The Fifteenth HoS Challenge

[Walpurgisnacht]

No, it's real. Trust me. Welcome back!

The rules are simple; I give a prompt, and you have until 4:00pm on the 26th to post a list related to the prompt. As for what constitutes a list? If you'd personally post it in Lists of Heads of Government and Heads of State rather than another thread, I think that's a good enough criterion. Writeups are preferred, please don't post a blank list, and I'd also appreciate it if you titled your list for polling purposes. Once the deadline hits, we will open up a multiple choice poll, and whoever receives the most votes after a week gets the entirely immaterial prize.

As the title hints at, April is the month of foolishness and merry pranks. That's why this month, our challenge is about the biggest piece of foolishness ever to cross the list community, Liberal X and Conservative Y! It's not just for Republicans and Democrats anymore! Your mission is to write a list where two parties swap ideologies, ideally ending with a GAL-TAN or Densitarian/Posturbian situation, but I'm not choosy. Political spectrums can come in all shapes and sizes.

Good luck!

 

[Mumby]

Liberal Conservatives and Conservative Liberals?!

look it was the first and most obvious thing i came up with

1908-1916: H.H. Asquith (Liberal)
1910, Acting (All-Party Technical Government); Arthur Balfour (Unionist), H.H. Asquith (Liberal), John Redmond / William O'Brien (Irish Nationalists), Arthur Henderson (Labour)
1911 Tariff Reform referendum; YES 53%
1911 (Minority, with IPP c&s) def. Austen Chamberlain ('Radical' Unionist), John Redmond / William O'Brien (Irish Nationalists), Walter Long ('Conservative' / Irish Unionist), George Barnes (Labour)
1916-1921: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener (Nonpartisan)
1916 War Government inc. Liberals, Unionists, IPP, IUA, Labour and Conservatives
1920 (Unity Coupon with Liberals, Unionists, IUA and NDLP) def. William Adamson (Labour), John Dillon (Irish Parliamentary), Walter Long (Conservative), Arthur Griffith (Sinn Fein)
1921-1927: Winston Churchill (Liberal)
1924 (Unity Coupon with IUA and Unionists) def. Arthur Henderson (Labour), Joseph Devlin (Irish Parliamentary), Cathal Brugha (Sinn Fein), Wilfrid Ashley (Conservative)
1927-1928: Austen Chamberlain (Unionist - Unity Coupon)
1928-1929: George Lansbury (Labour)
1928 (Minority) def. Austen Chamberlain (Unity Coupon - Liberals, IUA, Unionists), Joseph Devlin (Irish Parliamentary), Michael Collins (Sinn Fein), Wilfrid Ashley (Conservative)
1929-1935: David Lloyd George (Liberal)
1929 (Minority) def. George Lansbury (Labour), Joseph Devlin (Irish Parliamentary), Horace Plunkett (Irish Unionist), Michael Collins (Sinn Fein), Wilfrid Ashley (Conservative)
1931 (Majority) def. George Lansbury (Labour), William Redmond (Irish Parliamentary), Horace Plunkett (Irish Unionist), Oswald Mosley (Conservative), Michael Collins (Sinn Fein)
1935-1940: Neville Chamberlain (Liberal)
1936 (Coalition with IUA) def. Herbert Morrison (Labour), Oswald Mosley (Conservative), Eoin O'Duffy (Sinn Fein), Richard Beamish (Irish Unionist), William Redmond (Irish Parliamentary)
1938 Emergency Government
1939 (Majority) def. Herbert Morrison (Labour), Jorian Jenks (Conservative)
1940-1945: Leslie Hore-Belisha (Liberal)
1941 War Government inc. Labour and Conservatives
1944 (Coalition with IUA) def. Herbert Morrison (Labour), Gordon Campbell (Irish Unionist), Jorian Jenks (Conservative), Jim Larkin / J.B. Priestley (Common Wealth), Richard Mulcahy (Irish National)
1945 Monarchy referendum; ABOLISH 56%
1945-1956: Herbert Morrison (Labour)
1945 (Minority) def. Leslie Hore-Belisha (Liberal), Jorian Jenks (Conservative), Richard Mulcahy (Irish National), Gordon Campbell (Irish Unionist), Jim Larkin / Tom Wintringham (Common Wealth)
1946 (Minority) def. Leslie Hore-Belisha (Liberal), Richard Mulcahy (Irish National), Jorian Jenks (Conservative), Gordon Campbell (Irish Unionist), Tom Wintringham / James Larkin Jr. (Common Wealth)
1950 (Majority) def. Gwilym Lloyd-George (Liberal), Eve Balfour (Conservative)
1954 (Majority) def. Gwilym Lloyd-George (Liberal), Eve Balfour (Conservative), Tom Wintringham (Common Wealth)
1956-1962: Evan Durbin (Labour)
1958 (Majority) def. Rab Butler (Liberal), Kitty Wintringham / John Banks (Common Wealth), Eve Balfour (Conservative)
1962-1967: Rab Butler (Liberal)
1962 (Minority) def. Evan Durbin (Labour), collective (Common Wealth), Eve Balfour (Conservative)
1964 (Majority) def. Evan Durbin (Labour), Muriel Dowding (Conservative), collective (Common Wealth)
1967-1985: Jeremy Thorpe (Liberal)
1968 (Majority) def. Douglas Jay (Labour), Muriel Dowding (Conservative), disputed / collective (various Common Wealthers)
1972 (Majority) def. Douglas Jay (Labour), George Trevelyan (Conservative)
1976 (Majority) def. Roy Jenkins (Labour), George Trevelyan (Conservative)
1980 (Majority) def. Anthony Wedgewood Benn [replacing Roy Jenkins] (Labour), George Trevelyan (Conservative), Denis Healey / Ibrahim Swann (Democratic Labour Movement)
1984 (Majority) def. Dick Mabon (Labour), Tony Whittaker (Conservative)
1985-1990: Michael Heseltine (Liberal)
1988 (Minority, with Conservative c&s) def. Peter Shore (Labour), Teddy Goldsmith (Conservative)
1990-1994: Peter Shore (Labour)
1990 (Majority) def. Michael Heseltine (Liberal), Teddy Goldsmith (Conservative)
1994-2001: Jack Cunningham (Labour)
1994 (Majority) def. William Waldegrave (Liberal), Jonathon Porritt (Conservative), Norman Tebbit (Unioni)
1998 (Majority) def. Claudia Chirac (Liberal), Jonathon Porritt (Conservative)
2001-2002: Peter Mandelson (Labour majority; effective minority)
2002-2008: Bruce Lang (Liberal)
2002 (Majority) def. Peter Mandelson (Labour), Robin Harper (Conservative), collective (NewLabour)
2006 (Majority) def. Charles Kennedy (Labour), Robin Harper (Conservative)
2008-2014: Claudia Chirac (Liberal)
2010 (Majority) def. Charles Kennedy (Labour), Caroline Lucas (Conservative)
2014-2022: Anne Brown (Labour)
2014 (Coalition with Conservatives) def. Claudia Chirac (Liberal), Caroline Lucas (Conservative)
2016 (Majority) def. Owen Paterson (Liberal), Caroline Lucas (Conservative)
2020 (Majority) def. Liz Truss (Liberal), Tamsin Omond (Conservative)
2022-0000: Ted Miliband (Labour majority)

