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Carrasco posted:D: The Nuclear Option. Nope. Pick a spot any spot
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Apr 4, 2016 17:32
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| # ? May 4, 2024 19:46 |
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Mantis42 posted:A LBJ is popular now but he's stuck Jumbo in the Vietnam honeypot and we need to make sure it stays in there tight until 68. Make some backroom deals with Mao - he commits Chinese armed forces fully to the Indochina, turning it into a bleeding ulcer for the Johnson admin. When the American people turn on the Democrats and give us what's ours by right, send the signal to Beijing for the Red Chinese to begin a full withdrawal. In return, promise them Taiwan and a seat on the UN Security Council. When they come to collect, threaten to drop the bomb. Hell yes. Hell Yes.
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Apr 4, 2016 19:27
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I have nothing approaching the level of knowledge about either Johnson or Reagan that the two CYOA threads have but I'll happily do a couple terrible  posts if there's interest. Given that this started as "you, Richard Nixon, have assassinated Kennedy", don't expect to learn a bunch from this. Where possible I'll interject some things about actual history but I don't anticipate making more than 3-4 unfunny "joke" updates.For the record, I'm placing this in the universe that we created through the LBJ CYOA. That won't really have ramifications since the story I'm telling is about Nixon trying to spitefully gently caress his way into the White House, but I suspect that RFK's expanded authority in investigating the Kennedy assassination and Nixon's expanded role will probably come to a head earlyish. A. Only Nixon can go to China. One of the few advantages to your humiliating defeat in the 1960 presidential election is that you are once again a private citizen, beholden to no man and certainly not those frauds in Washington. Trapped in the "conventional wisdom" of think tanks and policy wonks, they're unable to cut through the red tape and get things done. Especially big things. Reopening relations with Beijing big. You inform your loyal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, that you intend to visit China and sort things out man-to-man with Mao Zedong as soon as possible. While Ms. Woods is generally not surprised by the things you ask her to do, this surprises even her. Dick Nixon cut his political teeth on communist spies, socialist hacks, and other un-American forces. It was personal with Kennedy, but it's just politics as usual with Johnson. You've got nothing against the guy; you both want to contain communism in southeast Asia, you both kind of hate the Kennedys, and you both started in the House, moved up to the Senate, and ultimately became Vice Presidents. Once you get a couple drinks in ol' Jumbo at Bilderberg meetings, he's not so bad. It's true that you would've cleaned the floor with him in the election--without Joe Kennedy's money, you would've cleaned the floor with any Democrat--but you can't change the past. You can only change the present, and that's what you're going to do. By visiting China. Hell, a president hasn't even visited Japan since before World War Two. You can't just fly to Beijing tomorrow and expect to change everything, though, and you decide to sit on your hands for a little while. There are whispers on the lunatic fringe already that Kennedy was killed in some kind of conspiracy and there's enough of a chance that somebody might get your hired gun Jack Ruby to say the wrong thing and start putting dots together. The last thing that you need to be doing right now is undermining the presidency (and God knows Kennedy was doing enough of that on his own). If you're going to make the trip, you need to either wait until the media crooks are distracted or until you've recovered from the humiliation of your 1962 defeat in the California gubernatorial race. To make matters worse, you promised not to run for president during that election. With 1964 coming up fast and Johnson receiving the electoral benefits of Kennedy's death, you need to make your decision quickly. A. They called Nixon a joke; let's see who's laughing after they lose the election. You have no great lost love for Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) but he was loyal to you in 1960 and campaigned on your behalf. Goldwater is a true Republican, but he's also a true nut who has no hope of beating Johnson. If you let the Republican electorate have a little fling with Goldwater in 1964, the shock of losing the election will make them nostalgic for the good old days of the Eisenhower years. Who better than Nixon, Eisenhower's ex-VP, to pick up the ashes of that disappointment and ride that wave into the White House in 1968? Show up, make a few speeches for Goldwater like a good soldier, then disappear before the stink sets in. B. The party comes first. Governor Nelson Rockefeller is the Republicans' best chance for getting Johnson out of the White House in 1964 and ending the mistake that was the 1960 election. There's no way that you can ride the top of the ticket, but Rockefeller will need a Vice President and you have connections. It's a lovely job, sure, but you'll be well-positioned to challenge Rockefeller and pay him back for undermining you in 1960 by stealing the ticket in 1968. C. Get back into DC as soon as possible. It would be humiliating to go from almost becoming President to a freshman Senator, but not as humiliating as