I've always wondered what would had happened in the "magic bullet" had kept "flying" and, after injuring Connally, had struck Wallace between the eyes...
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Kurt_Steiner: Magic bullet indeed! 
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The Voting Rights Act of 1963
On July 5th, 1963, Senate Majority Leader Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota was ushered into the Oval Office for a private meeting with the President. The meeting had been arranged on the spur of the moment and the President had instructed his appointments secretary Julia Cancio to “let Hubert in as soon as he arrives.”
Upon his arrival in the Oval Office, Humphrey found Jackson sitting behind his desk studying newspaper coverage of yesterday’s March on Washington. 200,000 people, most of whom were black, had poured into the city from all across America to hear speaker after speaker demand the right to vote. Looking up to see that Humphrey had hastily arrived, Jackson quickly got up from his desk and went over to him. After shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries, the President and the Senate Majority Leader sat down across from each other on a pair of couches situated in the middle of the room. Humphrey was asked what he thought about yesterday’s march. Humphrey replied that he thought the speakers had made strong and persuasive arguments on the need to end voter disenfranchisement in the United States. “They are coming here later today,” Scoop announced. He was going to meet with the speakers – including Martin Luther King, Jr. – to discuss where to go from here. “That’s why I asked you to come here as quickly as possible, Hubert. I know what they are going to ask me and you are the best person to answer their question. ‘It has been four months since the House passed the voting rights bill. Why hasn’t the Senate done anything, even with Hubert Humphrey in charge?’”
Humphrey frowned in frustration, clearly not happy about the lack of action in his chamber.
“Unfortunately, Scoop, the answer to their question is that there isn’t much I can do.”
He explained that the Southern wing of the Democratic Party had traditionally called the shots in the upper chamber and they had written the rules in such a way that made advancing major civil rights legislation next to impossible. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman James Eastland of Mississippi could refuse to bring up the voting rights bill for consideration for as long as he wanted and there was almost nothing that could be done to override him. Almost. “There is one thing I could try,” Humphrey revealed in a nearly secretive manner. “It is a very hard thing to do since it requires a lot of support from both parties. But there is a way to get the bill out of committee without Eastland’s approval.”
“Well, we need to try it,” Jackson replied matter-of-factly. With the country being roiled by a hot summer of racial strife, he was willing to try anything to save the most important piece of legislation of his Presidency from death by inaction.
On July 8th, Humphrey (above) filed a discharge petition to bring the voting rights bill out of the Judiciary Committee and onto the Senate floor for consideration, thereby bypassing Eastland’s entrenched refusal to act on it. Like Humphrey had told the President, for the discharge petition to work he needed the signatures of a supermajority of Senators from both political parties – which was understandably rare. However, he believed he now had the required number of signatures. For the past four months, Humphrey had been patiently biding his time, waiting for the right moment to act. As Lyndon Johnson’s protégé when he was Senate Majority Leader, Humphrey had learned from the master that if you wanted to get something done in the “world’s greatest deliberative body”, you had to strike while the iron was hot. In other words, you could best prod feet-dragging Senators into taking action if there was public support for a particular measure. By July 1963, public awareness of and support for voting rights was at an all-time high. According to the Gallup Poll, a majority of respondents now saw voter disenfranchisement as a pressing national issue that needed to be addressed. The marches and the violence that often accompanied them made many Americans conscious of the great moral and constitutional problem of racial discrimination in the voting booth. Even in the South, white moderates were calling for the passage of the Voting Rights Act as a matter of due course. As one moderate put it:
“I support the Constitution. I support what the Constitution says. The Constitution [under the Fifteenth Amendment] says that Negroes can vote, so I support that because that is what the Constitution says.”
Seizing upon the public mood, Humphrey filed his discharge petition. Although Eastland immediately attacked him for trying to cut him out of the legislative process, the Senate Majority Leader was able to round up enough signatures to effectively do just that. His biding strategy appeared to have paid off when several Senators who had previously been on the fence or were indifferent about blacks not fully having the right to vote signed the petition. They had been spooked by the violence – especially in Birmingham – and had come to the conclusion that the best thing to do was to take action. One Senator remarked that people in his state “are sick and tired of seeing this agitation in their communities. I want to show them that I am doing something about it.”
With bipartisan support, the discharge petition had acquired the required number of signatures by July 12th.
(The United States Senate, circa 1963)
The House version of the voting rights bill was now out of the Judiciary Committee, with no changes having been made to it. According to the rules, a bill that had been discharged from a committee could only be placed on the calendar for consideration on the second and fourth Monday of every month. That meant Humphrey had to wait until July 22nd to bring the VRA to the Senate floor. Once he did, the Senate debate finally began in earnest. Republican Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois, who had co-sponsored the bill with Humphrey, kicked off the support for the VRA. Called “The Wizard of Ooze” for his convincing but sometimes flowery and overblown oratory, Dirksen insisted that “this legislation is needed if the unequivocal mandate of the Fifteenth Amendment is to be enforced and made effective, and if the Declaration of Independence is to be made truly meaningful.”
Southern Democrats of course led the opposition. South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond claimed that the bill would lead to “despotism and tyranny.”
North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin – in his own words “a simple country lawyer” – made the legal argument that the bill was unconstitutional because it deprived the states of their right under Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution to establish voter qualifications. These Senators also offered a series of amendments designed to weaken the VRA. All of them failed to pass. However during the debate, there was one amendment to weaken the bill which did have serious support and it came from a surprising sponsor: Dirksen himself. One of the bill’s provisions banned the use of poll taxes, a voter registration fee that people had to pay and show that they had paid in order to be allowed into the voting booth. The poll tax was one of the tactics used to disenfranchise African-Americans, as well as poor whites who couldn’t afford to pay it. The voting rights bill banned the use of poll taxes in both Federal and state elections...which became a sticking point for Dirksen and other Republicans. They didn’t have a problem with abolishing the use of poll taxes as a requirement for the former; they had a problem with doing so for the latter. They believed that the Federal Government banning poll taxes in state elections was government overreach and they were afraid that if the ban remained in the bill, the states would then take the legislation to court over it. To prevent the entire bill from being struck down as unconstitutional, Dirksen offered an amendment which would remove the ban on poll taxes in state elections but keep the ban on poll taxes in Federal elections. Seizing the opportunity to weaken the voting rights bill with help from Republicans, Southern Democrats got behind Dirksen’s amendment. With bipartisan support, the amendment passed and the prohibition of poll taxes in state elections was removed.
Unable to prevent Dirksen’s amendment from passing, Humphrey moved quickly to halt any more weakening of the VRA. On August 27th, he filed a motion to invoke cloture, a legislative procedure which would end the debate and move the bill to a final vote. Humphrey needed a supermajority of two-thirds of all Senators (67 out of 100) to make the cloture filibuster-proof. The Senate approved the motion to invoke cloture by a margin of 70-30, clearing the way for the long-awaited final vote. With cloture invoked and the use of the filibuster to delay the vote off the table, Southern Democrats found themselves in a position they had never been in before: defeat. Having blocked every other effort to pass major civil rights legislation, they had failed to prevent this one from reaching a final vote. “We have done everything we can,” Georgia Senator Richard Russell noted with deep regret. “There is nothing more we can do. This bill will become law, and this country will never be the same for it.”
