald Ford, but Eastland refused to nominate “that n***er loving, socialist coddling, Zionist.” But the final straw came when Eastland pressured Federal prosecutors to bring charges against numerous black politicians. After the House passed Articles of Impeachment, the Senate voted 97-3 to convict Eastland and remove him from office (only Senators Jesse Helms, John Stennis and John Bell Williams, appointed to replace Eastland, voted not to convict).

41. Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill became the fourth President in 11 months. He vowed to restore honor back to the Presidency and even reached out to Republicans for cabinet appointments, such as former Congressman George Bush for Secretary of Commerce and convinced George Romney to return to the cabinet as Secretary of HUD. O’Neill nominated former Senator Fred Harris for Vice President. O’Neill lobbied Congress to pass a highway construction bill and modest tax cuts which resulted in lowering the unemployment rate and cutting inflation. O’Neill also succeeded in reaching a trade agreement with Canada resulting in opening up Canada’s oil supply and reducing American dependence on foreign oil. In foreign affairs, O’Neill convinced Israel and Egypt to sign a peace treaty, and handed over the Panama Canal back to Panama. On the other hand, the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and continuing sectarian violence in Northern Ireland happened on O’Neill’s watch. In 1976, O’Neill won the election over former California Governor Ronald Reagan. O’Neill left office with popularity ratings reaching 70 percent and is rated among the top ten greatest Presidents.

42. Harris defeated Senator Robert Dole in 1980 to win the White House. When a Supreme Court seat opened up, President Harris nominated former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan and she became the first female Supreme Court Justice. Harris failed to win reelection due to the recession of 1983-1984 and the pullout from US Marines from Lebanon after a terrorist suicide bomb attack on their barracks.

43. President DuPont would preside over the most conservative administration as his Cabinet was filled corporate, business-friendly types. DuPont pushed for the largest tax cut in history that was championed by Treasury Secretary William Roth and Commerce Secretary Jack Kemp. Also, ownership of public housing in the inner cities was transferred to its residents. The economic recovery helped to reelect DuPont in 1988. In his second term, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 resulted in military action that drove the Iraqis from that country. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wanted to march into Baghdad and capture Saddam Hussein but was overruled by DuPont. However, the CIA provided covert assistance to the Kurdish and Shiite rebellions that overthrew Saddam on December 25, 1991. But the recession and Savings & Loan scandals hurt the Republicans as former Senator Paul Tsongas defeated Vice President Malcolm Wallop in 1992.

44. President Tsongas’ pro-business liberalism resulted in a much needed economic recovery and decreased the budget deficit. In foreign affairs, Tsongas’ Secretary of State Claiborne Pell was able to broker an agreement that returned Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from exile and averted a possible civil war in Rwanda. Iraq would emerge as a beacon of democracy in the Middle East. In late 1995, Tsongas cited the recurrence of his cancer in deciding not to seek reelection.

45. Vice President and former Senator Jim Hunt easily won the Democratic Presidential nomination. He joins James K. Polk as the only North Carolinians to serve as President. He continued the economic policies of his predecessor and was able to eliminate the deficit by 1998. President Hunt’s biggest foreign policy challenge came from the troubles in Yugoslavia. Heeding Defense Secretary Sam Nunn’s advice, Hunt did not get involved militarily but backed economic sanctions and a NATO blockade of Yugoslavian ships. Vuk Draskovic defeated incumbent President Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia and made an uneasy peace with Kosovo and restored its autonomy which ended the sanctions. Hunt decided not to seek reelection in 2000.

46. With the Democrats nominating John Kerry (too liberal) and the Republicans nominating  James Inhofe (very conservative), former Maine Governor Angus King capitalized on the ideological divide and selected Senator John McCain (R-AZ) as his running mate. The King/McCain ticket swept the Northeast, New England, West Coast and interior Western states. President King’s first order of business was to take on wasteful spending and to amend the Constitution to give the President a line item veto. The 9/11/01 terrorist attacks thrust the United States into a War on Terror. The US led a coalition of NATO countries and even Iraq in the invasion of Afghanistan and put the Taliban and al-Qaeda out of business. British troops found Osama bin Laden’s hiding place in Kandahar. In the ensuing battle, bin Laden and Taliban leader Mohammad Omar were killed (good riddance). Iraqi troops patrolled Afghanistan’s countryside, allowing American, Canadian and British troops to concentrate their presence in and around Kabul. Hamid Karzai became the first democratically elected President of Afghanistan in 2001 and retired in 2009 to make way for his successor Ahmad Shah Massoud. King easily won reelection over Senator George Allen (R-VA) and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY). On March 4, 2005, Vice President McCain suffered a fatal heart attack. Congress confirmed former Virginia Governor Doug Wilder as the first African-American Vice President. With peace in Afghanistan, King was able to broker a landmark peace deal resulting in a Palestinian homeland (after some covert gun running operations to Fatah that ended Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip). King would share the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israel Prime Minister Tzipi Livni.

47. First African-American President. Wilder decided to run as an Independent instead of seeking the Democratic nomination (went to New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson). The Republicans nominated former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in a divided convention.  Wilder inherited Angus King’s supporters and won most of the South. Shortly after Wilder’s inauguration, the Line Item Veto Amendment was added to the Constitution. At press time, Wilder enjoys job approval ratings of 55-60 percent.

[Captain Chaos]

43. George W. Bush (R) / Dick Cheney (R) : 2001-2009 *
44. Barack Obama (D) / Joe Biden (D) : 2009-2013 *
45. Sarah Palin (C) / Bobby Jindal (C) : 2013-2025*
46. Chelsea Clinton (L) / Galvin Newsom (L) : 2025-2031*



43. Last GOP President
44. Last Democrat President
45. First Conservative Party President, First Female President, First Hindu-turned-Catholic
46. First Liberal Party President

The US Constitution limits a President to two terms.

[Captain Chaos]

READ MY LIPS. NO NEW TARIFFS.

POD: President Hoover vetoes the Smoot-Hawley Tariff (no stock market crash and no Great Depression)

31. Herbert Hoover (R-CA): 1929-1937
32. Newton Baker (D-OH): 1937
33. Huey P. Long (D-LA): 1937-1940
34. William Bankhead (D-AL): 1940
35. Samuel T. Rayburn (D-TX): 1940-1941
36. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (R-NY): 1941-1943
37. William H. Vanderbilt III (R-RI): 1943-1949
38. Franklin D. Roosevelt (D-NY): 1949-1952
39. Albert “Happy” Chandler (D-KY): 1952-1961
40. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ): 1961-1963
41. Earl Warren (R-CA): 1963-1969
42. Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX): 1969-1972
43. John F. Kennedy (D-MA): 1972-1974
44. James Allen (D-AL): 1974-1977
45. Barry Goldwater, Jr. (R-CA): 1977-1985
46. James Holshouser (R-NC): 1985-1989
47. David McCurdy (D-OK): 1989-1995
48. J. James Exon (D-NE): 1995-1997
49. John McCain (R-AZ): 1997-2005
50. Benjamin Chandler (D-KY): 2005-Current



Notes:
32. Died in office on December 25, 1937

33. First impeached President removed from office by Senate vote on corruption charges, July 2, 1940

34. Advances to Presidency from Speaker of the House. Died September 15, 1940

35. Speaker of the House and candidate for re-election to his Congressional District when President Bankhead died; returned to Speaker’s chair after completing his 4 months as President.

36. Died of heart attack on November 24, 1943

37. Vice President and former Rhode Island Governor (1939-1941) celebrated his 41st birthday when he learned the news of Roosevelt’s death. Youngest to become POTUS

38. FDR was Governor of New York (1929-1935) and US Senator (1935-1949), becoming Senate Majority Leader when Democrats won back control of Congress in the 1946 elections. As President, FDR continued Vanderbilt doctrine of Lend Lease to countries fighting Communist rebellions. As a result, the French captured Marxist Ho Chi Minh and defeated the Communists in Vietnam, Chiang Kai Shek and the Nationalists won the Chinese Civil War, and Korea was united after Kim Il Sung’s compound was destroyed by hydrogen bombs. Roosevelt would enjoy 60 percent job approval ratings entering 1952 but the stress of fighting the Cold War took its toll and he suffered a fatal stroke on March 14, 1952.

40. Assassinated November 22, 1963 in San Francisco. President Goldwater traveled to California to raise money for the Republicans. The GOP was caught in a tug of war between its conservative wing led by Governor William Knowland and liberal wing led by San Francisco Mayor George Christopher.

41. Warren’s legacy as President was the numerous anti-poverty legislation and creation of Social Security for the elderly, which was opposed by conservatives. But his failure to defeat Communist rebels in Cuba resulted in his decision not to seek reelection in 1968.

42. Once LBJ was sworn in as POTUS, he did what Warren would not do in Cuba. After withdrawing 10,000 Marines from Cuba, Johnson dropped hydrogen and napalm bombs on the Sierra Maestre Valley where the Commies had their headquarters. The bombs killed over 20,000 people (mostly innocent civilians) including Ernesto “Che” Guevara and brothers Fidel and Raul Castro. The remaining Communists surrendered and the war was over. In 1972, Johnson would defeat former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller in a 49 state landslide. While celebrating Christmas at his ranch in Texas and preparing for his second term, LBJ suffered a fatal heart attack.

