Ike Dodges the Draft, Or How We Got a Three Party System

[TGW]

"Branching off points, Doctor?" The young lady considered this for a moment. "Like if you went back in time and shot Hitler when....well, maybe when he was a baby, maybe a little older?"

The Doctor, still bent over the cadaver, scoffed a little unkindly at her. "Of course, if you want to pick the easiest example! Which most humans do, of course, there's never ever any variety in the examples they give. If Caesar hadn't have gone to that meeting on the Ides of March, he might have changed the direction of the Empire. If Churchill had not been the loudest voice in the room against Hitler, then who knows how the Second World War would have gone? And if your Republicans had managed to get Eisenhower to leave his books and his thoughts to run for President, well..." He wiped his hands and stood back up his voice softening a little "I understand it of course, I know I struggle with that particular idea."

-Extract from The Crimson Corpse, a Doctor Who Novelization published in 2002, written by Neil Gaiman.

......

The following is taken from a novelization of the film 'Morse' directed by Oliver Stone and written by Christopher Wilkinson. Dialogue may not be accurate to the real-life circumstances in which this meeting took place.

It began with a group of men. Such was the way these things tended to go in those days, so please, bear with us.

"It's not going to work." It was Dewey who spoke first, that is Governor Dewey of New York. "I mean, it could have. It very nearly did. But it's not going to. And we need to deal with that...somehow." His voice was sad and distant, but not without some note of determination. The others agreed, though none had the heart at present to speak on the matter further.

It was Cabot Lodge who spoke next. "That was smart of Taft. I didn't think he had it in him. Matter of fact, I still don't." The senator from Massachusetts was referring to a simple decision that Senator Robert A Taft of Ohio had made just this morning, based on a conversation with the General whom they had longed to draft into running. Before taking up his position at NATO, a chat between the two had Eisenhower make a legitimate promise to the Senator. Should Taft, a well known Isolationist, make a promise to ally with their international companions to defeat the evil scourge of Communism, then a statement would be put out firmly putting to bed any notions of running for President. Taft had, apparently, asked for a day to consider the matter. Four hours later he made arrangements to meet with the General and agreed to this promise. So too had the statement been put out, gently but firmly putting away any such notions of a takeover of the primary system. Cabot Lodge sighed. "The second he'll get into the office, he'll tear up the floorboards looking for a secret passage, a way to get out of the whole arrangement. Doesn't he see that?"

"Could we not just...put his name into the system anyway?" This was Harold Stassen, former Governor of Minnesota and former contender for the nomination himself. He looked around nervously. "I mean, if he wins New Hampshire-"

"Then Ike will thank us, and then he will declare that he is touched, and then he will torch the whole thing." Earl Warren had been silent for most of this, but now he had to speak. "Not only has he given a promise to Taft, but it won't have been Taft who broke it. It will have been us. And no amount of jockeying around, giving a position on the ticket to one of Taft's friends, will get away from the fact that Taft made a sacrifice on good faith that got thrown back in his face. He'll look a fool, and when someone looks a fool they can do a lot of damage to try and recover their reputation. And that'll hand the whole thing over to Stevenson, and he'll blather his way through the next four years while the Soviets push ahead. I agree with Thomas, the whole thing is off."

After a moment's pause, the one Democrat in the room stood up and turned to look out of the window. Beneath them, the busy hum and buzz of Chicago caused him to mediate on his friendship with Eisenhower. Claude Pepper was no longer representing Florida in the upper echelon of Congress, but he had been invited because of his admiration for the general, and his original attempt to get him to run as a Democrat. He still believed in the morality of what he and his Democrats pushed, but even so he could not help but feel weary of what was being pushed. What had they gone through in 48, if not for...?

And then, suddenly, something occurred to him.

"Do you know who they're thinking of nominating as Vice President?" He asked, casually. The others grimly shook their heads. "I think it is one of the Southerners. I doubt it would be Thurmond, there is still some bad blood there. It might be Stennis, but he strikes me as someone perfectly content to be in the Senate until his dying day. No, on the whole, I think it far more likely to be Sparkman. Naturally, once the Dixiecrats get their hooks in, they'll tear apart the plank that so inconveniences them with every bit of fury they have."

"Let us be frank, you can hardly put yourself on a great moral pedestal there, can you?"

Stassen stared at Pepper and Pepper stared at Stassen. Then, quietly, the former senator shook his head. "No, I cannot. Nor will I try to. But the fact remains, they will do anything they can to stop advancement of a better society. Maybe that is the game they have to play to survive, I know that that is how I see the matter, I will not argue whether or not that is accurate. But that will happen. And it will happen because quite frankly the Democrats are scared stiff of losing their support. The Byrds will not let progress occur unless it is by their hand. And it was all thanks to that campaign they ran back in '48. Now, suddenly, those grand schemes of McFarland and Johnson come to nothing because if they do, they'll have a rebellion on their hands, a split ticket, a threat to the iron grip of the Senate and the House. Perhaps even a switch to the Republican party all together. All because of '48."

There was silence for a moment. Then Stassen spoke up. "A third party run. That is what you are advocating."

There was no point in hiding it. Pepper nodded. "I am."

"But Ike won't run. At his heart, he's a Republican through and through, and if you couldn't get him to go to bat for the Democrats, then he'll not take a chance on some shot in the dark campaign." Dewey snorted. "And I'm perfectly content where I am, thank you. I'll do my time in office and then I'll pack my bags and go. I can't do another one of these campaigns, and I have no intention to do so. What about you, Earl?"

California's governor sighed. "Tempting as it is, I don't think so. The kind of people we'd need to court to even make a dent would regard me unkindly." He stared into the distance, images of screaming Japanese children and women, herded into internment camps, playing on loop perpetually in his mind. He shook himself. "I doubt you'd like to run, Claude?"

"The highest office I aspire to at present is the Speakership. Aside from that, no. I don't think I could run a campaign, for similar reasons to yourself."

"I'd do it." Henry Cabot Lodge smiled quietly to himself. "I'd like to volunteer, as it were."

"Now hold on, there's no reason here why you should get this nomination over me." Harold was already looking ready for a fight, his eccentric eyes twinkling with fire once again. "I could do it just as easily as you."

"Hm."

This noise from the veritable elder statesmen of Republican liberalism made all pause and turn their heads. "What?" Stassen said, his voice cracking a little. "I assume you have problems with me getting the go-ahead?"

"First of all, we have not even settled on what we would call this...hypothetical campaign of ours. Second, take this in the way it is intended to be, I think each of you should think carefully about what running for the Presidency means. Henry, you are in a seat that we need badly, and there's every chance that should you run and win, we could lose a link in the chain that keeps us relevant at a national level. Besides which, if we are to get a look in with Taft, you are the most likely candidate for Vice President at the present time, better to leave yourself on the table for the present. Harold...there is, in truth, nothing wrong with you as a Presidential nominee. But I suspect that you would find the Vice Presidency more to your liking. It is more hands on, it requires a greater challenge and it can give you a kind of on the job experience that can cover ground far more effectively than the central position can."

Harold Stassen sighed, and bowed to this wisdom. "I make no promises of holding back. I want that job."

"And your ambition does us credit, I am sure. But I do have a candidate to put forward. I doubt very much we can draft him, nor should we. He is quite vocal about matters, and has been full of critiques of both parties. As a matter of fact, I believe the word on the street is that he wishes to leave the Republican party at present and join up with the Democrats! ...As it stands, he'd make a grand go of it, he is in a seat that we have a decent amount of control over and though I've always found him a ornery old goat, he has much to offer this country."

There was a long silence. Dewey sat back and watched their faces as they tried to link up the description with someone they knew. It was, much to his surprise, Cabot Lodge who spoke first. "Not Morse? Surely not him? ...Thomas, NO."

Dewey simply laughed.

......

"This is a trick."

Claude sighed, and rubbed his head. "No, Senator. It is not a trick. You are perfectly free to decline or to accept, and there is no binding agreement that shall be made in blood that prevents you from going your own way after the election. You do not have to pick my party, or that of Henry's, or even this makeshift one we shall create. We just want you to run, that is all."

Wanye Morse sat back and stared at them. Then, very carefully, he checked under the table. Nothing. He looked up to the walls. No signs of any tampering. He checked the rest of the room. No one but himself, Representative Pepper and Senator Cabot Lodge. He settled back in his chair and glowered at Pepper. "If McCarthy is nearby-"

"He is not. And we are not involving him in this matter. We are trying to loosen that kind of maniac from the party, don't you understand that?" Pepper swallowed, took a deep breath and continued. "Senator Morse, if it is a matter of perception-"

"It is nothing of the sort. I would not be opposed to launching any sort of challenge to the current system, I just want to be sure that this challenge is a fair one. Or at least, as fair as one can allow. Now, what party name would I be running under?"

"That has been of some debate." Henry Cabot Lodge felt uncomfortable, but nonetheless he pushed forward. "We had considered the Progressive Party, befitting our status as the heir apparent to Theodore Roosevelt. However, Wallace's challenge has made that name....less than appropriate for the current climate. It is not completely out of the question, but we would like to hold off on it for the time being. The Liberal Party was also considered, as I suspect that the endorsement of the New York branch will go to you, naturally."

Morse scoffed at that. "I would much rather a Progressive than a Liberal, I must say. However, I take your point. It has the stench of Hiss around it, and I would prefer to stand back." He considered. "The Progress Party, then. Not the same as the last, but we can draw links back to the old days. Perhaps for now, at the very least, we can amend it at a later date." He did not miss both men staring at each other for a moment, and snapped "I presume if I run under this third party, I will have people backing me, will I not? I am not in the habit of starting that which I intend to leave unfinished." Both nodded hurriedly, and Morse sank back in his chair. "Now, I'm not stupid enough to think I can win this. Do you think I can win this?"

There was a knock at the door, and Pepper hurried over to see who it was. He relaxed instantly, and Morse did too at the sight of the ever charming Estes Kefavauer of Tenseness. He hurried over and sat down, cheerful as ever and shook Morse's hand. Morse was cheered by the sight of him, and asked if he would be working with him. Estes smiled warmly. "Not this time, I'm afraid. Though, if you consider going for it next time, then absolutely. No, I'm here to offer support, if I can. I'm already on the outs with the party at present, I lose nothing by throwing support to you." His manner was easy-going, but Morse knew well enough that the man was dogged and determined and would not rest until he had done what he had set out to do.

"Then who?"

"Stassen."

"If it has to be anyone, it might as well be Stassen." Morse was secretly quite pleased. He liked Stassen, he was the kind of Republican whom the future should belong to. He sighed. "But we will not win."

"It is about more than that, Morse." Kefavauer was quite serious now. "How many people must suffer because of the failure of both of our parties to consider their needs? We need to make sure that our country is consistently engaged with civic matters, or else future generations will be burned out husks of people. The good times may be here, but the bad times that follow will do so with a righteous fury the like of which we may not be prepared for." He paused, and then rubbed his head. "Civil rights is a big stumbling block. I admit, I struggle with what an integrated society might look like! ....But be that as it may, that is my own issue. I must deal with that. They have two choices at present, the doting dehumanization of Stevenson or the cold ignorance of Taft. There has to be a medium. If you can get the attention of those who are in need of it most, and if you can make a big enough dent, maybe our parties can start getting their heads on straight. Maybe we can stem the tide, even if just for another decade."

Wayne Morse sat back in the chair and rubbed his face. Not long ago, an accident had damaged it quite significantly, and he was keenly aware of the multitude of imperfections that ran across it, be they natural or otherwise. It was a bit like the political machine itself, he supposed, always attempting to present a clean image and never succeeding in keeping away the bumps and grooves and scratches upon which a country was built. And yet...And yet, you had to push on, you had to work with it, despite the imperfections. He looked up and nodded. "I want to talk to Stassen tomorrow. We need to get this thing up and running as soon as possible."

.....

The wheels of history rolled on.

Sure enough, Adlai Stevenson won the nomination and was 'awarded' the Vice President that the Southerners craved for in the form of John Sparkman. Soon that promising plank of civil rights was "Sawdust in a horse's ass" to quote the great Hunter S Thompson. Many Democrats regarded this unfavourably, and would turn their attention to the Republican party to perhaps give them a better option. in this, they were sadly mistaken. Robert Taft decided to pick someone a little more moderate than he, and indeed he was from Massachusetts, though Cabot Lodge would not be the pick. Instead, the slightly uninspiring figure of Joseph W Martin, the former House Speaker, would gain the title of Vice President. Many still believe that this was done to reassure Eisenhower that no, Taft would not tear out NATO's throat straight away. Martin was decently liked by people across the board, and for a moment, those planning to present a thorn in the side of Taft paused to consider their options carefully. But then they decided against it. Taft was no doubt ensuring that the big figure of General MacArthur, a great personal friend of Martin's, would remain on his side. aAnd besides which, Taft was Taft, and if anyone could be trusted to revert to form it would be him.

So it was that five days after the Republican convention, many news stations learnt that a conference was to take place. There, Morse stood in front of a crowd of reporters, with Stassen by his side, and began his speech. He made sure that the cameras were on him before he started too. He wanted everyone to hear this.

"My fellow Americans, I greet the announcements of the two parties with grim tidings. I offer my respect to Senator Martin, but that is all I can offer him. Not my support, nor my belief that the President he shall serve under shall be anything less than a hoarder and a miser of the highest order. Senator Taft's beliefs are his own and I do not fault them for holding them, I do claim that his foolish attempt to enforce them upon this nation as a whole will stunt us from reaching our full potential. I have seen what standing back on the side-lines has done, and I will have no further part in it. We must, with all reason and due deference to the Constitution, accept that we are not and can never be merely an island remote and uninvolved from everything and everyone. He may claim that he will not act in this fashion, but we would be a richer nation all in all if all the promises made and broken could be invested in the economy.

As to the Democrats, their support of Adlai Stevenson shows a willingness to cater to the same extreme Conservatism that created Senator Joseph McCarthy and continues to grind into the dust those who would wish for the simple rights that we take for granted. I have no such respect for Senator Sparkman, nor shall I insult the intelligences of you fine gentlemen here and watching at home by pretending that I do so. This indulgence of the Conservative Coalition, a strangehold from which no sane idea or belief can be rescued without severe damage, is one that I am no longer willing to endorse.