On August 28th, the Voting Rights Act overwhelmingly passed the Senate by a margin of 83-17. 16 Southern Democrats voted against it and the only Republican to join them was James Martin of Alabama. The 83 Senators who voted for it consisted of 47 Republicans – including Richard Nixon of California and Barry Goldwater of Arizona – and 36 Democrats. Although Goldwater – one of the leading conservatives of the era – opposed the Federal Government interfering in the affairs of the states, he voted for the VRA because he saw the right to vote as a constitutional right that the Federal Government had the obligation to enforce. The states had ratified the Fifteenth Amendment prohibiting the denial of the right to vote based on race; the states therefore had to obey it. Having passed the Senate, the VRA had to clear one more hurdle before it could be sent to the White House. Because the Senate had removed the Federal ban on poll taxes in state elections, the House of Representatives had to sign off on this alteration to their original bill. On September 3rd, the House gave its’ approval by a margin of 360-75. 54 Democrats, 20 Republicans, and 1 Independent didn’t approve of it; 226 Republicans and 134 Democrats did approve of it. The next day in the East Room of the White House, flanked by congressional and civil rights leaders and with the media on hand to broadcast the event live, President Henry M. Jackson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1963 into law.
(A voter registration office, circa 1964)
The Voting Rights Act of 1963 became the crowning achievement of Jackson’s Presidency. He had done what no other President had been able or willing to do: make following the Fifteenth Amendment mandatory. With the stroke of a pen, he had ended nearly a century of blatantly ignoring the law of the land in deference to the South. For nearly a century, white Southerners had steadfastly refused to allow African-Americans to exercise their constitutional right to vote and had gotten away with it. The passage of the VRA meant those days were over. The Fifteenth Amendment now meant exactly what it said and it would be strictly enforced by the Federal Government whether white Southerners liked it or not. Just as Russell predicted, the VRA had a far-reaching effect on America. It torn down virtually all the barricades which had been used so effectively to disenfranchise black voters:
(Campaigning for President in New York City in 1992, Bill Clinton epitomized the New South Democrat which the Voting Rights Act of 1963 had helped usher in)
In addition to giving rise to New South Democrats like Clinton (who as a high school student in 1963 actually got to shake Jackson’s hands at a White House event sponsored by the American Legion), the VRA opened the door for African-Americans to seek elected office. In 1964, there were just three African-American state legislators in the entire South. That number would shoot up to 176 by 1984. At the end of the 1960s there would be 1,500 African-American office holders nationwide; at the beginning of the 1980s there would be 5,000. By all measures, the Voting Rights Act of 1963 would be a tremendous success and a major legacy for Jackson. However, it was a legacy that came with a price. On September 5th, 1963, Alabama Governor George Wallace publically announced his candidacy for the Democratic Presidential nomination. In his announcement speech, Wallace furiously vowed to repeal the new voting rights law and roll back every gain civil rights had made during Scoop’s tenure. The anger that was on full display reflected Southern outrage that one of the pillars holding up their Jim Crow system – voter disenfranchisement – had just been knocked down. By taking such a bold move that clearly favored African-Americans over states rights, Jackson had stirred a hornets’ nest of opposition which would jeopardize the future of his Presidency. No post-Reconstruction Democrat had won the White House without Southern support and with the South ready to unite behind Wallace in the upcoming Presidential election, it appeared to some observers that Henry M. Jackson had just sacrificed a second term in order to do what morally and legally needed to be done for the good of the country. Other observers weren’t so sure that the President’s show of political courage would be his swan song. “Jackson will lose the segregationist vote,” a newspaper reporter for “The Chattanooga Times” wrote after the voting rights bill became law, “But he will get 110% of the Negro vote. He will gain more votes than he will lose.”
With Wallace hell-bent on throwing Scoop out of office for being pro-civil rights and South Dakota Senator George McGovern about to toss his hat into the ring because of strong disagreements over foreign policy and national defense, the 1964 Democratic primaries were shaping up to be a fierce three-way battle with much more than just the nomination at stake.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Voting Rights Act of 1963
On July 5th, 1963, Senate Majority Leader Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota was ushered into the Oval Office for a private meeting with the President. The meeting had been arranged on the spur of the moment and the President had instructed his appointments secretary Julia Cancio to “let Hubert in as soon as he arrives.”
Upon his arrival in the Oval Office, Humphrey found Jackson sitting behind his desk studying newspaper coverage of yesterday’s March on Washington. 200,000 people, most of whom were black, had poured into the city from all across America to hear speaker after speaker demand the right to vote. Looking up to see that Humphrey had hastily arrived, Jackson quickly got up from his desk and went over to him. After shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries, the President and the Senate Majority Leader sat down across from each other on a pair of couches situated in the middle of the room. Humphrey was asked what he thought about yesterday’s march. Humphrey replied that he thought the speakers had made strong and persuasive arguments on the need to end voter disenfranchisement in the United States. “They are coming here later today,” Scoop announced. He was going to meet with the speakers – including Martin Luther King, Jr. – to discuss where to go from here. “That’s why I asked you to come here as quickly as possible, Hubert. I know what they are going to ask me and you are the best person to answer their question. ‘It has been four months since the House passed the voting rights bill. Why hasn’t the Senate done anything, even with Hubert Humphrey in charge?’”
Humphrey frowned in frustration, clearly not happy about the lack of action in his chamber.
“Unfortunately, Scoop, the answer to their question is that there isn’t much I can do.”
He explained that the Southern wing of the Democratic Party had traditionally called the shots in the upper chamber and they had written the rules in such a way that made advancing major civil rights legislation next to impossible. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman James Eastland of Mississippi could refuse to bring up the voting rights bill for consideration for as long as he wanted and there was almost nothing that could be done to override him. Almost. “There is one thing I could try,” Humphrey revealed in a nearly secretive manner. “It is a very hard thing to do since it requires a lot of support from both parties. But there is a way to get the bill out of committee without Eastland’s approval.”
“Well, we need to try it,” Jackson replied matter-of-factly. With the country being roiled by a hot summer of racial strife, he was willing to try anything to save the most important piece of legislation of his Presidency from death by inaction.
On July 8th, Humphrey (above) filed a discharge petition to bring the voting rights bill out of the Judiciary Committee and onto the Senate floor for consideration, thereby bypassing Eastland’s entrenched refusal to act on it. Like Humphrey had told the President, for the discharge petition to work he needed the signatures of a supermajority of Senators from both political parties – which was understandably rare. However, he believed he now had the required number of signatures. For the past four months, Humphrey had been patiently biding his time, waiting for the right moment to act. As Lyndon Johnson’s protégé when he was Senate Majority Leader, Humphrey had learned from the master that if you wanted to get something done in the “world’s greatest deliberative body”, you had to strike while the iron was hot. In other words, you could best prod feet-dragging Senators into taking action if there was public support for a particular measure. By July 1963, public awareness of and support for voting rights was at an all-time high. According to the Gallup Poll, a majority of respondents now saw voter disenfranchisement as a pressing national issue that needed to be addressed. The marches and the violence that often accompanied them made many Americans conscious of the great moral and constitutional problem of racial discrimination in the voting booth. Even in the South, white moderates were calling for the passage of the Voting Rights Act as a matter of due course. As one moderate put it:
“I support the Constitution. I support what the Constitution says. The Constitution [under the Fifteenth Amendment] says that Negroes can vote, so I support that because that is what the Constitution says.”
Seizing upon the public mood, Humphrey filed his discharge petition. Although Eastland immediately attacked him for trying to cut him out of the legislative process, the Senate Majority Leader was able to round up enough signatures to effectively do just that. His biding strategy appeared to have paid off when several Senators who had previously been on the fence or were indifferent about blacks not fully having the right to vote signed the petition. They had been spooked by the violence – especially in Birmingham – and had come to the conclusion that the best thing to do was to take action. One Senator remarked that people in his state “are sick and tired of seeing this agitation in their communities. I want to show them that I am doing something about it.”
