One historical figure I've hardly ever seen used to his full potential is the famous and infamous Barry Goldwater, harbinger of sorts for the modern Republican Party and the Conservative Turn that Nixon and Reagan made into a reality in the second half of the Twentieth Century. Despite being a fervent anti-New Deal Crusader and Standard Bearer of the Conservative Coalition who didn't think much of threatening to use Nuclear Weapons, I don't think I've ever seen him use in the same way, say, Enoch Powell, Oswald Mosley, George Wallace or even Donald Rumsfeld. (Although admittedly, that might be because I don't read enough AH these days.) Even in For All Time his presidency was kind of an afterthought. (In that case that was probably the point, though, to show how figures like Goldwater and their cavalier thoughts on Atom Bomb Usage became mainstream in that world)
So, first things first, how to get this nebbish, barely-more-charismatic-than-Adlai-Stevenson-and-just-as-handsome, Algebra Teacher-looking fellow from Arizona elected to the Presidency of the United States?
Let's say than instead of creating a scenario in which the Barry Goldwaters of the world are normalized, ala For All Time, we stick to thinking inside the box and look at the three presidential elections in the 1960s:
1. 1960: barely over 50 and with less than 8 years in the Senate, he was nevertheless already famous as the new Robert Taft, being the voice of the Conservative Wing of the Republican Party, defender of McCarthy and critic of the Eisenhower Administration. Options could include either California senator William Knowland staying in the senate and opposing Nixon for the Republican nomination (IOTL he tried and failed to become Governor of California to achieve this) or Nelson Rockefeller doing the same and throwing the primaries and convention in disarray, allowing Dark Horse Goldwater to slip through the cracks.
An easier way might be to just have Nixon slip in the bathtub sometime before 1960 and have Goldwater barely squeak by Rockefeller.
His criticism of the Eisenhower administration and being 4 years earlier in the Civil Rights debate might mean that his Conservative, States' Rights message is less potent than IOTL 1964, though.
2. 1964: in a world in which John F. Kennedy had lived and Goldwater's dream of facing him had come true, there's still the issue of Kennedy being young, handsome and the ideal of what John Q. Taxpayer thinks a man should be, not to mention his approval rating was around 60% at the time of his death. So hard, but not slightly less hard than facing Johnson in 64 IOTL.
3. 1968: Just as 1960, this one was pretty close in the general and could have gone either way. Perhaps if Goldwater had left 1964 to Rockefeller and Lodge and instead runs in 68 as the Stop-Nixon Candidate. Goldwater's Hawkish policy in the year of the Tet Offensive and the possible presence of George Wallace as the Southern Candidate probably hurt him too much, though.
Each scenario has its own difficulties, as we can see, specially things like Goldwater's super-hawkish policies and thinking that Nuclear Weapons should be dished out like candy, which made painting him like a dangerous extremist rather easy. This would probably need some Nixon/Kennedy level of rat-fucking, or an extremely fractured Democratic Opposition, which, thankfully for our purposes, existed in both 1960 and 1968.
Each scenario also has its own potential for some very dystopic stuff.
If Goldwater were to be elected in 1960, his attempts at rollbacking would face stiff opposition from a Democratic Congress (Goldwater was never going to be the guy to carry his party in that regard), he would have done far less than Kennedy, Eisenhower or Nixon on the Civil Rights front and his Aggressive Foreign Policy would have surely led to confrontations with the USSR and China at Berlin, Cuba, Vietnam and who knows where else.
1964 and 1968 offer their own little nightmares. Assuming the Defense Department convinces Goldwater not to use Nuclear Weapons (or that he was speaking in the abstract when he made all those remarks and speeches), there'd still be escalation in Vietnam, with the addendum that Goldwater would probably lack Nixon's pragmatism, so leaving would have to be the job of the next President. And that's without getting into Israel and the Middle East,.
More importantly, Goldwater would not have gone to China, as Nixon did, so Taiwan remains as the One China, as far as the West is concerned, with all that entails for China and the World. It's hard to say whether the Democratic and Republican Presidents to replace Goldwater in the 70s and 80s would have handled China.
On the domestic front, there's still the Civil Rights issues, and things that Nixon did that Goldwater wouldn't have done. OSHA, the EPA, the Clean Air Act, the Philadelphia Plan, certain Civil Rights measures like the busing thing. On the other hand, a world in which Barry Goldwater is president might not have seen the Drug War become a thing under his watch.
