McGoverning

[Yes]

Hello! In the great tradition of radio callers, Long time reader, first time commenter. Despite my skimming of the Watergate chapters due to a rare and undiagnosed illness where if I read too much about legal affairs my brain melts, this is one of my favourite things on the internet. How you capture the burning humanity and the grim misery behind American politics is beyond any fiction I've run into online, and you can read the little shakes in history in every single little motion.

My question turns to the Southern Cone, and specifically the long-suffering nation of Argentina. As far as I can tell, the only mention of Argentina so far was in your breakdown of 1974, on the subject of the death of Juan Perón. The text reads that Isabelita stages a self-coup in an attempt to beat back revolutionary terrorism. I'm not by any means an expert on early 70's Argentina, despite it fascinating me immensely, but I'm just wondering: From what I know, Isabel couldn't politick her way out of a paper bag, considering she was plucked from a dance troupe in Panama, was only given the vice-presidency due to a spat between the left and right-Peronists and was generally accepted to be a puppet of José López Rega. Now, López Rega was a deranged occultist nazi who ran a death squad from the welfare office and who probably once tried to transfer Evita's soul from her embalmed corpse into Isabel, and that led to the PRN and a military coup that at that point even the Communist Party supported. Is that sentence in 1974 implying that López Rega now has emergency powers over the state, or am I reading too deep?

First, thank you very kindly for that lead graf, which is not only kind and generous but gracefully put too - for a maiden speech in the thread that's good stuff.

So is the question elaborated thereafter, which I'll try to come at without giving away too much future material. It's an autogolpe at least in formalist, procedural terms: ostensibly Isabelita seizes, by granting herself, additional powers of office in the interest of Smashing the Terrorists and, more generally, doing whatever the president (herself) pleases. There are two rather large qualifiers there. The first is that - just as you point out - this is one of those cases where the existence of newfound power absolutely should not be confused with the competence to use that power, other than in ways reminiscent of giving unlicensed plutonium to a late-stage elementary school student. Second, the deeds of even competent dictators are often shaped by the people in their orbit, so you're not wrong that Everyone's Least Favorite Fascist Occultist will want to feel the reins here. Where that leads, well, it's reasonable to think that Isabelita has slammed down the gas pedal on her political trajectory. Whether that's onto an escape ramp or into a concrete wall at 112 mph, I don't think you're wrong to go after the safe money there. We'll see, as things go, just how specifically messy that gets.

 

[Cikka]

First, thank you very kindly for that lead graf, which is not only kind and generous but gracefully put too - for a maiden speech in the thread that's good stuff.

I'm honoured! I'm usually not quite this verbose, but I think you bring it out in people.

So is the question elaborated thereafter, which I'll try to come at without giving away too much future material. It's an autogolpe at least in formalist, procedural terms: ostensibly Isabelita seizes, by granting herself, additional powers of office in the interest of Smashing the Terrorists and, more generally, doing whatever the president (herself) pleases. There are two rather large qualifiers there. The first is that - just as you point out - this is one of those cases where the existence of newfound power absolutely should not be confused with the competence to use that power, other than in ways reminiscent of giving unlicensed plutonium to a late-stage elementary school student. Second, the deeds of even competent dictators are often shaped by the people in their orbit, so you're not wrong that Everyone's Least Favorite Fascist Occultist will want to feel the reins here. Where that leads, well, it's reasonable to think that Isabelita has slammed down the gas pedal on her political trajectory. Whether that's onto an escape ramp or into a concrete wall at 112 mph, I don't think you're wrong to go after the safe money there. We'll see, as things go, just how specifically messy that gets.

Very excited to see where this goes, and I generally hope that this is poking at my greatest hope, which is that we'll potentially see another chapter of bumrushing through world politics, hopefully featuring The 20th Century's Least Politically Competent Female Leader and her favourite nazi.