With bipartisan support, the discharge petition had acquired the required number of signatures by July 12th.
(The United States Senate, circa 1963)
The House version of the voting rights bill was now out of the Judiciary Committee, with no changes having been made to it. According to the rules, a bill that had been discharged from a committee could only be placed on the calendar for consideration on the second and fourth Monday of every month. That meant Humphrey had to wait until July 22nd to bring the VRA to the Senate floor. Once he did, the Senate debate finally began in earnest. Republican Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois, who had co-sponsored the bill with Humphrey, kicked off the support for the VRA. Called “The Wizard of Ooze” for his convincing but sometimes flowery and overblown oratory, Dirksen insisted that “this legislation is needed if the unequivocal mandate of the Fifteenth Amendment is to be enforced and made effective, and if the Declaration of Independence is to be made truly meaningful.”
Southern Democrats of course led the opposition. South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond claimed that the bill would lead to “despotism and tyranny.”
North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin – in his own words “a simple country lawyer” – made the legal argument that the bill was unconstitutional because it deprived the states of their right under Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution to establish voter qualifications. These Senators also offered a series of amendments designed to weaken the VRA. All of them failed to pass. However during the debate, there was one amendment to weaken the bill which did have serious support and it came from a surprising sponsor: Dirksen himself. One of the bill’s provisions banned the use of poll taxes, a voter registration fee that people had to pay and show that they had paid in order to be allowed into the voting booth. The poll tax was one of the tactics used to disenfranchise African-Americans, as well as poor whites who couldn’t afford to pay it. The voting rights bill banned the use of poll taxes in both Federal and state elections...which became a sticking point for Dirksen and other Republicans. They didn’t have a problem with abolishing the use of poll taxes as a requirement for the former; they had a problem with doing so for the latter. They believed that the Federal Government banning poll taxes in state elections was government overreach and they were afraid that if the ban remained in the bill, the states would then take the legislation to court over it. To prevent the entire bill from being struck down as unconstitutional, Dirksen offered an amendment which would remove the ban on poll taxes in state elections but keep the ban on poll taxes in Federal elections. Seizing the opportunity to weaken the voting rights bill with help from Republicans, Southern Democrats got behind Dirksen’s amendment. With bipartisan support, the amendment passed and the prohibition of poll taxes in state elections was removed.
Unable to prevent Dirksen’s amendment from passing, Humphrey moved quickly to halt any more weakening of the VRA. On August 27th, he filed a motion to invoke cloture, a legislative procedure which would end the debate and move the bill to a final vote. Humphrey needed a supermajority of two-thirds of all Senators (67 out of 100) to make the cloture filibuster-proof. The Senate approved the motion to invoke cloture by a margin of 70-30, clearing the way for the long-awaited final vote. With cloture invoked and the use of the filibuster to delay the vote off the table, Southern Democrats found themselves in a position they had never been in before: defeat. Having blocked every other effort to pass major civil rights legislation, they had failed to prevent this one from reaching a final vote. “We have done everything we can,” Georgia Senator Richard Russell noted with deep regret. “There is nothing more we can do. This bill will become law, and this country will never be the same for it.”
On August 28th, the Voting Rights Act overwhelmingly passed the Senate by a margin of 83-17. 16 Southern Democrats voted against it and the only Republican to join them was James Martin of Alabama. The 83 Senators who voted for it consisted of 47 Republicans – including Richard Nixon of California and Barry Goldwater of Arizona – and 36 Democrats. Although Goldwater – one of the leading conservatives of the era – opposed the Federal Government interfering in the affairs of the states, he voted for the VRA because he saw the right to vote as a constitutional right that the Federal Government had the obligation to enforce. The states had ratified the Fifteenth Amendment prohibiting the denial of the right to vote based on race; the states therefore had to obey it. Having passed the Senate, the VRA had to clear one more hurdle before it could be sent to the White House. Because the Senate had removed the Federal ban on poll taxes in state elections, the House of Representatives had to sign off on this alteration to their original bill. On September 3rd, the House gave its’ approval by a margin of 360-75. 54 Democrats, 20 Republicans, and 1 Independent didn’t approve of it; 226 Republicans and 134 Democrats did approve of it. The next day in the East Room of the White House, flanked by congressional and civil rights leaders and with the media on hand to broadcast the event live, President Henry M. Jackson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1963 into law.
(A voter registration office, circa 1964)
The Voting Rights Act of 1963 became the crowning achievement of Jackson’s Presidency. He had done what no other President had been able or willing to do: make following the Fifteenth Amendment mandatory. With the stroke of a pen, he had ended nearly a century of blatantly ignoring the law of the land in deference to the South. For nearly a century, white Southerners had steadfastly refused to allow African-Americans to exercise their constitutional right to vote and had gotten away with it. The passage of the VRA meant those days were over. The Fifteenth Amendment now meant exactly what it said and it would be strictly enforced by the Federal Government whether white Southerners liked it or not. Just as Russell predicted, the VRA had a far-reaching effect on America. It torn down virtually all the barricades which had been used so effectively to disenfranchise black voters:
- Literacy tests were banned, so blacks no longer had to answer intentionally difficult questions in order to register to vote or cast a ballot.
- The requirement that a black person find a white person willing to vouch that they were of good moral character was eliminated. As John Lewis later noted, “No white person in their right mind in the South was going to vouch that a black person was of good moral character.”
- White officials in charge of voter registration were prohibited from refusing to register black voters or limiting their office hours just to make it all the more difficult for blacks to register or making up ridiculous tests that blacks had no chance of passing like guessing how many jelly beans were in a jar.
- Intimidating or harassing blacks in an effort to prevent them from voting was now illegal.
- As discussed previously, the law banned the payment of poll taxes in Federal elections but allowed the payment of poll taxes in state elections to continue. This wouldn’t last long, though. In 1966, the Supreme Court would reverse a 1937 decision upholding the use of the poll tax in state elections and strike it down as unconstitutional on the grounds that it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
(Campaigning for President in New York City in 1992, Bill Clinton epitomized the New South Democrat which the Voting Rights Act of 1963 had helped usher in)
In addition to giving rise to New South Democrats like Clinton (who as a high school student in 1963 actually got to shake Jackson’s hands at a White House event sponsored by the American Legion), the VRA opened the door for African-Americans to seek elected office. In 1964, there were just three African-American state legislators in the entire South. That number would shoot up to 176 by 1984. At the end of the 1960s there would be 1,500 African-American office holders nationwide; at the beginning of the 1980s there would be 5,000. By all measures, the Voting Rights Act of 1963 would be a tremendous success and a major legacy for Jackson. However, it was a legacy that came with a price. On September 5th, 1963, Alabama Governor George Wallace publically announced his candidacy for the Democratic Presidential nomination. In his announcement speech, Wallace furiously vowed to repeal the new voting rights law and roll back every gain civil rights had made during Scoop’s tenure. The anger that was on full display reflected Southern outrage that one of the pillars holding up their Jim Crow system – voter disenfranchisement – had just been knocked down. By taking such a bold move that clearly favored African-Americans over states rights, Jackson had stirred a hornets’ nest of opposition which would jeopardize the future of his Presidency. No post-Reconstruction Democrat had won the White House without Southern support and with the South ready to unite behind Wallace in the upcoming Presidential election, it appeared to some observers that Henry M. Jackson had just sacrificed a second term in order to do what morally and legally needed to be done for the good of the country. Other observers weren’t so sure that the President’s show of political courage would be his swan song. “Jackson will lose the segregationist vote,” a newspaper reporter for “The Chattanooga Times” wrote after the voting rights bill became law, “But he will get 110% of the Negro vote. He will gain more votes than he will lose.”