Two years ago, Senator Margaret Chase Smith made a speech declaring the rights to, among other things, hold unpopular beliefs, to think independently, to protest and to criticise. I encourage the peaceful application of all four ideals, and it is in this spirit that the gentleman from Minnesota joins me today in announcing a campaign for the highest office in all the land. I am Wayne Morse, this is Harold Stassen and we represent the Progress Party. And we will not be silent any longer."

....

Let us get to the brass tacks of the situation. I do not need to spoil matters for you by saying that Morse did not win the 1952 election. But that, as the honourable senator from Tennessee had said, was not the point. So what is the point?

The point was that Morse steamrolled Stevenson completely. Infamously, he would declare that "My opponent here will tell you that Senator Taft is willing to ignore the voices of thousands who would protest against Senator McCarthy and his maddening crusade against the red windmills! He is correct, and he should be an expert on such things, given what his vice-president suggests to do to Americans who have no voice to speak of!"

The point was that Morse brought up every little weakness in Taft's armour, such as the fact that he had "had to ask for permission from Eisenhower like a girl scout asking to be let out of the house to get the nomination!" and alternating between attacks on his promise ("Senator Taft has no guts, not even the guts to handle his own principles!") and suggesting that the promise was a hollow thing ("It was a kind lie that Mr Taft told to the general, but it was a lie nonetheless!") depending on which kind of audience he was speaking to.

The point was that Taft seemed to believe Morse the reincarnation of Dewey, and so focused much of his mudslinging upon his former Republican colleague. Accusations of Communism flew about, and though he was not utterly against McCarthy he nonetheless had to prevent the Senator from speaking, aware that it would cost him votes.

The point was that Morse, the only man who had signed on to the Declaration of Conscience speech and beleived it wholeheartedly, championed people like Margaret Chase Smith who had spoken out against McCarthy. Moderates in both parties supported him, some tacitly like Dewey and Chase Smith and even some argue LBJ, others out and proud, such as Estes and Warren and Pepper and the surprising figure of Lawrence Wetherby. Hollywood stars and prominent intellectuals who had supported the Wallace campaign came out in droves to support this pushback, gaining him much new publicity in the growing market of television. And in this, he was successful, he came across more well organized and passionate and frankly more with it than Taft and Stevenson did. Stassen out-charmed Martin and out-preached Sparkman, selling himself desperately for this campaign.

The point was that by the end of the vote counting, Morse/Stassen of the Progress Party had taken Oregon, Minnesota, New York, Tennessee and, in a shock turn of events thanks to the work of Governors Warren and Wetherby, Kentucky and California! And they had very nearly upset the Republican vice-president in his own home state, thanks to efforts by the younger Kennedys that ended up providing turn out. Others such as Ralph Yarbrough, George McGovern and Ed Muskie canvassed their own states, making them far closer run events, and we shall no doubt return to these individuals in the coming years. And in several high profile states, like Wisconsin, Vermont, Washington and even Texas, they too took second place in terms of votes.

The point was that they came second overall both in the popular and electoral count, with an Electoral Vote of 115, to Taft/Martin's 337 and Stevenson/Sparkman's 79.

The point was that they had put on the best performance of a third party since...well, ever!

The point was that many in Congress and on the state level were starting to wonder if this Progress Party had wheels

And even as Taft celebrated his destiny finally coming true, that he at last would ascend to the Presidency and truly bring America back to it's roots, a state to be envious of, Morse called up his colleague from Tennessee and asked with a slightly terrifying grin and a chuckle in his voice:

"Do you want to do this with me again in four years?"

......

(Author's Note: So. Here we are.

I wanted to try something of a more serious timeline here as opposed to my pop-culture one which I can assure everyone will be proceeding alongside this one. I have created lists of every governorship and senate seat, and I am reasonably confident in my ability to deliver events to you in an interesting fashion. The way I plan to do this is simple. Rather than take you step by step along the road with me, I am considering offering an overview of each term and election on their separate page, almost like a TILAW. I intend to do this right up until the most recent election, at which point I shall return to the beginning and provide an explanation of each state and what occurred starting from 1952 and again continuing up until the present day. If we manage to complete all fifty states, i will begin work on expanding on the world outside though I have not started on this yet in great depth. I hope this has been interesting, and that it has your attention.)

 

[dcharles]

"It's not going to work." It was Dewey who spoke first, that is Governor Dewey of New York. "I mean, it could have. It very nearly did. But it's not going to. And we need to deal with that...somehow." His voice was sad and distant, but not without some note of determination. The others agreed, though none had the heart at present to speak on the matter further.

It was Cabot Lodge who spoke next. "That was smart of Taft. I didn't think he had it in him. Matter of fact, I still don't." The senator from Massachusetts was referring to a simple decision that Senator Robert A Taft of Ohio had made just this morning, based on a conversation with the General whom they had longed to draft into running. Before taking up his position at NATO, a chat between the two had Eisenhower make a legitimate promise to the Senator. Should Taft, a well known Isolationist, make a promise to ally with their international companions to defeat the evil scourge of Communism, then a statement would be put out firmly putting to bed any notions of running for President. Taft had, apparently, asked for a day to consider the matter. Four hours later he made arrangements to meet with the General and agreed to this promise. So too had the statement been put out, gently but firmly putting away any such notions of a takeover of the primary system. Cabot Lodge sighed. "The second he'll get into the office, he'll tear up the floorboards looking for a secret passage, a way to get out of the whole arrangement. Doesn't he see that?"

"Could we not just...put his name into the system anyway?" This was Harold Stassen, former Governor of Minnesota and former contender for the nomination himself. He looked around nervously. "I mean, if he wins New Hampshire-"

"Then Ike will thank us, and then he will declare that he is touched, and then he will torch the whole thing." Earl Warren had been silent for most of this, but now he had to speak. "Not only has he given a promise to Taft, but it won't have been Taft who broke it. It will have been us. And no amount of jockeying around, giving a position on the ticket to one of Taft's friends, will get away from the fact that Taft made a sacrifice on good faith that got thrown back in his face. He'll look a fool, and when someone looks a fool they can do a lot of damage to try and recover their reputation. And that'll hand the whole thing over to Stevenson, and he'll blather his way through the next four years while the Soviets push ahead. I agree with Thomas, the whole thing is off."

After a moment's pause, the one Democrat in the room stood up and turned to look out of the window. Beneath them, the busy hum and buzz of Chicago caused him to mediate on his friendship with Eisenhower. Claude Pepper was no longer representing Florida in the upper echelon of Congress, but he had been invited because of his admiration for the general, and his original attempt to get him to run as a Democrat. He still believed in the morality of what he and his Democrats pushed, but even so he could not help but feel weary of what was being pushed.

He believed in it but "could not help but feel weary of" it? What does that mean? And what is the "it" that "he and his Democrats" are pushing?

What had they gone through in 48, if not for...?

And then, suddenly, something occurred to him.

"Do you know who they're thinking of nominating as Vice President?" He asked, casually. The others grimly shook their heads. "I think it is one of the Southerners. I doubt it would be Thurmond, there is still some bad blood there. It might be Stennis, but he strikes me as someone perfectly content to be in the Senate until his dying day.

At this point, a normal person would cut him off and tell him to stop telling them who it won't be and start telling who it will be.

No, on the whole, I think it far more likely to be Sparkman. Naturally, once the Dixiecrats get their hooks in, they'll tear apart the plank that so inconveniences them with every bit of fury they have."

"Let us be frank, you can hardly put yourself on a great moral pedestal there, can you?"

In spoken American English, "let's" probably outnumbers "let us" by 100-1. And also, I'm not understanding why Pepper can't put himself on a pedestal. He was one of the most liberal members of the Senate back then. He was Red-Baited out of his seat--in part due to comments he made about the Soviet Union being more friendly to minorities than the US--why is he being lumped in with the Dixiecrats?

Stassen stared at Pepper and Pepper stared at Stassen. Then, quietly, the former senator shook his head. "No, I cannot. Nor will I try to. But the fact remains, they will do anything they can to stop advancement of a better society. Maybe that is the game they have to play to survive, I know that that is how I see the matter, I will not argue whether or not that is accurate. But that will happen. And it will happen because quite frankly the Democrats are scared stiff of losing their support. The Byrds will not let progress occur unless it is by their hand. And it was all thanks to that campaign they ran back in '48. Now, suddenly, those grand schemes of McFarland and Johnson come to nothing because if they do, they'll have a rebellion on their hands, a split ticket, a threat to the iron grip of the Senate and the House. Perhaps even a switch to the Republican party all together. All because of '48."

There was silence for a moment. Then Stassen spoke up. "A third party run. +-+."

There was no point in hiding it. Pepper nodded. "I am."

"But Ike won't run. At his heart, he's a Republican through and through, and if you couldn't get him to go to bat for the Democrats, then he'll not take a chance on some shot in the dark campaign." Dewey snorted. "And I'm perfectly content where I am, thank you. I'll do my time in office and then I'll pack my bags and go. I can't do another one of these campaigns, and I have no intention to do so. What about you, Earl?"

California's governor sighed. "Tempting as it is, I don't think so. The kind of people we'd need to court to even make a dent would regard me unkindly." He stared into the distance, images of screaming Japanese children and women, herded into internment camps, playing on loop perpetually in his mind. He shook himself. "I doubt you'd like to run, Claude?"

"The highest office I aspire to at present is the Speakership. Aside from that, no. I don't think I could run a campaign, for similar reasons to yourself."

"I'd do it." Henry Cabot Lodge smiled quietly to himself. "I'd like to volunteer, as it were."

"Now hold on, there's no reason here why you should get this nomination over me." Harold was already looking ready for a fight, his eccentric eyes twinkling with fire once again. "I could do it just as easily as you."

"Hm."

This noise from the veritable elder statesmen of Republican liberalism made all pause and turn their heads. "What?" Stassen said, his voice cracking a little. "I assume you have problems with me getting the go-ahead?"

"First of all, we have not even settled on what we would call this...hypothetical campaign of ours. Second, take this in the way it is intended to be, I think each of you should think carefully about what running for the Presidency means.

Like they haven't been doing that for their entire lives. This is a room full of ambitious politicians, not Kanye West on a bender.

Henry, you are in a seat that we need badly, and there's every chance that should you run and win, we could lose a link in the chain that keeps us relevant at a national level. Besides which, if we are to get a look in with Taft, you are the most likely candidate for Vice President at the present time, better to leave yourself on the table for the present. Harold...there is, in truth, nothing wrong with you as a Presidential nominee. But I suspect that you would find the Vice Presidency more to your liking. It is more hands on, it requires a greater challenge and it can give you a kind of on the job experience that can cover ground far more effectively than the central position can."

Harold Stassen sighed, and bowed to this wisdom. "I make no promises of holding back. I want that job."

"And your ambition does us credit, I am sure. But I do have a candidate to put forward. I doubt very much we can draft him, nor should we. He is quite vocal about matters, and has been full of critiques of both parties. As a matter of fact, I believe the word on the street is that he wishes to leave the Republican party at present and join up with the Democrats! ...As it stands, he'd make a grand go of it, he is in a seat that we have a decent amount of control over and though I've always found him a ornery old goat, he has much to offer this country."

There was a long silence. Dewey sat back and watched their faces as they tried to link up the description with someone they knew. It was, much to his surprise, Cabot Lodge who spoke first. "Not Morse? Surely not him? ...Thomas, NO."

Dewey simply laughed.

......

"This is a trick."

Claude sighed, and rubbed his head. "No, Senator. It is not a trick. You are perfectly free to decline or to accept, and there is no binding agreement that shall be made in blood that prevents you from going your own way after the election. You do not have to pick my party, or that of Henry's, or even this makeshift one we shall create. We just want you to run, that is all."

Wanye Morse sat back and stared at them. Then, very carefully, he checked under the table. Nothing. He looked up to the walls. No signs of any tampering. He checked the rest of the room. No one but himself, Representative Pepper and Senator Cabot Lodge. He settled back in his chair and glowered at Pepper. "If McCarthy is nearby-"

"He is not. And we are not involving him in this matter. We are trying to loosen that kind of maniac from the party, don't you understand that?" Pepper swallowed, took a deep breath and continued. "Senator Morse, if it is a matter of perception-"

Pepper was a Democrat. Why would he care that the Republican Party has a prominent nutjob making them look bad?

"It is nothing of the sort. I would not be opposed to launching any sort of challenge to the current system, I just want to be sure that this challenge is a fair one. Or at least, as fair as one can allow. Now, what party name would I be running under?"

"That has been of some debate." Henry Cabot Lodge felt uncomfortable, but nonetheless he pushed forward. "We had considered the Progressive Party, befitting our status as the heir apparent to Theodore Roosevelt. However, Wallace's challenge has made that name....less than appropriate for the current climate. It is not completely out of the question, but we would like to hold off on it for the time being. The Liberal Party was also considered, as I suspect that the endorsement of the New York branch will go to you, naturally."

Morse scoffed at that. "I would much rather a Progressive than a Liberal, I must say. However, I take your point. It has the stench of Hiss around it, and I would prefer to stand back." He considered. "The Progress Party, then. Not the same as the last, but we can draw links back to the old days. Perhaps for now, at the very least, we can amend it at a later date." He did not miss both men staring at each other for a moment, and snapped "I presume if I run under this third party, I will have people backing me, will I not? I am not in the habit of starting that which I intend to leave unfinished." Both nodded hurriedly, and Morse sank back in his chair. "Now, I'm not stupid enough to think I can win this. Do you think I can win this?"

There was a knock at the door, and Pepper hurried over to see who it was. He relaxed instantly, and Morse did too at the sight of the ever charming Estes Kefavauer of Tenseness. He hurried over and sat down, cheerful as ever and shook Morse's hand. Morse was cheered by the sight of him, and asked if he would be working with him. Estes smiled warmly. "Not this time, I'm afraid. Though, if you consider going for it next time, then absolutely. No, I'm here to offer support, if I can. I'm already on the outs with the party at present, I lose nothing by throwing support to you." His manner was easy-going, but Morse knew well enough that the man was dogged and determined and would not rest until he had done what he had set out to do.

"Then who?"

"Stassen."