That along with the interesting situation you've set up in Portugal. Considering how much of an absolute shitshow the Portuguese transition to democracy was in real life, I'd be interested to see how it goes considering that here it appears to be not as much of a coup committed by angry left-wing officers and more of the entire military telling him to fuck off, I'd be fascinated to see how the balance of power plays out, considering we have what appears to be an attempt at a much less actively interventionist American foreign policy establishment (OTL, Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, my favourite Fidel Castro wannabe, said that he personally believed his biggest mistake during the PREC was underestimating how quickly the Americans can dig their claws in to drag a place in a direction), but also what I assume to be the MFA on a much weaker starting footing. Also, I have been giving some stray thoughts to how McGovern has been affecting Spain, especially in Franco's "Still Dead" years.

I'd also be interested to know what the fuck's going on in Southern Africa, considering the collapse of the Portuguese Empire potentially means that Ian Smith's Racism Jamboree Pretending To Be A Country will suddenly have only one ally into oil. Not that The National Party's Racism Jamboree Pretending To Be A Country (And Being Mildly More Convincing) is a less useful secret import method, but I can imagine both regimes start feeling the noose tighten.

I just realised I didn't ask a question during either of these paragraphs. I guess you could see them as stray thoughts to how things have been going across the Atlantic.

 

[Yes]

I'm honoured! I'm usually not quite this verbose, but I think you bring it out in people.

I might do, it's a dark gift

Very excited to see where this goes, and I generally hope that this is poking at my greatest hope, which is that we'll potentially see another chapter of bumrushing through world politics, hopefully featuring The 20th Century's Least Politically Competent Female Leader and her favourite nazi.

Only the best people. And since the Seventies are one of the high points of TVTropes' "South America Is Full of Nazis" trope, only appropriate. Bloody, messy, profoundly tragic, and inclined to make things that somehow manage to be even worse look better at first because they're not that ... but appropriate.

That along with the interesting situation you've set up in Portugal. Considering how much of an absolute shitshow the Portuguese transition to democracy was in real life, I'd be interested to see how it goes considering that here it appears to be not as much of a coup committed by angry left-wing officers and more of the entire military telling him to fuck off, I'd be fascinated to see how the balance of power plays out, considering we have what appears to be an attempt at a much less actively interventionist American foreign policy establishment (OTL, Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, my favourite Fidel Castro wannabe, said that he personally believed his biggest mistake during the PREC was underestimating how quickly the Americans can dig their claws in to drag a place in a direction), but also what I assume to be the MFA on a much weaker starting footing. Also, I have been giving some stray thoughts to how McGovern has been affecting Spain, especially in Franco's "Still Dead" years.

Something like OTL's MFA certainly is the main engine of the overthrow and shares most of the same goals as the MFA we know did, but also you're quite right that you have at once (1) a "much less actively interventionist American foreign policy establishment" exactly as you put it (2) but also definitely a broader collection of political groups, power bases, and interests involved in the process from "go." On the one hand some genuine competition (not merely perceived) might focus the MFA more, or at least exert a sort of Darwinian influence on alt!MFA, i.e succeed or get shitcanned, so folks too wrapped up in the fusion of their ego and The Cause and inclined to make rash, poorly thought out decisions - hi, Vasco Goncalves! - may not last even the time they did IOTL. Otelo's a savvier character so with his back a little closer to the actual wall he may play the politics a little more ably - or make an even more decisively doomed charge if the odds are against him. At ground level there's plenty of energy and dynamism on the leftward end of the process (tbf a lot of that vanity fluffing by a whole lineup of Castro-wannabes) but the actual popular dynamics - e.g. the overall Portuguese population - are a bit different than that - there's a reason PS and PPD got the vote share they did for the constitutional convention and it ain't all CIA ratfucking . But the upshot there is that whatever comes of the post-Caetano transition will be a more distinctively Portuguese creation, as McGovernment listens much less to anticommunist hysterics and watches to see how internal Portuguese dynamics shake out.