The Whigs are Britain's oldest and most historically dominant party, able to worm their way through the times, whereas their Conservative counterparts withered away into a third party in the mid 20th century, cast to the fringes as the Liberals successfully placed themselves on the centre-ground of British politics.

Britain has a roughly two-and-a-half party system and has done since the 1960s and the collapse of the Common Wealth Party. The Liberals and Labour are the two main parties, representing the right and left respectively, whereas the Conservatives have occupied an uncomfortable ground, not quite in the centre. The modern Conservative Party has it's roots in the 'country interest' group of Unionists who rejected the fait accompli agreed in 1910, and split from the rest of the party after Austen Chamberlain claimed the leadership. Ossifying under shire aristocrats, they enjoyed a brief resurgence of relevance under Oswald Mosley who filled the Conservative ranks with his Greenshirt paramilitaries, right up until Eoin O'Duffy's attempted coup in Ireland made all of that rather embarrassing.

Jorian Jenks' emergency leadership soon became a permanent one - he remained in post until 1947. Despite being politically adjacent to the Cagoulard Regime in France, he joined the War Government as Minister for Food and Agriculture. This proved to be the Conservatives' means of survival - they clung to relevancy in the shires, in farming cooperatives established under Jenks' aegis. From these unauspicious seedlings, the modern environmentalist movement would grow.

While the Liberals and Labour exchanged strongmen and their long-suffering successors, the Conservatives swung into many 'New Age' ideas - vegetarianism, animal rights, anthroposophy, ufology. They were something of a joke party. When the Common Wealthers split, the Creatic faction under Swann breaking with the Celtics, many of the Celts aligned with the Conservatives. It was in the 1980s, as the sheer scale of asbestos health risk was unveiled, and even the petty authoritarianism of Thorpe couldn't halt the scandal, that the Conservatives discovered their modern raison detre.

Their involvement with the environmental movement has only deepened as the years have passed. The very term 'Conservative' has come to mean a concern with environmental conservation in British political parlance. And as the years have passed a new generation of Britons, concerned with what kind of world they can expect to inherit has flocked to the party. Walter Long would no doubt be disgusted with what the modern party has become, with it's calls for gender identity recognition, a minimum basic income, and a breakneck adaptation to net zero emissions within the next decade.

 

[Mumby]

Couple of extra bits here - Jacques Chirac fled to Britain after the rise of the Cagoulard Regime in the 1930s, his daughter Claud (anglicised to Claudia) becomes a Liberal politician. And Anne Brown is Gordon Brown's daughter with the exiled Princess Margaret of Romania.

 

[Yokai Man]

Couple of extra bits here - Jacques Chirac fled to Britain after the rise of the Cagoulard Regime in the 1930s, his daughter Claud (anglicised to Claudia) becomes a Liberal politician. And Anne Brown is Gordon Brown's daughter with the exiled Princess Margaret of Romania.

*happy noises*

Seriously,fuck Radu Duda,everyone hates him,even royalists

 

[Steve Brinson]

A Question For The Historians?

Paul Nakasone High School History of the United States II (Pelafin Sailer, primary teacher) Assignment 8
Commentators like Sebastian Astorga (see "Confessions of a Mehta Populist", The American:Opinion, 2099 December 11) and Victorin Lim (see "How Jael Patterson Lost Her Way", Dissent, 2098 June 4) have argued America's two main political groupings have to some extent switched places since the immediate postwar. The group currently represented by President Desmond and the "Spirit of '31" is they propose presently more like the People's Party than the People's Party's institutional heirs in United for Democracy and vice versa. Should we believe these claims?​

Haisley Benavides, arguing against:
"It is, I think, appropriate in an argument about the changing nature of American politics since the Second Civil War to begin by outlining the state of play in the immediate postwar. The Unionist-Democrats viewed themselves and were viewed by the American people as the party of the war, victory, and the military-security state. More concisely, the party of doing what was necessary for victory. This frequently meant the federal government had and exercised authority over the states not only on matters of preparedness and security but also on welfare state issues like housing, social issues like creche childcare and multilingualism, and administrative issues like election law. It is not, as the United partisans say, disingenuous for the President Desmond to invoke Crenshaw and Ortiz Jones when discussing her proposals to standardize familial pensions across the states. It comes organically out of the same tradition.

"The same is true of their opposition. Neither is it disingenuous for the partisans of United to count prewar statist liberals and socialists like Bernie Sanders as part of their ideological heritage when many of their earliest members were card-carrying members of the Democratic Socialists of America, nor is it disingenuous for the Spirit of '31 to claim the same heritage and legacy. The truth is, even taking out the small faction of 'Patriotic Socialists', the DSA do not map cleanly onto modern politics. They protested the actually existing government of the time and their high-handedness on issues like policing and immigration, but they also fought state, local, and tribal governments and on behalf of central government programs like single-payer healthcare and environmental reconversion. The People's Party was, moreover, not merely a socialist movement. Many of its leaders came from Community Defense and even the Copperhead Road Liberation Army.