What's the world that Barry Goldwater could have made had he achieved the highest office of his land? A more conflictive, dangerous place, more likely. A more interesting one, certainly.
Naturally, getting Goldwater that far in the first place requires a certain degree of handwaving. There's a reason, after all, guys like him and Adlai Stevenson didn't make it to the presidency.
So, first things first, how to get this nebbish, barely-more-charismatic-than-Adlai-Stevenson-and-just-as-handsome, Algebra Teacher-looking fellow from Arizona elected to the Presidency of the United States?
Let's say than instead of creating a scenario in which the Barry Goldwaters of the world are normalized, ala For All Time, we stick to thinking inside the box and look at the three presidential elections in the 1960s:
1. 1960: barely over 50 and with less than 8 years in the Senate, he was nevertheless already famous as the new Robert Taft, being the voice of the Conservative Wing of the Republican Party, defender of McCarthy and critic of the Eisenhower Administration. Options could include either California senator William Knowland staying in the senate and opposing Nixon for the Republican nomination (IOTL he tried and failed to become Governor of California to achieve this) or Nelson Rockefeller doing the same and throwing the primaries and convention in disarray, allowing Dark Horse Goldwater to slip through the cracks.
An easier way might be to just have Nixon slip in the bathtub sometime before 1960 and have Goldwater barely squeak by Rockefeller.
His criticism of the Eisenhower administration and being 4 years earlier in the Civil Rights debate might mean that his Conservative, States' Rights message is less potent than IOTL 1964, though.
2. 1964: in a world in which John F. Kennedy had lived and Goldwater's dream of facing him had come true, there's still the issue of Kennedy being young, handsome and the ideal of what John Q. Taxpayer thinks a man should be, not to mention his approval rating was around 60% at the time of his death. So hard, but not slightly less hard than facing Johnson in 64 IOTL.
3. 1968: Just as 1960, this one was pretty close in the general and could have gone either way. Perhaps if Goldwater had left 1964 to Rockefeller and Lodge and instead runs in 68 as the Stop-Nixon Candidate. Goldwater's Hawkish policy in the year of the Tet Offensive and the possible presence of George Wallace as the Southern Candidate probably hurt him too much, though.
Each scenario has its own difficulties, as we can see, specially things like Goldwater's super-hawkish policies and thinking that Nuclear Weapons should be dished out like candy, which made painting him like a dangerous extremist rather easy. This would probably need some Nixon/Kennedy level of rat-fucking, or an extremely fractured Democratic Opposition, which, thankfully for our purposes, existed in both 1960 and 1968.
Each scenario also has its own potential for some very dystopic stuff.
If Goldwater were to be elected in 1960, his attempts at rollbacking would face stiff opposition from a Democratic Congress (Goldwater was never going to be the guy to carry his party in that regard), he would have done far less than Kennedy, Eisenhower or Nixon on the Civil Rights front and his Aggressive Foreign Policy would have surely led to confrontations with the USSR and China at Berlin, Cuba, Vietnam and who knows where else.
1964 and 1968 offer their own little nightmares. Assuming the Defense Department convinces Goldwater not to use Nuclear Weapons (or that he was speaking in the abstract when he made all those remarks and speeches), there'd still be escalation in Vietnam, with the addendum that Goldwater would probably lack Nixon's pragmatism, so leaving would have to be the job of the next President. And that's without getting into Israel and the Middle East,.
More importantly, Goldwater would not have gone to China, as Nixon did, so Taiwan remains as the One China, as far as the West is concerned, with all that entails for China and the World. It's hard to say whether the Democratic and Republican Presidents to replace Goldwater in the 70s and 80s would have handled China.
On the domestic front, there's still the Civil Rights issues, and things that Nixon did that Goldwater wouldn't have done. OSHA, the EPA, the Clean Air Act, the Philadelphia Plan, certain Civil Rights measures like the busing thing. On the other hand, a world in which Barry Goldwater is president might not have seen the Drug War become a thing under his watch.
What's the world that Barry Goldwater could have made had he achieved the highest office of his land? A more conflictive, dangerous place, more likely. A more interesting one, certainly.
Naturally, getting Goldwater that far in the first place requires a certain degree of handwaving. There's a reason, after all, guys like him and Adlai Stevenson didn't make it to the presidency.
