George W. Hobbes
Mr. Hobbes
Jr. Member
Posts: 962
Political Matrix
E: -0.38, S: 1.03
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« Reply #6 on: February 09, 2010, 10:59:06 PM » |
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« Edited: February 09, 2010, 11:00:37 PM by George W. Hobbes »
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POD: In a close race, George W. Bush is elected to Congress in 1978. A hard-drinking, hard-partying member of the House, he gets along famously with Congressman Charlie Wilson, and puts forward enough bad press clippings to prevent his father from defeating Ronald Reagan in the Iowa caucuses.
Sans a challenger, Reagan doesn't shake up his campaign team and ultimately runs a more disorganized campaign. He picks Jack Kemp of New York as his running mate, and narrowly wins the election, garnering 48% of the vote.
40. Ronald Reagan/Jack Kemp (R) 1981
President Reagan was assassinated by John Hinckley, Jr. Vice President Kemp was sworn in as the 41st POTUS.
41. Jack Kemp/Bob Dole (R) 1981-1989
Riding on a wave of sympathy after President Reagan's death, Kemp engineered an even more aggressive tax cut than in OTL, as well as more domestic spending cuts than OTL. This ginned up the Democratic left-wing base, and led to a lessening in prestige of more moderate Democrats, such as Congressman Al Gore.
In 1984, California Governor Jerry Brown would win the Democratic nomination, selecting Gary Hart as his running mate. Kemp defeated Brown in a narrow election, further illustrating the divided Blue/Red paradigm of the 1980's.
42. Gary Hart/Spark Matsunaga (D) 1989-1993
Senator Gary Hart emerged as the Democratic front-runner after the market collapse of 1987. He blamed "Kempian" (a take-off on "Keynesian") economics for the country's woes and advocates a return to large public-works projects and aggressive expansion of some of President Kemp's anti-poverty measures (such as a doubling of the Earned Income Tax Credit).
Hart's selection of Matsunaga for VP was somewhat controversial given the Senator's strident support for Japanese reparations for internment. The Republican ticket of Bob Dole and Lynn Mitchell did not approve ads cut by Lee Atwater and Pat Buchanan which would have taken advantage of Matsunaga's "otherness".
Vice President Matsunaga died in office in 1990 and was replaced with California Governor Tom Bradley.
In office, President Hart presided over the dissolution of the Soviet Empire and aggressively flooded Eastern Europe with financial assistance. He also worked with Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar on an aggressive anti-nuclear program designed to keep old Russian weapons out of the hands of terrorists. Domestically, Hart's new WPA was passed into law but largely considered a bureaucratic boondoggle and was (along with stagnant economic growth) responsible for his defeat in 1992.
43. Dick Cheney/John Heinz (R) 1993-2001
Jokingly referred to as "a couple of Dicks" by Democrats and the press, House Minority Leader Dick Cheney won the GOP nomination in 1992 by presenting himself as a calm, rational, intellectual counterweight to the brainy Hart. Cheney's platform of an aggressive foreign policy was counter to many in the Republican caucus, particularly Texas Senator (and now sober) George W. Bush, who advocated a "peace dividend" after the end of the Cold War.
However, the big issue in 1992 was the deficit, and the deficit hawk Cheney had strong credentials against President Hart's domestic programs and was also acceptable to the Kemp/supply-side wing of the party.
As President, Cheney aggressively sought to end the sanctions against Iran, particularly in light of Iraq's successful invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The Administration worked to create a scenario where both the Saudis and the Iranians could check Saddam Hussein, but the Iraq issue was a serious tinderbox. Ultimately, no wars occurred against Saddam under Cheney's watch, but he considered Iraq the biggest threat to world stability by the time he left office in 2001.
Domestically, President Cheney advocated for and signed an immigration amnesty, even working with old foe Senator Bush to get the bill passed, as well as a large corporate tax cut, which Republicans maintained ended the recession of 1991-1994.
Cheney and VP Heinz had a rather strained relationship, mostly due to gossiping about the President by Heinz's odd wife, Teresa.
44. Ben Nighthorse Campbell/John Kerry (D) 2001-2009
The "Dark Nighthorse" took advantage of a divided Democratic primary in 2000, and advocated a "retreat from Carter-Hartism" as the key to successfully returning Democrats to power. Although President Campbell gave up his beloved ponytail and Bolo ties to win the nomination, he retained a "maverick-y" sense about him and charted a fiscally conservative course during his Administration, usually to the chagrin of his Establishment VP, former Hart White House Chief of Staff John Kerry (who, incidentally, was a rare bachelor VP).
In 2003, Campbell signed welfare reform into law and cemented an era of cooperation with an arms deal to Iranian President Khatami, who had worked with student leaders in July of 1999 to toss out the more reactionary elements of the Council of Guardians. In response to the new accord between Washington and Tehran, Iraq began a new clandestine nuclear program and begin funding anti-American terrorist groups, including the little known al Qaida, whose spectacular attempt to hijack ten planes and hit both American coasts had been foiled by the CIA in February 2001.
In 2004, Campbell/Kerry was re-elected against a GOP ticket of Cheney acolyte John McCain and California Congressman Pete Wilson.
In President Campbell's second term, he created a bipartisan commission to study Social Security and attempted to pass a universal health care bill, although this effort failed. Later, in 2007, a bill to extend the life of Social Security by twenty years through a series of benefit cuts and tax hikes was shepherded through Congress.
45. John Kerry/Bob Graham (D) 2009-Present
On inauguration day 2009, Iraq test detonated a nuclear weapon. On March 18th, al Qaida flew a hijacked jet into the Library Tower in Los Angeles. Since those two fateful days, President Kerry has largely been focused on international issues, particularly his efforts to prevent the so-called Global War on Violent Extremism from going nuclear.
Currently American forces occupy Sudan and Afghanistan, two nations used as staging grounds for al Qaida's leadership and training camps. In his January 22, 2010 State of the Union address, Kerry indicated that the war may extend to other nations in the "nexus of hate", such as Somalia, Iraq, and Syria.
Republicans, led by Minority Leader George W. Bush, are hesitant to expand the war against extremism into Iraq, given its nuclear capabilities. Traditionally concerned with civil liberties, the Republicans (with the notable exception of former President Cheney) are very concerned about Kerry's use of CIA black sites to detain terrorists captured in the war, as well as allegations of possible torture at Camp X-Ray in Khartoum, Sudan.
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