43. First Roman Catholic President. Died of complications from Addison’s Disease on August 8, 1974

47. Inaugurated at the age of 37, making him the youngest POTUS to date. Killed during bombing of Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995

48. Did not run for POTUS in 1996 and retired.

[Captain Chaos]

Rocky Road

37. Nelson Rockefeller (R-NY): 1969-1972
38. Edmund Muskie (D-ME): 1972-1977
39. Richard Nixon (R-CA): 1977-1985
40. Thomas Foley (D-WA): 1985-1993
41. Mario Cuomo (D-NY): 1993-1997
42. John McCain (R-AZ): 1997-2002
43. Lamar Alexander (R-TN): 2002-2005
44. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA): 2005-Present

Notes:
37. Former Vice President Nixon was the favorite to win the GOP nomination until suffering an attack of phlebitis in June 1968, forcing him to end his campaign. Governor Ronald Reagan of California threw his hat in the ring but Rockefeller convinced nearly half of Nixon's delegates to switch their support. To satisfy Reagan's supporters, Rockefeller selected Senator Paul Fannin of Arizona as his running mate.

However, many rank-and-file Republicans could not stomach their party’s nomination of Rockefeller and took a second look at George Wallace’s independent candidacy. Wallace would win most of the Southern states and win Kentucky by just 300 votes (Rocky took Florida and Virginia). On Election Night, Rockefeller would win the most Electoral Votes but fall short of the 270 required to win election. The Wallace-Le May ticket finished in third place.

After three ballots in the House, Rockefeller was elected President on the third ballot as many liberal and Northern Democrats switched their support, including the New York and Massachusetts delegations. In the Senate, Fannin and Muskie were tied at 50 votes apiece. Hubert Humphrey cast the tie-breaking vote for his running mate Ed Muskie and he was elected Vice President.

The Rockefeller administration would be remembered for passing progressive legislation including The Clean Air Act, Environmental Protection Act, Earned Income Tax Credit and enforcement of Civil Rights and court-ordered busing. In foreign policy, Rockefeller was assisted by Secretary of State Richard Nixon, Secretary of Defense Henry “Scoop” Jackson and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger. By Christmas 1971, the tide in Vietnam would turn against the Communists and their Vietcong allies. A napalm attack on Ho Chi Minh City would destroy over 90 percent of the city and wipe out North Vietnam’s Communist leadership. South Vietnam took advantage of the anarchy and rode their tanks into the city. Vietnam was finally reunited.

Unfortunately, tragedy would strike after this victory. During a January visit to Ottawa, an American named Arthur Bremer was able to get close to President Rockefeller as he got into his limousine and fired the shots that ended his life. On January 16, 1972 at 2:25PM, Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was pronounced dead. He was 63. Bremer currently is serving a life sentence in a Canadian prison.

38. Now the new President, Muskie decided to keep most of Rockefeller’s cabinet except for Jackson who he nominated for Vice President. Muskie would make his historic visit to China which resulted in diplomatic recognition by 1976. Muskie defeated Governor Reagan in a landslide in November 1972. But rising inflation and foreign policy disasters such as the Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia doomed Muskie’s reelection chances. After resigning as Secretary of State after the 1972 elections, Nixon returned to California and wrote a best-selling memoir which kept his name in the public eye. His campaigning for Republican candidates in 1974 resulted in the GOP winning control of the House and elevating Gerald Ford to Speaker. Nixon easily defeated John Ashbrook and Meldrim Thompson in the Republican primaries and clinched the Republican nomination. He picked Senator John Tower of Texas as his running mate (helped to sweep the South).

39. Nixon would concentrate his Presidency on foreign policy. His crowning achievement was the Peace Treaty ending the state of war between Israel, Egypt and Jordan. He also used covert CIA support to crush the Iranian Revolution and convince the Shah to reform that country’s political system. Nixon also warned Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev not to conquer Afghanistan. Domestically, Nixon pushed for modest tax cuts and a health insurance plan featuring a limited public option, portability of insurance plans and allowing the insurance industry to conduct business across state lines; Senator Ted Kennedy’s support ensured Democratic votes. Vice President Tower would not run for President in 1984 for personal reasons (his alcoholism was worst kept secret).

40. The Democrats nominated Tom Foley, former Agriculture Secretary (1972-1975) and elected to Scoop Jackson’s former Senate seat in 1976 after Daniel Evans decided not to seek reelection. His running mate, Governor Mario Cuomo of New York, gave a memorable acceptance speech. The Democrats defeated the GOP ticket of John Anderson and George Bush in 1984. Under President Foley’s watch, covert Iranian backing of Kurdish and Shiite rebellions in Iraq resulted in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the return of democracy to that country (there was no Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s).

41. Leaving office with 70 percent approval ratings, Foley passed the baton to Cuomo and Vice President Bob Graham. Unfortunately, a lousy economy and Cuomo’s Hamlet on the Hudson approach to decision destroyed his political capital. Cuomo shocked the country when he decided not to seek reelection in 1996.

42. The stresses of fighting the War on Terror took a toll on President McCain and he died of a heart attack on the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

43. President Alexander continued McCain’s policies. But his decision to attack Syria (and removing Bashir Assad) despite not finding nuclear weapons in that country was unpopular, and would cost him the 2004 election.

44. First female and Jewish President of the United States. She ordered all troops removed from Syria and was praised for her handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Her push to reform the banking industry prevented a recession in 2008. She easily defeated John McKernan (Vice President, 2002-2005) that November.

[Captain Chaos]

For Want of a Bathtub

The POD is that President Taft is unable to get out of his bathtub which fatally suffocates him and results in a much different world than OTL. The Republicans emerge as a progressive, centrist party and Democrats become a small-government, socially conservative party.

27. William H. Taft (R-OH): 1909-1911
28. James Sherman (R-NY): 1911-1912
29. James “Champ” Clark (D-MO): 1912-1921
30. Theodore Roosevelt (R-NY): 1921-1923
31. Frank Lowden (R-IL): 1923-1929
32. Cordell Hull (D-TN): 1929-1933
33. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. (R-NY): 1933-1941
34. Herbert Hoover (R-CA): 1941-1949
35. Dwight D. Eisenhower (D-PA): 1949-1955
36. Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. (D-MA): 1955-1961
37. Quentin Roosevelt (R-NY): 1961-1963
38. Richard M. Nixon (R-CA): 1963-1968
39. Hubert H. Humphrey (R-MN): 1968-1969
40. Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. (D-MA): 1969-1977
41. George H.W. Bush (R-CT): 1977-1985
42. Howard Baker (R-TN): 1985-1989
43. Charles Robb (D-VA): 1989-1993
44. Paul Tsongas (R-MA): 1993-1997
45. John D. Rockefeller IV (R-NY): 1997
46. John S. McCain (D-AZ): 1997-2003
47. Mark Sanford (D-SC): 2003-2005
48. Olympia Snowe (R-ME): 2005-2013

Notes:
27. Died in office, September 11, 1911

28. Died in office due to complications from gallstones, February 8, 1912

29. First sitting Speaker of the House to move up to the Presidency. His 9 years and 1 month in office makes Clark the longest serving President to date. Clark refused to declare war on Germany after the sinking of the Lusitania because it and other ships were warned that it would be sunk by its U-boats. With the USA sitting out the Great War, a stalemate of sorts was declared in 1917. The German monarchy survived but the Kaiser would end up as a figurehead ruler by the 1940s. A consequence of this war was that the Reich refused to allow Vladimir Lenin to travel through Germany and return to Russia. Lenin remained in exile in Switzerland until his death in 1923. The White Army won the Russian civil war in 1917 and abolished the monarchy; Alexander Kerensky was the first democratically elected President of the Russian Republic and would serve in office until his retirement in 1942.

30. Eager to win back the White House, the Republicans nominated former President Roosevelt (with US not fighting in the war, his son Quentin lives). TR would be in failing health and die of a heart attack on August 2, 1923. He was succeeded by Vice President and former Illinois Governor Frank Lowden.

33. Elected Governor of New York in 1928 and re-elected in 1930, TR Jr. was viewed as the frontrunner for the GOP Presidential nomination in the wake of an economic recession which Hull was unable to solve. Roosevelt would continue the trust busting policies of his father and get his “New Deal” economic recovery program passed. With the help of Agriculture Secretary Henry Wallace, Roosevelt convinced Congress to pass landmark price support reforms, tax breaks for agricultural production, rural electrification and establish the Tennessee Valley Authority. By the time he left office, the unemployment rate fell to 4 percent. Roosevelt refused to run for a third term for health reasons (he was a heavy smoker and died of lung cancer in 1943).

34. Former Congressman and Commerce Secretary Hoover clinched the GOP nomination. A staunch supporter of civil rights, President Hoover instructed US Attorney General Thomas Dewey to prosecute violations of existing civil rights laws and enforce voting rights for blacks in the South. When Governor Earl Long of Louisiana vowed to physically block the entrance at Tulane University to prevent an African-American student from enrolling, Hoover federalized the Louisiana National Guard and Dewey personally threatened Long with arrest if he did not get out of the way. In foreign affairs, Hoover asked Congress to declare war on Japan after the December 1942 bombings of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, Alice Springs in Australia, Vladivostok in Russia, and the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong. This brought Russia, China, the United Kingdom and all of its Dominions on the side of the United States in the Pacific War. With no war in Europe, the coalition would invade Japan by the summer of 1943, cripple Japan’s air force and surround Tokyo. Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s surrender. With a landslide victory in 1944 and an increased Republican Congress, Hoover had the political capital to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1945 which ended all institutional segregation and discrimination, especially in the South.

35. A hero of the Pacific War, General Dwight Eisenhower and his running mate, Governor Joseph Kennedy of Massachusetts, won a landslide victory in 1948 against the Republican ticket of Robert Taft and John Foster Dulles. Eisenhower’s term was dominated by passage of the Federal Highway Act of 1950 and foreign policy achievements that included the founding of the United Nations, the creation of the Dominion of Palestine in 1949 (to be ruled jointly by Arabs and Jews, which had the support of the architect of the1930 Statute of Westminster and former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill), the Chinese Civil War of 1947-1950 (won by Chiang Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang), and the demotion of General Douglas Macarthur. The stresses of the Presidency contributed to Eisenhower’s fatal heart attack while vacationing in Colorado with his in-laws.

