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"Hipster" Politicians Thread

Oh that is inspired. Mondale becoming President and probably seeing some sort of union help is phresh as well.

The initial impetus was trying to create a world where Volcker isn't appointed Fed Chair and stagflation is brought to heel by a more liberal policy proposal:
  • no drastic IR hikes without accompanying consumer relief
  • a focus on relieving consumers in the wake of the oil shock not by pumping money into consumer markets but by helping to bring oil production costs down (through subsidies, which will go over better with the union crowd than green energy or deregulation)
  • excess money is removed from the money supply by some light OMO and tax hikes on the wealthy

Eventually, I figured that the only mainstream candidates who'd be willing to take this quasi-producerist, New Deal-style approach to stagflation were Proxmire, Jackson, and Mondale, and of the three, Mondale was the easiest to maneuver into power before Volcker could get in there.
 
The initial impetus was trying to create a world where Volcker isn't appointed Fed Chair and stagflation is brought to heel by a more liberal policy proposal:
  • no drastic IR hikes without accompanying consumer relief
  • a focus on relieving consumers in the wake of the oil shock not by pumping money into consumer markets but by helping to bring oil production costs down (through subsidies, which will go over better with the union crowd than green energy or deregulation)
  • excess money is removed from the money supply by some light OMO and tax hikes on the wealthy

Eventually, I figured that the only mainstream candidates who'd be willing to take this quasi-producerist, New Deal-style approach to stagflation were Proxmire, Jackson, and Mondale, and of the three, Mondale was the easiest to maneuver into power before Volcker could get in there.
That would have huge butterflies in South America especially but I don't want to flood this thread with any more discussion on this, instead here's another fun "Hipster" GOP Choice.
Robert Finch, the Lt. Governor of California, is an interesting and inspired choice for Nixon's Veep in 1968. He was in fact Nixon's first choice for Veep before turning him down and was the reason why Nixon said he resided in NY, so he could get Finch on the ticket. He actually gained more votes in 1966 than Reagan did so he was popular in CA. A more interesting reason he should be considered is that he was on the more liberal end of the GOP so when Nixon eventually gets caught up in Watergate we see a more liberal administration than the Ford one before it which would cause a totally different world.
 
Well, for a given value of 'politician', but @Beata Beatrix made me aware of the existence of Monte Melkonian today and I don't know how this guy isn't a meme on this forum already.
Zviad Gamsakhurdia is one of those people that was a nutjob but was still more preferable than the people who deposed him illegally just because they want power.

Like,Shevardnadze was aided by the literal Georgian mob that then became the Union of Patriots because it was more profitable to be a political party.
 
I want your most Post-Soviet State What If Scenario possible...

Too much.

I cannot state enough how much preferable Gamsakhurdia was compared to Shevardnadze and his gang.

And again,Zviad believed that Georgians are the TRUE descendants of Aeneas,were the masters of the Mediterranean before the Indo Europeans came and killed nearly all of them in the Trojan War and that the Golden Fleece was real and hidden in Georgia,
becoming (according to Gamsakhurdia in his book The Spiritual Mission of Georgia) the Holy Graal that Perceval found with the help of Georgian knights.

In Gamsahurdia’s view, the whole Christian religion has its roots in Georgia, and in his book he sets out in detail the architectural and soteriological symbolism of the Svetițhoveli Cathedral in Mțheta, where the mantle of Jesus is buried. The cycle of Grail legends is explained by him as having its roots in the circle of scholars of medieval Georgia known as the Gelati Academy,with the affiliation being viewed as normal, given that the Grail was nothing but the Golden Wool of the Argonauts.Likewise, the entire Greek mythology is explained by the Georgian language and the ancient polytheistic religion of the Georgians.

He also believed that the Basque are related with the Georgians and are the long forgotten brethren,supporting Basque independence because of that.
 
Georgia; Where a Third Position weirdo is better than having a corrupt politician supported by Gangsters.
Correction: a corrupt politician and former Secretary General with a contempt for democracy supported by Gangsters.

Said gangsters murdered his political opponents and did numerous massacres against Gamsakhurdia supporters before eventually turning on Shevardnadze and trying to coup him in return in the mid to late Nineties.
 
Correction: a corrupt politician and former Secretary General with a contempt for democracy supported by Gangsters.

Said gangsters murdered his political opponents and did numerous massacres against Gamsakhurdia supporters before eventually turning on Shevardnadze and trying to coup him in return in the mid to late Nineties.
Georgia just seems like Post-Soviet states on steroids, Corrupt Murderous Politician surrounded by Gangsters versus a equally authoritarian Third Positioner which descends into a Civil War.

