Dueling Visions

[LastMcGovernite]

This new timeline is called “Dueling Visions,” partly because our point of departure ensures that the most famous duel in American history, that which took place between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, never happened. The reason it never happens is because Aaron Burr becomes president after the 1800 election–which, as many of you know, very nearly happened. At the time, the electoral college didn’t distinguish between presidential and vice-presidential ballots; each elector got two and you could vote for whoever you liked as long as they both weren’t from your own state. It was assumed by Democratic-Republicans that Jefferson was the presidential candidate and Burr the vice-presidential, but they ended up getting the exact same number of electoral votes, throwing the race into the House. Jefferson prevailed after several ballots, but suppose he hadn’t? The results will show competing...let's say dueling...visions for what America ought to be.

As with my other timelines, this story will be told through a series of presidential trading cards. To see them, you will need to be logged in.

1A and 1B, you can assume, are Washington and Adams’s cards as they would be in real life. So let’s start after the fissure in time….

[LastMcGovernite]

Our next batch.

[LastMcGovernite]

 Sharp-eyed readers may note that I used a picture of Ethan Allen Brown for Decatur, who was also president #9 in my first timeline https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=314898.0. I couldn’t help myself…Brown looks almost exactly like what I’d imagine Decatur would, had the latter lived to middle age. Also, I foresee ex-president Decatur perishing in a duel not long into retirement, the first of two presidents to die violently after leaving office in this timeline.

[LastMcGovernite]

In which I jump the shark...









Designer’s notes: See what I mean about jumping the shark? I’m not sure that someone as diehard southern as Hammond could have been elected, even as racial violence and prejudice inflamed the North. With Hector Johnson, we’re in new territory for my timelines…the first person who straight-up didn’t exist IRL. I have always been fascinated by Richard Mentor Johnson, someone who almost openly cohabited with a mostly-white slave woman and treated her for most intents and purposes as his wife (and couldn’t emancipate her because Kentucky law forbid it). And he even raised their daughters as his own. What if he and an exceptionally light-skinned slave had a son together, and Johnson raised him as his heir and ushered him into public life without anyone knowing his true heritage? I wonder…

[LastMcGovernite]

[LastMcGovernite]

Designer’s notes: This period is notoriously difficult for finding compelling presidential timber. In the end, I chose an intriguing figure who won multiple states as a third-party candidate in Weaver. I also considered–what if Southerners could actually get elected nationwide in the 1880s? Vance- a pro-industry man trying to remake an agricultural economy- worked. And then– if Franklin Pierce was never elected president, then he wouldn’t have taken his family on that fateful train ride that derailed, killing his young son Benny. What if Benny lived to adulthood? My guess is that he would have been a dough-faced bootlick like his father. Finally, Joseph Foraker– as a gold standard, high-tariff, morally respectable Ohio Republican, it’s striking that he wasn’t ever close to becoming president in our timeline. In fact, that’s part of the problem; fellow Buckeye McKinley had seniority over him, and Teddy Roosevelt took a shining to Taft, blocking his support within his home state.

[LastMcGovernite]

[LastMcGovernite]

[LastMcGovernite]

Thoughts? Comments?

[LastMcGovernite]

[LastMcGovernite]

Designer's notes: I love Birch Bayh. And I’m a little upset that he never became president in real life. Several years ago, I met James Armstrong, who was the most prominent Methodist pastor in Indiana back in the 60s. Sen. Bayh asked Armstrong to baptize his son Evan. Armstrong, a classic 60s liberal activist churchman who hated the party’s “Third Way” turn in the 1990s, told me that he only regretted not having held Evan underwater longer.

Also, Hawaii not being a state in this timeline, Hirono's family ended up in Washington state instead.

[LastMcGovernite]

Designer’s notes: I ended the last two timelines with presidents who I found broadly agreeable. Just to make sure that these projects weren’t empty exercises in wish fulfillment or blatant wankery, I decided to end this one on a conservative note–not unfitting given that the United States is a lot more industrial a lot earlier in Dueling Visions.

I also like juxtaposing Birch Bayh’s selflessness in resigning the presidency to care for his wife dying of cancer with John Edwards resigning the presidency in disgrace after cheating on his wife dying of cancer.

Finally, I considered using a site like Fiverr to manipulate a picture of John Kerry so that he had an eyepatch or a distinct scar or some physical sign of his more McCain-like hardship while serving in the military. Ran out of time.

That ends the Dueling Visions timeline. Thoughts? 

[erſatz-york]

I get shades of David Cameron from Paul Ryan.

When did Indonesia get its independence? Also, what exactly was the “Insult at the Hague?”