losing two big elections in a row. Rumors are swirling that Senator Clair Engle is in poor health and his seat is up for re-election in 1964. Even if Goldwater gets the nomination, enough of the GOP base should turn out that you can capitalize on Johnson's certain imminent crash and decline in the polls to get back into the Senate. California might have rejected you for governor in 1962, but they still voted for you in 1960 and you think they could vote for you again in the future. D. Nixon Now, More Than Ever. You made your promise but that was when you expected the 1964 election to be a Kennedy vs. Nixon matchup and you had no wish to see the Kennedys steal another election. Now that Kennedy is gone, all bets are off. Time to throw your hat in the ring and fight like hell to take back what's rightfully yours. ------- REAL HISTORY TIME: Senator Clair Engle has, at this point, undergone surgery to remove a brain tumor and is partially paralyzed; he'll ultimately withdraw from his re-election campaign in April 1964 after it becomes clear that he's losing his ability to speak, much less his ability to run a re-election campaign. He won't even make it to the 1964 election, but still manages to get his best moment in history out while partially paralyzed and mute: quote:On June 10, 1964, during the roll call for the historic, successful effort to break the filibuster on what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when the clerk reached "Mr. Engle," there was no reply. The tumor had robbed Engle of his ability to speak. Slowly lifting an arm, he pointed to his eye, thereby signaling his affirmative vote ("aye"). The cloture vote was 71-29, four votes more than the two-thirds required to cut off the filibuster. Nine days later the Senate approved the Act itself. The seat gets filled by Pierre Salinger, Kennedy and LBJ's press secretary and future ABC News correspondent, but even with the 1964 Goldwater shitshow for Republicans, Salinger loses the California Senate seat to an actor who became a politician. And that actor's name was... George Murphy. Ronald Reagan will later credit George Murphy as his "John the Baptist", though you can definitely read that as part of Reagan's false self-promotion as a reluctant politician. George Murphy won't do much in office (and will also have a run-in with cancer and will lose office in his first re-election), but he will start the tradition of the Senate candy desk, which is exactly what it sounds like. The candy desk is currently maintained by Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA). If we keep Murphy out of the Senate by edging him out of the primary, then we might prevent Senators from eating candy for forty years. And wouldn't that just be the worst? Rockefeller will, of course, not get the nomination over Goldwater. Goldwater will lead the Republicans to a huge defeat in the electoral college, taking down a number of senators, congressmen, and governors with him. Rockefeller will ultimately become Gerald Ford's vice president, only to get forced off the ticket as part of the Reagan-Ford strife at the 1976 RNC. Kissinger enters the stage as a Rockefeller associate and, if I'm not mistaken, only really enters the Nixon camp as part of the party establishment coming together in 1968. The Nixon of 1963, especially a 1963 Nixon hell-bent on resuming relations with China, is potentially a very different Nixon than "drunk in the residence while Kissinger is trying to keep Israel and Egypt from blowing each other up" that we reach in OTL 1973. ----- (We will still go to China, but given that China is in the middle of the Cultural Revolution, it seemed unwise to just throw Nixon on a plane and have him land in Beijing two weeks after the Kennedy assassination. The comedy ending was "You go to China and demand to be taken directly to Mao Zedong. The party official who greeted you on the runway laughs as a guard strikes you in the back of the head with his rifle. You wake up in a work camp in Inner Mongolia.") (And yes, I know that the nuclear option got as many votes as Choice A. That won't be forgotten either.) Cockblocktopus has issued a correction as of 21:21 on Apr 4, 2016 |
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Apr 4, 2016 21:18
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A Let the stupid howler monkey Birchers have their turn at running off a cliff. We need to bid our time to rise through the chaos and become the savior of the party after Goldwater nearly kills it.
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Apr 4, 2016 21:58
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D. The White House will be ours!
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Apr 4, 2016 22:18
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D Nixon; Then, Now, Forever.
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Apr 5, 2016 01:32
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| # ? May 4, 2024 19:46 |
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For the record, "Nixon Now, More Than Ever" is a reference to Richard Nixon's kickin' 1972 re-election campaign theme song. There's also the more subdued counterpart but the first one is the one you'll get stuck in your head for days. Regardless of whether or not this Nixon thing takes off and/or forces OP to come back and reclaim the thread, I hope we can all appreciate this earworm from the talented folks of The Mike Curb Congregation, otherwise best-known for recording the theme to Kelly's Heroes.
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Apr 5, 2016 01:57
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