In Spain, for the time being at least, things are downright frigid between McGovernment and Madrid - The General (Spanish Version) yet dodders and no one's knocked off Carrero Blanco yet so Spain is a bastion of old-school reaction circa 1974-75 IMyTL, where the Cypriot Colonels park their slush funds and various unsavory characters who rocked the armband look in their youth go back and forth to Africa or South America. Among other things that means a significant economic/strategic shift as the McGoverners have considerably less interest in keeping up Rota or Torrejon Air Base or the like in those conditions and the Falangists are frankly happy to see the hippie-huggers fuck off. But we'll see where things go with a bit more time.

A couple of photos just because my inner Lusophile likes each of them a bunch. First, thanks to Wikipedia, the very look of an Overseas McGovern Moment in its efflorescence

Especially the "youth who look very much like they could be university students to the fore" of it. But, longer term, the reality that it took tanks in the streets to really get there, even if they're well intentioned tanks as it were, so at some point realpolitik or at least some more muscular ideologies than youthful romanticism will find a political level.

Then there's this - which is not to make directly any major claims for his political future IMyTL, rather that it's one of the most "1970s European Politics" photos I've ever seen.

The coiffed-back hair, those huge square frames, and the sheer breadth of the lapels - on point in every way. More than a hint of Aldo Moro about him which considering it's Francisco de Sa Carneiro (apologies for the absent accents, Me No HTML Good) is grimly apt. Of course here at McGoverning Estates we're mindful of the fact that in the multiple 21st century (OTL) inquests into his tragic plane crash, the putative bombers have said they were working with one of the Watergate burglars...

I'd also be interested to know what the fuck's going on in Southern Africa, considering the collapse of the Portuguese Empire potentially means that Ian Smith's Racism Jamboree Pretending To Be A Country will suddenly have only one ally into oil. Not that The National Party's Racism Jamboree Pretending To Be A Country (And Being Mildly More Convincing) is a less useful secret import method, but I can imagine both regimes start feeling the noose tighten.

Now, one way in which McGovernment is very much inclined to involve itself in Portugal's post-Estado Novo transition is in the fate of its more significant overseas territories. There, again, McGovernment's much less swayed by BUT MUH COMMIEZ pearl-clutching and much more focused on the strategic encirclement of the anglophone minority regimes. So too, for example, is the Lib-Lab government's Foreign Secretary in London, the delicately poised Mr. Thorpe, and while other foreign policy/natsec figures in that Cabinet are more cautious he's nevertheless not alone in Cabinet when it comes to those sentiments. On both sides of that struggle - the folks in DC or London and the folks in Pretoria or then-Salisbury - time is the essential variable. No one on either side knows how long the Lib-Lab coalition will last and, more significantly (given that DC could at least influence even a Conservative government on the issue) whether McGovernment will be a one-term wonder they can wait out, or not. So in the near term the liberals (and Liberals) in the US and UK would very much like to use independent ex-Portuguese neighbors to squeeze the anglo-racists. Which means figuring out how to have reasonably stable relations with them, not actually an entirely easy thing when you have multiple, often ethnically-based, anti-Portuguese movements in competition within both Angola and Mozambique.

I just realised I didn't ask a question during either of these paragraphs. I guess you could see them as stray thoughts to how things have been going across the Atlantic.

You're all good. The questions come out of them as a matter of course. At least some parts or elements of these matters will find their way directly into the chapters - beyond that there's also future "almanac" entries where there's likely to be a bit more granular detail (if we can get another couple or three chapters in I'll put out a complete 1974 for starters, once some spoilery bits no longer are, and we'll proceed on from there.)

 

[Yes]

The 20th Century's Least Politically Competent Female Leader and her favourite nazi.

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

Don't cry for me Argentina!
Cause turns out, I'm just a flunky!
Thanks for the riches, but with this resistance
I must be going... and keep my distance!

 

[Wayside]

A couple of photos just because my inner Lusophile likes each of them a bunch. First, thanks to Wikipedia, the very look of an Overseas McGovern Moment in its efflorescence

One of the most bizarre, fascinating bits of recent history, and also a reminder that you never really want to piss off college-educated people with guns.