"If it has to be anyone, it might as well be Stassen." Morse was secretly quite pleased. He liked Stassen, he was the kind of Republican whom the future should belong to. He sighed. "But we will not win."

"It is about more than that, Morse." Kefavauer was quite serious now. "How many people must suffer because of the failure of both of our parties to consider their needs? We need to make sure that our country is consistently engaged with civic matters, or else future generations will be burned out husks of people. The good times may be here, but the bad times that follow will do so with a righteous fury the like of which we may not be prepared for." He paused, and then rubbed his head. "Civil rights is a big stumbling block. I admit, I struggle with what an integrated society might look like! ....But be that as it may, that is my own issue. I must deal with that. They have two choices at present, the doting dehumanization of Stevenson or the cold ignorance of Taft. There has to be a medium. If you can get the attention of those who are in need of it most, and if you can make a big enough dent, maybe our parties can start getting their heads on straight. Maybe we can stem the tide, even if just for another decade."

Wayne Morse sat back in the chair and rubbed his face. Not long ago, an accident had damaged it quite significantly, and he was keenly aware of the multitude of imperfections that ran across it, be they natural or otherwise. It was a bit like the political machine itself, he supposed, always attempting to present a clean image and never succeeding in keeping away the bumps and grooves and scratches upon which a country was built. And yet...And yet, you had to push on, you had to work with it, despite the imperfections. He looked up and nodded. "I want to talk to Stassen tomorrow. We need to get this thing up and running as soon as possible."

Pretty cool idea. Dialogue needs some work though. Nobody talks like this. There's a lot of "as you know, Bob," sorts of conversation here.

 

[TGW]

Thank you for your review @dcharleos, and I'd like to address your points. First, the issue of dialogue. I am none too happy either with what I produced either, and while I will revise how I write it from now on, much of this story will be confided to text with the exception of political speeches from here on out. I had originally intended a reveal that these were extracts from a movie produced in the future of the timeline, but I thought it presumptuous and perhaps a little overtly complicated. Some of it, I argue, is justified (The section as to why the Progress party is not merely the Progressive Party I added in consideration of the political climate) but I accept that most of it is not. In truth, I may have done this in part to communicate where we are starting from. I forgot that this is an alternate history forum and naturally people are going to be more in the know about these things than I expected. In addition to which, it is your own history which I am writing about (I am Welsh) and I don't need to remind you of it. I accept the charge and resolve to do better.

Secondly, regarding Pepper's involvement. What I had hoped to communicate here was the idea of both political parties picking candidates that alienated the moderate-to-left factions of the party. Pepper is here in part because of his involvement in attempting to get Ike onboard for the Democrats, and while he would greatly prefer a Democrat at the head of government, he would first and foremost like a decent man in office. That did not come across well, I admit that. Narratively speaking, he is here to communicate that it is not just a Republican issue but one that affects both sides of the political coin so to speak. I did not intend to lump Pepper in with the Dixiecrats, rather to refer to his voting against the anti-lynching bills which he very much did do. Yes, he was the most liberal in a very un-liberal state, but that stuff still does not play well.

Thank you for your praise, and I will take what has been said onboard and try to do better.

 

[dcharles]

Thank you for your review @dcharleos, and I'd like to address your points. First, the issue of dialogue. I am none too happy either with what I produced either, and while I will revise how I write it from now on, much of this story will be confided to text with the exception of political speeches from here on out. I had originally intended a reveal that these were extracts from a movie produced in the future of the timeline, but I thought it presumptuous and perhaps a little overtly complicated. Some of it, I argue, is justified (The section as to why the Progress party is not merely the Progressive Party I added in consideration of the political climate) but I accept that most of it is not. In truth, I may have done this in part to communicate where we are starting from. I forgot that this is an alternate history forum and naturally people are going to be more in the know about these things than I expected. In addition to which, it is your own history which I am writing about (I am Welsh) and I don't need to remind you of it. I accept the charge and resolve to do better.

Secondly, regarding Pepper's involvement. What I had hoped to communicate here was the idea of both political parties picking candidates that alienated the moderate-to-left factions of the party. Pepper is here in part because of his involvement in attempting to get Ike onboard for the Democrats, and while he would greatly prefer a Democrat at the head of government, he would first and foremost like a decent man in office. That did not come across well, I admit that. Narratively speaking, he is here to communicate that it is not just a Republican issue but one that affects both sides of the political coin so to speak. I did not intend to lump Pepper in with the Dixiecrats, rather to refer to his voting against the anti-lynching bills which he very much did do. Yes, he was the most liberal in a very un-liberal state, but that stuff still does not play well.

Thank you for your praise, and I will take what has been said onboard and try to do better.

You're Welsh! The dialogue style makes more sense now. I was actually thinking that everyone sounded a lot like posh British people, so that explains it. (And to be fair, smoky backrooms stocked with prominent British politicians of the 1950s probably did sound a lot like what you wrote)
In any event, I'll be tuned in. I'm a PoC from the Deep South, so I've always had a soft spot for the politicians from back when who stood up for my rights when it was inconvenient and dangerous for them to do so. You've got two of my guys here--Kefauver and Pepper--so I'll definitely be watching.

 

[TGW]

You're Welsh! The dialogue style makes more sense now. I was actually thinking that everyone sounded a lot like posh British people, so that explains it. (And to be fair, smoky backrooms stocked with prominent British politicians of the 1950s probably did sound a lot like what you wrote)

Mm. Add onto the fact that I am autistic and therefore have a decidedly odd manner of writing, and you have the problem. I suspect that my attempt to ape some of our more distinguished writers of science fiction and fantasy for my own crude novel has rubbed off on me somewhat. Certainly I think it serves me better outside of dialogue, which is why I find the bloody stuff so irritating.

In any event, I'll be tuned in. I'm a PoC from the Deep South, so I've always had a soft spot for the politicians from back when who stood up for my rights when it was inconvenient and dangerous for them to do so. You've got two of my guys here--Kefauver and Pepper--so I'll definitely be watching.

Ah, that makes sense! I will honestly try and write them as well as can be handled, indeed part of the joy of working out the timeline was digging into the states and finding similar people across the states (Wetherby in particular was a rather surprising one). I can't say I'll always get it right, but hopefully that can be where people like you call me out on it.

 

[Don Corleone]

Mm. Add onto the fact that I am autistic and therefore have a decidedly odd manner of writing, and you have the problem. I suspect that my attempt to ape some of our more distinguished writers of science fiction and fantasy for my own crude novel has rubbed off on me somewhat. Certainly I think it serves me better outside of dialogue, which is why I find the bloody stuff so irritating.


Ah, that makes sense! I will honestly try and write them as well as can be handled, indeed part of the joy of working out the timeline was digging into the states and finding similar people across the states (Wetherby in particular was a rather surprising one). I can't say I'll always get it right, but hopefully that can be where people like you call me out on it.

Big Jim Folsom
George Wallace (seriously - the POD is before 1958)
Earl Long
Billy Graham (never ran for office but refused to preach to segregated audiences as early as the 1950s - including a revival in Arkansas, thereby making an impression on a young Arkansan named William Jefferson Blythe).

 

[ClockworkDawn]

This was a very unique sort of introduction, I'm definitely interested. Looking forward to seeing where this ride takes us!

 

[TGW]

(Author's Note: if there are mistakes that need to be edited here, gently inform me so.)

Robert Taft had been a senator since 1939. He had run three times for the nomination of President, and it was on the third that he had been elected. Since his election, he had become 'Mr Republican' to many in and out of Congress. He was, at the time of his official inauguration on January 20th, 63 years old.

All of these facts are obvious to people who have a passing knowledge of Taft, be it a high school student looking to get a good grade on a test or someone engaged in the art of politics. Nonetheless these points, simple and obvious as they were, ultimately led to his Presidency being what it was and so must be stated at the beginning of this.

At the start of his administration, Taft's Cabinet looked like this.

Vice President Joseph Martin
Secretary of State: William Knowland
Secretary of the Treasury: Howard Buffet
Secretary of Defence: Bernard Brodie
Attorney General: Leo Hoegh
Postmaster General: Arthur Summerfield
Secretary of Interior: Roger G Kennedy
Secretary of Agriculture: Zales Ecton
Secretary of Commerce: Thruston Ballard Morton
Secretary of Labour: Ralph Owen Brewster
Secretary of Health, Education and Wellness: Winthrop Rockefeller
Director of the Bureau of the Budget: Fred Seaton
Ambassador to the United Nations: Douglas MacArthur
Atomic Energy Commission Chair: Lewis Strass
Chief of Staff: Henry Cabot Lodge Jr
Cabinet Secretary: Fred A. Hartley Jr.
CDS Director: Val Peterson

Foreign

Perhaps the clearest sign of how Taft regarded the idea of foreign interference was when the Bricker Amendment came up in the senate. Taft threw his full weight of support behind it as covertly as he could, encouraging many of his old colleagues to vote for it. His reasoning for doing so is sound if one considers his mentality. Taft could not reasonably break his promise to Eisenhower, both due to his respect for the man despite his disagreements and because if he did, Eisenhower would more than likely launch a bid for the Presidency come 56. And Taft had no intention now of letting go of his Presidency, it had taken him this long to get to the top, they would have to wait the full eight years before they got him out of the White House.

But, he reasoned, supposing that the choice to engage was no longer his own? He was now trapped in the agreements that his predecessors made and while he deeply believed in Isolationism, he was aware that abandoning the commitments he had made would be ripe for the picking for any political opponents. The Bricker amendment offered him a way out, if every decision on such matter had to get through a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate, he could not be held responsible for not being able to assist in such matters. Several powers that were worked together to fight this bill, including Johnson and the opinionated Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota. Worse still were the liberal Republicans, each of whom decided to vote against the bill. The painful process it went through as it crossed first the House and then stalled viciously in Committee was aggravating to Taft to say the least. By the time Congress called for it's Recess in August, the amendment was left abandoned, left to linger until they returned in January.

One of the first actions Taft undertook was to disassemble the Mutual Security Agency and to split it's responsibilities between the State and Defence Departments. Taft may not have liked having to perpetually prop up America's old allies, but his decision was not done to spite Truman, but rather as a peace offering to the Dewey wing. He disliked doing this greatly, but he realized that this was going to be one of the ways he was going to have to compromise his vision. He would have been depressed if someone told him how much he was going to have to compromise by year’s end.

In terms of relationships with other foreign powers, Taft's approach was decidedly neutral. He shared Eisenhower's distrust of the French, and thought Vincent Auriol incompetent in his position . He cultivated good terms with the British at first, though he was forever mocked by Winston Churchill as being more like Clement Atlee than he would have liked. In addition, he and the rest of the NATO allies saw Taft's pushy and aggravated attempt for an official peace treaty to end the Korean War for good to be too much. He failed in this, and it is recognized that his role in the Korean War was merely as spectator to the final official moments before it was frozen in time.

But the most defining moment was one where, at least in the moment, Taft actually came out smelling of roses. Around about June, Taft was approached by representatives of the CIA who wanted his approval for a clandestine operation to remove Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mossadegh from power and to redirect most of the power to the incumbent Shah. Most people know of how this works, but it is important to hear the details that were confirmed to Taft The British secret service had gone to an awful lot of trouble to sow seeds of discord amongst the people of Iran towards their new leader who, it must be admitted, handled the situation in a less-than-perfect fashion which was of course all part of the plan. Operation Ajax, master-minded by Kermit Roosevelt Jr, would see Mossadegh arrested for overreaching his powers and the Shah put back on the throne. Then the oil could become property of American and British companies once again, court cases could be dropped and the world could go back to how it had been, with an ally firmly in the pocket of both USA and UK.

It must have been a difficult choice for Taft. Join the coup and it would ensure a connection between the oil of Iran and America's big businesses, a connection that Taft would have loved to have made to get big business back on side. But if he did, that would be another bend of the knee to the internationalist crowd. No, worse than that, it would set a precedent for meddling that he suspected would never end. Besides which, if the agitation carried out by MI6 was making a connection between Mossadegh and Communism that was non-existent or at the very least far less vital than was being told, he had no reason to get the US involved in such matters. To this, he refused to take part in the coup, vehemently so.

Despite efforts by the CIA to change his mind, the President refused. This was soon relayed to the agents in Iran, and more specifically to Kermit Roosevelt Jr, the agent who had worked hand in hand with MI6 in preparing the plan. Roosevelt had by this time sunk so much into the operation that he felt it had to go ahead, and that the President would see in time what a wise choice this had been. He would lose his life, in torture or in disgrace, but he would have made things better for the world. Operation Ajax would have been full of blunders had it occurred in August as planned, but moving it ahead to July? That made the whole thing far, far worse. It is wise to keep this in mind when reading what occurred.

Taft had been briefed on Roosevelt in the lead-up to this, and at the suggestion of Brodie found a couple of agents who supported his brand of politics (These agents do mot have official names, though many have laid claim to this), asking them to pass on information that the coup was to take place to Mossadegh. Angered by this, the Prime Minister made a very public statement indicating that the United Kingdom was attempting to interfere with the running of his country and intimated that the Shah might have been misled as to what would happen. The Shah had already begun preparing a dismissal for Mossadegh which, in theory, would have led the Prime Minister to overreach. Now, with panicked citizens worried that one of their leaders may be under undue influence and the other was imposing his power upon them, he was forced to make a choice: An about turn away from his 'vacation' to Northern Iran to try and salvage the situation or carry on with the plan and draw an immediate and impressive target on his back.

He chose, and decided to take his wife and make for Baghdad, intending to make a speech at the airport before departing, a speech in which he hoped to calm his people down. He had with him a considerable amount of guards too, so he did not take any chance. He was about halfway to his intended destination when, over the radio, it was announced that Mossadegh had been shot in the head. It would later be identified that the man responsible was a thug hired by the British who had decided that if Mossadegh had gone off script there was no reason why he shouldn’t also do so. Guards loyal to the Prime Minister seized him and dragged him to a secure jail. They made sure he could not kill himself, and then went about making sure he wished he could. Roosevelt was promptly dragged in and kept in relatively good condition for the time being. But that was not the end of the bloody affair.