36. First Roman Catholic President. The Kennedy Presidency would continue the policies of the Eisenhower Administration and pursue a pro-business agenda. Kennedy would be the last President to serve without a Vice President and he lobbied Congress to pass a Constitutional Amendment that enabled the President to nominate a Vice President if that position was vacant, subject to confirmation of the House and Senate. Also during this time, the Department of War was reorganized through the McCarthy-Russell Act of 1956 which changed the Department of War to the Department of Defense, created the Air Force from the Army Air Corps and Navy Air Corps, and brought the Departments of the Army and Navy under the authority of the Department of Defense. When the bill became law, President Kennedy named Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Joseph McCarthy (Republican of Wisconsin) the first Secretary of Defense (serving until his death in 1958). Kennedy and his running mate, Ambassador Adlai Stevenson, won in a landslide in 1956 over Senator William Knowland and his running mate Senator Glenn Beall. The Kennedy-Stevenson administration would meet an array of challenges that included the Lebanese Civil War of 1957-1958, the Suez Canal Crisis, the recession of 1958-1960, and CIA assistance to Iraq in stopping a coup attempt by the military against the monarchy. Two years after the Democrats won back control of Congress, the Republicans won it back in the 1958 elections.

37. Quentin Roosevelt was a Congressman from New York (1943-1947), Governor (1947-1955) and US Senator (1957-1961) when he and his running mate, Senator Richard Nixon of California defeated the Democratic ticket of Adlai Stevenson and Albert Gore in 1960. Roosevelt was assassinated on November 22, 1963 in Los Angeles while raising money for the California Republican Party (and to settle a political feud between Senator Earl Warren and Governor William Knowland).

38. While President Nixon would successfully push for progressive anti-poverty legislation and Medicare, and win a landslide victory in 1964 over Democrat Strom Thurmond, the rest of his Presidency would be plagued by the never ending civil war in Cuba between loyalists to President Fulgencio Batista and rebels led by Fidel Castro. The stresses in dealing with the conflict and a primary challenge from Senator Eugene McCarthy led to an attack of phlebitis which ended Nixon’s life on August 9, 1968.

39. Humphrey now inherited the headaches of the Presidency. He was nominated in a divisive Republican convention which saw Eugene McCarthy and his delegates walk out. (Humphrey had nominated Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine for Vice President) McCarthy declared an independent candidacy for President and selected Oregon Governor Mark Hatfield as his running mate on a peace ticket. The Democrats nominated Senator Joseph Kennedy, Jr. of Massachusetts in a more peaceful and united convention in Chicago. Kennedy selected Senator George Wallace of Alabama as his running mate and ran a campaign on peace with honor in ending the Cuban Civil War. The Kennedy-Wallace ticket won in a landslide.

40. Kennedy went straight to work in healing the divisions in America. Domestic accomplishments included passing the Earned Income tax Credit, creation of the Department of Transportation, and free trade agreements with the UK and its dominions. Talks brokered by Secretary of State J. William Fulbright resulted in the Treaty of Miami that ended the war (Fulbright would win the Nobel Peace Prize) and returned democracy to Cuba. Castro ran for elected office and served as Prime Minister of Cuba from 1972-1984. Kennedy would have to select a new Vice President after George Wallace was assassinated in 1972 by Arthur Bremer at a shopping center in Maryland. Congress easily voted to confirm Treasury Secretary John Conally for Vice President.  The Kennedy-Conally ticket won a 49 state landslide against George McGovern and his running mate, New York City Mayor John Lindsay (referred to as the “acid, amnesty and abortion” ticket by Senator Thomas Eagleton). The honeymoon would be short indeed as President Kennedy had to deal with the OPEC embargo that resulted in long lines at the gas station, Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor, terrorism in the Middle East committed by the Baath Liberation Organization (BLO) which operated in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine (BLO founder Saddam Hussein was Number 1 on Interpol’s Most Wanted), and Congressional investigations on CIA involvement in the military coup in Chile.

[Captain Chaos]

41. Bush never moved to Texas, and followed in his father’s political footsteps in Connecticut. He was elected to Congress in 1964 and Governor of Connecticut in 1970. Bush was viewed as the frontrunner for the GOP nomination after his 1974 reelection. Popular with Jews, blacks and middle class professionals, Bush cruised to the Republican nomination in 1976. His historical choice of Rep. Barbara Jordan, the first African-American Congressman from Texas, unified the Republican Party. On the other hand, the Democrats were a divided party. Vice President Conally had to fend off challenges from Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina and Governor Ronald Reagan of California. Conally selected bombastic, former Los Angeles Mayor Robert Dornan for Vice President (defeated for reelection in 1973 by Tom Bradley). Democrats all over the country avoided the bigoted and homophobic Dornan at all costs, especially after calling Barbara Jordan a lesbian (which she revealed in 1986). Bush became the first Republican to win the electoral votes of Virginia and Florida, and took 97 percent of the African-American vote. Bush’s Presidency would be regarded as a peaceful and prosperous time. His biggest accomplishment was the South & North American Free Trade Agreement (SNAFTA) which created the largest free trade zone on Earth. When Vice President Jordan retired in 1980 for health reasons, Bush selected Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker as his running mate.

42. To date, Baker is the only Tennessean elected to the Presidency. The recession and S&L crisis proved to be his undoing and he was defeated for reelection in 1988 by former Virginia Governor Charles Robb.

43. Robb was able to reverse the recession through tax and spending cuts. He would also declare a war on terror after a coalition of rogue army officers and BLO terrorists assassinated the Emir of Kuwait and slaughtered the royal family in 1990. For the first time, the BLO headed a sovereign government. President Robb ordered the Marines heading an international coalition to remove the BLO from power and offered a $1 million reward for the capture of fugitive BLO leader Saddam Hussein. By January 1991, American, Iraqi, Palestinian and Syrian tanks marched into Kuwait City and removed the BLO which literally fought to the last man. Ironically, Iraqi troops would find Saddam in a basement of a hideout near the Iraq-Kuwait border. Saddam was hung in Baghdad a month later. What brought down the Robb Presidency were allegations of marital infidelity and drug use. A former Miss Virginia admitted to having an affair with Robb.

44. Former Senator and Commerce Secretary Paul Tsongas won the Republican nomination and selected Senator John D. “Jay” Rockefeller IV of New York as his running mate. President Tsongas would be praised for balancing the budget and tax reform. Favored to win reelection in 1996, Tsongas announced that he had cancer and did not seek reelection. Vice President Rockefeller won the Democratic nomination but lost to Senator John McCain. Rockefeller would yet serve as President when Tsongas died on January 18, 1997 (two days before his term was up).

45. Rockefeller’s two day Presidency is the shortest tenure in history.

46. President McCain’s first term was marked by the first reorganization of the Federal Government since 1956, and a Constitutional Amendment giving the President of the United States line item veto power. His second term was dominated by another War on Terrorism. This time, it was the terrorist group Islamic Brotherhood led by Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, and with training camps in Sudan. On September 11, 2001, four planes were hijacked by 19 men, mostly Egyptian and Sudanese who lived in the USA. Two of those planes hit the World Trade Center, one plane hit the Pentagon and another plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania as the passengers fought back and may have prevented the plane from striking the White House or the Capitol Building. In a speech before a joint session of Congress attended by British Prime Minister Christopher Patten, Egyptian President Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Palestinian Prime Minister Yasser Arafat, McCain asked Congress to declare war against Sudan. The Americans and British Commonwealth led the international coalition that defeated Islamic Brotherhood and the Sudanese military dictatorship. Al-Zawahiri was killed in a gunfight with Egyptian troops while Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir was captured alive. Bashir was tried for crimes against humanity and harboring terrorists. The pressures of leading the War on Terror took its toll on McCain leading to his fatal stroke. He died on June 15, 2003 and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

47. President Sanford decided not to seek reelection after admitting to an extramarital affair during a trip to Argentina when he was Vice President. Jenny Sanford, former First Lady, got her divorce before her husband left office.

48. First female President of the United States

[Captain Chaos]

Liberal Republicans & Conservative Democrats

POD: Richard Nixon is elected POTUS in 1960. During his administration, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (same is OTL) is passed and he never pursues a Southern Strategy. Civil Rights would cause a split in the Southern (conservative) and Northern (liberal) wings of the Democratic party, and a realignment in the two parties beginning in the 1970s. Blacks and younger liberals would reject the Democratic party of their parents and find a home in the Republican party.

35. Richard M. Nixon (R-CA): 1961-1969
Vice President: Henry Cabot Lodge

Nixon's successful first term was highlighted by a successful Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba that removed Fidel Castro and installed an interim government leading to free, democratic elections (and no Cuban missile crisis) and passage of the Civil Rights Act which ended institutional discrimination in the South and ending Jim Crow laws. After the Democrats nominated Lyndon B. Johnson for President in 1964, Southern segregationists walked out and formed the American States Rights Party which nominated Senator Strom Thurmond for President and Rep. John Ashbrook (R-OH) for Vice President. The ASRP won 6 southern states plus Arizona and Idaho. As for the Democrats, the intra-party split would be unfixable. LBJ was defeated for re-election by John Tower. John F. Kennedy retired from the Senate in 1964 due to health problems and was succeeded by his brother, Bobby who ran for President in 1968 but was assassinated. Governor George Wallace of Alabama capitalized on this by running on a law and order platform and winning the Democratic nomination for President. Wallace picked Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson as his running mate. Enraged, many non-Southern Democrats formed the Progressive party and nominated Senator George McGovern for President and Rep. Stewart Udall for Vice President. The Republicans nominated Vice President Lodge and he picked Senator John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, a moderate acceptable to the border states and upper South. The result was a Republican landslide as the Progressives won the District of Columbia and Hawaii. The Democrats won the Deep South and Washington State. The GOP won the rest.