"This remained the case even as the People's Party came closer to power. People's Party governments on the state, local, and tribal level established the right to traditional medicine against the protests of the standardizers in the Unionist and Democratic Parties and the national health bureaucracy. They also resumed the prewar push towards reimagining the law enforcement and the legal system as a force for justice. In many cities, as well, People's Party figures like Dean Preston sought to put welfare programs like homebuilding under local control. On the national level Ro Khanna's campaign on the 'Progressive Alternative' ticket set opposition to wartime surveillance as its main purpose and Sara Nelson's campaign four years later as the first nominee of the People's Party made ending the federal government's authority over labor organizing and ending 'Second Reconstruction'-era controls on wages and prices its priorities. This was, furthermore, not merely a feature of the People's Party outside power. President Manning championed and signed bills to devolve the Full Employment Corps and National Resources Planning Board to state, local, and tribal control, amend the Republican Form of Government Act to legalize more varied forms of government, and pushed for the Community Guarantee.

"Why have observers like Astorga and Lim argued from their various viewpoints a realignment occurred if the parties maintain the same ideologies? Because the roles of the parties shifted. In a very real sense the People's Party 'won' the 2040s. At the beginning they were an insurgent movement viewed more as a protest than a national party, but by the end President Kennedy had adopted their assumptions and adapted them to her own ends. The commanding heights of the commentariat had, by the '80s, wholeheartedly taken the commitments of the People's Party, not least because those commitments allowed them to vote with their feet and build or join communities based on their other commitments. Liberationism began as an intellectual movement in response to the Communitarianism smoothly incorporated by Presidents Cruz and Douglas. The revival of Unionist centralism under the name of the Liberation Party and the further advance thereof by the National Party represented the ideals of Crenshaw advanced by the means of Khanna, Nelson, and Manning. The parties and ideological traditions have not changed. Only the world has."

Calel Rowe, arguing for (rebuttal):
"Haisley's framing of the argument is clear and convincing, but it misses, I think, several key aspects of both the post-war situation and the present.

"The Unionist-Democrats - and it is, I think, clear they became a unified faction on some level the hour war broke out - identified as the party of pragmatism, but not merely statist pragmatism. When the Congress rejected the Swalwell Act, for example, the Unionists and Democrats justified it in terms of pragmatism, but that pragmatism in their view pointed to a federalist conclusion. 'Whether or not,' as the Representative Nelson put it, 'we recognize abortion as a human right, the plain fact is many of our citizens - within and without loyalist territory - do not. Maintaining their loyalties will require respecting their conclusions, no matter what we think of them.' This pragmatic approach was not just a feature of the war years. A majority of the Unionists and Democrats voted against the Children's Bill of Rights as late as 2039. Some policymakers opposed the standardization of rights across the states and used the neutrality of the federal government as a smokescreen and others sincerely believed in that neutrality, but they all agreed. The country was better off and better united when the federal government recognized the different states and the different communities within those states had different views of human rights having to be respected on some level.

"Sound like anyone we know?

"Neither was this willingness to make choices that would seem heterodox today limited to the Unionist-Democrats. Their opposition did, indeed, take stands in favor of federalist autonomy in several cases, but this was not only not a universal commitment but not even a consistent pattern. Representatives from the People's Party in the Congress voted to mandate state and local governments recognize polyamorous marriages, end practices like pretrial detention and pervasive imprisonment, and expand supportive housing programs. Their position was clear. There was a baseline level of rights every American should expect to have. State, local, and tribal governments could innovate atop those rights within bounds, but they could neither reinterpret nor ignore them if that meant people would lose their rights. Because, furthermore, of the long history of federalism as a tool of oppression, those innovations should be regarded with skepticism outside of a few specific cases.

"This legacy led the President Manning to support the Community Guarantee. It was not that the rights of state, local, and tribal governments to create policy had to be expanded, but rather those rights had to be contained, channeled into particular areas, and matched with the responsibility to deal with consequences. If you were a state, local, or tribal government the federal government would allow you to make policies in certain areas without interference, but they would not bail you out if that policy failed or infringed on your citizens' rights. This legacy also led her to support the amendment of the Republican Form of Government Act. Though the provisions for unilateral cancellation of responsible government are considered dead letters now because they have never been used outside cases of gross corruption, this was not obvious at the time and was in fact an object of serious contestation. Party ideologue Hesperine Lincoln explicitly tied this to Trudeauism in Canada, stating that 'a democratic society cannot permit the formation of a parallel power that opposes it'. Manning and Lincoln like the Trudeauists did not see this as incompatible with a participatory democracy that respected its citizens' rights. They saw it as necessary for such a society.

"This is, bluntly, not a statement their ideological heirs would endorse. There has, undoubtedly, been a realignment. This realignment was not the act of a single moment, but one which took place over multiple elections and perhaps multiple generations. Haisley is certainly correct to point to the drift of the People's Party from the periphery to the establishment as a major factor, but is, I think, wrong to state that this did not affect their ideological commitments. In particular while the party had been able to attain power through an organic movement it could not hold power or survive periods outside it without building redoubts in party machines across the country. Those machines became institutionally conservative over time as individual heroes aged and co-opted reformists stopped being effective reformists. They drifted, moreover, apart from each other and forced the People's Party to resolve the contradiction by sacrificing either their commitment to federal enforcement of rights or those very machines. They chose the former and left the banner of federal power to enforce progressive values up to be carried by someone else. Prakash Mehta had long carried a similar banner and took the opportunity to weld a new movement together under the name of the Liberation Party.