 

[Cikka]

Like, Thatcher, Gandhi, Meir, these are all deeply controversial leaders with complex legacies, but they were all politically skilled and got to where they were (or at least stayed there) by political skill and mettle.

Isabelita managed to pull off the amazing feat of being a 20th century female deeply controversial leader with a complex legacy, who got shunted into the vice-presidency because her husband couldn’t wrangle his own out-of-control political vehicle, before he kicked the bucket leaving her at the reins of the country, embarking on a political term that didn’t even last two years but was so economically, socially and politically unstable that the leader of the opposition just sort of asked Videla to do a military coup that proceeded to enact a spree of murder and disappearances that I can imagine being taught as “over-eager excess” in the School of the Americas.

And somehow she’s still alive.

Argentina. What a country, man.

 

[Cikka]

Something like OTL's MFA certainly is the main engine of the overthrow and shares most of the same goals as the MFA we know did, but also you're quite right that you have at once (1) a "much less actively interventionist American foreign policy establishment" exactly as you put it (2) but also definitely a broader collection of political groups, power bases, and interests involved in the process from "go." On the one hand some genuine competition (not merely perceived) might focus the MFA more, or at least exert a sort of Darwinian influence on alt!MFA, i.e succeed or get shitcanned, so folks too wrapped up in the fusion of their ego and The Cause and inclined to make rash, poorly thought out decisions - hi, Vasco Goncalves! - may not last even the time they did IOTL. Otelo's a savvier character so with his back a little closer to the actual wall he may play the politics a little more ably - or make an even more decisively doomed charge if the odds are against him. At ground level there's plenty of energy and dynamism on the leftward end of the process (tbf a lot of that vanity fluffing by a whole lineup of Castro-wannabes) but the actual popular dynamics - e.g. the overall Portuguese population - are a bit different than that - there's a reason PS and PPD got the vote share they did for the constitutional convention and it ain't all CIA ratfucking . But the upshot there is that whatever comes of the post-Caetano transition will be a more distinctively Portuguese creation, as McGovernment listens much less to anticommunist hysterics and watches to see how internal Portuguese dynamics shake out.

I find Portugal in the 70's really interesting, because it's kind of been lost a little bit in the sands of time, in comparison to other world-shaking stuff from the decade like Iran, Chile and Spain.

The collapse of the Portuguese Empire was both hopelessly overdue and deeply important. It kicked off the war in Angola and the invasion and subsequent genocide in East Timor (I would ask about Indonesia if I genuinely knew more about the history), the former of which is extremely important for the history of Southern Africa and also Cuba. The latter feels notable for me personally because I learned about it between my "America is always good" and "America is always bad" periods of my foreign policy thought, which has now finally settled in a nice, comfortable "America is usually bad, but sometimes not as bad as the other bad ones".

Anyway, it also comes to mind because a potential Communist takeover in a western european country after the 1950's feels notable, but you legitimately don't hear about it. When I was initially looking into it, I found this, and it was so distinct to me, because I was just not aware that this came close enough to happening for the Yank press to fearmonger specific faces.

I knew very vaguely that there was a thing called the Carnation Revolution that overthrew the dictatorship started by that mean old catholic guy who fell off a chair, and that was that. When searching for literature in English on the PREC and the transition to democracy, I ran into two actual sources, the first of which being a book from 1977 that read like it was written by Henry Kissinger's less articulate page, and another called "A People's History of the Carnation Revolution" which I assumed wouldn't be a work free of political bias. And it sucks, because from what I understand it was a mashing together of distinctive and fascinating personalities in a battle of military affairs, international intrigue, mindnumbing idiocy and about six thousand coups, give or take.

The prelude, events, aftermath and consequences of April 25th are somewhat buried in Portuguese, which is heartbreaking as someone who's not particularly skilled at picking up languages, so I'm very excited to see you handle this overlooked facet of history in this here timeline.