With Wallace hell-bent on throwing Scoop out of office for being pro-civil rights and South Dakota Senator George McGovern about to toss his hat into the ring because of strong disagreements over foreign policy and national defense, the 1964 Democratic primaries were shaping up to be a fierce three-way battle with much more than just the nomination at stake.
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Magnific... now, time to see who runs for the White House...
What's going on in Nam?
What's going on in Nam?
Hey Nathan, I've been reading your AAR for the past week and let me just say the quality is so good that it's comparable to a Harry Turtledove novel. I love how in the TTL everything in this world matches just like ours while at the same time going completely against original history. Also as a fellow fan of George Bush Sr. it's nice to know that he'll have a 85-93 presidency. The 1964 race is sure to be interesting as i predict that the Republicans will win and usher in a Nixon-era like time (hopefully with no Watergate). I just wonder though who has the greatest chance of winning. I would love to see a Goldwater presidency but Nixon and Forbes have equal chances for the presidency. For the updates i have some questions of the Future for this AAR:
1. Now that China in this timeline is making hugely aggressive moves in Asia, wouldn't it be safe to assume that there would be a popular movement to repeal Article 9 in Japan in order to better protect against China and prevent incidents in the future such as the South China Sea Crisis? I'm sure the U.S would love to support it, plus this would mean possible Japanese troops in Vietnam.
2. With the Voting Rights Act would Blacks be more likely to vote Republican or Democrat nationwide? While Scoop's massive support for Civil rights it's safe to assume he'll get the Black demographic in the election, though since the Republicans in TTL are fervent civil rights supporters i think in the long run Blacks would be 50/50 in terms of political support.
3. When Chiang Kai-Shek dies in 1975 we'll that become a sign of detente between America and China similar to OTL, or would that mean that someone else would take his place with a similar mindset and ideology?
4. How come the 1956 Hungarian Revolution was never written, was it because of the timeline being differetn or because of being not having remembered at the time?
5. Lastly, will African decolonization be covered into detail with focus on wars of independence and heavy cold war espionage, or will most focus be placed on Asia and Europe?
Thanks for the great updates and looking forward to more soon.
P.S Roger Ledyard is now my favorite character of this alternate.
1. Now that China in this timeline is making hugely aggressive moves in Asia, wouldn't it be safe to assume that there would be a popular movement to repeal Article 9 in Japan in order to better protect against China and prevent incidents in the future such as the South China Sea Crisis? I'm sure the U.S would love to support it, plus this would mean possible Japanese troops in Vietnam.
2. With the Voting Rights Act would Blacks be more likely to vote Republican or Democrat nationwide? While Scoop's massive support for Civil rights it's safe to assume he'll get the Black demographic in the election, though since the Republicans in TTL are fervent civil rights supporters i think in the long run Blacks would be 50/50 in terms of political support.
3. When Chiang Kai-Shek dies in 1975 we'll that become a sign of detente between America and China similar to OTL, or would that mean that someone else would take his place with a similar mindset and ideology?
4. How come the 1956 Hungarian Revolution was never written, was it because of the timeline being differetn or because of being not having remembered at the time?
5. Lastly, will African decolonization be covered into detail with focus on wars of independence and heavy cold war espionage, or will most focus be placed on Asia and Europe?
Thanks for the great updates and looking forward to more soon.
P.S Roger Ledyard is now my favorite character of this alternate.
Too be honest, please focus this AAR on Vietnam. It's the name of the title of AAR after all. And I don't see America allowing Japan to rearm themselves, especially not allowing Japanese troops in Vietnam. I think America would fight it alone, with of course help from the nations that were part of the alliance that sent troops to Vietnam, like Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and Philippines.
While I understand your reasoning for not wanting Japan to re-arm themselves, there are actually several strong cases in both this alternate and real world history that would actually make it more plausible to have Japan re-arm themselves while still keeping the main focus on Vietnam.
Because China in TTL is a strong regional power with a modern millitary and a heavily industrialized economy, they are far more powerful and a bigger threat than Communist China in OTL. This would make the Japanese want to re-arm themselves because in OTL they could just rely on the U.S Navy to block China and didn't really have any major threats or crises, plus in OTL China mainly focused on Taiwan as its main foreign policy. With Taiwan (Formosa) being part of Nationalist China, the Chinese are solely bent on revenge against the Japanese, making the threat to Japan extremely more dangerous. Plus the United States wouldn't really have a problem re-arming Japan. By letting Japan have a strong millitary, the U.S can focus more on facing the Soviets in Europe while sending more troops to combatthe Communists in Vietnam, meanwhile Japan would be able to face China on her own and might be able to help protect some of its neighbors. Even today many people in the U.S millitary and the State department are wishing for Japan to get rid of Article 9 in order to help the U.S focus more on the Middle East while it can rely on Japan to take care of Asia's problems.
What many people don't realize is that Japan actually was a huge part in why the U.S went to Vietnam. If South Vietnam survived then the U.S wanted to turn it into a major regional supplier for rice and other agricultural products. This agrarian breadbasket ally would then contribute huge amounts of food to the Japanese economy, allowing the U.S to invest solely into Japan's industrial sector, turning Japan into an economic power that could be a large trade partner and combat Chinese economic expansion in Asia. Also if Japan sent troops to South Vietnam as part of the coalition then America won't have to send 500,000 troops because it can rely on alot of its allies to help in combat and defense duties. So hopefully with this information in the future Japan may repeal Article 9 and once more join the ranks of the Great Powers of the world.
Well, it looks like we are set for the return of the Republicans to the White House for the first time sense Dewey. I highly doubt Wallace will win the nomination, and Scoop looks like he is headed for humiliation, or if he does manage to beat McGovern he will likely lose the General Election. As this AAR is titled "The Vietnam War Edition" I highly doubt that we will see the anti-war dove McGovern become President, just as Vietnam is about to heat up . As such it is the time for the Republicans to take over! I support Rockefeller. President Rockefeller has a nice ring to it...
I am also wondering how the Democratic Left Wing will look sense it does not look like their will be anything close to Johnson's Great Society, kicking Medicare and Medicaid down the road for a future President.
. As such it is the time for the Republicans to take over! I support Rockefeller. President Rockefeller has a nice ring to it...I am also wondering how the Democratic Left Wing will look sense it does not look like their will be anything close to Johnson's Great Society, kicking Medicare and Medicaid down the road for a future President.
Well Scoop is about to prove that no good deed goes unpunished. The only question is if he makes it to the general; I suppose its possible that none of the three do and it works like OTL 68 but that seems unlikely. Of course this means Vietnam could go bad under the Republicans which would be fitting since they get the WWII credit in TTL. Or Vietnam could work out and they get credit for that too. Unlikely but possible I suppose.
Also, I'm with jeeshadow in wondering about the impact of the 64 election on the Great Society programs, since there probably won't be a landslide that puts a lot of liberal Democrats in Congress and I don't think even a more liberal Republican like Rockefeller would or could push through such an agenda and since I think Goldwater wins the nomination and the election, there is going to be a very interesting diversion from the OTL. I suppose a lack of Medicare and Medicaid could make it easier to put in place a more comprehensive program.
Also, I'm with jeeshadow in wondering about the impact of the 64 election on the Great Society programs, since there probably won't be a landslide that puts a lot of liberal Democrats in Congress and I don't think even a more liberal Republican like Rockefeller would or could push through such an agenda and since I think Goldwater wins the nomination and the election, there is going to be a very interesting diversion from the OTL. I suppose a lack of Medicare and Medicaid could make it easier to put in place a more comprehensive program.