"This is not to state that the modern parties are disingenuous in claiming their predecessors' principles. They claim, I do not doubt, their legacies in good faith. The complexities of the political viewpoints of both Crenshaw and Manning present plenty of space for a modern observer to see much that is admirable even from the other side of the political spectrum. But it would be disingenuous for an outside observer to claim that United for Democracy is the uncontestable heir of the People's Party of Manning or that the Spirit of '31 is the same for the Unionists of Crenshaw. The world has changed and the parties have changed with it."​

2029-2037: Vice President Dan Crenshaw (Republican then Unionist, Texas)

'28 irregular circumstances​

'32 (with Vice President John Fetterman) def. Representative Ro Khanna (Progressive Independent, California)​

2037-2041: Secretary of Defense Gina Ortiz Jones (Democratic, Texas)

'36 (with Senator Abigail Spanberger) def. Governor Luke Malek (Unionist, Idaho), AFL-CIO President Sara Nelson (People's, DC)​

2041-2049: Senator Chelsea Manning (People's, Maryland)

'40 (with Governor Greg Casar) def. President Gina Ortiz Jones (Democratic, Texas), journalist Meghan McCain (Unionist, Arizona)​

'44 (with Vice President Greg Casar) def. Senator Stephanie Murphy (Unionist-Democratic, Florida)​

2049-2057: Governor Kyra Kennedy (Unionist-Democratic, New York)

'48 (with Senator Jared Golden) def. Senator Michelle Wu (People's, Massachusetts)​

'52 (with Vice President Jared Golden) def. Governor Charli Wilson (People's, Central California), Governor Christian Douglas (Community, Alabama)​

2057-2063: Admiral Alex Cruz (People's, Kansas)

'56 (with Governor Matthew Novak) def. Senator Lauren Nelson (Unionist-Democratic, Nevada)​

2063-2069: Senator Leon Douglas (People's, Georgia)

'62 (with Mayor Victoria Duarte) def. Senator Prakash Mehta (Unionist-Democratic, Brazos)​

2069-2075: Senator Prakash Mehta (Liberation, Brazos)

'68 (with Representative Wenliang Guo) def. Vice President Victoria Duarte (People's, Chicago), Colonel Teresa Battaglia (True Unionist, New Jersey)​

2075-2081: Governor María Arcadia de la Torre (People's, Hawai'i)

'74 (with Senator Avery Wilson) def. Secretary of Infrastructure Martín Zamora (Liberation, Arizona)​

2081-2086: fmr. President Prakash Mehta (Liberation, Brazos)

'80 (with House Majority Leader Grace Juarez) def. Vice President Avery Wilson (People's, Glacier), Mayor Thomas Antonovich (Municipal, Los Angeles)​

'83 (with Senator Julia Moskowitz) def. Vice President Grace Juarez (National, New Mexico), Governor Daniela Quesada (People's, West Virginia)​

2086-2089: Speaker of the House Grace Juarez (National, New Mexico)

'86 (with Secretary of Industry and Enterprise Antonio Ruiz) def. Governor Frank Kennedy (New Democracy, Manhattan)​

2089-2098: Senator Jael Patterson (New Democracy, Apalachicola)

'89 def. President Grace Juarez (National, New Mexico)​

2098-: Mayor Ardent Desmond (Spirit, Nashville)

'98 def. Ambassador María Isabel Agustin (United, Virginia)​

 

[frustrated progressive]

ideally ending with a GAL-TAN or Densitarian/Posturbian situation, but I'm not choosy.

Good luck!

Pardon me, but I'm not familiar with either of those. Would you mind explaining?

 

[Steve Brinson]

Pardon me, but I'm not familiar with either of those. Would you mind explaining?

GAL-TAN stands for "Green/Alternative/Libertarian-Traditionalist/Authoritarian/Nationalist", it's essentially a way of describing the social (and to some extent establishment-outsider) dimension of politics.

Densitarian-Posturbian comes from this article, which tries to imagine a future after the death of organized social conservatism - Densitarian politics are the politics of the economically unequal big city (and, according to Lind, generally libertarianish), whereas Posturbian politics are the politics of the middle-class suburbs and rural areas (and, again according to Lind, generally statist).

 

[frustrated progressive]

GAL-TAN stands for "Green/Alternative/Libertarian-Traditionalist/Authoritarian/Nationalist", it's essentially a way of describing the social (and to some extent establishment-outsider) dimension of politics.

Densitarian-Posturbian comes from this article, which tries to imagine a future after the death of organized social conservatism - Densitarian politics are the politics of the economically unequal big city (and, according to Lind, generally libertarianish), whereas Posturbian politics are the politics of the middle-class suburbs and rural areas (and, again according to Lind, generally statist).

GAL-TAN sounds like a robot created to run for President of Colombia.
Seriously, thanks.

 

[Walpurgisnacht]

GAL-TAN sounds like a robot created to run for President of Colombia.

I've always thought "antagonist of The Difference Engine 3: Lies, Dammed Lies, and Eugenics", myself.

Please note that using the Lind political spectrum is very much not mandatory--I just threw that in there because the style of lists this contest aims to emulate often end up with it. If you don't want to touch GAL/TAN with a ten-foot pole, that's very understandable.

 

[Excelsior]

AHC: Red China?

Interesting prompt OP. Although it may be hard for us to imagine, there are definitely points where China could have turned to communism. Other people in this thread have been speculating about a communist party emerging to defeat or supplant the KMT early on, however I think this is the wrong approach. There were many reasons why communism would never be able to beat the KMT from the outside especially once you consider the numbers disadvantage and lack of support from other communist nations like Russia. The victorious group in the turmoil of early Republican China would be whoever could trace themselves directly back to Sun Yat-sen, it was his long presidency that made China whole again and established control firmly in Nanjing. There were many communists in the proto-nationalist party under him, it wasn't until Chiang wiped them all out that communism became little more than a dream in China. So actually I think you need to have the communists beat Chiang and take control of the party. With the communist faction in control over the KMT they would become the governing regime over most of China and you avoid the Japanese-collaborationist puppet state in Manchuria run by the remnants of OTL's "Communist Party". Instead you have a real left wing government in China, even if their name isn't "communist". And the communist ideology isn't tainted by association with hostile foreign powers.

I think an alternate Chinese president list would look something like this. You still have Sun Yat-sen taking over from Song Jiaoren and defeating Yuan Shikai, but instead of Chiang he is succeeded by Wang Jingwei, however Chiang doesn't go away quietly, he will put up a fight and Wang has to defeat him. In my list I decided to have Wang and Chiang take each other out, leaving Chen Duxiu to pick up the pieces and re-unite the KMT. Mao is still a problem however with Chen as the president instead of Chiang he will simply be an insubordinate underling instead of the leader of the main opposition party. Then after that we have OTL left wing KMT members running China and Mao followers are probably just the annoying intraparty rebels like the Jacksonites in America's Democratic Party. I ended the list with Deng because it's hard to pinpoint actual leftists from OTL post-civil war China. If anyone has suggestions please tell me.