36. Henry Cabot Lodge (R-MA): 1969-1970
Vice President: John Sherman Cooper

President Lodge achieved passage of the Clean Air Act of 1970, creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Earned Income Tax Credit. Lodge's life was tragically cut short when he was assassinated in Miami by Arthur Bremer on February 27, 1970.

37. John Sherman Cooper (R-KY): 1970-1973
Vice President: Robert Finch (Governor of California from 1967-1970)

Cooper became only the second Kentucky-born President (the other was Abraham Lincoln). He faced a recession and OPEC imposed oil price hikes. The Democrats united behind Senator Ed Muskie and his running mate Albert Gore Sr. as they ended 20 years of Republican control of the White House.

38. Edmund Muskie (D-ME): 1973-1981
Vice Presidents: Albert Gore Sr. (1973-1977), Lloyd Bentsen (1977-1981)

Muskie would govern as a "New Deal" Democrat and his Cabinet reflected the makeup of the Democratic party coalition with Scoop Jackson as Secretary of Defense and Southerners holding a majority of Cabinet posts (including Secretary of State J. William Fulbright). In 1976, Vice President Gore retired and Muskie was reelected in a landslide over the Finch/Dole ticket and ending the GOP's 12 year control of the House and Senate. But in Muskie's second term, the conservative/liberal rifts that hurt the Democrats in 1964 and 1968 split the party again. In 1978, Muskie needed help from the Republicans to ratify the Panama Canal Treaty over opposition led by conservative Democrat Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina. In 1979, the controversial Airline Deregulation Act became law and President Muskie refused to allow the deposed Shah of Iran into the United States for medical treatment (resulting in Jackson's resignation as Secretary of Defense). The increasing conservatism of the Democratic party resulted in widespread switches to the Republican party, including Rep. Patricia Schroeder of Colorado, Rep. Philip Burton of California, and Senator George Mitchell of Maine (appointed to President Muskie's Senate seat). But the most shocking party switch was from Rep. Claude Pepper of Florida in 1978. When Vice President Bentsen won the Democratic nomination and selected Jesse Helms as his running mate, the rest of the House Black Caucus switched en masse to the Republicans (Shirley Chisholm, elected Speaker of the House in 1979, switched to the Republicans in 1968). The realignment of the Republican party was complete, and would prove crucial to the 1980 election of


39. Edward Brooke (R-MA): 1981-1989
Vice President: Jack Kemp

Brooke was elected the first African-American President of the United States in 1980, and his coattails resulted in a Republican controlled Senate. The newly-elected Senators included: Bill Clinton of California, born in Arkansas to a Democratic family who decided to move to California to practice law and be active in the Republican party there. He was elected to the State Assembly in 1976 and won an upset victory over incumbent Senator Alan Cranston. Also elected to the Senate was Elizabeth Holtzman, a former Democrat who switched parties in 1976  and succeeded the retiring Jacob Javits.

The Brooke administration would preside over investment in the inner cities with passage of Urban Enterprise Zones and the Housing Reform Act in 1981, pet projects championed by Vice President Kemp when he served in Congress.

40. Robert Casey (D-PA): 1989-1993
Vice President: Martha Layne Collins

As Governor of Pennsylvania, Casey signed legislation restricting abortions and cut income taxes in half. Collins became the first female Vice President. After leading the US led coalition to victory in the Persian Gulf War and cutting unemployment, President Casey shocked the nation in late 1991 when he announced that he had cancer and would not seek reelection in 1992. Collins won the Democratic party nomination for President. But her campaign was hampered by several gaffes and reports of extramarital affairs that forced Senator Chuck Robb to resign as Collins' running mate in September (he was replaced by Treasury Secretary David Boren).

41. Hubert H. Humphrey III (R-MN): 1993-2001
Vice President: William J. Clinton

Previously Governor of Minnesota and the son of a Democratic US Senator, Humphrey won the Republican nomination over Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, former Senator Paul Tsongas and former Governor Jerry Brown. The Humphrey administration would be regarded as an era of normalcy which witness the rise of the internet. Humphrey became the first President to have an e-mail address. President Humphrey would mediate a peace treaty between Jordan and Israel in 1995 (earning him the Nobel Peace Prize) and the creation of the Republic of Palestine in 1999. Vice President Clinton won the Republican nomination for President in 2000 but rumors of marital infidelity and his role in a failed S&L in his hometown of Bakersfield, California hurt his campaign. It was only after the votes in Florida was counted, that the next President of the United States was





 

[Captain Chaos]

42. William Bennett (D-VA): 2001-2004
Vice President: Ben Nelson

The first Catholic elected Governor and US Senator from Virginia, Bennett was a leader of the "Religious Right" wing in the Democratic party. The support of evangelists Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell helped Bennett sweep the Southern primaries and win the Democratic party nomination. On September 11, 2001, tragedy struck when planes struck both Twin Towers in New York City and part of the Pentagon. When it was determined that the planes were hijacked by members of al-Qaeda and Hamas, President Bennett declared a War on Terror. By year's end, the al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and Hamas training camps in Palestine's Gaza Strip were destroyed and US Marines drove out the ruling Taliban from Kabul. Osama bin Laden, founder of al-Qaeda, was captured at the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. He was executed in 2002. Buoyed by his evangelist base, President Bennett ordered the invasion of Iraq and removal of Saddam Hussein from power. The Republicans protested and routed the Democrats in the 2002 midterm elections. There were also allegations that President Bennett once lost over $1 million gambling in Las Vegas. The stress was too much for Bennett and he suffered a fatal heart attack on January 15, 2004.

43. Ben Nelson (D-NE): 2004-2005
Vice President: Donald Rumsfeld

President Nelson promised to continue the policies of his predecessor. The Republicans united behind Senator Lincoln Chafee who ran on a platform of removing the troops from Iraq where over 2,000 US soldiers were killed. Chafee's landslide victory in 2004 brought more Republicans to Congress, which included a freshman Senator from Illinois named Barack Obama.

44. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI): 2005-Present
Vice President: Alan Wheat (former Governor of Missouri and first African-American Vice President)

Chafee came into office with a mandate to bring back the troops home from Iraq, which he did in 2007. In Afghanistan, unhappiness with corruption under its President Hamid Karzai resulted in his impeachment by the loya jirga and his removal from office; he was replaced by former Foreign Minister Dr. Abdullah Abdullah and he promised to clean house. Passage of financial regulation reform in 2006 was credited with staving off bankruptcies of Citigroup and Lehman Brothers. Chafee easily won a second term in 2008 and looks forward to returning home to Rhode Island in 2013.

[Captain Chaos]

FDR Dies in 1921: Rise of the Progressives

The POD is that the polio that struck Franklin D. Roosevelt during his vacation in 1921 turns fatal. Due to butterflies, Robert LaFollette Sr. runs a stronger campaign paving the way for the Progressive Party to become the major opposition to the Republicans after the stock market crash of 1929 and winning the White House in 1932

31. Herbert Hoover (R-CA): 1929-1933
32. Burton K. Wheeler (P-MT): 1933-1941
33. Robert LaFollette, Jr. (P-WI): 1941-1946
34. Henry Wallace (P-IA): 1946-1949
35. Charles Lindbergh (R-MI): 1949-1950
36. Harold Stassen (R-MN): 1950-1953
37. Dwight Eisenhower (D-PA): 1953-1959
38. Adlai Stevenson (D-IL): 1959-1961
39. Claude Pepper (P-FL): 1961-1964
40. Hubert H. Humphrey (P-MN): 1964-1973
41. Charlton Heston (D-MI): 1973-1978
42. Edward Brooke (R-MA): 1978-1981
43. Charles Matthias (P-MD): 1981-1989
44. Roger Staubach (D-TX): 1989-1997
45. Dianne Feinstein (P-CA): 1997-2005
46. Hillary Rodham Daley (D-IL): 2005-2009
47. Michael Bloomberg (P-NY): 2009-Present

Notes:
32. First Progressive Party nominee elected POTUS. Pushed OTL version of the New Deal to get the country out of the Great Depression and during his second term, he announced that the country would stay out of a possible future war in Europe. This included no Lend Lease to the United Kingdom in 1940. With no help from the US, Prime Minister Winston Churchill was forced to resign after six months in office.

33. Son of 1924 Progressive Party nominee, the younger LaFollette succeeded his father in the US Senate. Did not run for President in 1932 and many historians speculated it was due to his bouts with depression. He served as US Attorney General during the Wheeler administration, and in this position he discovered that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover engaged in unconstitutional activities against organized crime including illegal wiretapping (resulting in President Wheeler firing Hoover in 1936). LaFollette promised to continue Wheeler’s neutrality policies regarding World War II. However, that promise was broken when the Japanese attacked US military bases in Guam, the Philippines, and Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941. When Germany declared war on the USA, President LaFollette asked Congress to declare war on Germany. This enabled LaFollette to request Lend Lease for the UK (signed an armistice which Germany) which pleased Prime Minister Lord Halifax. By the summer of 1944, the Allies defeated the Third Reich and Italy, ending the war in Europe. A week before Election Day, the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which forced the Japanese to surrender

President LaFollette’s second term turned out to be more difficult as the conversion to a peace time economy led to a recession and labor unrest. While LaFollette supported the creation of the United Nations and NATO, he opposed foreign aid (earlier end to World War II meant the USSR was unable to spread Communism to Eastern Europe, therefore no Marshall Plan. Instead, there was a ten-year moratorium on American tariffs on European goods). Combined with the Communist takeovers in China and North Korea, the Republicans were able to end the Progressive majorities in Congress in the 1946 elections. On November 22, 1946, LaFollette was discovered dead at his desk in the Oval Office due to an overdose of sleeping pills.
 