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Kurt_Steiner: I have an update coming up about the 1964 Republican field.
That’s coming up in the update after this one.
Kaiser Chris: Thank you very much. I never read a Harry Turtledove novel, although I have read other alternate history books.
I do a lot of research into what really happened in order to try to figure out what could have happened had “this” or “that” been different. In the case of civil rights for example, I looked at JFK’s record on civil rights and Scoop Jackson’s record on civil rights and compared the two. Since Jackson was a stronger supporter of civil rights than Kennedy was, I then made the conclusion that President Jackson would have pushed harder for civil rights than President Kennedy (who was rather timid about taking a strong position on the issue and had to be forced by events to take action).
George H.W. Bush is one of my favorite Presidents. I was a little kid when he was President and the older I get, the more I find myself gravitating towards him both from a political and a personal standpoint. He had an understated style of doing things that I find appealing and he’s someone I would have politically supported had I been able to do so. Although I have several ideas for Presidents before 1985 and after 1993, Bush is the only person I have in mind to be President between 1985 and 1993. That is why he is official even though I am still in 1963.
Whenever I do a Presidential election, I always have the next one in mind. That way I know how to approach the next four years. When I did the 1960 election, I knew that voters in 1964 would be in the mood for change after three straight Democratic victories. So I have been writing Jackson’s Presidency with that in mind.
I’m not entirely sure yet who I will go with on the Republican side in 1964. I keep wrestling with a couple different ideas. I like Goldwater, but I have a hard time seeing him be electable. After all, this is the man who talked freely about lobbing a nuclear bomb into the bathroom of the Kremlin.
The United States is encouraging Japan to beef up her Self-Defense Force in the face of Chinese aggression. The problem is that Japan on her own isn’t in a military position to defend herself in the event of a Chinese attack. That is why the US is stepping up her military presence in the Western Pacific to help defend the Japanese.
I think it would depend on who the Democratic nominee is in 1964. If Scoop gets renominated, he can safely count on the black vote in November. If McGovern gets nominated instead, I think he would run into trouble with blacks who would view him as someone who wrestled the nomination away from “their hero.” As for Republicans, they enjoy a stronger position among black voters TTL because of what Republican Presidents did for them back in the 1940s as well as the fact that the majority of Congressional support for the Voting Rights Act came from Republicans. The “Party of Lincoln” label still carries significant weight heading into 1964.
I imagine a little bit of both. I don’t think Chiang’s successor would immediately abandon his way of doing things, but I do think you would see the Young Turks in China emerge and eventually take power in an effort to change how things are done now that Chiang is safely gone.
One reason why I never did the 1956 Hungarian Revolution is because of different circumstances. Germany never got divided into two TTL because I reached the Oder River in my HOI game and was able to release all of Germany as the yellow FRG. I was also able to keep the Czech Republic (but not Slovakia) and Yugoslavia out of Communist hands. So with the West having a stronger position in Central Europe and the Balkans, I imagined the Soviets beefing up their military presence in the captive nations of Eastern Europe to prevent anyone from getting away. With more Soviet forces in Budapest, I just figured they could put down the revolution should it be attempted. Another reason is because I felt like doing something else instead of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution (namely the civil war in Yugoslavia between the Communists and the pro-US royalist regime).
African decolonization is something I just never felt like getting into. I did an update about the Congo, but that’s pretty much the extent of my decolonization coverage. I tried to write an update about Algeria, but I got bored with it and abandoned it. I look at Asia and I go “Oh! I got an idea!” I look at Africa and go “I got nothing.” Unless I get a spark, chances are you aren’t going to see much about African decolonization in this AAR. It doesn’t mean it isn’t happening; it just means I don’t feel like spending time and effort covering a subject that I don’t have the spark for.
I’m glad you like Roger Ledyard. Although many of the people I feature in this AAR are real, there are some who are fictional. Ledyard is a character I created, based on my background of having grown up in Groton, Connecticut. There really was a Ledyard family that was prominent in the local area (there’s a town near Groton called Ledyard that’s named in their honor). I went to an elementary school named after William Ledyard, who was a colonel in the American Army during the American Revolution. Given how prominent the name Ledyard was in my childhood, I decided to give Roger (which I took from Roger Sherman, who represented Connecticut during the Revolution and afterwards) that surname.
NickFeyR: I have the Vietnam War mod downloaded and up and running. It starts on November 1st, 1963 and goes on until the end of April 1975. So five-and-a-half years after I began this “Vietnam War” AAR, I’m actually going to start playing the mod and posting screenshots from my game.
Kaiser Chris: Article 9 bans Japan from using war as a way to settle international disputes. It doesn’t mean Japan can’t have a military force in which to protect herself.
China is becoming a strong regional power. The Chinese spent much of the 1950s rebuilding their economy and national infrastructure that were virtually wiped out by their war with (1937-1939) and subsequent occupation by Japan (1939-1947). It was only in the late 1950s that China began to seriously build up her military. China in 1963 is only strong enough to do saber-rattling. She isn’t strong enough yet to actually attack Japan (not to invade the country but to get back at them for their brutal occupation of the country), get into a naval war with the Americans and the British, or force the British out of Hong Kong. But give her a few more years...
There’s an alternate history essay by Chinese expert Arthur Waldron called “China Without Tears” which lays out how postwar China might have developed had Chiang Kai-shek remained in power on the mainland. It’s really interesting and well thought out, and has influenced how I’m presenting a Republic of China that never got driven off the mainland by the Communists (which is one of the biggest differences between this alternate history and real history).
As for Japanese rearming, I think the Japanese would at least build more ships to defend her right to the sea and probably build more planes. But I don’t think they would have the kind of large military they had back in the 1930s and early 1940s. China is not going to invade Japan and Japan certainly isn’t going to invade anybody, so there’s no need for a large army.
Speaking of being an economic power, I assume that with Korea being united in this alternate history and ruled by Seoul, Korea will become a stronger economic power than she is in reality. After all, South Korea would have access to North Korea’s iron ore and coal production (one of the few sectors where North Korea performs significantly better than South Korea). With a much larger population and more opportunities arising from a united Korean peninsula, I assume Korea will have a stronger and larger economy. Certainly the North Koreans will be much better off, considering they will be living in a free and prosperous society instead of languishing under a harsh and oppressive Communist regime.
jeeshadow: 1964 really is shaping up to be a Republican year. With the Democratic Party tearing itself apart at the seams and the electorate in the mood for change, the GOP would have to do something really stupid to lose a surefire election.
You’re right about Wallace. He has no chance of winning the nomination, but he certainly can and will make life difficult for whoever does get the nomination. As for Scoop, his days are numbered either way.
McGovern ran a terrible campaign OTL in 1972 and somehow I don’t think he would be a better candidate if he gets the nomination in 1964. As McGovern himself said, “I wanted to run for President in the worst possible way and I’m sure I did.”
You will definitely see Rockefeller in the GOP primaries. Whether he can win the nomination is something you will have to wait and see.
I think Medicare will be one of those things liberals will keep pushing for until the political conditions are right for it. Jackson tried to pass Medicare in 1961, but Congress wouldn’t play ball.
SirNolan: There is also the possibility that we could see the Democratic convention opt not to nominate either Scoop or McGovern and go for a brokered candidate instead.
Vietnam could go either way regardless of how 1964 plays out. I’m trying a different strategy to win in Vietnam, but it could also be just a different way of losing. The fact that I’m playing the Vietnam War mod for the first time means I’m not really sure how things will turn out.