List of Presidents of the Republic of China
1. Song Jiaoren (Kuomintang) 1912-1913[1]
2. Sun Yat-sen (Kuomintang) 1913-1925[2]
3. Wang Jingwei (Kuomintang) 1925-1929[1]
4. Chen Duxiu (Kuomintang) 1929-1944[2]
5. Zhou Enlai (Kuomintang) 1944-1978[2]
6. Deng Xiaoping (Kuomintang) 1978-????

[1] assassinated
[2] died in office

 

[OHC]

"Sledgehammer Theocracy! Day-Glo Fascism!"

1969 - 1977: Eugene McCarthy (Democratic)
1968 (with Terry Sanford) def. Richard Nixon (Republican), George Wallace (American Independent)
1972 (with Terry Sanford) def. Ronald Reagan (Republican)
1977 - 1983: Tom McCall (Republican)
1976 (with Lawrence Hogan) def. Terry Sanford (Democratic), Martin Luther King, Jr. (Justice)
1980 (with Floyd McKissick) def. Allard Lowenstein (Democratic), Jesse Helms (Conservative)
1983 - 1989: Floyd McKissick (Republican)
1984 (with Steve Conliff) def. Pat Schroeder (Democratic), Eileen Shearer (Conservative), Daniel Patrick Moynihan (Independent)
1989 - 1997: Stewart Brand (Democratic)
1988 (with Barbara Mikulski) def. Floyd McKissick (Republican)
1993 (with Barbara Mikulski) def. George Atiyeh (Republican)
1997 - : Bob Kelleher (Republican)
1996 (with Charles Evers) def. Jerry Pournelle (Democratic)

That's right. Even after Nixon and Chennault were exposed... even after peace in Vietnam... even after a vengeful, dying Hoover leaked his files and blew up the Establishment... even after the backlashers failed and the culture wars ended before they began, after McCarthy became an inflation hawk and the GOP embraced creativity in government rather than its rejection... the denizens of the organic farming villages and the new cities of the Black Belt vote Republican, and the yuppie telecommuters and space stevedores vote Democratic. Just can't get rid of that two-party system, huh.

Spoiler

Another BClick "what I just read" special. There's McKissick with his new towns, of course, but the whole concept here has a pretty silly origin. I was rereading The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test alongside my BITR research and got to the part where Kesey and co visit Timothy Leary and realize that their respective attitudes and aesthetics aren't very compatible, and I thought "lol what if the hippies won and Pranksters vs Millbrook was the political spectrum" - loud and spontaneous and sensual and present in the world, vs serious and contemplative and transcendental.

Then I realized that if you take into account Kesey and Leary's later careers, it kind of works. The former, gritty western Americana artist type, moving to a farm and experimenting with left-libertarian political reforms and becoming a localist civic-booster type in Eugene; the latter, East Coast intellectual dissident, caught up in international intrigue with the Weathermen and getting into transhumanism and endorsing Ron Paul. Hey, those would be the ends of the political spectrum in the Age of Aquarius, wouldn't it?

 

[SenatorChickpea]

THE SENATE AND THE PEOPLE

Thus it came to pass that both the Senate and the knights, although opposed to each other, were united in hating Drusus. Only the plebeians were gratified with the colonies. The Italians, in whose interest chiefly Drusus was devising these plans, were apprehensive about the law providing for the colonies, because they thought that the Roman public domain (which was still undivided and which they were cultivating, some by force and others clandestinely) would be taken away from them, and that in many cases they might even be disturbed in their private holdings. It was generally considered that Drusus’s program would fail, and even that he was in very peril of his life; one evening as he bid a crowd of clients good night an assailant struck at him with a shoemaker’s knife, but succeeded only in wounding him. (1) By this cowardly stroke, the tribune’s position was transformed. No one wished to be seen as a chief of assassins, and what had been seen as Drusus’s obstinacy and arrogance was now declared unwavering courage in the face of murderers.

Appian, On The War With Pontus (2)

‘Drusus’s great prize had been the securing of the whole of newly enfranchised Italy as a client base. This was one of the main reasons his reforms had been intolerable to the Senate, who saw that the Tribune would become one of the most powerful men in Rome before ever holding a military command or a great office of state. But perhaps due to his weakened state following the assassination attempt, or simply because his earnest desire to pass his laws outweighed his personal ambition, in the days following the prize was divided up. Grandees such as Gaius Marius, M. Aemilius Scaurus, and Drusus’s opponent L. Marcius Philippus all become the patrons of swathes of Italy. The Drusine Laws were, amidst much fear of a Tribunician veto, passed. There would be no civil war between Rome and the allies.

The Drusine laws would transform republican politics. While the Senate doubled in size, the number of offices on the cursus honorum remained the same. The result was that the pedarii- the backbenchers- increasingly refused to vote with the great men of the Senate. To ambitious young senators, independence of voting seemed the only path to distinction. This led to first the creation of the unofficial post of villicus- named after the rural stewards responsible for the managing of other slaves, and of cattle. A Senatorial villicus was expected to corral the pedarii and get them to vote as required. Secondly, old rules about seniority in speaking order began to erode- more and more senators, conscious that they would never sit in the consul's chair, began to demand speaking privileges anyway. It became import for a villicus to manage who was going to address the chamber on what topics, and to know what those senators would say. In this way, party discipline developed before parties did.

The aristocracy’s newfound power base in Italy upended politics. The boni who had resisted the reforms now benefited the most from them; many of the populists who had championed them were left out in the cold.… (4)

R. Syme, (Equite,) The Roman Reformation, (Oxonia, Oxonia Academia, 2692)



LIST OF CONSULS OF ROME DURING THE 'DRUSINE' REPUBLIC

a.u.c. 666 L. Cornelius Sulla, Optimate/ Gn. Pompeius Strabo, Optimate (5)

a.u.c. 667 Gn. Octavius, Optimate/ L. Cornelius Cinna, Populare (6)

a. u. c. 668-671, L. Cornelius Cinna, Populare/ G. Marius, Populare, G. Marius II suffix consul, Populare

a. u. c. 671, Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius, optimate/ Q. Sertorius, Custodes (7)

a. u. c. 672-674, L. Cornelius Sulla, optimate/ M. Tullius Decula, P. Servilius Vatia, Gn. Cornelius Dolabella, optimates. (8)

...

a. u. c. 702, M. Portius Cato populare/ P. Claudius Pulcher, populare (9)


(1) The POD.