Shevardnadze was terrible but I suspect Gamsakhurdia would probably have lead to a war with Armenia or something.
 
Georgia just seems like Post-Soviet states on steroids, Corrupt Murderous Politician surrounded by Gangsters versus a equally authoritarian Third Positioner which descends into a Civil War.

Shevardnadze was terrible but I suspect Gamsakhurdia would probably have lead to a war with Armenia or something.

Most likely a reclamation war on abzkhakia and south ossetia, which would make the chechens ally with Russia since in OTL Baseyev and Gelayev went down there.
 
Tim Beaumont:

Son of a Tory MP, grandson of a radical Liberal MP, great-grandson of a baron. Studied at Eton, Gordonstoun, and Oxford, then became an Anglican priest in 1956. Served a parish in Hong Kong for four years then returned home after receiving an inheritance. Stepped down from active ministry in 1973 because he believed his views were incompatible with the priesthood, but became active again in 1984, running a parish in Southwark.

Made a large donation to the Liberal Party in the early 1960s and was appointed honorary party treasurer. Received a life peerage in 1967, and subsequently became party chairman (1967-68) then president (1969-70). Joined the Liberal Democrats but soon switched over to the Greens due to the Lib Dems' support for free trade, becoming the first ever Green peer.

Strongly opposed the European Union, was an early advocate for transgender equality, and served as chairman of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society.
 
Patricia Hewitt:

Born in Canberra, the daughter of a prominent Australian civil servant [whose positions included Secretary of the PM's Department under John Gorton, secretary to several other government departments, and Chairman of Qantas under Gough Whitlam]. Educated at the Australian National University and Cambridge, then settled in Britain. Married the son of a Tory MP and became a Conservative herself, but later divorced him around the time her politics started shifting leftward. Became an outspoken radical leftist and supporter of Tony Benn, even being classified a "Communist sympathizer" and placed under surveillance by MI5 after dating "radical lawyer" Bill Birtles, whom she later married. Started working at the National Council for Civil Liberties, eventually becoming general secretary.

First ran for office in 1983, standing against a Labour MP who had defected to the SDP. After she lost, she was hired by Neil Kinnock as press secretary, becoming an early figure in Labour's first stage of modernization. Ran again in 1997 to replace a retiring Labour MP in a safe seat and won. An active and loyal Blairite, then served in Blair's cabinet from 2001-2007 as Trade Secretary then Health Secretary.
 
George Murphy
Defeated Pieree Salinger in 1964 ca.u s. senate elections song and dance man in musicals.
John Tunney
Son of boxer Gene Tunney defeated Murphy for senate in 1970.inspiration for the Robert Redford film,the canidate.
 
André Parizeau, nephew of former Quebec PQ Premier Jacques Parizeau, ran provincially for Quebec solidaire and federally for the Bloc Quebecois. More entertainingly, he was also the leader of the Parti communiste du Québec for a few years - that alone makes it seem like he ought to be used more often.
 
Kent Carlsson

Was supposed to be elected chair of the Swedish Social Democratic Youth League in 1990 but withdrew his candidacy a few weeks before the congress because he was diagnosed with HIV. Shortly afterwards he became Sweden's first openly gay MP and served until his death in 1993. If he hadn't gotten HIV it's not impossible to imagine that he'd have become a minister or even party leader/PM. Having been chair of SSU has usually been a good place to start for plenty of ministers in Social Democratic cabinets.
 
When John Wilkes Booth, fleeing from his assassination of Lincoln, was surrounded in a burning barn, one brave Union soldier disobeyed his orders and shot to avenge the President, right there and then. That man was Boston Corbett.

"Gee!" you might be saying to yourself. "What an impressive record! I wonder why I've never heard of this interesting fellow?"

Well, you see, Corbett was mad as a hatter. Literally--he started life as an apprentice milliner and (after a short stint of alcoholism ended by becoming a born-again Christian) worked his way up, and the brain damage from mercury fumes is probably responsible for some of his erratic behaviour, such as castrating himself after being aroused by prostitutes. At home. With scissors.

After joining the Army, he was nearly court-martialed for telling his colonel off for taking the Lord's name in vain, then re-enlisted, then captured and sent to notorious death-camp Andersonville, and then later released. This was probably quite bad for his mental health as well.

He did then get a second court-martial for the whole "killed Booth before he could stand trial" thing, but the Army decided to release him on the basis of "oh dead how sad never mind". The brief intense fame that surrounded him turned out to be something of a nine days wonder, and he retired from the Army and public life soon afterwards.

