Stabbed In The Back, Vietnam-Style (To Present)
Presidents of the United States (1969-2001)
1969-1973: Richard Nixon / Spiro Agnew (Republican)
1968: Hubert Humphrey/Edmund Muskie (Democratic), George Wallace/Curtis LeMay (American Independent)
1972: George McGovern/Sargent Shriver (Democratic)
1973: Richard Nixon (Republican) / (none)
1973-1974: Richard Nixon / Gerald Ford (Republican)
1974: Gerald Ford (Republican) / (none)
1974-1977: Gerald Ford / Nelson Rockefeller (Republican)
1977-1981: Frank Church / Elmo Zumwalt (Democratic)
1976: Ronald Reagan/Richard Schweiker (Republican)
1980: Elliot Richardson/Bob Dole (Republican), Bo Gritz/Pat Buchanan (Freedom)
1981: Elmo Zumwalt (Democratic) / (none)
1981-1989: Elmo Zumwalt / Lloyd Bentsen (Democratic)
1984: George Bush/Al Quie (Republican)
1989-1993: Bo Gritz (Freedom) / Bob Martinez (Republican)
1988: Bo Gritz/James Stockdale (Freedom) def. John Heinz/Bob Martinez (Republican), Lloyd Bentsen/Geraldine Ferraro (Democratic), Jesse Jackson/Frank Lautenberg (Alliance)
1993-2001: Bo Gritz / James Stockdale (Freedom)
1992: Gerald Ford/Warren Christopher (independent), Ralph Nader/Walter Fauntroy (Alliance)
1996: write-ins
2000: write-ins
2001: Bo Gritz (Freedom) / (none)
2001: Trent Lott (Freedom) / (none)
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Following his re-election, Gritz takes the United States out of the United Nations and the far-right begins a reign of terror that ultimately destroys the United States. Domestically, the imprisonment of political opponents accelerates, while academia is purged. Civil and social rights are rolled back at breathtaking pace, and the country becomes militarized as military service becomes mandatory for young men 25 and under. Dissent is ruthlessly crushed and criticism drowned out by a pervasive propaganda network overseen by media czar Roger Ailes.
Internationally, the psychic scars of Vietnam loom too large for the nation's unquestioned leaders, and the United States begins an era of naked neo-imperialism, with a second consecutive generation of Americans sent into foreign jungles on seek-and-destroy missions. Only now, instead of saving Southeast Asia or Europe from communism, there is no fig-leaf to cover knocking off unfriendly governments in Venezuela or Nicaragua or using aircraft carriers for gunboat diplomacy in the Persian Gulf to insure a steady supply of oil.
The United States becomes a pariah state, even as it becomes clear there are plenty of opponents of the Gritz regime within the military and security state. The Cold War ends, and an anti-American alliance begins to form between Russia, the diminished former superpower, the United States' former allies in the United Kingdom and France, and the strongest nations from the developing world, such as India and China. Repeated aggression by the United States tests the new alliance's resolve, until Gritz attempts to bully Canada back into line with an attack on Ottawa by barely-disguised Patriot Battalion members.
The Second American Civil War (or the American War outside the United States) from 1999 to 2001 begins as a result, with several battalions openly crossing the border into Canada to help defend against US forces. The Freedom Party's militarization has resulted in the United States having unequivocally the largest and strongest military in human history. But it is grossly overextended by the time the war begins, and its ranks bolstered by resentful and unmotivated conscripts. The United Nations agrees to aid Canada, and many American veterans, resistance members and stateside military units join the United Nations Command.
The trickle of desertions picks up pace as UN forces take Hawaii and begin to liberate urban coastal centers on the mainland. It becomes a torrent once the first special correctional centers (SCCs) are liberated in spring 2001 and the crimes of the Freedom Party government revealed. Factories churning out consumer and military goods at the hands of malnourished prisoners. The eyewitness accounts of widespread torture, neglect, and rape. The mass graves of prisoners who were either summarily executed upon arrival or who died as a result of the horrible conditions. It doesn't take long before it becomes clear that an overwhelming percentage of the dead or nearly-dead are ethnic and racial minorities, Jews, LGBT people, political prisoners or women who had an abortion.
Faced with a military that is rapidly disintegrating, the government flees to the Raven Rock Mountain Complex in late summer 2001. Faced with what they believe is annihilation at the hands of a vengeful New World Order, the hardline Freedomite remaining draw up plans to launch the nation's nuclear missiles in a final Ragnarok that would take the world down alongside the United States.
