Makemakean
Mr Makemean
- Pronouns
- Logical, unlike those in German
1965-1969: Lyndon B. Johnson / Hubert Humphrey (Democratic)
1964: Barry Goldwater / William E. Miller (Republican)
1969-1971: Hubert Humphrey / John Connally (Democratic)
1968: Richard Nixon / John A. Volpe (Republican), George Wallace / Harland Sanders (American Independent)
1971-1973: Hubert Humphrey / John Connally (Democratic / Republican)
1973-1977: John Connally / Charles Percy (Republican)
1972: Hubert Humphrey / Milton Shapp (Democratic), Pete McCloskey / Mike Gravel (Independent)
1977-1985: Jerry Brown / Terry Sanford (Democratic)
1976: John Connally / Charles Percy (Republican)
1980: Charles Percy / Phyllis Schlafly (Republican)
1985-1993: Frank Rizzo / Frank Borman (Republican)
1984: Terry Sanford / Birch Bayh (Democratic), Ramsay Clark / Ron Dellums (We The People)
1988: Richard Hatcher / Lawton Chiles (Democratic)
1993-1997: Frank Borman / Anne Gorsuch (Republican)
1992: Walter Mondale / Al Gore (Democratic), Ralph Nader / Karen Silkwood (We The People)
1997-: Elizabeth Hanford / Sherrod Brown (Democratic)
1996: Frank Borman / Anne Gorsuch (Republican)
2000: Bill Schuette / Matt Fong (Republican), Paul Weyrich / Virgil Goode (Independent)
John Connally was the saviour and destruction of Hubert Humphrey and the maker and unmaker of the modern Republican Party. His choice as Humphrey's running mate united Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy and the protestors outside the convention hall in anger but likely put Humphrey over the line in many key Midwestern states - the last time this would be necessary thanks to Birch Bayh's constitutional amendment. But as the slow process of withdrawal from Vietnam faltered and economic crises escalated, relations between president and vice president deteriorated over everything from medicare expansion to aid to South Vietnam. Ultimately, supreme court nominee Shirley Hufstedler was the final straw for the Vice President, who announced that he was leaving the Democratic Party for the Republicans a week after Gerald Ford was sworn in as Speaker of the House.
This move had been long-planned by Connally in co-ordination with Richard Nixon and fellow Republican power brokers, who smoothed his way to the Republican nomination over defective opponents like Ronald Reagan and John Volpe. The slow-motion collapse of the South Vietnam through 1972 doomed doomed Humphrey's chances of re-election. The Connally administration worked quickly to roll back as much as the Johnson-Humphrey legacy as possible, especially on issues of civil rights and the economy. The latter caused him much trouble. Inflation remained cripplingly high and the austerity budgets drawn up by White House economic advisor Alan Greenspan, "short-term pain for long-term gain" led to massive battles with congress. The faltering economy likely did more to make him a one-term president than the emerging corruption investigations, ones that saw the former president convicted of bribery and mail fraud in 1979's "trial of the century".
His successor was not as much of a break from Connally as Democrats wanted. The youngest ever President was a new kind of Democrat, one that accepted that the New Deal had had it's time and that this was the age of new ideas. While achievements such as the Department for the Environment, the Amtrak Express Network and Equal Rights Amendment are still with us, his aggressive pushes for deregulations, tax breaks and welfare cuts alienated, outraged and severely weakened many Democratic Party voter blocs. A return to growth, a popular intervention in the Iranian Civil War and ideological battles in the Republican Party (culminating in Vice President Percy being forced to put his volatile, divisive primary opponent on his ticket) secured President Brown's re-election. Many more achievements were made in his second term - most notably steering the collapsing Soviet Union towards something resembling a democratic state - but by 1985 his party was hollowed out.
Frank Rizzo was both a symptom and cause of his hollowing out. The tough-talking Mayor of Philadelphia had long sought outrage and terror from liberal commentators and politicians, and had been a regular critic of Jerry Brown even before he formally switched party affiliations in 1978. As middle America grew tired of the Playboy President and his seemingly hands-off approach to race riots and liberal extremists, Rizzo quickly became the darling of the Republican Party and it's frontrunner for the 1984 election. His bombastic rhetoric did not dampen down in office, frequently picking fights with Congress, liberal celebrities and foreign leaders alike, fighting a "war on terror" against left-wing and jihadist extremists across the world. After the Republicans gained control of Congress in 1986 he pushed through a series of bills that empowered law enforcement across America and roll back the frontiers of the state, the latter of which empowered governors sympathetic to Rizzo to clamp down on civil rights protestors and all manner of "subversives" with force. With crime rates falling economy still booming in 1992, Rizzo retired enormously popular.
His successor was far less fortunate. Despite Rizzo's popularity the 1992 election was a near tie for the entire election campaign. The long boom of the 1980s finally faltered and Rizzo Republicans became increasingly impatient with the business-minded president trying to raise taxes to slay the deficit His rapprochement with nations previously considered America's antagonists also rankled, especially as a "pink tide" was seeing socialist leaders rise to power across the global south. But he only became a one-term president when the North-Cape scandal was uncovered. That the Rizzo Administration had illegally sent aid to the South African Apartheid regime during the South African Civil War soon consumed the election, and Borman's furious denials of any knowledge of wrongdoing were not terribly convincing. Which meant that the Democrat widely assumed to be a sacrificial lamb would defeat him decisively.
Elizabeth Hanford had worked as a staffer and cabinet secretary in the Johnson, Humphrey and Brown Administrations, and then had slowly worked her way up the ranks of the Democratic Party and the Senate as a reliable, forward-thinking technocrat. She only won the 1996 nomination because most of the big names had chosen to wait for 2000, and in the vague hope that she might be able to improve the party's issues with women and "Rizzo Democrats". In office Hanford has pushed a series of "Millennium Bills" designed to modernise the American state and its infrastructure, as well as making historic meetings with leaders such as Winnie Mandela and Fidel Castro. As the Republicans continued to feud over Rizzo's legacy, Hanford's problems exist elsewhere. The Russian State has elected a Communist President, and America's leader still thinks she can micromanage the White House.
I take offense at your blatant theft of my comment in the Democratic Reagan thread that ”Sure, it’s entirely possible for the Democrats to be the ones to bring in the new monetarist consensus, I suppose…”!!