(2) Originally of course, The Civil Wars.

(3) A parliamentary whip, essentially.

(4) The difficulty in doing a Head of Government list for the Roman Republic is that the optimates and populares were not really political parties, Consuls certainly did not run with party affiliations, and a straight list of largely forgotten consuls would be rather dull. Hence lots of explanatory text to try and enliven a rather awkward list.

(5) Sulla and Pompeius Strabo were not officially optimates, but they are generally noted as such to impress upon students the contrast with Cinna. There was little in the year of Sulla’s first consulship to suggest his later radicalism; if anything, his colleague Pompey was more comfortable with the new political landscape given his powerbase in Picenum outside Rome. Following their consulship, Sulla and Strabo were both given commands in the Pontine War- Strabo was sent to secure Macedonia against a feared collapse of the northern border, while Sulla took overall command against the great Mithridates.

(6) Cinna was the first of the ‘new’ Populares; he was generally accused of pandering to the urban mob, who worried that they were being outvoted by the newly enfranchised Italians. Cinna’s political platform was simple: to restore the greatness of Rome with a focus on the traditional virtues and a lost way of life, before the elites had sold out the Senate and People to their fellow nobility across the peninsular. Rome was shocked when he ran, and won, a second term- this time as junior consul. For three years Cinna was the leader of the Roman Republic, aided by the immense popularity of his ‘junior’ consul, the stroke-felled Gaius Marius, whose personal authority gave legitimacy to Cinna’s misrule long past the point when Marius’s son had to ‘interpret’ the great man’s pronouncements. Cinna’s unwillingness to leave office perversely doomed him; in holding to consular imperium he never took up the chance to get out to a province, make some money and let the opprobrium fade. He did set the precedent, though it took a while to bed in, of senior consuls having running mates- within a few decades, it became very unusual for consuls to be elected on separate ‘tickets.’ Re-election of consuls- once rare- would become the norm.

(7) After the death of Marius and his replacement with his scandalously young son, many of the populares broke with Cinna. Marius’s nephew Quintus Sertorius agreed to work with Metellus Pius, the first consul to openly brand himself as the ‘Optimate’ candidate. Cinna spent the year raging that he would be re-elected. Sertorius secured another round of land reform, and a juicy provincial command in Spain.
At this point, the radicals split between those who sought legitimacy directly from the crowd, with a focus on returning power to the Tribunate Assembly and other lawmaking bodies directly answerable to the population of the city of Rome- still called Populares- and those like Sertorius who cast themselves as military men, guardians or ‘custodes’ of Rome.

(8) Returning to Rome with a grass crown and a captured King of Pontus, Sulla swept the elections. Cinna refused to accept his defeat, and like Saturninus years before him, tried to occupy the capitol. Sulla astonished Rome with his reform program. His motto was that there was ‘no greater friend, no worse enemy’ than he, and he proved it- first with a massively generous distribution of spoils following his victory in the east, and then with the crucifixion of Cinna upon the Field of Mars. Sulla decidedly completed the transformation of the optimates into a party of paternalist reformers; land was distributed to veterans, and citizenship extended to new towns even outside Italy- towns who in turn would become clientele of selected senatorial elite.

(9) A fierce defender of Roman tradition, Cato stubbornly held that Rome had been diminished by its extension of the franchise. An out and out reactionary, he would probably have alienated the equites and small landowners of the citizenry were it not for his charismatic running mate Claudius Pulcher. They immediately overextended themselves with a campaign directed at overturning the reforms of the outgoing, five year Optimate ministry of M. Tullius Cicero and his colleague L. Sergius Catilina...

 

[frustrated progressive]

@SenatorChickpea

Incredible!
You've taken a woefully underused POD and made it fit to actually renew Roman Republican governance while not lapsing into "and everyone just magically believes in the Republic again" sleight-of-hand. Your approach with the rise of the vilici is exactly the kind of emergent, slightly unconscious constitutional weirdness that Romans did, and you deftly handle how this new system still allows for everyone's conflicting interests while also working better. The inversion of OTL political figures is just icing on the cake. Rarely have I seen any political AH in an ancient or medieval setting approach such levels of verisimilitude.
This is truly a Triumph.

 

[Walpurgisnacht]

THE SENATE AND THE PEOPLE

Senator, don't take this the wrong way, but even though it's incredible I kind of hope your list doesn't win because I can't find any decent music to put with the post. I've been looking for an hour and the best I've got is two German kids trying to rap Cicero's denunciation of Catiline.

Still, the details about how a form of whipping and party politics emerges naturally from patronage systems and then creates the party systems necessary to justify itself are *chef's kiss*.

 

[SenatorChickpea]

@SenatorChickpea

Incredible!
You've taken a woefully underused POD and made it fit to actually renew Roman Republican governance while not lapsing into "and everyone just magically believes in the Republic again" sleight-of-hand. Your approach with the rise of the vilici is exactly the kind of emergent, slightly unconscious constitutional weirdness that Romans did, and you deftly handle how this new system still allows for everyone's conflicting interests while also working better. The inversion of OTL political figures is just icing on the cake. Rarely have I seen any political AH in an ancient or medieval setting approach such levels of verisimilitude.
This is truly a Triumph.

Senator, don't take this the wrong way, but even though it's incredible I kind of hope your list doesn't win because I can't find any decent music to put with the post. I've been looking for an hour and the best I've got is two German kids trying to rap Cicero's denunciation of Catiline.

Still, the details about how a form of whipping and party politics emerges naturally from patronage systems and then creates the party systems necessary to justify itself are *chef's kiss*.

You're both very kind. It goes to show that sometimes it's good not to work on what comes most naturally from the POD- deciding on your scenario and then working out how to get there through the natural contortions of history can lead to much more distinct and interesting results than a simple 'what would be the most plausible next step?'