But nothing happens. Whether it is because of the incredible stress the war has put upon him pushing him past his breaking point, or the fact that First Lady Claudia Gritz left Raven Rock and her husband upon learning of the plans, Gritz never gives the order. Instead, on September 20, 2001, he shoots himself in the head with his Army sidearm, dying instantly.
At the time of Gritz's death, the vice presidency was vacant owing to the death of Vice President Stockdale (who had been effectively incapacitated for years) from Alzheimer's disease only a few weeks earlier. Accordingly, Gritz is succeeded by Speaker of the House of Representatives Trent Lott. Lott, seeing the writing on the wall, ignores entreaties of the paranoid fanatics who want the nuclear strike and agrees to a ceasefire with UN forces. The ceasefire becomes a surrender once Lott is informed of the complete disintegration of Freedom Party control in most of the country. The United Nations Transitional Authority for the United States (UNTAFUS) formally takes control of the former United States on October 1, 2001, ending the Second Constitutional Period.
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Chief Administrator of the United Nations Transitional Authority (2001-2002)
2001-2002:
Shashi Tharoor (UNTAFUS--United Nations Transitional Authority For the United States)
President of the Provisional Government of the United States (2002-2003)
2002-2003: Warren Christopher (nonpartisan) (acting)
Presidents of the United States (2003-present)
2003-2011: Richard Lugar / Paul O'Neill (National)
2003 (1st round): Jesse Jackson/Martin Olav Sabo (Alliance), Al Gore Jr./Niki Tsongas (New Democratic), Doug La Follette/Winona LaDuke (United Greens)
2003 (2nd round): Jesse Jackson/Martin Olav Sabo (Alliance)
2007: Dennis Kucinich/Jim Hightower (Alliance), Harold Ford/John Breaux (New Democratic)
2011-2015: Paul O'Neill / Bill Owens (National)
2011: Bernie Sanders/Rocky Anderson (Alliance), Evan Bayh/Andrew Cuomo (New Democratic), Howie Hawkins/Pat LaMarche (United Greens)
2015-2019: Jon Huntsman Jr. / Robert Zoellick (National)
2015 (1st round): Bernie Sanders/Cecile Richards (Alliance) , Donald Trump/Ben Carson (independent), Joe Manchin/Henry Cuellar (New Democratic),, Cam Gordon/Constance N. Johnson(United Greens)
2015 (2nd round): Bernie Sanders/Cecile Richards (Alliance)
2019-0000: Bill de Blasio / Keith Ellison (Alliance)
2019 (1st round): Jon Huntsman Jr./Robert Zoellick (National), Krysten Sinema/David Archambault II (United Greens), Tulsi Gabbard/Mick Mulvaney (Reform America), Andy Beshear/Stephanie Dang (New Democratic)
2019 (2nd round): Jon Huntsman Jr./Robert Zoellick (National)
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The United Nations' administration of the United States is, by design, brief. Largely, UNTAFUS exists to give the anti-Freedom resistance and defectors a chance to re-establish enough state and local governments to plausibly be able to claim administrative authority over the former United States, as well as to continue military operations to crush the last remnants of Patriot resistance in what the dead-enders call their "redoubts".
The provisional government is perhaps rushed into creation when the thorny question of the United States' nuclear arsenal is raised by at the UN General Assembly (now reconvened in New York). Christopher is chosen to lead the government while the Second Constitutional Convention begins to craft a new constitution for the United States. Unwilling to make waves owing to the fragility of the provisional government, Christopher defers questions over the nuclear stockpile, the debts incurred by the Gritz administration, reparations for victims of the Freedomite regime, and other questions. He makes it clear he will retire when the new constitution goes into effect, and presides ably over the reunification of most of the country by the time the new Constitution comes into effect on December 1, 2003.
The Third Constitution seeks to prevent another Gritz from coming to power. Like other national constitutions written in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, it lays out the human, social and civil rights granted to American citizens, while entrenching the country's democratic system of government and the human rights that were crushed under the Freedomite bootheel. Several powers and prerogatives accumulated by presidents from Washington to Zumwalt are given instead to the reformed Congress as a whole, which is now restructured so that the House of Representatives and one-half of the Senate is elected every four years. The presidency survives, but a strict two-term limit is entrenched and the Electoral College abolished in favor of a popular vote system that requires a run-off if no candidate receives at least 40% of the vote.
The destruction of the Democratic and Republican parties during the Gritz years, and the outlawing of the Freedom Party following the end of the war creates a brand new party system, with only the pre-war Alliance surviving as a result of several of its leaders surviving repression and the war. The National Party emerges as the main successor to the pre-Gritz major parties, although other new parties arise to poach members from both the Nationals and Alliance.