The Shah regarded the whole thing as a mess. With Roosevelt under lock and key, and the rest of the CIA under direct orders from Taft to stick with the Mossadegh government, it seemed unlikely that Americans would support Prime Minister Zahedi instead. Midway through discussion about whether to turn back and make the best of a bad situation, a group of officers arrived on the side of the road. What happened next makes sense if one remembers that Pahlavi was himself under threat of being deposed by the CIA if he did play along. Roosevelt had good intentions if horrible execution, some of the men he had recruited had much of the latter and not enough of the former. These rouge agents recognized the car of Iran's ruler and refusing to believe that their President had abandoned them, believed Pahlavi had. They opened firing, riddling the vehicle with bullets and killing everyone inside. The Shah staggered out, tried to say some final words, choked on his blood and died before them all. These guards either killed themselves, fled or were captured by a third group of soldiers, these ones loyal to Mossadegh, who had intercepted the message stating that Zahedi was to become the Prime Minister. They placed it by the dead Shah.

Hossein Fatami, close friend of Mossadegh, acted swiftly. He announced that the Shah’s death was a British plot as had been the Prime Minister’s own death. The Shah’s letter proclaiming that Zahedi was to be implemented as Prime Minister? A forgery of course, made by threatening the Shah’s wife and children and of course his loyal and faithful subjects. Zahedi was dragged off to be interrogated where he confessed to some role in the coup, but killed himself before he could say more. His last words were proclaiming that he loved the Shah and would never have killed him. Fatami immediately integrated himself with the grieving wife of the Shah, For now, with the Shah having produced only one daughter who by law was illegible for the throne, his brother Ali Rezha Pahlavi would take the throne. Fatami got inside Ali’s ear almost immediately and both agreed that while dealings with the US was only fair, the UK would have to wait a long time. Eisenhower would soon learn of the coup and responded with the appropriate amount of sympathy, all the while castigating his UK colleagues on the foolishness of the plan. Taft and the new Prime Minister (Fatami himself) got along very well once Taft had negotiated Kermit Roosevelt’s return to the US to stand trial in military court for insubordination in exchange for extraditing him back to Iran for their own trial. He also promised that a full investigation into CIA’s potential planning of the coup would be carried out. Both respected each other’s desire for some level of control over their own countries. In fact, Fatami thought so highly of Taft that he decided that once the wretched embargo business was settled, perhaps their countries could do some business together. Churchill’s blunder failed, the United Kingdom had been embarrassed on the world stage (particularly as more of the bad actors who had posed as communists at Mossadegh's rally came forward to save their own skin), the tax payer had wasted much of their money on a failed coup attempt and it would lead to him to resign by the end of the year with Anthony Eden taking over and leading the Conservatives to a disastrous election in 1955, but that is a story for another day.

Roosevelt, incidentally, was tried both in the US and Iran as per usual. Thanks to Taft, he did not die, but was instead sentenced to life. He died in 1972 as a result of poor conditions in his prison, aided by a consistent diet of abuse from the guards.

It can be surmised that Taft tried to keep his promise by doing the absolute pair minimum. He hosted foreign dignitaries, and though polite to them, he was quite evasive when they wanted to talk on stronger matters, leaving that particular job to Martin. And with regards to NATO, he certainly did not pull out of the organization adn that is pretty much the extent to his positive contribution to the organization. His more conciliatory attitude towards the Soviets meant that the discovery that Truman had saddled him with a great big Hydrogen bomb left him furious. But you can't uninvent a thing, and Taft was bitterly aware that no matter his personal dislike for such things it was now his responsibility to figure out what to do with it. So while he glumly began to stockpile the arsenal, he nonetheless insisted that he was not going to be saddling future generations with a hundred thousand ticking time-bombs.

Domestic

Similar to the MSA, Taft oversaw a amalgamation between the Federal Civil Defence Administration and the Office of Defence Mobilization. Again, this was to streamline the process, and again this was a bone to be thrown to the Dewey wing which Taft hated doing. He was all for keeping the power separate, but he had to bow to it in the end. Thus did the Civil Defence Service come into existence,

Taft had to deal with the New Deal next, and many people held their breath in anticipation. But he was not a Conservative whole-heartedly however, for he had invested in the improving of public housing and had done since discovering the lacklustre standards of living during the height of the New Deal. Money was given to assist in this, and with bi-partisan assistance, he made it law that a nation-wide examination of housing would be carried out every five years. Though he was watching the rest of the money like a hawk, he did make sure keep up funding the public schools throughout his tenure, having no desire to leave the next generation's children uneducated.

And that was all the leeway Taft was willing to give the New Deal. Taft was able to triumphantly proclaim that he had avoided another recession, but that was only by cutting down on the amount of money spent on national security. Taft worked hard to decrease the budget deficit, though he did not balance the budget he did manage to even things out a little and was beginning to cut the heaviest of the taxes at the request of Senate Republicans. Indeed, he was in the process of negotiating with senate leaders to introduce a infrastructure bill that would invest heavily in big business when events took him out of action for a time. While he was never going to scrap social security, he did plan to make severe cuts to it, cuts that were opposed loudly and furiously by the Save our Security Coalition. The cuts ended up being significantly smaller.

And still, the New Deal taunted him. Something he realized very early on was that for all he hated it, and for all he preached about it being socialist, it was too deeply entrenched and liked by the nation et-large to tear it apart. Taft had his interests, Taft had his beliefs, but Taft also had a nation unafraid to make it's voice heard if it felt it was being ignored. Forever, it seemed the President was hamstrung by his entire history, as everybody had prepared counterpoints for his arguments for cutting this program or to get rid of that amendment. Taft's issues with labour sprang back to bite him as he championed attempts to institute a mandatory 'right to work' across America. The bill managed to pass through the House, but in the Senate, a veritable tide of hated spilling out through personal letters and telephone calls resulted in the bill lacking the votes needed. It became abundantly clear, even to the deeply stubborn Taft, that he was going to kill the party if he tried to push any further. In fact, any effort he made to bring the unions in line during his tenure failed, causing him much frustration. He did gain one victory, however, issuing an executive order to pause the draft, on the grounds that freedom of choice was being taken away from the young men of the country. This did make him popular with the younger generation for about three weeks, and then they went right back to hating him.

And then there was the question of race. Now, Taft has in recent years been claimed as the first truly Libertarian president. It is an interesting choice to try and reclaim Taft as a figurehead for why Libertarianism worked, for Taft did nothing practical for the private rights of the other races at all. His small government ideals meant that effectively he would not venture out of his way to try and force the issue with any of the governors. He did lend his support to an anti-lynching bill, which was about as much use as a pot to piss in in a latrine factory, because as per usual it failed to get through the senate. Civil rights leaders despaired at the election of Taft, which did legitimately upset the President, for he thought theirs was a noble goal. He just wasn't going to do much of anything to help them achieve it. Not desegregating schools, not challenging the Byrd Machine, not even really sticking up for them in public to let them know that he kept them in his thoughts. He did what he always did, which is what he thought was right and damn how the others thought. And it was wearing thin on the people of America really fast.

Congressional

But perhaps all of these failures might not have been so bad if it had not been for the Congress that Taft had to deal with.

A quick explanation is in order. Riding the wave of Anti-Democrat sentiment, the House had flipped over to Republican control, albeit a narrow and less than sturdy control of about three seats. In addition, several of the liberal Republicans who remained began to take an interest in the Progress Party, as did the liberal wing of the Democrats. At the very least, Taft could sure to get any legislation he wanted passed through the lower chamber. The upper chamber was quite a different matter. In Connecticut, both seats were up for grabs following the death of Brien McMahon. He had been replaced by Prescott Bush, supposedly after the Governor at the time that it would distract the challenger for William Benton’s seat if William Purfell was appointed. Bush would retain the seat in the special election, but Purfell would lose, not to Benton but to the man who had defeated him in the primary thanks to an endorsement by Wayne Morse, Abraham Ribicoff. This victory was not the only one the Democrats made, along with that of John F Kennedy, Stuart Symington, Mike Mansfield and Henry Jackson, it ensured that the Democrats were now one seat from reclaiming the senate. Or at least, they would have been, if not for one man.

The Senator from Oregon had refused to change his party back to that of the Republicans. And to the chagrin and begrudging admiration of Johnson, he would not become a Democrat. This senator had gone through quite a journey starting from his decision to form the Progress Party, all of which can be tracked by how he was addressed in casual conversation. He had transitioned from "My friend, Senator Morse" to "Senator Morse" to "Morse" to "That goddamn Morse!" to "That sonuvabitch, Morse!" and finally to "The Sonuvabitch" over the course of his decision to become a very public and very painful splinter in the Conservative Coalition. With his refusal to return to the Republicans and his remark that he would caucus with whomever he felt had the best interest of the American people at heart, he trapped the senate in a deadlock where ‘theoretically’, the Democrats still held power by one seat. But that could change at any moment. It is suspected that had Eisenhower or Cabot Lodge or Dewey or Warren won the election, then Morse would have at the very least decided to caucus with the Republicans. But none of them had. It was Taft, whom Morse had little respect or time for. What made matters worse was that many of the newcomers to the Senate were more liberal than average, and thus they began to work with Morse more and more.

The irony was that Morse was himself a cantankerous so and so, not too dissimilar to Taft, but whereas Taft had a holier than thou attitude to his politics, Morse was always willing to admit he too was learning and adapting with the rest of the country. He had welcomed the adoption of the Bricker amendment with some relief, but apart from that, he pushed back at Taft's attempts to cut down on the New Deal. Taft began to get a little unnerved by this strange figure who seemed to be full to the brim with righteous fury at the system around him, and at how popular he was across the country. Worse still, Taft got the distinct impression that a lot of the foreign allies were bitterly disappointed not to be dealing with Morse instead.

McCarthy was the other problem. Now, whatever else can be said about Robert Taft, let it not be said that he was blind to what Joseph McCarthy was. Taft believed you needed to be tough on Communism, but not excessively so. McCarthy foamed at the mouth at the mere mention of the word, and tore and tore away at America trying to find the traitors within. Taft tried to restrain him, tried desperately to make sure that when one thought of the Republicans one did not think of the Senator McCarthy. He failed and bitterly so, with McCarthy turning on him, he and the rest of his followers began to make intimations about what Taft was really doing, abandoning the allies they had gained in the war and trying to scale back the attacks on Communism. The incident with the Iran coup d'etat was the last straw, McCarthy bought the British suggestion of communism hook, line and sinker. Too late, Taft realized that Truman had not been lying in his statements regarding the persistent threat of the enemy within. Worse was to come, those that had flocked around Taft and had elected him Senate Leader now moved to bring McCarthy to that position. In a blind panic, Taft backed the moderate effort to implant Leverett Saltonstall into the position. He was someone you could work with, someone who could negotiate. This in turn angered the Conservative Coalition. What was wrong with McCarthy, they demanded, he's just doing what you won't! McCarthy backed down and offered a replacement for himself, William Jenner. Taft agreed that this was better, and then discovered that no, actually, it wasn't. Jenner was a reverent believer of McCarthy's method and reasoning and gave as much room for the Wisconsin Senator to go off on as he wished.

Taft was Mr Republican. And as Mr Republican, he had kept the party running for so long be it behind the scenes or on camera, to mangle a metaphor. But now he was out of the picture, the forces he had used to control the party now ran out of control. It is perhaps fortunate that Taft did not see what the next year had in store. If he wasn’t dead by then, then that would have almost certainly finished him off.

Personal

"I'm sure he meant well." One staffer was quoted as saying in a 1989 interview, before pausing and adding awkwardly "He was very ill at the time."

Taft was a charismatic person. You have to be if you can get elected three times, once during a war, twice after being the loudest critic against a popular president, screwing over the labour unions and so on and so forth. But that was Taft to the public. Taft in private, be that at the White House or in Congress, was not easy to get along with. If you did your work well and you were of good sound character (as judged by Taft), then he was cordial towards you. But cordial for Taft meant quiet grudging respect which can easily be mistaken for aloofness. If you did not pass the test of character, however, he was deliberately rude in quieter ways, never shouting or raising his voice, nonetheless he would ignore and often delegate important items away from you. He was an introvert by nature, and though he was all ready to get down to business, it might be suspected that achieving his lifelong dream was exciting for about a week. Then the dream ended and reality set in, and reality meant having to deal with multitudes of people constantly, with little to no escape.

He and his Attorney General did not get on. On a professional level, Hoegh’s enforcement of the rules with little to no lenience was right and just in Taft’s eyes, even if he felt the man had ambitions beyond his means. But on a personal level, he felt as though Hoegh was a reminder of all that he didn’t want the party to be. He got along better with Knowland and of course MacArthur, whom he brought to Korea to negotiate the end of the war. But overall he was abrasive with a lot of his closer staff members, victory had not tamed him, rather it seemed to unshackle him. However, before judgement is passed, it is notable that he would undergo a vicious trial by fire not three months into the job.

We have covered the first three basic facts, and these affected his presidency. One must now turn to the matter of his age. It is silly in hindsight to make a big deal out of Taft's age, but at that point he was the fourth oldest President in the country's history, behind William Henry Harrison, James Buchanan and Zachary Taylor. He did not decline in his faculties, remaining as sharp and as immovable as ever, but nonetheless his age did become a concern to those who knew him. The busy campaign schedule had left him feeling exhausted, and the brief period of grace in which he spent the confirmation of his victory and his ascension to the Presidency did not revitalize him as he might have hoped. All that has been described above occurred during Taft's discovery that he was not in good condition at all. White House Doctors had been concerned following the stumble at MacArthur's birthday party and upon preforming the requisite tests discovered that he had cancer. It took about a month to work out where the primary tumour was, and despite Taft's insistence that he would recover and deal with it, the surgeon's grim face caused him to relent from this position. He finished out a week's worth of visits and decided to undergo surgery to remove it.

The treatment that Taft was getting, though primitive by today's standards, almost certainly extended his life than if he had been a senator. But not by much. The operation to remove the initial tumour was successful, but it turned out that it had been caught far too late in the process. The cancer had spread and fast, and while Taft refused to consider the idea of giving up on fighting with it, privately he must have known he was living on borrowed time. Ironically, had Taft not been in the White House, it was possible that he might have been spared the utter indignity of the last three months of his life. Taft would suffer a brain haemorrhage in the late hours of July 31st. Had he been anywhere but the White House, it would have almost certainly have killed him. As it was, he was kept alive but in bad condition. He did not leave the White House again except for trips to the doctors, and was perpetually confined to a wheelchair. He would require a large amount of oxygen, routinely fell asleep and began to lose most of his sight. He was able to give speeches, but only over the radio and even these began to degrade.