Given that the Fair Deal went almost nowhere, the Great Society is a non-starter. It will be interesting to see what a Republican President and a Republican Congress will do in place of LBJ and his huge liberal majority in Congress.
Kaiser Chris: Well, with glasses like that...
On a side note, former First Lady Nancy Reagan (1981-1989) died last Sunday at age 94. May she rest in peace alongside her beloved husband.
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Opening
In September 1963:
(“Dr. Richard Kimble: an innocent victim of blind justice, falsely convicted for the murder of his wife...reprieved by fate when a train wreck freed him en route to the death house...freed him to hide in lonely desperation, to change his identity, to toil at many jobs...freed him to search for a one-armed man he saw leave the scene of the crime...freed him to run before the relentless pursuit of the police lieutenant obsessed with his capture.”)
On September 11th, a tall and handsome thirty-nine-year-old stepped up to the podium in an Austin, Texas press room. To the reporters gathered to hear what he had to say, the speaker struck them as something akin to a fish out of water. He didn’t sound like a Texan, he didn’t have the educational background of a Texan, and he certainly hadn’t been born in Texas. Born in Massachusetts and raised in Connecticut, this speaker had attended prestigious New England schools like Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts and Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. So what was this New Englander doing all the way down in Texas? The answer: he wanted to make his own way in the world and what Texas had to offer proved to be too attractive. Instead of following his father to Wall Street after World War Two, this man packed up his growing family and moved south to Texas to join the booming oil industry. A hard and tireless worker by nature, he climbed his way up the oil industry ladder and became a millionaire. In the early 1960s, he used his business connections to raise money for Texas Republican John Tower in his two unsuccessful bids for the Senate and his 1962 election to the Governorship. Having found a new calling in politics, the speaker decided to seek elected office and he audaciously set his sights high. “My name is George Bush,” he began with his noticeable New England accent, “And today I announce my candidacy for the United States Senate.”
Audacious indeed! Democrats had tightly controlled Texas politics for nearly a century; until Tower’s gubernatorial election, no Republican had held a major political office in The Lone Star State since the 1870s. By choosing to seek the GOP nomination for the Senate, Bush could have looked like he wanted to be a sacrificial lamb in a state that last elected a Republican Senator during Reconstruction. Except...Texas was experiencing a tumultuous political upheaval which gave the first-time office seeker an opening. The combination of the Fair Deal and Jackson taking the moral high ground on civil rights had greatly exacerbated tensions within the Democratic Party in Texas to the point that an all-out civil war erupted. On the one side you had the liberal wing, represented by Senator Ralph Yarborough, who loyally backed the President. On the other side you had the conservative wing, represented by Senator John Connally, who very much opposed what the President was trying to do domestically. The two wings were clashing bitterly, both claiming to be the true voice of the Democratic Party in Texas and accusing the other of being a phony. Yarborough and Connally personally hated each other and refused to even say a word to each other on Capitol Hill. Exploiting this inter-party rift, Tower campaigned for Governor in 1962 by playing up his conservatism and urging conservative Democrats to cross party lines and vote for him on ideological grounds. His central campaign argument ran something like this:
“I am a conservative. You are conservatives. We share the same values and beliefs. Instead of staying home on Election Day because your party has nominated a liberal that shares none of your values and beliefs, you should enter the voting booth and cast your vote not for a Republican but for a fellow conservative. Only by electing me Governor can we keep Texas in conservative hands.”
His strategy of appealing to conservative Democrats to put shared ideology ahead of party lines worked. On Election Day, John Tower did the unthinkable: he became the first Republican to be elected to statewide office in Texas since the 1870s. After attending Tower’s inauguration in Austin, Bush began to think that if he followed his friend’s strategy, he too could get elected to office. The first target of opportunity was Yarborough’s Senate seat, which would be up for a vote in 1964. In Bush’s mind this was perfect: who better to take on than the bane of conservative Democrats? He enthusiastically believed “I can win.”
In his speech announcing his bid for the Senate, Bush hammered away at Yarborough’s liberalism and proudly promoted himself as a conservative Republican in the Tower-Goldwater mold. He said that Yarborough “is diametrically opposed to everything I believe in. He is a Federal interventionist. I believe in the finest concept of states’ rights – in keeping the government closest to the people.”
He attacked the incumbent Senator for supporting all of the Fair Deal, such as his 1961 vote for Medicare (which passed the Senate with a tie-breaking vote by the Vice President...only to die in the House of Representatives). Bush promised that if elected to the Senate, he would work with Connally instead of working against him like Yarborough constantly was. Like Tower, Bush emphasized shared ideology over party line. Unlike Tower, Bush wasn’t a Texan by birth and it showed during the speech. GOP operative James Leonard, whom Bush hired to be his campaign manager, cringed at hearing his New England-rooted vernacular. “He called Yarborough a ‘profligate spender’ and nobody knew what the hell that meant. It sounded like some kind of sexual thing.”
As George Bush and his wife Barbara hit the GOP primary campaign trail in the autumn of 1963, Leonard knew he badly needed to work on his man’s public image. If Bush wanted to convince Texans to send him to the United States Senate, sounding like a Texan and not an “Ivy League Yankee” would be a big help.
Bush’s confidence that he could unseat Yarborough reflected his party’s optimism in the autumn of 1963. The Republican Party had spent the past decade in the political wilderness, having last won a Presidential election in 1948. Since then, the GOP had lost three Presidential elections in a row (1952, 1956, and 1960). With 1964 on the horizon, Republicans confidently believed they could finally end their losing streak and regain control of the White House. They were after all facing a Democratic incumbent who was politically vulnerable and whose Gallup approval rating sat at a dismal 36%. Henry M. Jackson was unpopular with many Americans, who saw him as a weak and ineffective President. Despite the landmark passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1963, Jackson’s domestic record was sparse and made the electorate feel that the country wasn’t moving with him at the helm. The actions he did take split the Democratic Party apart, with angry primary challengers coming at him from both the Southern and liberal wings of the party. The economy was still recovering from the effects of the 1962 steel strike, which Jackson had badly mishandled. The Secretary of Agriculture and several other USDA officials were now sitting in jail for engaging in corruption and fraud which managed to eclipse even the Teapot Dome Scandal of the 1920s. Given his unpopular and troubled Presidency, it should perhaps come as no surprise that Democrats in late 1963 were wringing their hands at the prospect of re-nominating Scoop for a second term. During his November 24th appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press”, Democratic National Committee Chairman John F. Kennedy showed only lukewarm support for the President. JFK’s comments, which were more about defending his party’s record of the past ten years in general than defending his party’s standard-bearer in particular, struck many as evidence that the party in power was in an “anyone but Scoop” mood. “Scoop certainly felt he was being abandoned,” Presidential speechwriter Arthur Schlesinger later recalled. “What hurt him the most was seeing people he thought were his friends turning their backs on him.”
With Jackson’s chances for four more years in office growing dimmer, Republicans were eager to exploit anything that could help them drive home their message that it was time for a badly needed change. Thus when rumors emerged that autumn concerning a member of his Administration, they quickly jumped all over it.