Former senator Richard Lugar becomes the standard-bearer for the Nationals, with his foreign policy expertise and status as one of the last "Old Republicans" left standing after Gritz and the war. He is barely kept from a first-round victory, but easily defeats Jesse Jackson in the first presidential runoff to become the 43rd President of the United States, and the first one under the Third Constitution.
Lugar's presidency is the most consequential of any president since Gritz: he greatly reduces the United States' military presence abroad, begins the long-term disassembly and destruction of 90% of the American nuclear arsenal, and the creation of the Reconstruction Authority that works to rebuild both the United States and fund and build infrastructure projects in the nations the United States government attacked after Gritz took power. His apology to the United Nations and successful return to the world body less than a decade after American troops were shooting soldiers waving the UN banner is seen as the biggest foreign policy triumph by an American administration since Nixon's visit to China. His popularity is such that he becomes the first (and so far only) president to win an election in one round since the adoption of the popular vote system in 2007.
However, Lugar's response to the crimes of the Gritz years draws some criticism. Despite endorsing the trials of surviving Freedomite leaders (including Lott) at The Hague and the government ostentatiously working to accommodate requests from the newly-created International Criminal Court to both provide evidence and help capture suspected war criminals and human rights abusers from the Gritz years, Lugar repeatedly lobbies Truth and Reconciliation Committee to be more liberal with granting amnesty to alleged human rights abusers. His willingness to rehire Gritz administration veterans with technical experience, much moreso than any of his successors, also alarms some at home and abroad.
Nevertheless, Lugar leaves office with high approval ratings, and hands off power to his preferred successor, his vice president Paul O'Neill. O'Neill is a technocrat whose economic advise is widely seen as responsible for the post-war economic boom as the country rebuilds itself. Unlike Lugar, whose experience as a legislator and cross-partisan respect allowed him to influence the creation of legislation and crafting of policy, O'Neill proves unable to be effective on the same scale in the legislature-dominated policy arena. Clumsy attempts to persuade Congress to move in his direction backfire, with legislators in the post-Gritz era (perhaps rightly) reacting hostilely to any attempts at what they perceive as the executive attempting to displace them as the main policymaker. As a result, O'Neill becomes a managerial president, largely focusing on restoring America's economic links to nations still wary of it. He announces he will not seek re-election, citing his age (he turns 80 mere days after leaving office).
Jon Huntsman Jr. is seen as a breath of fresh air when he takes office in December 2015. Helped by his comparative youth (at 55, he was nearly two decades younger than his Alliance opponent Bernie Sanders), voters seem to believe that his election marks a break from the increasingly elderly generation of pre-Gritz politicians who remained active into the second decade of the Third Constitution. However, the sheen begins to come off Huntsman as his term goes on: the economy slows after nearly two straight decades of growth, and the scale of Huntsman and his family's involvement with the Freedom Party, either directly or indirectly through the Latter-Day Saints (Mormon) church becomes known during his presidency. His government's response to the waves of strikes and protest in the final year of his term alienates many voters, and only adds to the fatigue voters have begun to have with the Nationals.
When his term is up in 2019, Huntsman becomes the first president since Gerald Ford, and the first elected president since Herbert Hoover, to lose his bid for re-election. He leaves office, but restores an important tradition of the peaceful transfer of power between presidents of different parties, the first time it has happened in three decades.
Bill de Blasio is the first president in United States history to be a self-identified socialist. The nation's 46th president was born Warren Wilhelm Jr., and adopted his current name in exile shortly after fleeing New York in the early Gritz era, having been a left-wing organizer and open democratic socialist. Unlike the previous Alliance nominees, de Blasio had not been an active politician before the rise of the Freedom Party, and rose through the ranks gradually until he was governor of New York during his defeat of Huntsman.
Even if he does not win a second term in 2023, de Blasio has already made an impact in Americans' lives: under his leadership, the Alliance permanently extended Medicare to cover every American, replacement of fossil fuel power plants with ones fueled by renewable energy has been greatly accelerated, and several pension funds (for the spouses and children of soldiers killed in the Second Civil War, victims of Freedomite human rights abuses, public sector workers unjustly purged by the Gritz regime, etc.) that have been arguably underfunded for years have now been replenished and paying out much higher benefits to recipients.
These reforms, and many more the de Blasio administration has carried out, have not gone uncontested even within his own (fractious) party. Defections and special election defeats have left the president with an incredibly small majority in Congress with which to work. In this new political era, the specter of a divided government looms large in the United States as the country heads towards 2023...