However, Taft would have one last chance to make an impact upon the United States. Fred Vimson suffered a sudden and sharp heart attack on September 8th, and passed away. Taft, drugged up to the nth degree though he was, seemed in good spirits upon learning that he could make an appointment to the Supreme Court, and a Chief Justice no less! He retained enough of his intelligence to create a list alongside his friends, and after some consideration, picked a man whom he considered to be a good compromise. He had been someone who supported much of the New Deal that Taft had despised, but on the other hand was a conservative man in many respects, had the support of many in the Senate and would show due respect to the law. In addition to which, he had already been a judge before.

South Carolina Governor James F Byrnes was well known to many people. He had served as both Senator and House Representative, he had been the Secretary of State under Truman, he had taken care of economic stability under Roosevelt, and before he had been tapped for the latter he had served as an associate judge of the court for fifteen months. He was one of the Southern Democrats and it can be argued that it was he who managed to convince them to back the New Deal, making him perhaps one of the most influential figures from the South. He also had been drawing away from the Democrats, feeling that they took the South for granted and found the support for the Progressives to be an intolerable state of affairs. Having stated all of this, one might wonder why anyone would react negatively to this, with the exception of Morse and his allies.

Well, Byrne had developed a little bit into Taft-lite during his time as governor. He had backed a lot of Roosevelt's ideas, but critically had differed when it came to organized labour, refusing to go along with creating a minimum wage that would, in his head, make the textile mills in the state less competitive. He was also ex-Catholic and was vehemently loud about saying so to avoid the negative stereotypes, offending that particular market as well. But where he suffered most was on race. One must always grade on a curve when it comes to segregationists, there is the obvious (but wretched) case of politicians who got into power because they spoke in favour of it, and then there are those who actually suggested that the reason for lynching's is because of all the rape that the men responsible had done. True, he had done his best to ensure that the schools that the black children had to go were given good supplies and so on, but the vigorous anger with which he criticized what would morph into Brown vs Board of Education, what he saw as an open and shut case, alarmed all with an interest in bringing segregation to an end.

Had Robert Taft been well, he might have recognized this. Or perhaps that is suggesting too much. Perhaps Taft would have always pushed ahead with this choice, be he ill or not. In any case, Taft was no friend to the labour union. He wasn't religious in any real respect, and probably assumed that Byrnes's remarks would just blow over. And as to the race matter? Well, Taft may have thought the African Americans deserved to vote, but he sure as hell wasn't going to try and bring it about. It had to come naturally was his thought process, and he would not force the states to desegregate, not if they didn't want to. So in many respects, Byrnes was actually a candidate that Taft could get behind. The meeting was short, Taft had recovered a little bit so they were able to hold a conversation. Byrne was term limited, so running for a second election wasn't an issue. He accepted, and it was decided that they would announce the choice of judge in a week's time, with a recess vote taking place a week after that.

And then something rather strange happened. Byrnes's name was leaked to the press.

Now that might not sound strange to you. Surely, a shortlist for such an important nomination would of course be given due examination by the press and so forth. And you would be right. But the shortlist itself wasn't what was leaked. The actual selection process had taken very little time at all, and the shortlist itself was a scribbled piece of paper, not some official document. For Byrnes's name to be released one day after the agreement was quite something. It had to come from one of three places, people theorized. Byrnes himself, one of Taft's staffers or Vice-President Martin. Conspiracy theorists believe that it is likely that Martin leaked the name to try and prevent Byrnes from being chosen for the Chief Justice seat as he was far more supportive of Civil Rights efforts than Taft was. Most likely, it was one of the staffers, but that is not as interesting a story quite frankly.

In any event, reactions were swift and they were troubling. 'Sonuvabitcha Morse' and his new partner in crime Estes Kefauver both announced they would filibuster the appointment, that they would argue furiously against any effort to appoint Byrnes to the highest seat. While they did not go so far, Taft's fellow Isolationists regarded the appointment of a New Dealer who had got them into multiple messes overseas as a betrayal, that this was not something forced upon Taft but something he had chosen. And Lyndon B Johnson, who had plans to run for the Presidency in 1956 and was beginning to look the prejudices that he had perpetuated in the eye, was also starting to have a quiet word with certain colleagues who might have been amendable to, if not outright stopping Byrnes, then making it harder than it might have otherwise been. Those heavily backed by labour also stated their worry at supporting a candidate. When the recess appointment came to pass, there were not enough votes to prevent Morse beginning to filibuster as promised, with Kefauver waiting in the wings to take over for him, supposedly having planned to raise the idea that Byrnes might have a conflict of interest than any moral judgements in a savvy political move. He didn't need to. Into the second day of the hearings, a shaken Martin approached the bench and informed all present that Robert Taft had died. Immediately, he was sworn in to take his place, and a temporary moratorium was placed on the Supreme Court hearing. After a week had passed, Byrnes's name was withdrawn and a new candidate would be put forward. But that is a story for next time.

What actually killed Taft was a second haemorrhage, occurring in the seconds between one doctor leaving and the next entering. Despite their best efforts, he died on October the 1st, 1953, having not even served one quarter of his term. His death would often be attributed to learning of how badly his court appointee was doing, which is almost certainly an attempt to romanticize what would have been a very painful death for a man who was already in intense physical agony. There are rumours that his wife may have ended his life, or a decision was taken to let him pass on, or that Martin himself caused his death to get his way to the Presidency. All of which ignores Occam's Razor, which was that he was an old and ill man in a deeply stressful job.

It is difficult to state with any certainty how the modern era views Taft. Taft the Senator leaves behind a complicated history of awkward positions that have not aged particularly well, opposition to the Second World War and the damage to which Russia could do to the world at large were proven wrong in surprising speed, and his ideal America is still regarded to this day as a hopelessly idealistic dream that, like most idealistic dreams, would have most likely been executed awfully. The modern conservatives owe a lot to him, and indeed he is often thought of fondly as one of the most effective politicians the Republican party has ever produced. Taft the President lived long enough to make some good decisions, some awful decisions but nothing that approached the extreme end of either spectrum. The true tragedy of his stay in the White House was that his main goal was to bring back an American that couldn’t exist anymore, no matter how much he may have wished it so. His obvious dislike for what the Presidency had become suggests that a lifetime of chasing had been better for him than that fleeting moment where he caught hold of it. What would he have done if he'd more time? We'll more than likely never know.

Next time: A dive into the Joseph Martin presidency, the turbulent years and how his choice of Vice President altered the course of the nation forever.

 

[TGW]

Hey all! Brief update, I'm still working on the next chapter. The reason it's taking so long is because one really can't alter Taft's fate that much, so he only has a year if we were to be generous with it. With Martin there are three years to cover and that's in addition to the usual work as well. I am still working on it though, and hopefully by that point we can start the ball rolling on the election of 56, which is where things really start getting detailed.

 

[gentboss]

Ah yes, the Congressman from Innsmouth, MA.

 

[Anarch King of Dipsodes]

He shared Eisenhower's distrust of the French, and of De Galle especially....

De Gaulle's out of power at this time and not a factor AFAIK.

'Sonuvabitcha Morse' and his new partner in crime Estes Kefauver both announced they would filibuster the appointment, that they would argue furiously against any effort to appoint Byrnes to the highest seat.

Why would Kefauver co-lead the charge against Byrnes? Kefauver was relatively liberal for a Southerner, but Byrnes was no reactionary (except on race). In 1953 no southern Democrat would make a public stand on that issue. And Byrnes was a fellow Southerner.

 

[TGW]

De Gaulle's out of power at this time and not a factor AFAIK.


Why would Kefauver co-lead the charge against Byrnes? Kefauver was relatively liberal for a Southerner, but Byrnes was no reactionary (except on race). In 1953 no southern Democrat would make a public stand on that issue. And Byrnes was a fellow Southerner.

To your first point....whoops! My bad, my brain thought he was in power earlier than he had been. That's definitely an error. And to your second point, I do accept that I might have overread the extent to Kefauver's opposition to segregation. I'd argue that perhaps his growing relationship with Morse might influence him a little bit, but I accept that it might be going a bit far. I'll edit these as soon as I can, and thanks for pointing those out.

 

[Bughuntertf]

Signed on for this - I mostly lurk but as this is a new timeline with an interesting twist, I want to pitch in a few words to say that this is very enjoyable so far and I really like your prose style.

There are rumours that his wife may have ended his life, or a decision was taken to let him pass on, or that Martin himself caused his death to get his way to the Presidency. All of which ignores Occam's Razor, which was that he was an old and ill man in a deeply stressful job.

This, especially, I loved. Cool and conversational. I can almost hear the speaker sighing.

 

[TGW]

Signed on for this - I mostly lurk but as this is a new timeline with an interesting twist, I want to pitch in a few words to say that this is very enjoyable so far and I really like your prose style.

This, especially, I loved. Cool and conversational. I can almost hear the speaker sighing.

Thank you! As a former long time lurker myself, it's praise indeed! I'm glad you liked the prose too, I'm always a little nervous about my writing. I really enjoyed writing that section, there was a sense of closure to it that I really enjoy getting to provide.

 

[Sabin]

Signed onto this. I'm quite a fan of Adlai Stevenson but most timelines involving an alternate history with his candidacy have a tendency to turn into a bit of wank. So far, I think this is surprising, credible, and features a nuanced take on a Robert Taft Presidency.

 

[TGW]

Signed onto this. I'm quite a fan of Adlai Stevenson but most timelines involving an alternate history with his candidacy have a tendency to turn into a bit of wank. So far, I think this is surprising, credible, and features a nuanced take on a Robert Taft Presidency.

Thank you for the follow!

It is a relief to learn that I didn't mess Taft up too much. Having read a lot about him in an attempt to understand what a Taft presidency would be like, I honestly believe that the conclusion I reached in the story is an accurate one, that he'd have struggled with the Presidency had he actually won it, particularly at this point in history. I have no doubt he'd have thrown his all at it, but even so...well, that's just my reading, Despite my dislike for his positions and general attitude, I even found myself a little sad at writing his passing. in any case. I feel like I should be up front and say that I'm pretty left-wing as a person, but hopefully I can keep up the restraint I showed here.

Hopefully I can continue to avoid the 'wank' as we go along. Stevenson's an interesting man, clearly you do something right if you managed to get the top party nomination twice in the same decade, even if that something is playing the game right. I hope you will be interested to see what 1956 has in store.

 

[TGW]

(Author's Note: So it's been a while. I admit I've actually had this chapter finished for a good while now, but a few things have held me back. First of all an absolute cavalcade of social events kinda took the wind out of my sails. Secondly, a burst of creativity regarding an actual work of fiction I can publish (in theory anyway, still need to work on that) took my attention away from this work. And third but most importantly, I am a little nervous about how this chapter is going to be received. From here on out we start taking more and more diversions from the normal run of history which, I know, is the point! I mean this forum isn't 'Exactly-the-same-except-the-names History' is it? Nonetheless I do worry that I may be taking the train off the tracks in a inaccurate manner. So with that in mind I am open to suggestions as to areas that I have strayed from the historical characteristics of the people involved.

So, with that in mind, I hope you enjoy this look at the Martin Presidency!)

Joseph Martin regarded his new situation the same way one might regard losing a limb. Painful, startling, not something he had signed up for, but now he was stuck with it and he had to learn how to live with it for everyone’s sake, including his own. He had served in the House from 1925 to 1953, had been the House Minority leader twice and the Speaker once. He had accepted the job of Vice President as a bone to the left-wing faction of the Republicans which surprised Martin enormously. He considered himself a Compassionate Conservative and shared Taft’s ideals of opposing the New Deal. Yet, he was seen as personable enough that the slot of Vice President was a good choice. He hoped that the Vice President inheriting his boss’s office was not going to be a trend in the future.

The first thing he did was to establish a week of mourning for Taft. The second thing he did, as we have discussed, was to immediately withdraw the nominee to the Supreme Court from consideration. And most believe that the third thing he would have done was to submit one of his own. But what actually turned out to item number three on the agenda was a conversation with a small but striking delegation from Congress. They exchanged pleasantries and condolences, and then the leader of the delegation stepped up to the plate to make his pitch.

Over the course of the next year, the unofficial vice-president would work closely with Martin while an effort by the Republican held House and Senate quickly came up with a fairly popular amendment. With Taft's death so early on, the Republicans feared that a war between the various factions of their party would result in the Democrats getting to elect the speaker of the house when the current speaker ascended to the presidency. In one of the fastest turnarounds seen in a single year, the twenty-third amendment was ratified in 1954 mostly due to the need to certify what should happen in the event of a sudden death or injury. This was done during the mourning period for Taft and while the position of Vice-President was never officially filled as per the rules, it is generally considered by historians that in all but official office William Jenner was the Vice President of the United States from 1953-1957.

The way that Herman Welker presented it that first morning was so convincing and it must have been to the slightly dazed Martin, though this is not to suggest that Martin was dozing on the job, merely that the events of the past few days had hit him like a truck. William Jenner was liked by many in the McCarthy coalition for his ferocity. He was also a staunch anti-interventionist in the mould of the recently deceased President. It would be of great service to these caucuses if Jenner was approved to take the place of Martin himself. Records from Martin’s personal secretary indicate that while many spoke to him warmly, she never once got the impression that they believed they were talking to the President of the United States of America. Now, history has shown this to be a poor decision, and we are using understatement here. But it did make some logical sense, Martin regarded the McCarthy wing favourably enough at the time, believing them to be passionate in their beliefs. And while he found Jenner’s rhetoric to be alarming, that could be tempered with experience of the highest office in the land. Indeed, the suggestion that Richard Nixon take the position of Republican Deputy Leader was one that soothed the troubled soul of the President and granted him some peace of mind. Nixon was not a liberal by any meaning of the word but he had at least some moderate credentials. He was a supporter of McCarthy but, and this was important to Martin’s decision, he was a quiet one who would never make headlines for his declarations of Communists hiding in suburbia ready to leap out and maul the children of the US. And most importantly, he could be counted as liberal enough on issues to avoid any outright protests by Morse and his ilk. Thus did the wheels of history turn. Martin unofficially ascended to the Vice-Presidency and Nixon took his place as Republican Leader, a position he would remain in for the next decade and a half.