 

[Excelsior]

THE SENATE AND THE PEOPLE

I'm really glad you did this because "optimates/populares" was one of my other ideas and I wouldn't have done it nearly as good as you have.

 

[Steve Brinson]

Like A Stranger In The Night

1933-1945: Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democratic) ✞

'44 (with James F. Byrnes) def. Thomas A. Dewey (Republican)​

1945-1949: James F. Byrnes (Democratic)
1949-1953: Thomas A. Dewey (Republican)

'48 (with John Bricker) def. James F. Byrnes (Democratic), Hubert Humphrey (Human Rights)​

1953-1961: J. William Fulbright (Democratic)

'52 (with Scott Lucas) def. Thomas A. Dewey (Republican), Clarence Manion (National Republican)​

'56 (with Scott Lucas) def. Prescott Bush (Republican)​

1961-1969: Richard Nixon (Republican)

'60 (with Claude Pepper) def. Pierre Salinger (Democratic)​

'64 (with Claude Pepper) def. Frank Church (Democratic)​

1969-1973: Warren P. Knowles (Republican)

'68 (with George Bush) def. George C. Wallace (Democratic)​

1973-1978: Sid McMath (Democratic) ✞

'72 (with Byron White) def. Warren P. Knowles (Republican), Pete McCloskey (Independent Republican), Lester Maddox (States' Rights)​

'76 (with Byron White) def. Barry Goldwater (Republican), Edwin Walker (Patriots' League)​

1978-1981: Byron White (Democratic)
1981-1989: John Barbagelata (Republican)

'80 (with John Tower) def. Byron White (Democratic)​

'84 (with John Tower) def. Bess Myerson (Democratic)​

1989-1993: Jeremiah Denton (Republican)

'88 (with John Heinz) def. Bill Clinton (Democratic)​

1993-2001: Pat O'Rourke (Democratic)

'92 (with Harvey Gantt) def. Jeremiah Denton (Republican)​

'96 (with Harvey Gantt) def. Janet Reno (Republican), Ted Gunderson (Patriot)​

2001-: Harvey Gantt (Democratic)

'00 (with Lane Evans) def. Bob Dornan (Republican)​

To: lamaruniv/hist3302/students
From: lamaruniv/mbender
Subject: Interesting panel

Dear class:
I wanted to draw your attention to an interesting panel discussion just made public on the McGovern Institute's depot, essentially talking about one of the major themes of the class, the development of the modern Democratic and Republican parties. I'm going to be discussing the panel in class on Monday, so though it's not required I do highly recommend you watch. The link is here.

To summarize, the discussion (which was moderated by the Washington Post's Jill Lepore) had five participants, all of whom took a different position on the matter:

• Barry Obama-Robinson, a name I know you will recognize because I assigned an interview between him and Isaac Chotiner last week, takes the position that electoral politics was a lagging indicator of a more progressive American people - first World War II and the New Deal helped to reduce prejudice against Catholics, Jews, and Southern whites, then the Chinese War did the same for racial minorities and homophiles. Meanwhile, both those and broader changes in the American economy led to more women working, which helped to defuse sexism as well. Barbagelata and Denton, in this analysis, represent the confluence of social issues once thought of as specifically Catholic (most importantly abortion) becoming acceptable and conservative voters reacting to the changing society.
• Rick Perlstein, who some of you may have read (I've included a chapter from his Opening the Gates on the politics of crime in the '70s, but we haven't gotten there yet), takes the position that the major motive force was the Republican Party's compromises; Nixon needed popular support to legitimize his stances on the Game of Steel abroad and the War on Communism at home, so he made alliances with both Southern segregationists and Northern (especially Catholic) cultural reactionaries, which combined to take control of the party during the '70s and then govern through the '80s. As a result, the Democrats essentially ceded ground in the Culture War, focusing on liberal economics and a general sense of newness under O'Rourke and Gantt.
• Rebecca Traister, who's written a lot for magazines like New Republic and Nation, talks about the role of social movements on the left - in particular, the civil rights movement asserted its independence from the state, which drove a wedge between Nixon and figures like Thurgood Marshall, and the women's rights movement, who gained prominence and influence in the Democratic Party under McMath and White and helped keep the party alive under Barbagelata.
• Elizabeth Warren, who famously wrote the "Warren Memo" while working in the Denton White House (which we will discuss once we get there) and has since written a lot on what I would broadly describe as the economic history of the modern American family, points to changes in the nature of the American economy and social safety net - Nixon's war economy brought a lot of women out of the home and into the workforce, and his promotion of big business led to the destruction of small business and in general the death of a lot of "anchor institutions" in American communities. The former expanded women's rights but depressed wages, because employers and producers increasingly catered to two-income families, and the latter meant that rural areas and conservatives within the cities were both 'left behind', leading to a bifurcation between upwardly mobile Democrats and downwardly mobile Republicans.

Some potential discussion questions:

• Where do these narratives overlap? Where do they contradict each other?
  • How did the right-wing movements Perlstein talks about and the progressive movements Traister talk about affect each other? How were they similar and different?
  • How do Traister and Warren's accounts of the state of the American woman differ and align?
  • One notable narrative not talked about is the one from Bevins 2018: that the Republican Party's opposition to Fulbright's internationalism led it to support neocolonial methods overseas that it then adapted for use at home. Does this fit in with the others? Why or why not?
• How would you be able to distinguish between policy affecting social values and the reverse?

Have a great weekend! I'll see you all on Monday.

 

[Steve Brinson]

Senator, don't take this the wrong way, but even though it's incredible I kind of hope your list doesn't win because I can't find any decent music to put with the post.

Maybe "Freedom of Choice" by DEVO? Not the best option, but it has that verse that starts "In Ancient Rome", and it fits the theme...