If you were in Washington, D.C. in the late 1950s and early 1960s, then chances are you knew who Bobby Baker was. Born in South Carolina in November 1928, Baker was a well-known figure in Washington who personally knew many of her high-profile players. He was especially close to Lyndon B. Johnson, who made him his secretary when he became Senate Majority Leader in 1956. Following the 1960 Presidential election, LBJ advised Jackson to appoint Baker to be his legislative liaison on the grounds that his secretary had a rapport with leaders on Capitol Hill which made him a natural for the post. Scoop obliged and for the next three years, Baker served as his personal representative in the halls of Congress. In late September 1963, Jackson began to hear rumors that Baker was doing more than simply serving as the middleman between the White House and Congress. Allegedly Baker had set up a side business in which he provided lawmakers and other influential men with what he called “party girls” and pocketed the profits. In other words, the legislative liaison in the Jackson Administration was making money from prostitution! Having endured a major corruption scandal, the last thing the President wanted or needed was a new scandal that was even more salacious. For the Republicans, it felt like Christmas had come early. They jumped at the chance to present the Administration as being scandal-ridden and full of ethically-challenged crooks who needed to be thrown out (although no one accused the straight-as-an-arrow President of having ethic problems). Republicans on the Senate Rules Committee launched an investigation into Baker’s “party girls” service, as well as other business ventures Baker was involved with that could be financially questionable – such as a business which provided vending machines to companies who were working for programs that had been established by Federal grants. These Republicans wanted to know how a man earning a government salary had been able to afford a town house, some pricey country real estate, and three luxury cars. With the Senate investigation generating public attention of the kind he didn’t want, the President tried to blunt the impact these sensational allegations were having on his Administration. On October 7th, he fired Baker and publically reiterated that corruption and ethic violations wouldn’t be tolerated by him. Unfortunately for Scoop, there was more to this scandal than just Bobby Baker renting out prostitutes.
With Baker being investigated, it didn’t take long for his closest friend to be drawn into the matter. Although there was no evidence tying Lyndon B. Johnson to the alleged “party girls” service, there was evidence that he had done other business dealings with Baker. Following the money, the Senate widen its’ investigation to look into the Vice President’s financial activities. They expected to dig up dirt; after all, this was LBJ they were talking about. This was a man who had committed voter fraud in the 1948 Democratic Senate primary in Texas and who had made jokes about having done so. This was a man who had the reputation of doing whatever it took to get his way – whether it was ethical or not. By the very nature of his character, Johnson had made himself vulnerable to scrutiny and had given curious investigators an opening to ask questions...and questions they asked.
“Where did Johnson get $500,000 to buy a 4,800-acre ranch in Texas? Why was it that the Johnsons owned the only broadcasting tower in Austin? What kind of real estate and banking deals had Johnson done? How did Johnson acquire a fortune worth $15 million?”
These were tantalizing questions and it turned out the probing Senators weren’t the only ones asking them. On October 28th, “Life” magazine opened their own inquiry into Johnson’s wealth. They too were curious about how someone who had been on the public payroll all his life had managed to make so much money. With suspicions about unethical behavior swirling around him, the Vice President denied that he had done anything wrong. He accused those who were investigating him of engaging in a politically-motivated fishing expedition for the sole purpose of damaging the Administration a year away from the next election. However, his denials were met with skepticism. Given that the Vice President was once again under a cloud of suspicion about his questionable activities, some within the Administration weren’t giving him the benefit of a doubt about this new round of allegations. They urged the President to either dump LBJ from the 1964 ticket because he was a tainted liability or ask him to outright resign, pointing to his very public commitment to dismiss any corrupt official from his Administration. Put between a rock and a hard place, Scoop chose to do nothing for the time being. He had already decided to keep Johnson on the ticket and he wasn’t a man who changed his mind very easily. He also wasn’t convinced yet that the rumors going around about Johnson’s wealth were true. After all, he had heard accusations about his Vice President being involved with last year’s scandal at the Department of Agriculture that turned out to be completely untrue. These new rumors also couldn’t be true, right?
That’s coming up in the update after this one.
Kaiser Chris: Thank you very much. I never read a Harry Turtledove novel, although I have read other alternate history books.
I do a lot of research into what really happened in order to try to figure out what could have happened had “this” or “that” been different. In the case of civil rights for example, I looked at JFK’s record on civil rights and Scoop Jackson’s record on civil rights and compared the two. Since Jackson was a stronger supporter of civil rights than Kennedy was, I then made the conclusion that President Jackson would have pushed harder for civil rights than President Kennedy (who was rather timid about taking a strong position on the issue and had to be forced by events to take action).
George H.W. Bush is one of my favorite Presidents. I was a little kid when he was President and the older I get, the more I find myself gravitating towards him both from a political and a personal standpoint. He had an understated style of doing things that I find appealing and he’s someone I would have politically supported had I been able to do so. Although I have several ideas for Presidents before 1985 and after 1993, Bush is the only person I have in mind to be President between 1985 and 1993. That is why he is official even though I am still in 1963.
Whenever I do a Presidential election, I always have the next one in mind. That way I know how to approach the next four years. When I did the 1960 election, I knew that voters in 1964 would be in the mood for change after three straight Democratic victories. So I have been writing Jackson’s Presidency with that in mind.
I’m not entirely sure yet who I will go with on the Republican side in 1964. I keep wrestling with a couple different ideas. I like Goldwater, but I have a hard time seeing him be electable. After all, this is the man who talked freely about lobbing a nuclear bomb into the bathroom of the Kremlin.
The United States is encouraging Japan to beef up her Self-Defense Force in the face of Chinese aggression. The problem is that Japan on her own isn’t in a military position to defend herself in the event of a Chinese attack. That is why the US is stepping up her military presence in the Western Pacific to help defend the Japanese.
I think it would depend on who the Democratic nominee is in 1964. If Scoop gets renominated, he can safely count on the black vote in November. If McGovern gets nominated instead, I think he would run into trouble with blacks who would view him as someone who wrestled the nomination away from “their hero.” As for Republicans, they enjoy a stronger position among black voters TTL because of what Republican Presidents did for them back in the 1940s as well as the fact that the majority of Congressional support for the Voting Rights Act came from Republicans. The “Party of Lincoln” label still carries significant weight heading into 1964.
I imagine a little bit of both. I don’t think Chiang’s successor would immediately abandon his way of doing things, but I do think you would see the Young Turks in China emerge and eventually take power in an effort to change how things are done now that Chiang is safely gone.
One reason why I never did the 1956 Hungarian Revolution is because of different circumstances. Germany never got divided into two TTL because I reached the Oder River in my HOI game and was able to release all of Germany as the yellow FRG. I was also able to keep the Czech Republic (but not Slovakia) and Yugoslavia out of Communist hands. So with the West having a stronger position in Central Europe and the Balkans, I imagined the Soviets beefing up their military presence in the captive nations of Eastern Europe to prevent anyone from getting away. With more Soviet forces in Budapest, I just figured they could put down the revolution should it be attempted. Another reason is because I felt like doing something else instead of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution (namely the civil war in Yugoslavia between the Communists and the pro-US royalist regime).
African decolonization is something I just never felt like getting into. I did an update about the Congo, but that’s pretty much the extent of my decolonization coverage. I tried to write an update about Algeria, but I got bored with it and abandoned it. I look at Asia and I go “Oh! I got an idea!” I look at Africa and go “I got nothing.” Unless I get a spark, chances are you aren’t going to see much about African decolonization in this AAR. It doesn’t mean it isn’t happening; it just means I don’t feel like spending time and effort covering a subject that I don’t have the spark for.
I’m glad you like Roger Ledyard. Although many of the people I feature in this AAR are real, there are some who are fictional. Ledyard is a character I created, based on my background of having grown up in Groton, Connecticut. There really was a Ledyard family that was prominent in the local area (there’s a town near Groton called Ledyard that’s named in their honor). I went to an elementary school named after William Ledyard, who was a colonel in the American Army during the American Revolution. Given how prominent the name Ledyard was in my childhood, I decided to give Roger (which I took from Roger Sherman, who represented Connecticut during the Revolution and afterwards) that surname.