Aside from that, there was at this point no reshuffling of the cabinet, for fear of upsetting the apple-cart. At least at that point.

Vice President N/A
Secretary of State: William Knowland
Secretary of the Treasury: Howard Buffet
Secretary of Defence: Bernard Brodie (1953-1954) Styles Bridger (1954-1956)
Attorney General: Leo Hoegh (1953-1954) Silvio O Conte (1954-1957)
Postmaster General: Arthur Summerfield
Secretary of Interior: Roger G Kennedy
Secretary of Agriculture: Zales Ecton
Secretary of Commerce: Thurston Ballard Morton
Secretary of Labour: Ralph Owen Brewster
Secretary of Health, Education and Wellness: Winthrop Rockefeller
Director of the Bureau of the Budget: Fred Seaton
Ambassador to the United Nations: Douglas MacArthur

Atomic Energy Commission Chair: Lewis Strass
Chief of Staff: Henry Cabot Lodge Jr
Cabinet Secretary: Fred A. Hartley Jr.
CDS Director: Val Peterson

Supreme Court

With Taft’s nomination now withdrawn, the new President had to consider the replacement for Chief Justice. He did so with great care and forethought, most notably he would not involve Jenner in the decision. This would prove to be a problem for his political future but it did help him to come to a reasonable choice. Thomas P Thornton was a man who was not flashy or particularly controversial, but he was a man with a solid sense of judicial matters. He had a good sense of humour, was an avowed Roman Catholic and if he held any extremist views on the idea of integration vs separation, he kept them to himself. And this last point must be emphasized as a point in his favour, for the Conservative Coalition did not have something to really go after him for in his hearings. He was elected with acclamation and took up his position as the leader of the Thornton Court.

But there had been concessions that had been made to get this through. While Johnson had been able to rally many of the Southern Democrats to his side, a few had held out until Martin had made a weary agreement with them. The next one would have to be one of their ilk. This decision he had undertaken with Jenner behind him, which did not in later years help his public image as a puppet, but he stood by it nonetheless. And the opportunity came sooner than Martin had expected. In October 1954, Robert H Jackson passed away following ill health that had lasted most of the year. In his place, Martin turned to North Carolina and a very familiar name to most in that state was put forward.

Sam Ervin was a man who had served as both politician and judge. He had previously served in the North Carolina House of Representatives in 1923-1927, and then again for a further term in 1931-1933. He graduated to the House proper in 1946 representing the state’s tenth district in a special election caused by the suicide of the prior holder of office, retiring after the midterm elections. He was at present serving as Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of North Carolina when it was suggested that once again he be appointed to a seat held by a dead incumbent, this time in the senate. However, a quiet word from members of the North Carolina delegation led to the choice by the ailing Governor Umstead to appoint the 5th District representative Richard Thurmond Chatham to the seat instead. History had something a bit grander for the simple country lawyer.

Now, no doubt future students of history may wonder why Byrne had been rejected and why Ervin was accepted. Certainly in terms of race it can be argued relatively convincingly that Ervin had actually done less than Byrne on the race front. Byrne had at the very least tried to create some tangible version of ‘separate but equal’ where that loathsome axiom might have approached decent whereas Sam Ervin had never been in such a position to do so. Without excusing Ervin’s segregationist past (And please, let us never do that), the answer to why can be found in several key places.

Firstly, the Brown v Board of Education decision had effectively sent a shockwave through a lot of the country but in particular in the South. With all nine judges in accord with each other, some more firm than the others, the South’s anger was roused and the Conservative Coalition threw out any doubts they may had against Byrne. They needed someone on that court who could speak for them, and Ervin seemed just the man.

Secondly, if one could cut out the elements of his mind that led him to support Segregation, then he was something of a liberal champion. He was very much in favour of the individual’s right to privacy and was opposed to forcing the issue of prayer in school. Admittedly his views on women were, it can charitably said, flawed but he kept those considerably quieter than his statements on race. These decisions made many who might have taken the side of the progressive wings of both parties grimace and take the medicine with a shudder but not much complaint, a lot of the pragmatists knew they had pushed as far as they could go on the Court front at present. In addition to this, Ervin was careful years afterwards to stress that his dislike of the decision had come from a place of fear of judicial overreach as opposed to out and out support for segregation. It didn’t matter of course to students of history, but put simply there was no conflict of interest like there had clearly been with James Byrnes.

The third reason was interesting, several Southerners carefully made insinuations about Hugo Black’s former role as a member of the KKK in his youth. They never went out of their way to say that the Klan was bad, with a few bolder exceptions, but even so they did plant the idea in the mind of the uncertain as to why people were arguing so loudly about this man being appointed. Why, he wasn’t belonging to an extreme organization such as that! What a fuss about nothing! Fourthly, Kefauver’s arguments against Byrne had cost him support that he could ill afford to lose even now, and the reason he felt he could speak against Byrne was due to the legal issues it raised. Ervin’s views were scummy, yes, but he had not been a recent and vital part of a controversial court case. Therefore, the senator from Tenseness made a lot less fuss regarding this choice. And of course, this time the Coalition planned ahead. Nixon and Sparkman (More and more often the Southern Delegation turned to him to prepare the Coalition compared to Johnson) made sure that certain people were taken out of the reach of Morse, and while a filibuster was intended, enough votes were tallied to confirm Sam Ervin to the court.

Ervin was not a particularly bad judge in Supreme Court terms, if one ignores his repugnant views on race and to a lesser extent gender, and he was often in the minority of the most liberal court seen at that time but his appointment was yet another brick in the rapidly drying cement of perception. The Democrats were now turning into the party of segregation, whether they wanted to or not, and the Republicans were viewed as being eager to do anything to maintain some measure of control. And there in the wings, raising a fuss at all of this, stood Wayne Morse.

A third choice would have been needed to be made in 1956 as Sherman Minton’s health took a turn for the worse. However, the hyper-partisan nature of the Presidential election meant that Minton deliberately held off on announcing his plans to retire until after the election was decided and the winner was sworn in. For what it is worth, Martin in a later interview claimed that his intended replacement would be Prince H Preston, Georgia’s 1st District congressman and another segregationist. This would have been part of an effort to get the Conservative Coalition on his side and he freely admits that he was happy that the option was removed from his hands on that one.

Congressional

Martin’s record with the 83rd and later 84th Congresses is mixed. If one counts personal interaction, then he did a far better job than Taft did, keeping the friendships his long years as part of Congress had afforded him. Certainly it is harder to parse than Taft’s and some of that, though certainly not all, has to do with the surprising amount of deaths that occurred in the upper chamber. The lower chamber was used to representatives passing, it was part and parcel of having such a large selection of members. But by the end of Martin’s first term, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Wyoming would lose a senator each, and both Nebraska and North Carolina lost both just under a year apart. Each was replaced by members of their own party, which meant that the Senate remained the same consistently. But there was one who’s death could very well have given the Republicans better footing. And Martin undoubtedly failed to capitalize on it. In fact he may have made things worse.

Lester Hunt of Wyoming did not die as a result of health issues or old age. He killed himself, following a campaign that almost certainly had McCarthy’s fingerprints on it but carried out by Styles Bridges and Herman Welker, upon realizing he was now waist deep in a blackmail plot. His son had been caught engaging in sexual conduct with another man which was, suffice to say, not going to play that well. Hunt killed himself upon realizing that either his political career was over or his son was going to have his life ruined. It is almost certainly the case that his death was not the end-goal of the two Senators, merely his disgrace. But the matter was closed and surely it now fell to the Republican governor of Wyoming to appoint a Republican to his seat. And perhaps that would have been the case, if Estes Kefauver hadn’t opened a package a day later and discovered a, by our standards, primitive magnetic tape. On it he received three ‘conservations’ between Hunt and the Republican bully-boys. He carried an investigation of his own and discovered that Welker had leaned heavily upon the Inspector in the case to charge Hunt Jr. The tape was not going to admissible in a court, that much was clear. But there was one place that it could be of worth. And that was on the campaign trail.

Estes ensured that copies could be made, giving the first to his new friend Morse, and promptly hit the road alongside his companion. Soon, advertisements popped up along the country attacking McCarthyism with actual audio of the threats made against Senator Hunt being heard throughout. And this was effective, particularly for the Democrats side of the matter. But the Republicans might have been able to salvage their rapidly sinking reputation if Martin had given a strong response. Historians agree that the best solution would have been to throw both men under the bus, maybe that would have saved the situation. As it stood, he offered a vague and somewhat disinterested condolence on the death of Hunt and suggested that the country move on. Soon after, Bridges would be taken out of the senate and given the job of Secretary of Defence. And that was the final straw, even for a country desperate for a solution to the problem that Bridges was now in charge of.

The Governor of Wyoming regarded the events with dismay. There was no victory here, particularly seeing as the Democrats were chomping at the bit to tear him apart for his decision. In the end, he sent a Democrat to replace Hunt, one Gale McGee. In effect, the whole venture had been for nothing. Worse was to come with the results of the midterms. The House returned to the Democrats, with a newly re-elected Claude Pepper gaining assistance from other liberal figures recently re-elected such as Helen Gahagan Douglas and Harold Stassen, both of whom were making their political comeback.

Even more bitterly, the Republicans actually gained a seat in the Senate, allowing them a very narrow majority, only for that to also come a-cropper thanks to Morse’s official announcement that he would be caucusing officially with the Democrats for the time being in protest of the Hunt Scandal. In effect, the Senate was now deadlocked, and the situation would not get better as time passed by. And most importantly, damage was done to the relationships between the conservative and liberal members of both parties. And as the second half of the Martin presidency wore on, these divides grew more and more pronounced.

However, if one looks at bills passing, Martin does better than Taft though he does not have the excuse of slowly dying that Taft had. He oversaw the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 which created a series of progressive tax brackets, and with it the Federal Unemployment Tax Act, while in 1956 federal funding was diverted to public libraries in a wholly popular move. Agricultural Acts were passed in both 1954 and 1956 that strengthened the industry, in between which the first official acknowledgement and attempt to deal with air pollution also made it through to the desk of the President, followed by a Fish and Wildlife Bill that was yet another step for Conservationists everywhere. An act championed by Senators Kennedy, Chase-Smith and Morse entitled the Radiation Sickness Easing Act which provided all countries in NATO with information regarding the effects of radiation upon the human body and any treatments that could aid in reducing pain managed to pass by the skin of it’s teeth. Two very helpful bills were also passed, the Watershed Prevention and Flood Prevention Act was the first and was to be expected, but it was also followed up by a bill that achieved surprising bi-partisan (Or, depending on your view of the Progress Party at this time, tri-partisan) support, the Protection from Tropical Storms Act served to strengthen the countries defences against such occurrences and also to educate the citizens of what to do in such a situation. It was one of the few bills that Martin and Jenner agreed upon, and it’s swift passage following the events of Hurricane Hazel showed that when Congress worked, it really worked.

A pity then that it rarely did.

One should get used to the general theme of ‘McCarthy screwed over the Senate’ for this section. For he and his supporters were louder than ever thanks to the arrival of Jenner in the Vice-Presidency. One cannot underestimate the effects this had on the upcoming election. A bill banning the Communist Party of the United States was fast-tracked to the very audible approval of the Vice-President, and though Martin worried over the precedent this would set, he didn’t veto it. And small wonder, for it is likely that this bill would have shoved it’s way back into the Oval Office faster than you can scream “Abuse of Civil Liberties”. The Alaskan Mental Health Bill, which sought to increase assistance for the Alaskan Territory was loudly opposed on the grounds of Communism, and despite efforts by Barry Goldwater to rescue the bill, it would end up being strangled in the bed until after the election. Likewise, the efforts to provide vocational training to Native Americans was also stalled when McCarthy started a rumour that the trainers would be imparting the Reservations with all manner of communist criminology, which itself was echoed by the Vice-President. And then, of course, there the McCarthy-Bridges Supreme Court Restriction Act.

The McCarthy-Bridges Supreme Court Restriction Act. was suggested around about the end of the 1955 session of Congress. Jenner had advocated for something similar but it had died a slow death in committee. This time however, the wording of the bill was just enough that it got a lot more attention. Now, one can extrapolate what the act relates to from the title alone, but the specifics are worth going into. This would strip the Court of authority to act in areas related to the anti-Communist areas of the nation. And some of the examples cited could and were read to be critical of Brown v Board of Education and any further attempts to forcibly deal with the issue of segregation. To say that the Democrat members of the Conservative Coalition reacted with excitement would be like saying that Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor had a bit of a warm relationship, they jumped at the chance to get on the bandwagon.

Now, let us take William Jenner seriously for a moment. No matter what else could be said about him, Jenner was not someone who was without sympathy to the cause of the African-Americans. In fact, he and Martin had taken one of their rare agreements and encouraged the introduction of a Civil Rights Bill, albeit one that would not get to the House before the end of the 1956 Congress. He believed in Civil Rights, and indeed he believed that the Federal Government should make provisions to assist the cause. This puts him to the left of even the late President Taft on that issue. But the fact remains that often in politics, one can put into law one cherished belief or the other, but rarely both. It was civil rights, or it was anti-communism. And Jenner hated the communists a lot more than he loved civil liberties. He threw his support behind the proposed bill, and indicated that the President was also backing it.

This was news to Martin, who was quite sure that he had given absolutely no statement regarding this.

Jenner’s backing of the bill ensured that the Republicans in the South managed to gain a foothold in several legislatures for the first time in ages. Though the ‘Southern Gambit’ as it is usually referred to would not be truly seen until the election of 68, one can trace the gradual increase made in that state to this decision. Other Republican senators who nominally supported civil rights followed Jenner’s example and threw their support to the bill, and soon a lot of the Conservative Coalition began to try and force this through. The bill itself occurred during the Southern Manifesto’s origin, and if you had someone who signed the manifesto then that same person would back the bill. Now, of course, the bill didn’t pass for the simple reason that many who might have supported it were deeply worried that the other party was proposing it. But it was far closer than it had any right to be, and it did not die outright throughout the year. In fact, it started to become the centrepiece for certain Presidential campaigns.

