I, for one …

Perhaps?

Malzberg, Barry N. “January 1975”
Divergence: 1960 CE
What if: Nixon was elected president in 1960.
Summary: A writer in that timeline tries to convince his editor to accept a series of stories based on the premise that Kennedy was elected.

Oh, look, more ‘Trump is gearing up to be the next Hitler!’ bullshit from the left.

This is why I can’t take this site seriously. You all claim to be sober intellectuals. And then you devolve into McCarthystic smears that have very little basis in reality. I mean, where are all your reports of the shady, less-than-Democratic people involved with Clinton? she actually is gearing up to be the next Nixon, but you don’t care about that because she has a D next to her name. But one guy with shady clients is plenty of proof that Trump is a monster.

It’s laughable. I mean, do you all think anyone but the hardcore political whackjobs on your side of things will buy what you’re selling here? Or is this a George Costanza ‘it’s not a lie if you believe it!’ kind of thing?

Manafort evidently disappeared from American politics in the same way David Axelrod ‘disappeared’ from America to the UK to help sink Labour at precisely the same time as another Dem vote-counter for hire Jim Messina also ‘disappeared’ to the UK and had rather better fortunes working for the Tories. Or else credit for the Tory victory goes to the Lytton Crosby, yet another expert vote-getter who similarly ‘disappeared’ only this time from Australian politics to work for Cameron’s Tories. Manafort, like the other aforementioned characters is a political fixer of considerable stature and like Axelrod, he doesn’t come cheap. Axelrod billed Labour 500 k to help them lose and them blamed the pollsters.

The only real question regarding Manafort is why it took Trump so long to understand the need to bring someone like Manafort on board. This Wapo piece confirms that Manafort’s focus on principally international clients can be more reliably dated to 2012, not ‘decades’ ago. According to the Wapo piece Manafort has been close to the heart of Republican politics for most of his adult life. He’s also worked for Trump before and lives close enough to Trump to share elevators.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/04/07/from-ukraine-to-trump-tower-paul-manafort-unafraid-to-take-on-controversial-jobs/

“Paul has been involved in internal Republican politics for almost all of his adult life,” (my italics) said Vin Weber, a lobbyist and a Republican former congressman from Minnesota who is a longtime friend of Manafort. “He’s one of the true first-rate professionals in the Republican Party. There’s only a handful of people, I really mean that, that can honestly say they know how a national convention works. He’s one of them.”
Weber, who advises Kasich, is no fan of Trump but lauded his choice of Manafort all the same. “This is one of the most impressive things I’ve seen the Trump organization do,” Weber said. “Maybe the only impressive thing.” After BMS&K was sold to Burson-Marsteller, Manafort formed Davis Manafort in 1995 with former John McCain adviser Rick Davis. It effectively disbanded after the 2008 election, Politico reported in 2014. Davis did not immediately return a request seeking comment. Manafort then founded DMP International, a business and international-affairs firm. The firm was formed in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., in 2012, according to the state’s business records.”

We’re certain to learn more, but Manafort had strong links to McCain until 2006.

…and a global solution to global warming which involved minimal economic disruption and a burst of green energy technology.

This is all part of why Fat Tony is now roasting in torments, screaming that he repents and repents, while St. Peter says, “perhaps. get back to me in a few eons.”

Well, probably not what you’re thinking of, but the Alan Moore graphic novel “The Watchmen” featured a long-serving President Richard Nixon. Also, in the novel Fatherland featured a different President Kennedy, it was his father who got elected. JFK was killed in the war.

The “Nixon is President forever” theme of the Watchman is a joke. The idea is that the US uses nukes (“Dr. Manhattan”) to win the Vietnam War, allowing Nixon to stay in the White House forever, constitution be damned.

For someone like me who was born during the Nixon administration, and who has seen how his successors have done in office, the amount of hatred of intellectual types on the left for Nixon is quite honestly puzzling. The Nixon joke in “The Watchman” hasn’t aged well.

The “Watchman” book and movie are sort of alternative history, in that they explore what the world would like like if comic book superheroes actually existed. The theme is that this would change the behavior of the non-superheros in all sorts of ways. The director of the “Watchman” movie, Zach Synder, went on to direct two conventional superhero movies, one of which just got released. The second movie turned out to be “The Watchman”, except with a bigger budget and non-parody superheros, and flopped with the critics who were expecting something else.

The 1960 election is a good alternative history starting point because it was so close. At least in terms of popular vote percentage (0.7%) , it was the closest election in the twentieth century, if not US history. Kennedy’s national popular vote margin of roughly 12,000 votes includes his margin of 81,000 in Alabama, which is probably not accurate because the Democrats ran a mixture of Kennedy electors and unpledged electors who wound up voting for someone else in the Electoral College. At any rate, this is a really easy election result to reverse.

An alternate history based on Nixon’s election in 1960 has to determine if Nixon too winds up assassinated. Also what the Kennedy’s wind up doing, and how many butterflies are released by Henry Cabot Lodge being in DC and not in a poilcy-making position in Vietnam. Also what happens to the 1964 Goldwater candidacy, LBJ staying in the Senate (plus no election of John Tower), and the fact that Nixon’s close electoral defeat changed him and resulted in a somewhat different Nixon in 1969-74. This is one event where the ramifications are not obvious, and would be a good alternative history novel.