34. Wallace served as Secretary of Agriculture in the Wheeler administration and was Vice President under LaFollette. Facing a Republican Congress and its (mostly southern) Democratic allies, Wallace was unable to get any legislation passed. Tired of 16 years of Progressive control of the White House, the GOP ticket of Senator Charles Lindbergh of Michigan and Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen won a landslide victory of President Wallace and his running mate, Senator Harry Truman of Missouri, and the Democratic ticket of Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia and former Oklahoma Governor Robert Kerr.

35. A famous aviator and a leading isolationist, Lindbergh was elected to the US Senate in 1944. He reluctantly agreed to accept the Republican nomination for President after the national convention was deadlocked between Thomas Dewey and Robert Taft. Lindbergh was seen as acceptable to conservatives and moderates in the party. In his short time in office, President Lindbergh was able to get the Taft-Hartley Act passed. With the help of Progressives and northern Democrats, the Civil Rights Act of 1949 was passed (15 years earlier than OTL). On November 1, 1950, Lindbergh was assassinated by Puerto Rican nationalists Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo.

36. Stassen’s Presidency was plagued by a stalemate in the Korean War, a backlash from conservatives over his firing of General Douglas Macarthur for insubordination, and racial riots stemming from the assassination of civil rights activist, Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.

37. A hero of World War II, General Eisenhower decided to run for the Democratic Presidential nomination and he benefited from a Stop Estes Kefauver movement at the convention as Southern delegates and the moderate wing of the Democrats supported Eisenhower. Americans liked Ike and not even President Stassen or Progressive Party nominee Vito Marcantonio could stop the Democrats from winning its first Presidential race since 1916. The stresses of dealing with the crises in Cuba and the Middle East resulted in Eisenhower suffering a fatal heart attack on August 30, 1959.

39. Pepper became the first Progressive elected to the US Senate from the South. His popularity at home ended the Democrats monopoly in Florida politics. In 1956, Pepper was Wayne Morse’s running mate. In 1960, he was unchallenged for his party’s nomination and selected Hubert Humphrey as his running mate. Due to the unpopularity of President Stevenson and the extreme conservatism of the Knowland-Goldwater ticket, Pepper won a 42 state landslide. Tragically, Pepper’s life was cut short due to the stress of dealing with the American-Cuban War and he suffered a fatal stroke on January 14, 1964.

[Captain Chaos]

40. Humphrey’s 9 years and 6 days in office is the longest serving Presidency to date. Inheriting the American-Cuban War from Pepper, the conflict ended in 1965 at the Battle of Sierra Maestre with the US victorious (the Cuban army fought to the last man). Anti-communist exiles returned to Cuba to draw up a constitution and return democracy to the island, which it remains to this very day.

41. A former actor, Heston became a leading voice of the conservative movement with his “Time for Choosing” speech at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. His popularity from that speech led to his election as Governor of California in 1966. His election to the Presidency in 1972 brought realignment in politics as the Democrats became more conservative. A recession and rising gas prices marked his first term. Although Republican Nelson Rockefeller had a plurality of popular and electoral votes, the 1976 election would be decided by Congress. Rockefeller’s running mate, Senator Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, was elected Vice President by the Senate due to the combined support of Republicans and Progressives (the result was announced by Vice President Robert F. Kennedy in his role as President of the Senate). In the House, the Democrats had the majority and controlled 27 state delegations; Heston was reelected.

After Heston was re-inaugurated, reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered a wiretapping scandal and an attempted burglary at the Progressive Party’s National office near the Watergate Hotel. The backlash resulted in the Progressives sweeping the 1978 Congressional races. Faced with impeachment hearings by the incoming new Congress, Heston resigned from the Presidency on December 21, 1978.

42. First African-American President

44. First former professional athlete elected President (Governor of Texas from 1983-1989)

45. First female President

47. First Jewish President

[Captain Chaos]

Wouldn't the CSA go after Cuba if Castro had come to power?

[Captain Chaos]

The Assassination of President-Elect JFK
The POD is that Richard Pavlick assassinates Senator John F. Kennedy after he is elected President in 1960.

35. Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX): 1961-1969
36. Nelson Rockefeller (R-NY): 1969-1972
37. Melvin Laird (R-WI): 1972-1977
38. Robert F. Kennedy (D-MA): 1977-1985
39. James E. Carter (D-GA): 1985-1989
40. Robert Dole (R-KS): 1989-1993
41. Albert Gore Jr. (D-TN): 1993-2001
42. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (D-NY): 2001-2009
43. John E. "Jeb" Bush (R-FL): 2009-President

Notes:
35. Elected President by the Electoral College. Stuart Symington was elected Vice President. LBJ accomplished passing the 1963 Civil Rights Act and a myriad of anti-poverty programs but his administration would be burdened by the quagmire in Cuba. After the successful Bay of Pigs invasion in which Castro was removed from power and replaced by a democratically elected government, US Marines had to battle pro-Castro rebels in the countryside. The Democrats nominated Vice President Symington for POTUS in 1968 but his connection to LBJ proved to be a political liability.

36. Running on a campaign of law and order and bringing an honorable peace in Cuba, President Rockefeller brought the troops home after rebel leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara was killed by US Marines in battle. On the domestic front, Amtrak and the EPA were created. Tragically, Rockefeller was assassinated in New Hampshire in January 1972 by Arthur Bremer.

37. Riding on sympathy for the slain Rockefeller, President Laird pledged to continue his agenda and made a historic visit to China. He easily won a full term that November over Senator George McGovern. But things went downhill after his inauguration. First was the resignation of Vice President Robert Matthias in 1974 over personal scandal. Next came the fall of Laos and Cambodia to the Communists, anti-busing riots, and the drinking problems of Secretary of Defense John Tower. After barely winning the GOP nomination in 1976, Laird lost reelection to Governor Robert F. Kennedy of Massachusetts

38. First Roman Catholic President. Bobby Kennedy was appointed in 1960 to his brother's Senate seat and served there until his election as Governor in 1970.

39. Governor of Georgia (1967-1971), US Senator (1971-1977) and Vice President (1977-1985), Carter won a close race for President in 1984 over Howard Baker. Citing health reasons, President Carter choose not to run for reelection in 1988.

42. Former Senator from New York (1987-1993) and US Attorney General in the Gore administration, RFK Jr. continued the domestic policies of Federalism as advocated by his father and President Carter. Job approval ratings peaked at 90 percent in the aftermath of the 9/11/01 terrorist bombings of the World Trade Center and Pentagon. While the War on Terror removed the Taliban from power in Afghanistan and resulted in the capture (and later execution) of Osama bin Laden, President Kennedy decided to leave Saddam Hussein alone in Iraq (he was overthrown in the 2011 Iraqi Civil War following the resignations of Presidents Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt).

US Senators from Massachusetts
Robert F. Kennedy (D): 1960-1971
John Volpe (R): 1971-1977
John Kerry (D): 1977-2001*
Nicole Tsongas (D): 2001-Present**

*resigned to become Secretary of State
**widow of former Senator Paul Tsongas, appointed to the seat by Governor Joe Kennedy

Governors of Massachusetts
John Volpe (R): 1961-1971
Robert F. Kennedy (D): 1971-1977
Michael Dukakis (D): 1977-1983*
Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. (D): 1983-1987**
William Weld (R): 1987-1995
Joseph P. Kennedy II (D): 1995-2003***
Scott Harshbarger (D): 2003-2007
Scott Brown (R): 2007-Present

*elected to the US Senate in 1984 after Paul Tsongas retired
**son of former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, did not seek reelection in 1986
***son and brother of Presidents RFK and RFK Jr, elected to US Senate in 2008 after Dukakis retired

Governors of New York
Nelson Rockefeller (R): 1959-1968
Malcolm Wilson (R-C): 1968-1975
Hugh Carey (D): 1975-1981*
Mario Cuomo (D-L): 1981-1991**
Robert Abrams (D-L): 1991-1999
Rudolph Giuliani (R): 1999-2007
Andrew Cuomo (D): 2007-Present

*resigned to become US Attorney General
**appointed to the Supreme Court in 1994, retired in 2006

US Senators from New York
Kenneth Keating (R): 1959-1971
Daniel P. Moynihan (D): 1971-1985*
Karen Burstein (D): 1985-1986**
Sol Wachtler (R): 1986-1995***
Mark Green (D): 1995-2007
Rudolph Giuliani (R): 2007-Present

*Vice President of the US (1985-1989)
**first openly gay US Senator, appointed by Governor Cuomo but lost 1986 special election
***did not seek reelection in 1994 in the wake of a sexual harassment scandal

[Captain Chaos]

So which State did Carter move to?  Georgia didn't have a Senate election in 1970, so he couldn't have been elected to one there.  (Or did you envisage Carter appointing himself to Russell's seat when he died?)

In this TL, Jimmy Carter wins the Democratic primary in 1966 and is elected Governor of Georgia. He cannot run for re-election in 1970. His successor, Carl Sanders appoints Carter to the Senate after Richard Russell's death in 1971. Carter is elected to a full 6 year term in 1972.