 

[ZeroFrame]

A Thousand Points of Light

35. John F. Kennedy 1961-1967 (D-MA) [1]
(With Lyndon B. Johnson) 1960 Def: Richard M. Nixon/Walter Judd
(With Lyndon B. Johnson) 1964 Def: Barry Goldwater/John D. Lodge
36. Lyndon B. Johnson 1967-1969 (D-TX) [2]
37. Lauris Norstad 1969-1974 (R-MN) ✞ [3]
(With Edward Brooke) 1968 Def: Lyndon B. Johnson/Peter Rodino
(With Edward Brooke) 1972 Def: Ralph Nader/Carl Sanders
38. Edward Brooke 1974-1975 (R-MA) ✞ [4]
39. Winfield Dunn 1975-1977 (R-TN) [5]
40. Henry M. Jackson 1977-1981 (D-WA) [6]
(With Albert Brewer) 1976 Def: Winfield Dunn/Robert Finch
41. Silvio Conte 1981-1989 (R-MA) [7]
(With Bill Clements) 1980 Def: Henry Jackson/Albert Brewer Martin L. King/Mike Gravel (Tomorrow)
(With Shirley T. Black) 1984 Def: Dan Walker/Fred Phelps
42. Ed Clark 1989-1993 (R-CA) [8]
(With R. Bud Dwyer) 1988 Def: John Murtha/W. Fox Mckeithen
43. Jeanne Kirkpatrick 1993-2001 (D-WA) [9]
(With Al Gore) 1992 Def: Ed Clark/R. Bud Dwyer
(With Al Gore) 1996 Def: Ross Perot/George W. Haley
44. Jay Rockefeller 2001-2005 (R-NM) [10]
(With Julie Nixon Eisenhower) 2004 Def: Bill Kristol/Richard Riley
45. John McCain 2005-2013 (D-AZ) [11]
(With Peter Navarro) 2004 Def: Jay Rockefeller/Julie Nixon Eisenhower
(With Peter Navarro) 2008 Def: Niki Tsongas/Bill Clinton
46. Theodore Roosevelt V 2013-2021 (R-ND) [12]
(With Charlie Crist) 2012 Def: Peter Navarro/Bill Ritter
(With Charlie Crist) 2016 Def: James Perry/Peg Lusik
47. Josh Hawley 2021- (D-MO) [13]
(With Tulsi Gabbard) 2020 Def: Charlie Crist/Conor Lamb

[1] "The man who compromised on civil rights and was too busy having sex to care about the children dying in Vietnam. A true tragedy he wasn't impeached for war crimes rather than lying about fucking some random reporter."

- Hunter S. Thompson, 1978.

[2] "My father-in-law had only one regret in life. That was not completing the dream of Roosevelt. Unlike Kennedy he was in the Senate, fighting the good fight and trying to win in Vietnam all while building the groundwork for universal healthcare. There's a reason he's now being viewed by the left as the last true left-wing president, akin to Roosevelt but one who was snuffed out by Kennedy's stupidity."

- Former Senator Chuck Robb, 2002.

[3] "I was a Democrat before I became a socialist. But to this day my regret is that I voted for Johnson rather than Norstad. Norstad is a hero to the working class through and through. Unlike the Democrats, he didn't sell out the blacks to the white supremacists but put them on equal footing, a man who ended the slaughtering of children in Vietnam, and a general of peace who made the ultimate sacrifice. As I look back all I can see is a man who made me into a red Republican."

- Secretary of Socialist International Dennis Kucinich, 2021.

[4] "Like King, Brooke was a man who may not have been popular but was so because he fought for what was right. Unfortunately, he didn't pass from a heart attack in his sleep but a racist's bullet whose actions caused the lord's wrath in the Days of Rage. If there's a place for Brooke it's heaven, where he's with King and Mandela."

- Jesse Jackson, 1999.

[5] "I was around during the Days of Rage and that right there is the reason Dunn lost. Martial law was popular for a reason and in my opinion necessary. Hundreds laid dead in the streets of America, yet Dunn was concerned with political correctness and "authoritarianism.""

- Associate Justice James Meredith, 2002.

[6] “A war criminal through and through. Whether it was South Africa, El Salvador, or Columbia he made sure bombs were a daily occurrence for the children of Latin America and Africa.”

- Cardinal Oscar Romero, 1990.

[7] “There’s one man who I admire from America and that’s Silvio Conte. During his time instead of sleeping with journalists or invading Vietnam, he stood up to authoritarianism in South Africa, Poland, and Italy.”

- Prime Minister Alessandro Di Battista, 2021.

[8] "Despite our disagreements over taxes and healthcare me and Clark remain friends for the sole reason we view each other as humans, people worth listening to and respecting, which is all the SHIP community could ask for."

- Representative Harvey Milk, 2000.

[9] "I met Jeanne during my time in the Jackson Administration. To put it simply she's a woman of iron, one who's tough as shit and whether it was Fedorchuk, Hani, Yasser, or anti-American protestors she took off the kid gloves and tore them to shreds with her words alone."

- Secretary of Defense Elliot Abrams, 1995.

[10] "He's like just like Kennedy. A spoiled rich kid who got a cushy senate seat through name recognition and had no clue how to deal with the bread-and-butter issues like the economy. The only thing he has over him is that he was at least loyal to his wife."

- Governor Ben Nighthorse Campbell, 2002.

[11] “What I admire about McCain is that he was a true Democrat. One who supported humanitarian intervention, anti-corruption bills, healthcare reform, and fought for the true heroes of American society."

- Actor Tom Selleck, 2009.

[12] “Like the other two Roosevelts he did some great things, but his legacy will be complex and controversial due to the changes seismic we've seen from Azania to the Soviet Union, some for the best, some for the worst.”

- Illinois Representative Lauren Underwood, 2021.

[13] "About time we got someone who actually fights for the working class in office, standing up against the evils of cultural decline, outsourcing, and illegal immigration.”

- TV Host Tucker Carlson, 2020.

 

[SenatorChickpea]

AHC: Red China?


List of Presidents of the Republic of China
1. Song Jiaoren (Kuomintang) 1912-1913[1]
2. Sun Yat-sen (Kuomintang) 1913-1925[2]
3. Wang Jingwei (Kuomintang) 1925-1929[1]
4. Chen Duxiu (Kuomintang) 1929-1944[2]
5. Zhou Enlai (Kuomintang) 1944-1978[2]
6. Deng Xiaoping (Kuomintang) 1978-????

[1] assassinated
[2] died in office

I like the simplicity of this: neatly punctures the assurance with which we assess plausible outcomes and likely scenarios.