A brief note going forward is that while there are many reasons that Jenner, McCarthy and their ilk seem to hold such power and sway both over the party and the president at this juncture, there is the key fact that no one in Congress was actually very happy that Joseph Martin was the President. It was an error perhaps at the beginning to state that he had been chosen by Taft to appeal to the left-wing of the Republicans, it was more an attempt to appeal to anyone left of Taft himself. Now that he was actually in office and governing like a conservative, albeit a generous one, he had many friends but few supporters. The coalition he had worked at building found his outright refusal to do away with a lot of the troublesome social security programs to be a betrayal of his principles and the Southern Democrats found his support for civil rights depressingly similar to Truman. The left wing of both parties found that he was doing too little when it came to African-American problems and his inability to reign back the Conservatives worried them. McCarthy and the Anti-Communist alliance were the only ones who tried to back his plays a lot of the time, and thus he came to rely on them more heavily for much needed support. And even this was fickle, if he did little he was mocked for it and if he did much it would inevitably turn out to be the wrong kind of action they wanted.

Now, one might wonder why McCarthy, the man himself, had such significant power. Hadn’t a motion to censure the Senator been introduced? Indeed it had. But to explain why McCarthy persisted one needs to learn what Martin was doing on the domestic front.

Domestic

Before we get to the defining moment of the 1954-1957 term, it is worth discussing what Martin was doing on a smaller scale. Under Martin the first nuclear submarine would launch, code-named Nautilus appropriately, and indeed much of Martin’s first few months, when not spent untangled Taft’s mess, was making sure that the nuclear situation was well in hand. His position on nuclear weapons was simple, stockpiling as a whole was fine but only up to a point. He made sure that there was to be so many missiles prepared in one year, that amount and no more. He also created, by executive order, the Presidential Commission on the Storage and Handling of Nuclear Missiles, Waste and Other Articles. This unwieldly and complicated title was, in effect, a summation of his main concern: how much of this stuff should we be making and how the hell do we keep it from, pardon the pun, blowing up in our faces?

His desire to roll back some of the New Deal had been dashed during his year as Vice-President for he understood that which Taft did not, the American public on the whole depended on them a lot more than he had given them credit for. Thus while he did support some cutbacks in terms of funds going towards these projects, he mostly left them alone. He also invested heavily in schools, continuing one of the few areas in Taft’s ideology where they were matched pretty much spot on. And it was on schools that Martin became somewhat associated with, as the Brown v Board of Education’s decision that the segregation of schools was unconstitutional. He offered up a surprisingly optimistic response when first questioned, only to discover that the narrow majority on which he could get stuff done was quivering with rage. Not long afterwards, Leo Hoegh announced his intention to retire from the position to mount an ultimately successful bid for the Governorship of Iowa, and despite the efforts of Jenner and others, Martin was able to get his own choice of Attorney General into the White House. This was undoubtable a good thing, as his choice was Silvio O Conte of the Massachusetts Senate who was a liberal Republican with some conservative morals and someone who was willing to start the process of desegregation. That there was a start at all in the process is almost certainly down to Conte’s success at management.

From there he restrained himself, though he still worked with liberal Republicans and Sonuvabitch Morse to create some form of legislation that would address Civil Rights which we have discussed above. But with all else going on, he began to struggle with the weight of it all, though he believed whole-heartedly that there was an illness that needed dealing with, he couldn’t be the one to do it. The very coalition that he needed to maintain any sort of hold was the thing that was keeping the illness from breaking. His attitude towards the whole thing worsened with the announcement of the McCarthy-Bridges bill, and he is reported to have called up several civil rights leaders and apologized.

Elsewhere, he was surprisingly firm on civil rights. He condemned the murder of Emmett Till furiously, with one such meeting between himself and the two senators from Mississippi ending with him barely able to contain his rage at the injustice. This shocked both Eastman and Stennis into silence, and they were forever after careful on that particular matter. Likewise, though he did not send his official approval to the Montgomery Bus Boycott that had begun with Rosa Parks refusing to get up from her seat, he made sure to hold the army back in reserve and rebuffed efforts made to get the army to deal with the uppity insert-slur-here. It was overshadowed by much of what followed next but it is worth noting that he was firmly in favour of civil rights.

Tragically, the most prominent legacy of the Martin presidency does not shine a particularly decent light upon the President. These are the two somewhat separate but inexorably linked incidents of the Puerto Rico Stand-Off and the McCarthy Triumph. Let us take the first and most tragic of these incidents. On March 1st 1954, while Martin was attending the launch of the first nuclear submarine, four Puerto Rico nationalists stormed Congress while it was in session and made for the chamber containing the House Representatives who were debating a bill regarding Mexico. At that, the four nationalists stood up, shouted out “¡Viva Puerto Rico libre!” and opened fire. Now, the generally accepted view of the situation was the one that the defendants put forward in their trial, albeit tempered with a great deal of scorn and anger, that the four intended to make a loud and powerful statement regarding the ill treatment the colony (As they saw it) received from America but that powerful and loud statement did not include the deaths of anyone present.

Two things occurred that made the shocking situation worse.

Firstly, the Speaker did not react as quickly as many thought he ought to though no one blamed him or blames him as such. Charles Halleck had been rewarded the position of House Speaker following the departure of Martin and had been backed extensively by Taft. But he was also struggling with some ill health on the day in question. Therefore, his attention was not fully on the matter at hand. Therefore he had not enough time to shout for everyone to take cover before the firing began. But even then, things might have not been as bad as they were, had not one of the shooters lost her balance.

Lolita Lebron had been the leader of the group, even insisting that they go ahead after the other three hesitated due to the rain. She had aimed her shots, according to herself, up at the ceiling. But as she had stood up, she knocked her foot into the bench and stumbled forward. Amidst the chaos, one shot more than had been intended headed towards the floor, and immediately the group realized something had gone amiss. Six wounded could be seen, and the worst had been done to two of Michigan’s Representatives, Alvin Morell Bentley had received a shot to the chest that injured him dreadfully, though he would recover. But Gerald Ford was not so lucky. In an ultimately successful attempt to drag Bentley out of the line of fire, the ill-fated shot struck him in the neck. As panic filled the chamber, Ford died within standing distance of the Minority Leader’s desk. He had served since 1949 and was forty years old. Bentley would suffer from the wound for the rest of his life, and it contributed to his early death. The other four survived well enough. Suffice to say, it did not take the security long to catch the four, and as they were arrested, a stunned and shaken Lebron screamed “I did not come to kill! I came to die for Puerto Rico!”

Now, this was a tragedy. All mourned the death of Ford, and even to this day there is an argument to be made that he is the politician with the most memorials and buildings named in his honour. All parties and all sides of each party united in grief. And the thing about grief is that there is a side no one really likes to talk about. An uglier, nastier side. This manifested in many ways, from the incredibly rough treatment of Lebron from the police culminating in her court appearance having to be pushed back due to an excessive amount of force having damaged her jaw to the hostilities angled at various Hispanics across the country regardless of ethnicity or creed. It is fair to note that many in Congress were angered by this and fought back to note that the Nationalists were a tiny group of people compared to the multitudes who appreciated America. That of course did nothing to stop the swell of anger, and in fact it became clear that there were exactly two things that could. The incarceration (at least) and execution (at most) of the attackers, and some measure of punishment to be doled out to the territory.

The former was achieved soon enough. By the time that Lebron entered the courtroom she had been thoroughly abused by guards and prisoners alike and in a utterly nasty move, it was as she entered the court that she received word that her son had died. Satirists and cartoonists had a field day showing her naked and raw grief coupled with her wounds to thoroughly dehumanize her. There was no point in trying to calm the mind of the mob outside, and the three men were sentenced to life in prison, while Lebron would be given the death penalty. Appeals were launched immediately, which succeeded in delaying her fate until 1955. But it was no good. Lolita Lebron died in front of a blood-hungry press, and her image in history was thus affected forever. It would take until the 1970’s for a mild ease in the examination of the Nationalists and until the 1990’s for a true re-evaluation.

But for the revenge on Puerto Rico itself, this is where McCarthy enters the picture. A somewhat obscure historical note lost in the general chaos of the years 1954-1957 is that McCarthy had planned to make a big deal about the army harbouring Communist sympathizers earlier that year. Only to discover that the army was making accusations regarding his lawyer Roy Cohn’s attempts for preferential treatment for a recently enlisted man whom he had his eye on though the soldier in question never talked about such things. McCarthy might have taken matters further, had the incident with the House not immediately given him a chance to pivot. McCarthy and FBI Director J Edgar Hoover met up and exchanged notes and ideas. The attempt by the army to charge both men with attempting to exert an undue influence over them was dropped, and Cohn was promptly pulled away from the Senator’s side in disgrace. That decision would not be one that can be ignored by a student of history. But at that moment, McCarthy had strength behind him and he stormed into the Oval Office, grabbed Jenner and sat him down.

Some three hours later that Martin entered the room where the two men sat, and by that time McCarthy had constructed in front of the wide-eyed Jenner a gift-wrapped present for the warmonger that was made from one-hundred percent genuine bullshit. Jenner would not only accept the gift but would proceed to display it proudly wherever he went. For you see, the Nationalists had done what they had done for the sake of the Soviets. Oh, they might claim that they wanted the US to take responsibility as the leading colonial power, but that was all a lie to make the United States release them from their debt. And if that was the case, well what was to stop them from heading straight for the Soviets to receive ill-gotten support and to give them a landing base from which to launch a full invasion? At the very least, a security threat that needed to be dealt with. And it needed to be dealt with by a proper fucking army, not this….this lavender sniffing weaklings!

It is worth stating that McCarthy was by all accounts in the process of sobering up after the worst drinking spree of the decade thus far, so if it appears incoherent, then that is because it is. And Martin knew that it was incoherent. And yet…And yet not twenty four hours later he called for recognition of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico as a terrorist organization, and announced that he would be directing the National Guard to enter Puerto Rico to eliminate said party once and for all. And as soon as he was out of sight, he would remove Bernard Brodie from his position and appoint, as acting head, R. W. Scott McLeod on the recommendation of Jenner. McLeod wasted no time in tracking down as many people who were suspected of being communists, queer, queer communists or hostile to the ‘benign interests of the United States (Read: Jenner and McCarthy) and shuffled them around to far less prominent positions, while putting in place people who were far more determined to end the scourge that faced them as violently as possible.

Why had Martin done this? The simple case of the cold equations. There was no way Martin could avoid making a reprisal against Puerto Rico without effectively killing the Republican party for a good generation. Blood needed to be spilled to the American people, and that McCarthy had managed to severely damage the military in the process seemed of very little immediate consequence to Martin’s loyalty to the party. He managed to get news out to the governor that, whether he liked it or not, the National Guard would be permanently lodging itself in the colony until such time as the Nationalist problem was dealt with. When that conversation was over, he discovered that while a minimum of senators and house reps would be voting no, otherwise he was going to get exactly what he wanted.

Which leads us, nicely enough, into the foreign policy that Martin undertook.

Foreign

The first thing one must notice about Martin was that he was considerably more impressed by the idea of America the great national power than Taft was. He set to work repairing the relationships that Taft had let fall into disrepair. He was liked by a lot of the NATO countries and indeed cultivated a firm friendship with Eisenhower though he did not take the idea of stockpiling the nuclear weapons the same way that Ike did, teasing him that he should gone for President himself if he wanted the job so much. Under Martin, foreign aid was sent to many countries affected by natural disasters, such as the Austria avalanches that claimed the lives of more than three hundred people and the aforementioned Hurricane Hazel that had already torn through Haiti on it’s way to the states. Despite arguments that a lot of the money was being wasted, mostly by McCarthy and Jenner, Martin insisted on doing his bit and most politicians sort of grumbled and shrugged their soldiers.

Compared to Taft, Martin had to deal with a great deal of change in the political structure of the world. New governments were formed in Yugoslavia, Paraguay and Turkey amongst others which required that the Martin administration approach with kid-gloves. For the most part he kept the train moving without tangible results. Prime Minister Menzies of Australia was Martin’s closest ally, given their hatred of Communism and their determination to do something regarding it, both of them had worked to ban their respective Communist parties. France was in the process of shedding her colonies, and Martin was consistently forced to adapt to a new Prime Minister several times over as an attempt to maintain control of perhaps the oldest ally America had seemed to falter every few months of so. Britain still regarded the US with bitter wariness, a situation that worsened as the new Prime Minister Aneurin Bevan took office in the general election of 1955. Being of a leftist disposition, he did not like Martin and found Jenner to be a credible threat to the security of NATO. That led to the events of the Suez Crisis as detailed below, in which the US ended up with egg on their face at the worst possible time. Martin would ignore efforts by the CIA to paint Guatemala as a incubator for Communist threats and refuse to assist a planned coup, threatening a full tearing apart if he found out that a similar attempt to Mossadegh had occurred. For the time being, Jacobo Arbenz remained in power. A stay of execution only however, as events in 1957 and 1958 would bring the country closer to sliding back into the darker side of history.

Under the watchful eye of the world, West Germany would become an official sovereign country again with, thanks to efforts on the part of the United Kingdom, a limited rearmament plan. Conditions of her sovereignty was that if there was a need to get involved in war that she would commune with the United Kingdom, the United States and France beforehand. Konrad Adenauer accepted this deal as the best option of a bad lot, and Martin celebrated a new anti-Communist ally. The death of Stalin and the subsequent savaging by his successor Khrushchev was cause for some harsh discussion between Bevan and Martin, the former believing that perhaps some thaw could be achieved here while the latter firmly denied this. Some revisionists have tried to paint this as an effort by Jenner to manipulate the President but while in many cases Jenner worsened a situation, here it was Martin’s decision alone to act as he did. The two countries, linked by their past and unable to be fully separated, regarded each other coolly for the rest of Martin’s tenure. But indeed allies would be needed with the formation of the Warsaw Pact on May 14th 1955.

And so, to Puerto Rico. The campaign itself lasted one year and four months, roughly. It gained two names, at the time the press referred to it as the Puerto Rico Invention. Later, much later, it was given the name the Puerto Rican Slaughter.

