Continued
1982
As the year 1981 came to a head over the summer and autumn months of the Eastwood Presidency, the economy began to show signs of a slow rebound: manufacturing indices had spikes between six and eight percent during the first six months in the year, and though this jump had begun to slow after July, it nevertheless demonstrated that the economy was on track to recover from the grinding slow-down of the previous decade.
President Eastwood capitalized on this glad tiding. At a press conference on September 4th of that year, he told the American people:
And not only America. A very particular American - longtime Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart - retired in July of 1981, leaving a seat vacant for the first time in Eastwood's Presidency. The nation watched to see what manner of jurist Eastwood would select for the role, with tremendous pressure mounting from the Republican Right to appoint a Right to Life judge to counteract what that wing saw as a plague of judicial activism stemming from the
Roe vs. Wade case.
But Eastwood, typically, would choose his own approach to the matter. After several days of internal debate, Eastwood announced his choice:
Aaron Director, libertarian, teacher of law at the University of Chicago, and close confidante of Justice Secretary Edward Levi.
The choice was immediately controversial: elected Democrats denounced Director's economic views, with Senate Minority Leader Robert Byrd going so far as to call Director a "kleptocrat". Conservatives were fairly unhappy with Director's less-than-conservative leanings on issues of civil rights as well; Senator Steven Symms of Idaho threatened to boycott Director's nomination.
Still the President held his ground. Speaking to a group of reporters the day before hearings commenced, he told them:
Director was later confirmed with only token opposition.
I world events, the Soviet Union, having erroneously taken President Eastwood as a foreign-policy hardliner prior to his Inauguration, now seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief at the relative lack of bellicosity emanating from the White House at this time. So great was its good-feeling that it invited Eastwood to Geneva to begin the famed "zero option" talks: a joint effort to reduce tension through the world by removing all intermediary-ranged nuclear weaponry from Europe on both sides. This effort served as a lynchpin of Eastwood's foreign policy programme: if he could negate the tremendous expenses incurred by maintaining a massive nuclear arsenal stationed half a world away, he could, with time, re-emphasize the role of a more traditional military in the arena of national defense, and thereby de-escalate the possibility of nuclear war between the two superpowers.
And his preliminary efforts, at least, were successful. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) was passed by both Houses of Congress and signed into law on March 2nd, fully a year and a half before it was expected. A compromise was reached on the issue of weaponry stationed in Great Britain, which had long been expected to undermine the entire effort: the Soviet Union would agree to permit a "wet blanket" of short-ranged missiles to be stationed indefinitely in the United Kingdom in exchange for a withdrawal from continental Europe. In turn, Premier Brezhnev made concessions in the realm of domestic human rights, and allowed for a gradual liberalization of the economy under the aegis of a neo-NEP -- a process many external observers would come to regard as having been inevitable, considering the extent of decay within the centralized Soviet Economy.
The INF treaty was met with tremendous applause both domestically and around the world; even the President's harshest critics were stunned by the extent to which it relieved internal pressure on the United States. Several of those critics, however, anticipated what they assumed to be the inevitable invasion of continental Europe in light of the Treaty. The charges came from those that Eastwood had now taken to calling "the usual suspects", in particular General Haig. From a press conference held March 22nd:
The announcement came as little surprise to either the Administration or astute observers of the inter-party politics of the GOP. Nor was Haig the only high-profile defection: Jesse Helms, leading Southern Republican, had this to say about the President in a frank interview with
Time:
The President's approval ratings stood at 54%-46% on April 1st.