[Captain Chaos]

In His Own Right-A POD within a POD

For those of you familiar with the site Changing The Times, there is an alternate history titled “In His Own Right” in which the point of divergence is that Senator Mark Hanna lives a couple months longer leading Theodore Roosevelt to govern more progressively and eliminate reactionary, e.g. conservative, influence in the Republican Party. In a divergence, Roosevelt survives the assassination attempt at the eve of the 1916 GOP Convention and sparing the USA of an Albert Beveridge Presidency (and attempts to establish a dictatorship and crackdown on the Socialists leading to the 1920 revolt and establishment of a parliamentary system with a Prime Minister)

26. Theodore Roosevelt (R-NY): 1901-1913
27. James “Champ” Clark (D-MO): 1913-1917
28. Theodore Roosevelt (R-NY): 1917-1920
29. Warren Harding (R-OH): 1920-1921
30. Hiram Johnson (P-JE): 1921-1929
31. Franklin D. Roosevelt (P-NY): 1929-1931
32. George Norris (P-NE): 1931-1933
33. Upton Sinclair (S-CA): 1933-1941
34. Henry Wallace (S-IA): 1941-1946
35. Claude Pepper (S-FL): 1946-1950
36. Vito Marcantonio (S-NY): 1950-1953
37. Dwight Eisenhower (P-PA): 1953-1961
38. William Knowland (C-JE): 1961-1965
39. Hubert Humphrey (P-MN): 1965-1973
40. Ralph Yarborough (S-TX): 1973-1977
41. Frank Zeidler (S-WI): 1977-1981
42. Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown (P-JE): 1981-1989
43. Lamar Alexander (C-TN): 1989-1997
44. Paul Wellstone (S-MN): 1997-2003
45. Roberta Achtenberg (S-JE): 2003-2009
46. Pedro Rosello (P-PR): 2009-Present

Notes:

P=Progressive
S=Socialist
C=Conservative

28. Died in office

29. Succeeded William Howard Taft as Chairman of the Constitutional Party. As part of the deal to merge the Constitutional and Republican Parties, Harding accepted the Vice Presidential nomination. In 1920, former members of the Constitutional Party (conservative wing) dominated the state delegations to the Republican National Convention and nominated President Harding. Senator Johnson led a walkout of his supporters and announced his candidacy for President of the newly formed Progressive Party. Harding, seen as incompetent, was revealed as an alcoholic and adulterer. A former mistress revealed that she was the mother of Harding’s out-of-wedlock son. Johnson won every state except the South (won by the William Gibbs McAdoo); Ohio (only state won by Harding); and North Dakota, Indiana, Oklahoma, Wyoming and Cuba (won by Socialist nominee Eugene Debs)

31. A former Democrat, FDR served as Secretary of the Navy during Johnson’s first term and was the first Progressive elected Governor of New York in 1924 (Al Smith was the Democratic nominee for President that year). After serving two terms, Roosevelt was nominated for President in 1928 and picked Senator George Norris as his running mate. Seven months into his Presidency, the stock market crashed. While FDR convinced Congress to pass landmark bank reform, he insisted on keeping the budget balanced and opposed any kind of make work programs. The Socialists swept the 1930 midterm elections and won majorities in the House and Senate for the first time in history. With unemployment breaking 20 percent in 1931 and his popularity in decline, Roosevelt suffered a stroke and died on April 20, 1931.

33. Elected Governor of Jefferson (OTL Northern California) in 1930, Sinclair campaigned for President on the promise of a New Deal for the American people (his biggest and most shocking endorsement came from FDR’s widow Eleanor who switched her voter registration to Socialist and was elected to the US Senate from New York over incumbent Progressive Robert F. Wagner). President Sinclair’s legacy includes the Tennessee Valley Authority, Federally-owned public utility companies, the modern highway network, the Civil Rights Act of 1935 and rural electrification.

34. President Wallace would devote much of his administration in leading the country in war against Japan resulting from that country’s kamikaze attack on the Presidio in San Francisco on December 7, 1941. Forming an alliance with China, Union of Socialist Republics of Russia (USSR with a figurehead Tsar), United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands (whose territories and dominions in the Pacific and Southeast Asia were also attacked by Japan), the Allied Powers achieved victory on July 2, 1945 when atomic weapons fell on Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Yokohama. Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s surrender and sued for peace. The Treaty of Melbourne that officially ended the Pacific War awarded the Kurile Islands to the USSR, Manchuria to China, and required the Japanese to return land captured during the war back to its original owners. Japan had to cut its military in half and ban its military from serving in the government. Back at home, the conversion of most factories to peacetime use resulted in lost jobs and another recession. The pressures of governing caused great stress to President Wallace and he died of cardiac arrest on February 14, 1946.

35. US Senator from Florida (1936-1945) before his election as Vice President in 1944. With the support of labor unions, and black and Jewish voters, Pepper helped deliver Florida to the Socialist ticket in 1940 and 1944. Elected President in his own right in 1948, Pepper’s Presidency was cut down in its prime when he was assassinated by Puerto Rican pro-independence terrorists in 1950.

36. First Roman Catholic and first Italian-American President. Marcantonio was elected to Congress in 1932 and served 4 terms before his election as Governor of New York in 1940.  His neutral stances in the 1950 Korean Civil War and ethnic cleansing of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were criticized back home and resulted in the resignation of George Patton as Secretary of War. Americans tired of 20 years of Socialist rule elected General Eisenhower, hero of the Pacific War, to the White House with Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon as his running mate. The Conservative Party, founded by pro-business Southerners and what was left of the Republicans, nominated Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, and won New Hampshire, Arizona and Ohio.

41. Former Mayor of Milwaukee, US Senator from Wisconsin (1963-1977) before elected President. Defeated for reelection due to the recession of 1979-1980

42. Brown’s Presidency was defined by income tax cuts, environmental legislation, realpolitik in foreign policy and a centrist approach to governing. Many furious left wing members of the Progressives gravitated towards the Socialists. In Minnesota, Paul Wellstone convinced the Farmer-Labor Party to join the Socialists and end its 40 year old merger with the Progressives when that party nominated former Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt for President. This implosion in the Progressive ranks may have aided in the election of Lamar Alexander to the White House.

44. First Jewish President. In 2003, President Wellstone announced that he had leukemia and became the first President to resign from office.

45. First openly gay President and was previously Lieutenant Governor of Jefferson (1987-1991) and Mayor of San Francisco (1991-1997) before her election as Vice President in 1996.

46. First Hispanic President

[Captain Chaos]

Trumping the White House

POD: Fred Trump decides to try his hand at politics after a successful career developing middle class housing in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. In 1954, the Republican Party in New York nominates Trump for Governor instead of Senator Irving Ives. Trump is elected Governor in a close race over the Democrat Averell Harriman. In 1956, President Eisenhower offers Secretary of Defense to Vice President Nixon if he dropped from the ticket. Ike picks Trump as his running mate. In 1958, stress from dealing with the crisis in Lebanon results in a second heart attack for Eisenhower, this time fatal.

35. Frederick C. Trump (R-NY): 1958-1969
36. Hubert Humphrey (D-MN): 1969-1975
37. Stewart Udall (D-AZ): 1975-1977
38. Malcolm Forbes (R-NJ): 1977-1981
39. Gary Hart (D-CO): 1981-1989
40. Donald Trump (R-NY): 1989-1997
41. John Kerry (D-MA): 1997-2001
42. Hillary Rodham (R-IL): 2001
43. Colin Powell (R-NY): 2001-2005
44. Gray Davis (D-CA): 2005-Present

Notes:
36. Died of cancer

37. First Mormon President

38. Governor of New Jersey (1962-1970) and Republic nominee for Vice President (1972) as John Ashbrook’s running mate.

39. Governor of Colorado (1975-1981), Hart promised to remove all American troops from Iran if elected President in response to President Forbes’ unpopular decision to send troops there to intervene in that country’s civil war. Reza Cyrus Pahlavi, who succeeded his father as Shah of Iran in 1980, agreed to reforms reducing the monarchy to a ceremonial figurehead role and autonomous governments for the Arab and Kurd minorities. Hart and his Secretary of State Eliot Richardson would share the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts in brokering peace to Iran.

40. Son of former President Trump, Donald graduated from Harvard Law School and became a lawyer. In 1978, he was elected Attorney General of New York. When Senator Jacob Javits retired in 1980, Trump was elected to the Senate although Hart easily carried New York. In the Senate, Trump co-authored the Trump-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1985. In 1988, Trump defeated Vice President Jimmy Carter to win the Presidency

42. Attorney General (1983-1991), Governor of Illinois (1991-1997), and first female President. The Rodham Presidency came to a tragic end on September 11, 2001 when a plane hijacked by Muslim terrorists deliberately crashed into the White House during a meeting with Vice President William Janklow, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, Senate President Pro Tem Ted Stevens and Treasury Secretary Steve Forbes. Secretary of State Powell was in Toronto meeting with Canada’s Foreign Minister at the time of the terrorist attack.

43. When the smoke cleared, the line of succession went to Powell who became the first African-American President of the United States. He declared a war on terror and ordered military air strikes on terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and removal of the Taliban from power. By the end of October, Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Mullah Muhammad Omar were killed and Ahmad Shah Massoud was elected President of Afghanistan. Despite 80 percent popularity ratings, President Powell decided not to run in 2004.

44. Governor of California (1999-2005), Davis united the progressive and isolationist wings behind his candidacy. With his running mate Dennis Kucinich, Davis easily defeated former Secretary of Defense John McCain in 2004. Presently, Davis presides over a healthy economy and enjoys 60 percent job approval ratings.

[Captain Chaos]

Having now seen two lists of alternate Presidents in which Stassen wins the Presidency long past any possible relevancy, I shall make my own, one which I hope is more realistic.