 

[Yes]

I want to return later to two things: the pleasant little discussion just above of Portugal's flowerless revolution IMyTL, and also a couple of extended comments/questions from the thread's relatively recent past.

First, though, I received a fun little question from a Careful Reader outside this thread that speaks to my love of ever-expanding granularity. It is, as a matter of fact, one of those little things I have lying around the Many Scrivener Sub-Folders since it's one of the few places I can get close to indulging my Commonwealthophilia with an hono(u)rs list. (Because, my God, if I'd ever actually done just a straight British/Canadian/AusNZ/etc. TL, with a pair of honours lists rolling through on a yearly basis, it'd be like you just mainlined me nine cups of coffee and my eyes might start to bleed.)

So. The question was, more or less, "can you tell us anything about recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom during the McGovern administration?"

The simple answer is "yes, yes I can." The slightly longer answer is, "I can give you the list that covers this here whole presidential term of George's, because none of it is truly spoilery, the only thing that comes close is that when he's faced with the chance that this might be all she wrote for his presidency, he's inclined to add two or three that he knows will be controversial but that he wants on principle, because in a corner our guy Doubles Down on George."

Here goes.

Name	Year	Notes
Martin Luther King, Jr.	1973	With Distinction (posthumous)
Robert F. Kennedy	1973	With Distinction (posthumous)
Walter Reuther	1973	With Distinction (posthumous)
Georgia O'Keefe	1973
Jonas Salk	1973
Margaret Mead	1973
Ansel Adams	1973
Rachel Carson	1973	With Distinction (posthumous)
Earl Warren	1974	With Distinction
Jesse Owens	1974	With Distinction
James Farmer	1974
Archibald MacLeish	1974
Eugene Carson Blake	1974
Norman Rockwell	1974
Tennessee Williams	1974
Dorothy Height	1975
Lady Bird Johnson	1975
Dolores Huerta	1975
Martha Graham	1975
Margaret Chase Smith	1975
Edward "Duke" Ellington	1975	(posthumous)
John Arthur Burns	1975
Clark Clifford	1975	With Distinction (second award)
John Sherman Cooper	1975
Chester Bowles	1975
Arleigh Burke	1975
Arthur Rubinstein	1976	With Distinction
Lowell Thomas	1976
Menachem Mendel Schneerson	1976
Esther Peterson	1976
Philip Hart	1976	With Distinction
R. Sargent Shriver	1976	With Distinction
Omar Bradley	1976
Norman Borlaug	1976	With Distinction
Gordon Hirabayashi	1976
Paul Robeson	1976	(posthumous)

Note that even though this is McGovernment and they're doing their bit, this remains the Seventies, so the majority of the list remains white men. That said there's a deliberate and relatively diverse burst of female recipients during International Women's Year in 1975. Plus at the end, George saying consecutively, "If Congress isn't yet ready to make reparations for Japanese internment I'll damned well show them whose side I'm on while I can," along with "Robeson stands in the long line of great American dissenters and I'm cussed enough myself to point that out, GREAT GOD STROM can go get bent," because when George's back is to the wall he's only more himself, especially his most stubborn qualities.

 

[Yes]

I find Portugal in the 70's really interesting, because it's kind of been lost a little bit in the sands of time, in comparison to other world-shaking stuff from the decade like Iran, Chile and Spain.

The collapse of the Portuguese Empire was both hopelessly overdue and deeply important. It kicked off the war in Angola and the invasion and subsequent genocide in East Timor (I would ask about Indonesia if I genuinely knew more about the history), the former of which is extremely important for the history of Southern Africa and also Cuba. The latter feels notable for me personally because I learned about it between my "America is always good" and "America is always bad" periods of my foreign policy thought, which has now finally settled in a nice, comfortable "America is usually bad, but sometimes not as bad as the other bad ones".