He went on to never hold down a steady job due to his own religiosity and erratic behaviour (convinced a secret society trying to avenge Booth was after him, he started brandishing a pistol at all times) before being appointed assistant doorkeeper to the Kansas House of Representatives, a position he resigned from after paranoidly chasing several officers out of the building, being declared insane, and then escaping from the insane asylum he was committed to and eventually dying in a forest-fire in Minnesota. We think. It's unclear.

Is there any chance this man could have gone into politics? Honestly, bar an incredibly Big Brained Move by the Republicans in a TL where Booth's plot killed Seward and Johnson as well, it seems unlikely. On the other hand, such a fantastically distressing historical figure deserves to be more well known.
 
When John Wilkes Booth, fleeing from his assassination of Lincoln, was surrounded in a burning barn, one brave Union soldier disobeyed his orders and shot to avenge the President, right there and then. That man was Boston Corbett.

"Gee!" you might be saying to yourself. "What an impressive record! I wonder why I've never heard of this interesting fellow?"

Well, you see, Corbett was mad as a hatter. Literally--he started life as an apprentice milliner and (after a short stint of alcoholism ended by becoming a born-again Christian) worked his way up, and the brain damage from mercury fumes is probably responsible for some of his erratic behaviour, such as castrating himself after being aroused by prostitutes. At home. With scissors.

After joining the Army, he was nearly court-martialed for telling his colonel off for taking the Lord's name in vain, then re-enlisted, then captured and sent to notorious death-camp Andersonville, and then later released. This was probably quite bad for his mental health as well.

He did then get a second court-martial for the whole "killed Booth before he could stand trial" thing, but the Army decided to release him on the basis of "oh dead how sad never mind". The brief intense fame that surrounded him turned out to be something of a nine days wonder, and he retired from the Army and public life soon afterwards.

He went on to never hold down a steady job due to his own religiosity and erratic behaviour (convinced a secret society trying to avenge Booth was after him, he started brandishing a pistol at all times) before being appointed assistant doorkeeper to the Kansas House of Representatives, a position he resigned from after paranoidly chasing several officers out of the building, being declared insane, and then escaping from the insane asylum he was committed to and eventually dying in a forest-fire in Minnesota. We think. It's unclear.

Is there any chance this man could have gone into politics? Honestly, bar an incredibly Big Brained Move by the Republicans in a TL where Booth's plot killed Seward and Johnson as well, it seems unlikely. On the other hand, such a fantastically distressing historical figure deserves to be more well known.
He’s like a more successful 19th Century version of Isaia Faur.

On an unrelated note,it’s really stupid that Faur attacked/almost killed every president Romania ever had apart from the internim ones and be a menace to society because the law just doesn’t give a shit.
 
John Reith fought hard to preserve the BBC's editorial independence in the General Strike and ran the organisation with paternalist discipline, becoming Director-General at 38. He admired Mussolini and Hitler in the mid-1930s out of misplaced idealism, saying to Marconi in 1935 that "I have always admired Mussolini immensely and constantly hailed him as the outstanding example of accomplishing high democratic purpose by means which, though not democratic, were the only possible ones". In 1922 he was secretary to the London Conservative group of MPs. Although Reith didn't like television (preferring radio so much he set up a committee under the Poet Laureate to determine the 'correct pronunciation of the English tongue'), he could fit into a Baldwin-esque great communicator role, or even slip into the New Party.

Marcus Sieff's politics combined a dislike of government intervention and high taxation, with an emphasis on worker-employer co-operation. Building up a wide middle class audience for Mark's and Spencer's, he complained throughout the 1970s that the decade's economics made free enterprise impossible, while accepting that companies had certain responsibilities to their employees. An economic liberal with a social conscience (also pointing out M & S bought 90% of its stock domestically), he accepted a peerage from Margaret Thatcher in 1980. Sieff declined the ambadassorship to Israel in 1974 from Callaghan.

Edward Shortt (yes, two Ts) hailed from Newcastle and rose to prominence as Home Secretary from 1919-22, the only forgotten holder of the Great Offices of State in the Coalition. Lloyd George valued his abilities and he seemed to be capable and a sociable enough man, overshadowed by his boss. A typical Nonconformist Liberal with all the puritan vices and dour, paternalist individualism to match, you could mine a rich vein of humour by swapping places with the other Ted Short of Newcastle - their attitudes didn't seem to differ much.
 
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