34. Harold Stassen (R-MN)/Douglas MacArthur (R-AR) 1949-1957
35. Adlai E Stevenson (D-IL)/John F Kennedy (D-MA) 1957-1962
36. John F Kennedy (D-MA)/vacant, George Smathers 1962-1969
37. Richard M Nixon (R-CA)/Nelson Rockefeller (R-NY) 1969-1975
38. Nelson Rockefeller (R-NY)/Howard Baker (R-TN) 1975-1981
39. Ernest Hollings (D-SC)/Lloyd Bentsen (D-TX) 1981
40. Lloyd Bentsen (D-TX)/Gary Hart (D-CO) 1981-1989
41. Mark Hatfield (R-OR)/John Chaffee (R-RI) 1989-1993
42. David Boren (D-OK)/Albert Gore Jr. (D-TN) 1993-2001
43. Lincoln Chaffee (R-RI)/Colin Powell (R-PA) 2001-2009
44. James Webb (D-VA)/Evan Bayh (D-IN) 2009-Present

Liberal Republicans, Conservative Democrats

[Captain Chaos]

Based on "What If Gordon Banks Had Played"

1976: Ronald Reagan (R-CA)/Richard Schweiker (R-PA)
1980: Walter Mondale (D-MN)/James Wright (D-TX)
1984: Walter Mondale (D-MN)/James Wright (D-TX)
1988: Donald Rumsfeld (R-IL)/Lamar Alexander (R-TN)
1992: Lawton Chiles (D-FL)/John D. Rockefeller IV (D-WV)
1996: Lawton Chiles (D-FL)*1/John D. Rockefeller IV (D-WV)
1998: John D. Rockefeller (D-WV)/Joseph Lieberman (D-CT)*2
2000: John D. Rockefeller (D-WV)/Joseph Lieberman (D-CT)
2004: Joseph Lieberman (D-CT)/Kathleen Kennedy Townshend (D-MA)*3
2008: Tommy Thompson (R-WI)/J.C. Watts (R-OK)*4

1. Died of heart attack while exercising in the White House Gym
2. First Jewish Vice President and President
3. First Female and Roman Catholic Vice President
4. First African-American Vice President

[Captain Chaos]

Civil Rights is a little too sucessfull
1968 - Martin Luther King Jr./Ceaser Chavez
1972 - Martin Luther King Jr./Ceaser Chavez
1976 - Jesse Jackson/Walter Washington
1980 - Jesse Jackson/Walter Washington
1984 - Clarence Thomas/Colin Powell
1988 - Clarence Thomas/Colin Powell
1992 - Walter Washington/Douglas Wilder
1996 - Colin Powell/Alan Keyes
2000 - Colin Powell/Alan Keyes
2004 - Douglas Wilder/Mosley Braun
2008 - Alan Keyes/Ezola Foster
2012 - Barack Obama/Jimmy McMillian

Now this list is ASB. And the rent is too damn high

[Captain Chaos]

Where are they now? Other characters in "The Rise of the Liberal Republicans"

Ronald Reagan (R) Formerly a member of the Liberal Republicans, Reagan became a Conservative in 1962 after having endorsed the Republican nominee three elections in a row. He was elected to the Senate in 1964 and Governor of California in 1970. Despite being a candidate for President in 1980, he lost in the Republican primareis to Vice-President Martin Luther King Jr. He placed second in front of Governor Robert F Kennedy of Massachusetts.

Barry Goldwater Jr. (R) The son of President Goldwater, Barry Goldwater Jr. served as Congressman from California (1969-1972), Whitehouse Chief of Staff (1973-1978), Governor of California (1979-1987), and Senator from California (1987-1993). He was Republican Vice-Presidential nominee in 1992 but declined to run for anything after that.

Ron Paul (R) Besides Barry Goldwater Jr., one of President Goldwater's other proteges was Ron Paul who served as a Congressman from Pennsylvania (1975-1978), Whitehouse Chief of Staff (1978-1981), and returned to Congress in 1983. Serving from then to 2003 when he became Governor of Pennsylvania. After one term, however, Paul retired. He was a candidate for the Republican nomination in 1992, 1996, and 2000, as well as the Vice-Presidential nominee of the "Liberty Party" ticket in 1988.

John Chaffee (LR) Governor of Rhode Island (1963-1969), Secretary of the Navy (1970-1973), Senator from Rhode Island (1973-1993), and finally Secretary of War (1993-1999), John Chaffee was an expert politician and a proud member of the "Blueblood" wing of the Liberal Republican party, meaning the North-Easterners. His son, Lincoln Chaffee, who served in his Senate seat (1993-2001), was elected Vice-President by the Senate after Vice-President elected Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash.

John Warner (R) Secretary of the Navy (1973-1978), Senator from Virginia (1979-2003), and Secretary of War (2005-Present), John Warner is another veteran politician and a more moderate member of the very conservative Republican Party.

Hubert H Humphrey (LR) Icon of the Liberal Republicans and Senate Majority Leader during the Nixon years, Humphrey never got to be President, going down in flames in 1960 to the popular and charming Vice-President Smathers. However, he was re-elected to the Senate and continued to serve, becoming Senate Majority Leader after his boss, Lyndon Johnson, left for the Vice-Presidency.

Eugene McCarthy (LR) Two-term Senator from Minnesota, McCarthy's most lasting legacy is a doomed run for the Presidency in 1972 on a third-party ticket after having failed to snatch the LR nomination away from Vice-President Johnson. A bigger icon of the "New Left" than Johnson would ever be, McCarthy is well remembered by peace protesters and so called "Groovies" of the late 1960's and early 1970's.

Nelson Rockefeller (LR) 1960 Vice-Presidential nominee, Nelson Rockefeller's career began in 1933 and ended fifty years later. Working in local politics, Rockefeller had not only the advantage of money, but also the advantage of connections forged by his grandfather the late Nelson W Aldrich who althrough a Republican, was a hero to his grandson. In 1941, Rockefeller was rewarded with his first national position, Postmaster General (1941-1945). After heading back to New York following the beginning of FDR's second term, Rockefeller was elected Mayor of New York City with the backing of FDR, Thedore Roosevelt Jr., and incumbent Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. He served there from 1946 to 1949. After his four years there, Rockefeller headed back to Washington, being appointed by President Wallace Ambassador to the League of Nations, a post which Rockefeller filled from 1950 to 1953. Back in New York after the Liberal Republicans were out of power, Nelson Rockefeller set his sights on the highest position available to him at the time: Governor of New York (1955-1965). During his time there he expanded government, became known as a "tough on crime Liberal", expanded funding for the arts and signed a repeal of abortion prohibitions in the state. After his landslide loss on the Liberal Republican ticket as Vice-Presidential nominee in 1960, Rockefeller hoped to be well set up for 1964, having managed to bring New York into Humphrey's rather small fold. No such luck as Richard Nixon, the "comeback kid" came roaring back with a string of vistories in the Western, Southern, and Mid-Western primaries and won the nomination. However, upon Nixon taking office, Rockefeller was appointed Secretary of State. Despite it being later revealed in confidential tapes that Rockefeller and his friend Ambassador Kissinger were both hated by Nixon, Rockefeller dutifully served from 1965 to 1973. In 1974, Rockefeller won his fourth race for Governor of New York and was re-elected in 1978. On December 31st, 1982, Rockefeller's public career would end and he would die only a few months later in his mistress' home. He was a candidate for the Liberal Republican Presidential nomination in 1960, 1964, 1972, and 1976.

Calvin Coolidge (R) Governor of Massachusetts 1919-1925, Coolidge was the Republicans' 1924 Presidential nominee. He made the case for limited government, a return to Federalism, enforcement of Civil Rights Laws, and other things. However, he was defeated by President LaFollette by a solid margin.

What ever happened to: George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham, Barack Obama, Strom Thurmond?

[Captain Chaos]

FDR the Republican

The POD is that Franklin Delano Roosevelt decides to pursue his political career as a Republican after voting for his distant relative, President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904. In 1906, he is elected to a US House district in New York City previously represented by William Randolph Hearst. In 1914, FDR is elected to the US Senate. In the favorable Republican year of 1918, Roosevelt defeats State Assembly Speaker Alfred Smith for Governor of New York. Two years later, Roosevelt is nominated by the Republicans for Vice President.