Anyway, it also comes to mind because a potential Communist takeover in a western european country after the 1950's feels notable, but you legitimately don't hear about it. When I was initially looking into it, I found this, and it was so distinct to me, because I was just not aware that this came close enough to happening for the Yank press to fearmonger specific faces.
View attachment 752695
I knew very vaguely that there was a thing called the Carnation Revolution that overthrew the dictatorship started by that mean old catholic guy who fell off a chair, and that was that. When searching for literature in English on the PREC and the transition to democracy, I ran into two actual sources, the first of which being a book from 1977 that read like it was written by Henry Kissinger's less articulate page, and another called "A People's History of the Carnation Revolution" which I assumed wouldn't be a work free of political bias. And it sucks, because from what I understand it was a mashing together of distinctive and fascinating personalities in a battle of military affairs, international intrigue, mindnumbing idiocy and about six thousand coups, give or take.

The prelude, events, aftermath and consequences of April 25th are somewhat buried in Portuguese, which is heartbreaking as someone who's not particularly skilled at picking up languages, so I'm very excited to see you handle this overlooked facet of history in this here timeline.

"America is usually bad but sometimes not as bad as the other bad ones" is not inaccurate.

Also "a mashing together of distinctive and fascinating personalities in a battle of military affairs, international intrigue, mindnumbing idiocy, and about six thousand coups, give or take" likewise is a pretty accurate and thorough description of the Carnation Revolution and Portugal's democratic transition. Lots of folks who cut a dash for some period of time but ultimately too dumb or inept to succeed (or sometimes both - gonna single out Vasco Goncalves out there again, there were plenty of would-be Castros in Portugal during the mid-Seventies but Goncalves' run at it, especially the strategies he pursued or rather threw at the wall to see if they'd stick, raised incompetence to performance art.)

What's fun - except that it's not, it's proof that Ken Galbraith's old hobgoblin "conventional wisdom" is a dangerous beast, mostly because it's vast and lumbering and not very bright - is to see just what hysterics the Western and especially American media raised themselves to over Portugal or the Compromeso Storico in Italy. Some of it was just straight-up yellow journalism - TIME for example had in no way yet emerged from Henry Luce's original right-wing orbit - and some of it was a matter that drama and controversy sells copy and honestly, looked at in the cold light of day, on many fronts things were kind of quiet for the US right after the withdrawal from South Vietnam so you needed to stir up fear and drama and paranoia in order to sell everything from newsprint to the military-industrial complex, but also it's interesting now to see. TIME had a notably lurid cover with Berlinguer - possibly the most anti-Moscow communist in Europe, Yugoslavia included - that really spoke to the manufacture of controversy and the failure of pragmatism when you still had Henry Kissinger running around and beguiling the American press.

Also that sort of American agita surely made things worse, not better, than they would've been without it. The lack of competence among most of the Castro wannabes is notable - even Otelo, very much the class of the bunch in terms of political nous, let himself get suckered into a doomed charge at power - and really, though Portugal was genuinely a left-of-center nation in the Seventies on a mass-politics basis, at the same time a supermajority of those same left-of-center folks looked at the Castro wannabes as very much a Left iteration of Salazar, and they'd done dictatorship already with no desire to return that way. Add to that the fact that Mario Soares and Francisco de Sa Carneiro really probably were the most intelligent and capable senior pols in late-Seventies Portugal, things sort of found the level they were likely to find unless you started bumping those guys off (which of course happened to Carneiro in 1980 but that was after most of the true democratic/constitutional transition.) Much of the sub rosa American ratfucking really was finding ways either to profit from chaos or to justify the budget lines of the entities involved.

Here's that Berlinguer TIME cover

I mean, c'mon, guys...

Because we should all hide under our beds at the sight of a physically dinky minor Sardinian nobleman and fulsome Italian patriot who hated the Soviets more than Mitterrand did and could be a somewhat stodgy technocrat when given the chance to govern. That should keep us up nights in a world before the START treaty and with Watergate and the Church Committee's revelations in it. (Of course the latter two items were perfectly good reasons to stage group freakouts about Reds Under the Bed...)

