IOTL He was governor of New Mexico, so I guess that's also the case here.
New Deal Coalition Retained: A Sixth Party System Wikibox Timeline
Asami
Banned
Boy, that's... something else. Lots of lives saved from AIDS... but at the same end, 300,000 people had to be forcibly liquidated.
Can't decide if Mobutu's gonna get good karma or bad karma for that.
Agreed. The only question for me is how well Bull Moose is going to do.
There's gonna be some paragraph about the two parties "splitting the vote" and Rumsfeld takes the win.
Bookmark1995
Banned
From 1960-1980 OTL, there was an enormous shift in sexual relations: the rise of easy contraception, abortion, gay rights, premarital sex.
For a while, it seemed eroticism would be mainstream, since erotic movies were also gaining acceptance in the greater population, and swinging became popular.
Then, the Moral Majority came to power, AIDS infected a lot of the population, and the energy died down.
In the post about Mobutu, it said he was actually ensuring the economic success of Zaire (while still taking cash for himself, just not in a destructive way), and that instead of being overthrown and dying in Morocco in 1997, he would rule Zaire until his death in 2005.
Most likely, he will remain a divisive figure since he did more good than harm ITTL for his country, but he still will be remembered as a brutal man.
Bookmark1995
Banned
The way leaders are judged is how they influence their population. FDR is a man who certainly did nasty things, like the Japanese internment, but he did a lot to bring America into a era of global hegemony and economic stability.
Suharto is an even nastier man than FDR, but he is credited for turning his country from a colonial plantation into an economic superpower.
Mobutu ITTL will be similar: a nationalist who took a colonial state and made it an economic gem, and gave its people pride, but still did ruthless things.
Bookmark1995
Banned
Exactly my point, but the fact that he pulled the country back from the brink means those things are quietly forgotten by the majority.
Remember that ITTL itself, nobody knows how bad the outbreak of disease Mobuto prevent would have been (i.e. how bad it was IOTL) Therefore they would not consider it as important to assessing his net good/bad for Zaire-or at least, not to the extent we would.
That's very true. I don't think anyone thought of that.
Good update @TheCongressman I like the primaries, looks like it will be Rumsfeld for the GOP though the Democratic side is still uncertain. i wonder who Anderson will hurt the most, as in OTL 1980 he hurt Carter more despite being a split from the GOP. However could it end up with the election going to the House?