The governor of Puerto Rico at that time was Luis Muñoz Marín, the first democratically elected since the Americans had taken the territory for their own. And he was perhaps the perfect person to be governor for the Americans at this time. He hated the Nationalists, thought that independence would lead nowhere and as the leader of the Senate in Puerto Rico had spearheaded a restrictive bill that made it so that the Nationalists effectively had the air supply cut from under them. No flags of any sort could be displayed, not even in the privacy of their own homes, and frequently following assassination attempts there would be harsh crackdowns against suspects. That these four had slipped through the cracks alarmed him, that the Americans were now coming to make sure this time the job was finished gave him less comfort than he might otherwise had hoped for. It took the army some time to be declared officially ready by the watchful eye of Jenner and his ilk, time enough for Styles Bridges to take his office as Secretary of Defence and ensure that the objective was clear and concise. The reduction of the Nationalist movement from organized groups to individual actors who could be handled by the local authorities.

This objective sounds simple, and that really was part the problem. ‘Organized groups’ took the form of actual militias that had begun to spring up as news of the American fury reached them to small gatherings of protestors who just wanted the soldiers to go home and leave them alone. Arguably, the greatest problem of the situation was that Marin had actually done a fairly successful job of reducing the threat beforehand, only for the Americans to wade in and bugger it up right royally, to borrow a British saying. To make matters worse, the soldiers were almost to a man unable to understand the language being spoken to them which was incredibly embarrassing for the Martin administration. Put simply, if you start with the idea that there is a stable and good government in charge of a stable and good people, both of which are undermined by a minority troublemakers who needs to be dealt with, it is important that you have a basic understanding of telling these two sides apart.

As such, it can be hard to understand how successful the mission was in terms of actual concrete proof. Because a lot of the Nationalist groups were dealt with, some would call it a success, certainly many who might otherwise have become powerful figures were snuffed out and dealt with. Others, and this author concurs, suggest that by the time the troops withdrew in the last quarter of 1955 they had effectively spread the plague to the common citizens. A great deal of bungling happened all the way up the ladder from the leaders in the field to the leaders back at home. Stories would emerge consistently in the coming years of soldiers, bored out of their mind by a week or so of little action, finally coming across what they thought to be a group of Nationalist terrorists and ending the threat only to discover a few minutes later that their targets had moved on to a new town a good three days before.

Photographers took their time getting back to the states from Puerto Rico. A lot of this was due to the fear that what they had in their cameras would be too shocking or snapped up by the army. A long chain of people were needed for the photographs to reach a safe place and an even longer one needed to get them into wide circulation. But they would. It was a matter of time only.

The Suez Crisis

While to America the events of Puerto Rico is more noticeable, the incident with the Suez Canal is his most well-known contribution to the national landscape. It occurred at the forefront of the Presidential election and no doubt led to the events that would come to define a whole new political era.

The decision to take the fight to General Nassar was supported by a good many of the maritime allies of the West, but there were four key players to consider here. The obvious first was France, the second was Israel which was currently in the process of trying to ensure their own existence against a very distrustful Nassar. Third, and perhaps the most surprising, there was Iran, who did not operate openly but covertly with the backing of the other three players. Ali Reza Pahlavi had died in a plane crash one year after the death of his brother and Mossadegh. By all accounts it was a normal if tragic case of pilot error, but his successor, Gholam, had ideas regarding the likelihood of a successful assassination attempt. He suspected that England had turned on the Shah's family and were now getting their own back to sooth their wounded pride, and that they were acting through Egypt. His suspicions were seemingly confirmed when, despite holding a joint claim with France for all goods, the British government seemed to drag their feet with responding to Nassar. In truth it was the utterly sensible in hindsight belief that Bevan held that trying to take the canal by force would be an utter disaster, but to the mind of Gholam it was a sign that the British had cut a deal with Nasser. If they couldn’t take control of their country via threatening his brother’s family then they were going to do it via the proxy of Egypt.

Understandably, Prime Minister Fatemi found this all a little hard to swallow, not least of which because the general position under the previous Shah had been that the nationalization that the Middle-East was carrying out was a good thing. In fact, Fatemi had hoped to make an ally of Nassar in the continuing quest to rid the Middle East of extreme Western manipulation. He quickly learnt to recalibrate this to the whims of the new Shah however and realized that he was not going to be able to talk him out of joining the makeshift alliance for one simple reason. He didn’t have the ear of the Shah, that honour went to another member of the family who also happened to be living and working in America. Mahmoud Reza Pahlavi had been recruited by the CIA after finishing up his time in the University of Michigan, and he firmly believed that Nasser was a Soviet threat waiting to happen. Therefore he talked Gholam, grief-stricken with the death of two brothers and furious at the feeling of impotence as the colonial powers tugged at the rest of the world, into committing a small but vital part of his army to the retaking. In addition to which, several assassins would make their way into Egypt and attempt to do some major damage to the new President.

Which brings us, rather neatly, to the Americans. Now, if Taft had still been alive and in relatively decent health, it is a generally accepted idea that he would have almost certainly kept America out of the operation completely. Perhaps he would have tried to restrain the attackers in their attempt to retake the canal or at the very least pledge neutrality in the issue to win over Nassar in the same vein as he had done with Fatami. There is one important distinction here however. The incident with the oil in Iran was centred around a sense of entitlement from the Western colonial powers, which was quickly built upon as a general threat to capitalism and the scourge of communism. It was a threat with no legible basis in fact beyond “They did something we did not like, ergo they are Communists and need to be stopped”. Nasser was an out and out socialist who had designs on shaping Egypt and a lot of the Middle East in a similar fashion that the Soviets had done to their own country. And now, the Warsaw Pact’s existence meant that there was nothing but time and the interest of the Russians preventing the red scourge from spreading into the Middle East. This is the reason that, even if one cannot agree with it, makes sense in geopolitical terms. But there were two other factors that made Martin commit troops. The first was a simple case of wounded pride, Martin had been hammered by the Conservative Coalition for not doing enough to stop the scourges of socialism and communism, and Martin wanted to gain some political points back.

But the other, more alarming reason was that the President was unsure about his own safety. Martin’s decision to not take the CIA up on the opportunity to eliminate the Guatemalan threat led to rumours that they were on the cusp of going AWOL. All of this is, of course, utterly without evidence but Martin couldn’t be sure that with the influence that McCarthy had indirectly over the army that it was all flim-flam. So when he was approached by another operative about beginning a campaign to remove Nassar from power, he reluctantly agreed under the cover that Nassar was infringing on the civil liberties of the Egyptian people. This of course was true, but the retaking of the canal was the driving reason for the war and it is quite clear that Martin had no intention of actually confronting what ‘providing civil liberties to the Egyptian people’ actually looked like. Nor, of course, would it be his problem.

What became abundantly clear the second the troops started to move in was that all had completely misjudged the competence of the Egyptian troops. Though a path was beginning to get cleared in the month it took for a cease-fire to officially be called, any hold they had over the land they had was shaky in the best case scenario. While the naval and aerial battles saw a slight advantage to the invaders, and a massacre of several non-combatants in the Gaza Strip saw it taken by the Israel troops, the Egyptians outmatched the American and French ground forces. Part of this was down to sheer exhaustion, a lot of the troopers being sent in had not long returned from the Puerto Rico fight and were showing signs of weariness and shell-shock. The American public had no idea why their husbands, fathers and sons were dying in this pointless skirmish and turned against the cheerleading Republicans hard. In a reversal of the Iran situation, now it was Britain who would extricate America from the mess they had made.

Now whatever else can be said about Bevan as a Prime Minister, and there is much to discuss when we turn our attention to the United Kingdom, he learnt from the mistakes of the Conservatives. By the time that any reasonable plan could be made for a British invasion, anger from his own people had subsided in swift fashion. He had no interest in blackening the name of the United Kingdom further with yet another Middle East Muddle-Up and set to work negotiating with Nasser. He was quickly joined by other allies who found the idea of combat to be wasteful, and soon received official backing from Eisenhower who, in the midst of trying to stop the chaos, read Martin and Jenner the riot act with language that was charitably described as ‘scorching’.

At the end of it, the men who would share the Nobel Peace Prize for 1957 arrived to make an end to the brief and bloody skirmish. Dwight E Eisenhower, Aneurin Bevan and Lester Pearson managed to negotiate with Nasser and ensured that the canal would remain in Egyptian control. From there, the President of Egypt would ensure that the Commonwealth would regain most of her shipping rights, that some rights would be returned to Israel (But not, importantly, use of the canal itself) and that NATO’s use of the canal would be handled on a case by case basis. America, out of respect for Eisenhower, got the better end of the deal and France, out of disrespect for practically all of the French, would get the worst of it. No longer could French domination be counted upon, and Bevan left with the understanding that he had merely borrowed time for the ailing Empire.

Tragically, to top off the whole miserable state of affairs, not long after negotiating a peace deal between all sides, Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in the scorching sun of Iran following a stern talk with the Shah regarding future attempts to deal with Nasser and despite the best efforts of NATO, he died with his wife at his side on November 26th 1956. He was 66 years old and was succeeded in position as Supreme Commander by his deputy, the incredibly popular British war hero Field Marshall Montgomery. To say that this was all a feather in the cap for Britain’s self esteem would be like saying that a nuclear winter was a bit discomfiting, though Bevan would have cause to bandy against Montgomery soon enough. To say that the election opponents of the Republicans had a field day with this is an understatement. The only reason that America didn’t look like a complete fool was because of the man now being paid respects in the Capitol, and Martin’s approval was at it’s lowest point.

Personal

Working for Martin was considerably different from working with Taft. There are the obvious examples, Martin was not as old as Taft nor was he severely ill at the time of his Presidency. But of course, Martin was the personable one in the team, and that continued when he became President. Perhaps the kindest thing he did, and this came out only in the early sixties when Martin’s presidential ambitions were consigned to the past, was that he insisted the Taft family reside in the White House for as long as they needed. One fact not covered in the previous profile of Taft was that his wife had suffered a debilitating stroke two years before his run for President, and that she had been receiving round the clock care since entering the White House. Martin announced that as long as he was President he was perfectly willing to allow the care to continue and for the Taft’s to remain in the White House. None of the children wanted this opportunity for their mother to receive good medical care for a time to pass, so they accepted the offer. His friendship with Robert Taft Jr would lead to him becoming a backer of him in political events in the future. Interns described working for Martin, even in the worst times, as being easy and worthwhile. “We wanted to make him proud—” said one in a retrospective interview “—and often he made us feel as though we had.” There are precious few stories of someone coming out of the Taft administration with any real desire to run for further office, but there are plenty who did so as a result of working for Martin and though it has never been out and out stated, it is these people who ensured that the Republican party lasted even after all the chaos it would endure over the course of the century.

Perhaps the worst relationship of the White House was sadly the most important. William Jenner was an incredibly volatile man, whom while not without charm or ability was also violently pro-McCarthy. Jenner supported the McCarthy-Bridges Amendment and was outraged that the President did not support it. Was he not Republican? Was he not charged with the sacred and solemn duty of protecting the country? Why on earth would the President not throw his support behind this obvious and common sense law…unless of course there was something that the President wanted to hide? These tensions grew worse and worse with every passing week. The situation in Puerto Rico made it unbearable. Even when Bridges was ascended to Secretary of Defence in a more permanent position and dialled back some of the tearing apart, Martin could barely bring himself to talk to him in anything other than snappy remarks and furious diatribes to get this shit back in order, get this whole fucking mess back in line! But he couldn’t. As 1954 dragged on to 1955, and the rage began to subside into a sort of desperate shock, the glimmer of self-recognition began to show in the eye of the American public. It took until the end of that year’s session of Congress for him to confirm it, but as more and more polls came in, the President realized that the American public had taken their pound of flesh and a good deal more: more that they had wanted, indeed more than they thought possible. Martin had by this point stopped caring about his own reputation in the matter and pounced upon the latest reports suggesting that the Nationalists were in fact broken for a generation, perhaps even two, declaring that yes, the situation had been done and they could all go home now and begin the process of rebuilding! Perhaps not in so desperate terms but certainly no one could miss the sheer relief of being able to stop now. Thus ended the Puerto Rican Intervention, and the scars that it left upon the country cannot be understated. But that's another story.

There is some debate if what happened next actually happened the way it is portrayed, and yet it is an enduring idea that has rarely received much pushback from more fact-based, less romantic historians. This then is how it is often told. One morning after giving the speech announcing the withdrawal of troops from Puerto Rico, and after receiving official confirmation that the National Guard was retreating back to the Puerto Rico bases they had held before the campaign and were waiting to be redeployed back home, Martin woke up after a relatively good night’s sleep. Relative to all the other terrible nights he had received, but nonetheless a decent night. On his desk was the New York Times, and he opened it up to receive two bits of information.

The first bit of information did not surprise him in the least. William Jenner had declared the President to be a coward and a communist sympathizer and a Democrat in disguise and a combination of all three. Puerto Rico was not yet purified, not yet dragged kicking and screaming into the light. And the decision to stop now because things were getting tough was a clear sign that the days of the Bull Moose had long since passed. In truth, Martin didn’t care about that. What was he going to do? He found out with the second piece of information, which was far, far more surprising. William Jenner was going to run for a second term as Vice-President. And he was going to do it with someone who wasn’t Martin. You probably don’t need me to tell you who he hoped his new President would be, but as if to rub it in, McCarthy was on the television confirming that he accepted the request with the grim humbleness that suited the troubled times they lived in.

The countdown to the election had begun.

(Author’s Note; Next time, we take a look at the election of 1956. I should note that I’m currently considering making it a three parter, the first will cover the primaries, the second the election itself and the third will focus on the months between confirmation and inauguration. EDIT: In effect the twenty third amendment of this timeline works pretty much identically to the 25th in ours. So sorry for such a real slip up, I'm a fool.)

 

[Don Corleone]

The VP spot would have remained vacant back then. Ford was the first appointed VP.

 

[TGW]

The VP spot would have remained vacant back then. Ford was the first appointed VP.

Ah fuck.

My bad, I just need to make a quick edit here. Thanks for pointing that out, I'm an idiot.

 

[Don Corleone]

Ah fuck.

My bad, I just need to make a quick edit here. Thanks for pointing that out, I'm an idiot.

Not at all. Very common mistake in timelines.