 

[Yes]

@mr1940s,

Answers to two questions you raised a little ways back in the thread (a little ways back, but not very far. Pretty recent in the scheme of things.)

The first of them about George and Woodrow Wilson. It is probably not an accident that George McGovern's academic biographer first made his bones in the profession with studies of Woodrow Wilson, specifically of Wilson's internationalist program and vision. Now, of course, we have an understanding that a fair amount of Wilson's own internationalist vision was a rather selective tissue of hubris and propaganda, but that didn't stop multiple generations of internationalist liberals from trying to make Wilson's platitudes live up to their potential for a collaborative and in meaningful ways small-d democratic international order, one in which post-colonial nations would receive sufficient no-strings support to raise themselves out of poverty and attempt real self-determination. In that sense at least George was broadly a Wilsonian both in his strategic outlook and in the operational details of foreign policy, also the places where (like food policy) foreign and domestic policies were inseparably entwined.

It is also true that the longer George remains president the more some of the folks who are part of his own "rainbow coalition" may educate him a bit more about the grim realities of the Woodrow Wilson who, despite backing a raft of technocratic Progressive reforms early in his presidency, actually marched the country a good distance backwards on race relations, ideological tolerance, and civil liberties. But that is in some meaningful ways separable from George's received "Wilsonian" approach to foreign affairs.

On the separate matter of significant African American politicians during the McGovern years, there are a variety of ways things may turn out. It is true that many currents in political economy whose tide moves in a neoliberal direction are Trends more than Butterflies. But also the simple fact of McGovernment and the things it is seen to represent - whether it always, or even only sometimes, manifests them in practice - also makes space for other political possibilities. For example experiments in new, post-Black Panther Party politics rooted more distinctively in African American communities themselves, or different kinds of tactical/operational alliances with other minority populations or different sorts of allies in city or state politics. Over time, at least, McGovernment itself is more likely to talent-scout and hire on rising black politicians (or non-elected figures with a political role like certain types of city or even university administrators, civil rights lawyers, academics, etc.) So there are chances to broaden or deepen one's vita that way too. As for - for example - the wave of neoliberalism sweeping into the fiscal politics of cities, much of that crystalized around New York City's debt crisis, and McGovernment's response to that (at least some form of that crisis was getting towards inevitable by the time George took his oath of office, much less by early 1975 IOTL), may vary substantially from "FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD." So there are specific things McGovernment may do, and other ways and cases where it opens up space for alternate possibilities, that affect the career arcs of people like Andrew Young and really his whole generational cadre of African American pols.

 

[Wayside]

What's fun - except that it's not, it's proof that Ken Galbraith's old hobgoblin "conventional wisdom" is a dangerous beast, mostly because it's vast and lumbering and not very bright - is to see just what hysterics the Western and especially American media raised themselves to over Portugal or the Compromeso Storico in Italy. Some of it was just straight-up yellow journalism - TIME for example had in no way yet emerged from Henry Luce's original right-wing orbit - and some of it was a matter that drama and controversy sells copy and honestly, looked at in the cold light of day, on many fronts things were kind of quiet for the US right after the withdrawal from South Vietnam so you needed to stir up fear and drama and paranoia in order to sell everything from newsprint to the military-industrial complex, but also it's interesting now to see. TIME had a notably lurid cover with Berlinguer - possibly the most anti-Moscow communist in Europe, Yugoslavia included - that really spoke to the manufacture of controversy and the failure of pragmatism when you still had Henry Kissinger running around and beguiling the American press.

That was a fascinating tidbit in Cooper's "The Oil Kings"; how a lot of journalists were speculating that the US would go full-tilt isolationist after Watergate, Vietnam, and the Bad And Spooky Vibes of Mediterranean alienation.