(except on spelling)

(and content: reactionary political *history* of NY)

The US policy after the second world war was inconsistent and self contradictory. For example in South Korea before the war the State department had done everything they could to keep out Rhee, who they considered an untrustworthy troublemaker who was a threat to Korean chances of democracy. The defence department military administration him a passport and flew him to Korea, they saw only his anti communism and frustrated the state department’s policy. It’s often enlightening to distinguish between government policy and department policy.

Along similar lines, and inspired by the same Politico piece: http://www.sharynemery.com/teaching-angels-in-america

Personally, I have an easier time with “historiographic metafiction” and “alternative reality timeline” than with “postmodernism.” I don’t recognize anything “postmodern” about “Angels in America.” But then I didn’t recognize anything “Angels in America” about “Angels in America” when, after seeing it in workshop in Los Angeles in a small black box theater I attended the full production at the Music Center. For all of the splash and glitter, the latter was an etiolated wisp of the promise afforded by the workshop.

Speaking of Angleton, it’d be fun if CT would host a “seminar” or whatever you care to call it on Mailer’s “Harlot’s Ghost.” Rich historiographic metafiction there!

Trump should have started playing Cruz’s game of buying delegates for the second ballot a long time ago in case he doesn’t get to the magic number. IMHO that is why Manafort was brought in.

the 22nd Amendment is so clear that it’s hard to imagine even the most determined Supreme Court holding that a person could be president for more than eight years.

What happens if the VP is a former president? Does the promotion then bypass the VP and go to someone else? I am thinking of Putin’s shuffle specifically, wondering whether DrEvil could rule as president for 8 years, then run as VP to someone who resigns a few days after appointment.

Soullite @3

If you can’t take this site seriously, should your own comments be taken seriously? or should I just laugh at them?

Will you be here all week?

@26 – the 22nd amendment does not say that a person who has served two terms is “constitutionally ineligible” to the office of President. It says that “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.” Elected. That’s a very different thing.

Suppose person A is elected to be president of the USA and person B elected, at the same election, as her Vice President. A dies in late December between the meeting of the Electoral College and the Inauguration. So B asks person C to be her Veep. C’s appointment is confirmed by the Senate in a session in early January, in time for the Inauguration. But B also dies between that confirmation and the Inauguration. (No, this is not the plot of the next House of Cards season.) Person C now becomes President. Her first term is one for which she was not elected. Is it then possible, under the constitution, for C to serve three full terms, 12 years, by being elected for her second and third terms?

On Watchmen, the simple answer is of course that Moore simply misread the role of the 22nd Amendment in American civic life. As sins go, it’s not a big one.

Going with the extrapolative flow, though, looking at how the Supreme Court has been this century, I wonder if a Nixon-packed court would find a way to declare the amendment invalid for some stupid reason.

peterv @31

In any case, the scenario you outlined is not within the scope of what’s permitted by Section 2 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment: ‘Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.’

If the President-elect dies between the meetings of the electors and the inauguration (or, for that matter, if the Vice-President-elect does), that doesn’t create a vacancy in the office of Vice-President. The vacancy in the office of Vice-President would only commence after the inauguration, and it’s only from that point that the President would be empowered to nominate a candidate to fill the vacancy. There’s nothing empowering a President-elect to nominate a candidate to fill a vacancy in the position of Vice-President-elect.

JD @35 – So that means that the maximum that someone can be POTUS is 10 years minus one day?

“We’re in the one that had the defeat of Gore by Bush in 2000,”

By a five to four margin. Still not over it.

“The 22nd Amendment is so clear that it’s hard to imagine even the most determined Supreme Court holding that a person could be president for more than eight years.”

Factually incorrect, as other commenters have pointed out. I’m old enough to remember that LBJ, who served for more than four years after JFK’s assignation, having been elected himself once, could have run for a second term and clocked more than eight years if elected – but chose not to run for a second term.

If the words ‘ineligible’ and ‘eligible’ in the Twelfth Amendment are construed in parallel fashion (which seems plausible), it would mean that nobody who is constitutionally barred from being elected President can be elected Vice-President; so it could be argued that it does not prohibit the appointment as Vice-President of somebody who is constitutionally barred from being elected President. On that interpretation, somebody who had served eight years as President could (under the procedures of the Twenty-fifth Amendment) fill a Vice-Presidential vacancy and then succeed to the Presidency when it fell vacant. The Twenty-fifth Amendment imposes no explicit restrictions on who can be appointed to fill a Vice-Presidential vacancy, so in theory it could be somebody who failed to fulfil other usual requirements (age and citizenship).

That’s a possible interpretation, but I predict that if the Supreme Court had to rule on the issue, it would rule differently; but I also predict that the Supreme Court won’t be asked to rule on the issue because nobody’s going to try it on.

I, for one, hope we’re not in the version reality in which Trump makes a deal that makes Kasich his running-mate in exchange for the Republican nomination, and voter suppression, voter apathy (esp. among Bernie believers) and a combination of other effects conspire to elect Trump.

Trumplusconi goes on to pack his cabinet with more women than any previous cabinet – but few are US-born, so the line of succession is short. Secretary of Defense Dov Zakheim, Attorney General Trey Gowdy and Secretary of Transportation Chris Christie end up being the only cabinet members eligible to hold the office.

Now, I’m beginning to worry about one major branch of realities after that – does Trump declare martial law after the assassination attempt, or does Kasich impose martial law upon assuming office?