So one of my favorite alternate history stories is a TL on another website called McGoverning. It’s a plausible-feeling story of George McGovern winning the 1972 Presidential election and his ensuing administration. It’s an excellent story, and reading it gave me an appreciation for George McGovern as a person when I learned about him. So, I now offer a challenge, have George McGovern win the 1972 election.
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AHC: President McGovern
- Thread starter Bomster
- Start date
napoleon IV
Sheer Animal Cunning of the Groundhog
- Location
- Washington, Douglass Commonwealth
- Pronouns
- he/him
I think you need a massive scandal to hit Nixon, something so big that it completely destroys his campaign and turns the American people against him. If somehow HR Haldeman's notes showing that Nixon sabotaged peace talks with North Vietnam were to get out that would probably do the trick, but it's difficult to imagine how those could get revealed. It would also help if Agnew's corruption scandal came out around the same time, so as to completely obliterate the Republican ticket's credibility.So one of my favorite alternate history stories is a TL on another website called McGoverning. It’s a plausible-feeling story of George McGovern winning the 1972 Presidential election and his ensuing administration. It’s an excellent story, and reading it gave me an appreciation for George McGovern as a person when I learned about him. So, I now offer a challenge, have George McGovern win the 1972 election.
Lyndon Johnson knew about that, right?I think you need a massive scandal to hit Nixon, something so big that it completely destroys his campaign and turns the American people against him. If somehow HR Haldeman's notes showing that Nixon sabotaged peace talks with North Vietnam were to get out that would probably do the trick, but it's difficult to imagine how those could get revealed. It would also help if Agnew's corruption scandal came out around the same time, so as to completely obliterate the Republican ticket's credibility.
napoleon IV
Sheer Animal Cunning of the Groundhog
- Location
- Washington, Douglass Commonwealth
- Pronouns
- he/him
He did, but given that he didn't reveal it in 1968 I doubt he'd be willing to reveal it in 1972. It would make him look incredibly bad to have kept such a huge scandal a secret, and Johnson had no particular reason to help McGovern (who he considered loony left).Lyndon Johnson knew about that, right?
Why didn’t he reveal it in ‘68?He did, but given that he didn't reveal it in 1968 I doubt he'd be willing to reveal it in 1972. It would make him look incredibly bad to have kept such a huge scandal a secret, and Johnson had no particular reason to help McGovern (who he considered loony left).
Creekmench
A shade of indigo
- Pronouns
- He/him
IIRC, he obtained it via a warrantless wiretap?
- Location
- North Alabama
Why didn’t he reveal it in ‘68?
IIRC, he obtained it via a warrantless wiretap?
Partly, but also through NSA monitoring of international phone conversations that included Anna Chenault speaking with South Vietnamese leaders and Henry Kissinger feeding information to the Nixon campaign from Paris. The NSA's existence was still something the US government didn't openly admit too loudly and LBJ sure as hell didn't want to admit that the US was routinely spying on ELINT from "friendly" and allied nations.
Johnson did tell Humphrey, but the Vice President didn’t want to use the information.Why didn’t he reveal it in ‘68?
https://progressive.org/dispatches/hubert-humphreys-fateful-decision-fifty-years-later/
Humphrey, in a post-election memoir, acknowledged that he had balked at reporting the FBI information because, amazingly, he could not bring himself to believe that the notorious “Tricky Dick” Nixon of that era would do such a thing.
“I wonder if I should have blown the whistle on Anna Chennault and Nixon,” Humphrey mused in his memoir, The Education of a Public Man.“He must have known of her call to Thieu. I wish [his italics] I could have been sure. Damn Thieu. . . . I wonder if that call did it. If Nixon knew. Maybe I should have blasted them anyway.”
Deceptacon
Dyke to Watch Out For
- Location
- the 520
- Pronouns
- they/she/he
For a fun (not in that way) scandal in the vein of McGoverning, how about having the Plumbers' plot to assassinate Jack Anderson go through? The plan obviously never went through, but Nixon's orders to "stop Anderson at all costs" bore some truly creative ideas, ranging from framing it as just another mugging on the streets of D.C. to slipping him LSD to stage a car crash. Just imagine the fury towards the Nixon administration if his lackeys were responsible for causing and then covering up the murder of a famed political opponent and muckraker.
- Location
- North Alabama
I'm reminded that there's two very different McGovern victory stories in the Alternate Presidents anthology I recently reviewed on the blog. One that's along the lines of @akagreenette's comment, though not with Anderson and Suppose They Gave a Peace... which deals with the effects of McGovern's Vietnam policy upon a middle America family with a son serving over there.
Ronald Reagan is elected president in 1968. China and Russia has a brief war. Increased
fighting in veitnam.
Reagan has a aggressive foreign policy.
McGovern picks Wilbur miles as v.p. forgoing his otl pick.
fighting in veitnam.
Reagan has a aggressive foreign policy.
McGovern picks Wilbur miles as v.p. forgoing his otl pick.
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