 

[GDIS Pathe]

Nevada: Paul Laxalt (R) def. Alan Bible (D) (once more with feeling... wasn't)

Doing a quick re-reading of the thread, and this caught me eye. How's the young up and coming Lt. Governor of Nevada doing in the McGovern-verse?

 

[Aubreyyy]

On the separate matter of significant African American politicians during the McGovern years, there are a variety of ways things may turn out. It is true that many currents in political economy whose tide moves in a neoliberal direction are Trends more than Butterflies. But also the simple fact of McGovernment and the things it is seen to represent - whether it always, or even only sometimes, manifests them in practice - also makes space for other political possibilities. For example experiments in new, post-Black Panther Party politics rooted more distinctively in African American communities themselves, or different kinds of tactical/operational alliances with other minority populations or different sorts of allies in city or state politics. Over time, at least, McGovernment itself is more likely to talent-scout and hire on rising black politicians (or non-elected figures with a political role like certain types of city or even university administrators, civil rights lawyers, academics, etc.) So there are chances to broaden or deepen one's vita that way too.

Has Jesse Jackson been able to use his ties and work with McGovern to really expand PUSH and his national profile? Hes one of my favorite politicians and speakers of the 70s-80s and it would be cool to see him establish himself as more of a national figure even earlier. Maybe him being involved with negotiations at wounded knee and having actual ties to an administration could help him get involved in the foreign diplomacy and hostage negotiation he really thrived at earlier.

 

[King of the Uzbeks]

One of the most bizarre, fascinating bits of recent history, and also a reminder that you never really want to piss off college-educated people with guns.

Screwing Up so badly you accidentally turn your Fascist Army into Socialists is certainly a way to go out.

 

[Wayside]

Screwing Up so badly you accidentally turn your Fascist Army into Socialists is certainly a way to go out.

I'd joke that this is why I'm pursuing a Navy commission, but that doesn't seem like something to joke about at all.

 

[King of the Uzbeks]

I'd joke that this is why I'm pursuing a Navy commission, but that doesn't seem like something to joke about at all.

I mean you're already one now.

Like, America screwed up in Afgahnistan. But the Officer Corps didn't become Jihadists.

 

[Cikka]

God, I just realised.
I didn't ask about Northern Ireland, did I?

Now, it's been a while since I've brushed up on the details in Norn Iron, and so far what I've seen is a mention that Paisley could pop up in a future British chapter. So I'm going to keep it simple: did Sunningdale still happen in '73, as well as the UWC strike that shot the project before it could start running?

God, I remember more about Argentina than potentially the most notable event to happen on the island ever since we in the Republic fucked off

 

[Yes]

God, I just realised.
I didn't ask about Northern Ireland, did I?

Now, it's been a while since I've brushed up on the details in Norn Iron, and so far what I've seen is a mention that Paisley could pop up in a future British chapter. So I'm going to keep it simple: did Sunningdale still happen in '73, as well as the UWC strike that shot the project before it could start running?

God, I remember more about Argentina than potentially the most notable event to happen on the island ever since we in the Republic fucked off

What I can say (and you're probably right about "most important," not for nothing was the Good Friday Agreement called "Sunningdale for slow learners") is that those subjects will come up quite directly in the next chapter. Along with related issues on both sides of the border and on the big island next door too.

 

[Yes]

God, I just realised.
I didn't ask about Northern Ireland, did I?

Now, it's been a while since I've brushed up on the details in Norn Iron, and so far what I've seen is a mention that Paisley could pop up in a future British chapter. So I'm going to keep it simple: did Sunningdale still happen in '73, as well as the UWC strike that shot the project before it could start running?

God, I remember more about Argentina than potentially the most notable event to happen on the island ever since we in the Republic fucked off

Along with the Visibly Sociopathic Calvinist Beaver (that'd be Rev Paisley) I'd also keep an eye out for this guy and his special-sauce flavor of Norn politics:

Which is to say that, as "McGovern Moments" diversify and go global, sometimes in the words of Anna Gaitskell all the wrong people are cheering...