1920: Warren G. Harding (R-OH) *1/Franklin D. Roosevelt (R-NY)
1923: Franklin D. Roosevelt (R-NY)/vacant
1924: Franklin D. Roosevelt (R-NY)/Irvine Lenroot (R-WI)
1928: Herbert Hoover (R-CA)/Charles Curtis (R-KS)
1932: Millard Tydings (D-MD)/Herbert Pell (D-RI)
1936: Millard Tydings (D-MD)/Herbert Pell (D-RI)
1940: Franklin D. Roosevelt (R-NY) *2/Alfred Landon (R-KS)
1944: Franklin D. Roosevelt (R-NY) *3/Alfred Landon (R-KS)
1946: Alfred Landon (R-KS)/vacant
1948: Ernest McFarland (D-AZ)/Alben Barkley (D-KY)
1952: Thomas Dewey (R-NY)/Robert LaFolette (R-WI) *4
1954: Thomas Dewey (R-NY)/vacant
1956: Thomas Dewey (R-NY)/Hubert H. Humphrey (R-MN)
1960: Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. (D-MA) *5/Ronald Reagan (D-CA)
1963: Ronald Reagan (D-CA)/vacant
1964: Ronald Reagan (D-CA)/Albert Gore Sr. (D-TN)
1968: Mark Hatfield (R-OR)/Robert Taft Jr. (R-OH)
1972: Mark Hatfield (R-OR)/Robert Taft Jr. (R-OH)
1976: Robert F. Kennedy (D-MA)/Jimmy Carter (D-GA) *6
1980: John Anderson (R-IL)/Morris Udall (R-AZ) *7
1984: John Anderson (R-IL)/Morris Udall (R-AZ)
1988: Richard Thornburgh (R-PA)/Eliot Richardson (R-MA)
1992: Albert Gore Jr. (D-TN)/Alphonse D’Amato (D-NY) *8
1996: Mitt Romney (R-MA)/Ronald Dellums (R-CA) *9
2000: Mitt Romney (R-MA)/Ronald Dellums (R-CA)
2004: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (D-NY)/John Edwards (D-NC) *10
2008: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (D-NY)/James R. “Rick” Perry (D-TX)

1. Died in office in 1923 (As Vice President, FDR does not spend his vacation in Campobello Island. Therefore, he is not stricken with polio)

2. First President since Grover Cleveland to serve non-consecutive terms

3. Stress of being war time President contributed to Roosevelt’s death from a stroke

4. Suffering from lifelong depression, Vice President LaFolette committed suicide from alcohol poisoning

5. First Roman Catholic President. Assassinated on November 22, 1963

6. RFK served as US Attorney General in his brother’s administration and that of his successor Ronald Reagan. After Edward Kennedy (elected in 1962 to JPK’s Senate seat) was killed in a plane crash in 1964, RFK resigned and stayed in seclusion at the family compound in Martha’s Vineyard. After a period of mourning his brothers’ deaths, RFK defeated self-appointed Senator Endicott Peabody in the Democratic primary and won election to the US Senate. He rose to Senate Majority Leader in 1972 and served in that capacity until 1975 when he successfully sought the Presidency. RFK’s Presidency would be tarred with wiretapping scandals, a kickback scheme that forced the resignation of Vice President Carter’s Chief of Staff Bert Lance and a primary challenge from Senator John Conally.

7. Udall became the first Mormon Vice President but decided to retire in 1988 for health reasons. Two months before his death in 1996, his son Governor Thomas Udall of New Mexico revealed that he first developed symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease in 1987.

8. Gore’s Presidency was doomed when he broke his no tax pledge and had to approve of tax increases and Medicare cuts to fund an increase in the debt ceiling. To top it off, Vice President D’Amato was the subject of articles in Newsday detailing the bribes he received for steering HUD-financed housing to relatives and political allies. D’Amato chose not to seek a second term as VP and was replaced on the ticket by California Congressman Robert Dornan. The Democrats still lost in a landslide.

9. First Mormon President and first African-American Vice President

10. Vice President Edwards did not seek reelection in 2008 for personal reasons. Publicly, he cited his wife’s cancer. In private, the FBI discovered that Edwards carried on an extramarital affair that produced an out-of-wedlock child. For that reason, President Kennedy “encouraged” Edwards to retire quietly. Texas Governor Rick Perry replaced Edwards on the ticket.

[Captain Chaos]

Awesome, but I have a feeling you might have lifted something from something Im currently working on.

Probably a coincidence.

[Captain Chaos]

Sharing The Wealth: A New Realignment

POD is the assassination of President-Elect Franklin D. Roosevelt by Giuseppe Zangara. Vice President-Elect John Nance Garner becomes President and governs as the Democratic Coolidge and there is no New Deal.

32. John Nance Garner (D-TX): 1933-1937
33. Huey P. Long (SOW-LA): 1937-1945
34. Henry Wallace (SOW, P-IA): 1945-1949
35. Earl Warren (DR-CA): 1949-1950
36. Joseph McCarthy (DR-WI): 1950-1952
37. Walter George (DR-GA): 1952-1953
38. Claude Pepper (L-FL): 1953-1961
39. Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. (DR-MA): 1961-1969
40. Hubert H. Humphrey (L-MN): 1969-1975
41. Fred Harris (L-OK): 1975-1981
42. Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown, Jr. (DR-CA): 1981-1985
43. John D. “Jay” Rockefeller IV (P-NY): 1985-1993
44. Patrick Leahy (P-VT): 1993-1997
45. Lamar Alexander (DR-TN): 1997-2005
46. Dennis Kucinich (S-CA): 2005-2009
47. Andrew Cuomo (P-NY): 2009-Present

Notes:

SOW=Share Our Wealth
DR=Democratic Republican
P=Progressive
L=Labor
S=Socialist Party of Labor

33. In the aftermath of FDR’s assassination, Huey Long strengthened security in Louisiana to the point that it became a de facto police state with a suspension of habeas corpus. These measures were credited with preventing an assassination attempt on Long in 1935. When the Democrats nominated President Garner and the Republicans nominated Alfred Landon, there were very little differences in political philosophy. Long ran to the left on a platform of taxing higher incomes, building highways and reforming the banking system and financial markets. As President, Long kept the United States neutral during World War II The alliance of the United Kingdom, France and the USSR defeated the German-led Axis.

34. Wallace served as Secretary of Agriculture during Long’s first term. Vice President William Borah died in early 1940, and Wallace was selected as Long’s running mate. Wallace was elected to President Long’s “third” term in 1944. This was the first election in which the conservative wings of the Democratic and Republican parties merged into the Democratic Republican party and nominated Senator Harry Hopkins (D-NY) for President and Governor John Bricker (R-OH) for Vice President. During the Wallace Presidency, the Soviet Union was able to spread Communism all the way to Austria, Greece and North Italy. The Empire of Japan granted dominion status for Korea and Manchukuo. His efforts to end segregation in the South split the Share Our Wealth party. And the arrest of Secretary of State Whittaker Chambers in 1946 for selling secrets to the USSR led to the Democrat Republicans ending the SOW majority in the House and Senate in the midterm elections. The SOW refused to nominate Wallace in 1948; he ran for re-election under the banner of the Progressive Party. The SOW nominated Senator Richard Russell of Georgia for President and Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina for Vice President. The Democratic Republicans nominated Governor Earl Warren for President and Senator Joseph McCarthy for Vice President, and won a landslide victory in 1948.

35. Assassinated by Puerto Rican nationalists in 1950.

36. First Roman Catholic President. His imposition of martial law in Puerto Rico turned into a revolt which resulted in the deaths of over 2,000 Marines who attempted to restore order. The turning point came with the summary execution of Dr. Ernesto “Che” Guevara, a mercenary from Argentina who aided the Puerto Rican rebels. The quagmire there resulted in the resignations of Dwight Eisenhower as Secretary of War, George Marshall as Secretary of State, and Thomas Dewey as Attorney General. With President McCarthy’s job approval ratings dropping to 20 percent in early 1952, Dewey challenged McCarthy for the nomination in the primaries. Dewey won 12 out of 15 states that had primaries but the remaining 33 states were behind McCarthy. Dewey ran as an Independent and selected George Marshall as his running mate. Strom Thurmond ran as the States Rights Democratic nominee for President with Senator James Eastland of Mississippi as his running mate (they won four deep South states). This allowed Claude Pepper to defeat McCarthy that November. After the election, a distraught McCarthy began drinking heavily and died of alcohol poisoning during a Thanksgiving visit to his family in Wisconsin.

37. Walter George, a former Senator who replaced Marshall as Secretary of State, served the remainder of McCarthy’s term of office.

38. Claude Pepper served as Vice President (1945-1949) during the Wallace administration. Pepper spent the next four years courting the Socialists, Progressives and former members of the Share Our Wealth Party (most of the southern SOW members would join the Democratic Republican party). The result was the creation of the Labor Party in 1951. At its first National Convention in San Francisco, the party adopted a civil rights plank. Pepper selected Senator Glen H. Taylor of Idaho as his running mate. The Labor ticket won a landslide victory with President McCarthy winning only Massachusetts, his home state of Wisconsin, and his running mate Willis Robertson’s home state of Virginia. During the Pepper Administration, the Department of War was reorganized, an interstate pipeline was established in the interior western states, Puerto Ricans voted for total independence, and Alaska and Hawaii were admitted as the 49th and 50th states. In foreign affairs, President Pepper took a realpolitik approach to the USSR and established the Pepper corollary to the Monroe Doctrine which advocated hands off policy to the internal affairs of Central and South America. As a result, Pepper refused to intervene in the Guatemalan Civil War that kept Jacobo Arbenz in power and did not impose sanctions on Cuba even after Fidel Castro overthrew the Batista regime in 1959.

39. JPK campaigned for the White House on a platform of getting American moving again and increasing defense spending. His brother and campaign manager, Congressman John F. Kennedy, was credited with the winning campaign. Vice President Taylor ran a second rate campaign and was often overshadowed by his running mate, Senator Hubert Humphrey. As President, Kennedy pursued a policy of détente with the Vienna Pact nations led by the USSR and intervened to prevent rebellions in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. To keep Cuba out of the Russian sphere of influence, President Kennedy offered to close down Guantanamo Bay, remove tariffs on Cuban sugar and provide financial assistance for modernizing the tourism industry, all of which Prime Minister Castro accepted (he would never declare himself a Marxist and in 1974, agreed to reinstate political parties that he banned when he came to power). On domestic policy, Kennedy’s goal of putting a man on the Moon became reality in 1967 and the income tax was cut from its high of 90 percent down to 28 percent. Despite leaving office with job approval ratings of 75 percent, Kennedy was unable to deliver victory to his party’s nominee Senate Minority Leader Lyndon Johnson and his running mate, Governor George Romney of Michigan. The Democratic Republicans convention was a disaster as Governor George Wallace led a walkout of Southern delegates, many of whom supported Barry Goldwater for President and were upset that a Mormon was chosen for the ticket (even members of Kennedy’s inner circle distanced themselves from LBJ).