NickFeyR: I have the Vietnam War mod downloaded and up and running. It starts on November 1st, 1963 and goes on until the end of April 1975. So five-and-a-half years after I began this “Vietnam War” AAR, I’m actually going to start playing the mod and posting screenshots from my game.
Kaiser Chris: Article 9 bans Japan from using war as a way to settle international disputes. It doesn’t mean Japan can’t have a military force in which to protect herself.
China is becoming a strong regional power. The Chinese spent much of the 1950s rebuilding their economy and national infrastructure that were virtually wiped out by their war with (1937-1939) and subsequent occupation by Japan (1939-1947). It was only in the late 1950s that China began to seriously build up her military. China in 1963 is only strong enough to do saber-rattling. She isn’t strong enough yet to actually attack Japan (not to invade the country but to get back at them for their brutal occupation of the country), get into a naval war with the Americans and the British, or force the British out of Hong Kong. But give her a few more years...
There’s an alternate history essay by Chinese expert Arthur Waldron called “China Without Tears” which lays out how postwar China might have developed had Chiang Kai-shek remained in power on the mainland. It’s really interesting and well thought out, and has influenced how I’m presenting a Republic of China that never got driven off the mainland by the Communists (which is one of the biggest differences between this alternate history and real history).
As for Japanese rearming, I think the Japanese would at least build more ships to defend her right to the sea and probably build more planes. But I don’t think they would have the kind of large military they had back in the 1930s and early 1940s. China is not going to invade Japan and Japan certainly isn’t going to invade anybody, so there’s no need for a large army.
Speaking of being an economic power, I assume that with Korea being united in this alternate history and ruled by Seoul, Korea will become a stronger economic power than she is in reality. After all, South Korea would have access to North Korea’s iron ore and coal production (one of the few sectors where North Korea performs significantly better than South Korea). With a much larger population and more opportunities arising from a united Korean peninsula, I assume Korea will have a stronger and larger economy. Certainly the North Koreans will be much better off, considering they will be living in a free and prosperous society instead of languishing under a harsh and oppressive Communist regime.
jeeshadow: 1964 really is shaping up to be a Republican year. With the Democratic Party tearing itself apart at the seams and the electorate in the mood for change, the GOP would have to do something really stupid to lose a surefire election.
You’re right about Wallace. He has no chance of winning the nomination, but he certainly can and will make life difficult for whoever does get the nomination. As for Scoop, his days are numbered either way.
McGovern ran a terrible campaign OTL in 1972 and somehow I don’t think he would be a better candidate if he gets the nomination in 1964. As McGovern himself said, “I wanted to run for President in the worst possible way and I’m sure I did.”
You will definitely see Rockefeller in the GOP primaries. Whether he can win the nomination is something you will have to wait and see.
I think Medicare will be one of those things liberals will keep pushing for until the political conditions are right for it. Jackson tried to pass Medicare in 1961, but Congress wouldn’t play ball.
SirNolan: There is also the possibility that we could see the Democratic convention opt not to nominate either Scoop or McGovern and go for a brokered candidate instead.
Vietnam could go either way regardless of how 1964 plays out. I’m trying a different strategy to win in Vietnam, but it could also be just a different way of losing. The fact that I’m playing the Vietnam War mod for the first time means I’m not really sure how things will turn out.
Given that the Fair Deal went almost nowhere, the Great Society is a non-starter. It will be interesting to see what a Republican President and a Republican Congress will do in place of LBJ and his huge liberal majority in Congress.
Kaiser Chris: Well, with glasses like that...
On a side note, former First Lady Nancy Reagan (1981-1989) died last Sunday at age 94. May she rest in peace alongside her beloved husband.
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Opening
In September 1963:
- The first Marvel comic books featuring The Avengers and The X-Men hit the stands.
- British geophysicists Frederick Vine and Drummond Matthews jointly publish a paper proving that the seafloor is spreading away from mid-ocean ridges by pointing out that there is a symmetrical pattern of magnetic reversals in the basalt rocks on both sides of the ridges. At the time, the theory of plate tectonics (that the Earth’s crust and upper mantle is broken up into several plates) was new and not generally accepted in the scientific community.
- The Pro Football Hall of Fame opens in Canton, Ohio with seventeen charter members including Green Bay Packers founder Curly Lambeau and famed halfback Jim Thorpe.
- “Heat Wave” by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas peaks at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100.
- The Big Three television networks begin their 1963-1964 television season. In addition to returning favorites like “The Beverly Hillbillies” (CBS; season two) and “The Dick Van Dyke Show” (CBS; season three) are new shows including “The Fugitive” (ABC) and “Petticoat Junction” (CBS).
(“Dr. Richard Kimble: an innocent victim of blind justice, falsely convicted for the murder of his wife...reprieved by fate when a train wreck freed him en route to the death house...freed him to hide in lonely desperation, to change his identity, to toil at many jobs...freed him to search for a one-armed man he saw leave the scene of the crime...freed him to run before the relentless pursuit of the police lieutenant obsessed with his capture.”)
On September 11th, a tall and handsome thirty-nine-year-old stepped up to the podium in an Austin, Texas press room. To the reporters gathered to hear what he had to say, the speaker struck them as something akin to a fish out of water. He didn’t sound like a Texan, he didn’t have the educational background of a Texan, and he certainly hadn’t been born in Texas. Born in Massachusetts and raised in Connecticut, this speaker had attended prestigious New England schools like Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts and Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. So what was this New Englander doing all the way down in Texas? The answer: he wanted to make his own way in the world and what Texas had to offer proved to be too attractive. Instead of following his father to Wall Street after World War Two, this man packed up his growing family and moved south to Texas to join the booming oil industry. A hard and tireless worker by nature, he climbed his way up the oil industry ladder and became a millionaire. In the early 1960s, he used his business connections to raise money for Texas Republican John Tower in his two unsuccessful bids for the Senate and his 1962 election to the Governorship. Having found a new calling in politics, the speaker decided to seek elected office and he audaciously set his sights high. “My name is George Bush,” he began with his noticeable New England accent, “And today I announce my candidacy for the United States Senate.”
Audacious indeed! Democrats had tightly controlled Texas politics for nearly a century; until Tower’s gubernatorial election, no Republican had held a major political office in The Lone Star State since the 1870s. By choosing to seek the GOP nomination for the Senate, Bush could have looked like he wanted to be a sacrificial lamb in a state that last elected a Republican Senator during Reconstruction. Except...Texas was experiencing a tumultuous political upheaval which gave the first-time office seeker an opening. The combination of the Fair Deal and Jackson taking the moral high ground on civil rights had greatly exacerbated tensions within the Democratic Party in Texas to the point that an all-out civil war erupted. On the one side you had the liberal wing, represented by Senator Ralph Yarborough, who loyally backed the President. On the other side you had the conservative wing, represented by Senator John Connally, who very much opposed what the President was trying to do domestically. The two wings were clashing bitterly, both claiming to be the true voice of the Democratic Party in Texas and accusing the other of being a phony. Yarborough and Connally personally hated each other and refused to even say a word to each other on Capitol Hill. Exploiting this inter-party rift, Tower campaigned for Governor in 1962 by playing up his conservatism and urging conservative Democrats to cross party lines and vote for him on ideological grounds. His central campaign argument ran something like this:
“I am a conservative. You are conservatives. We share the same values and beliefs. Instead of staying home on Election Day because your party has nominated a liberal that shares none of your values and beliefs, you should enter the voting booth and cast your vote not for a Republican but for a fellow conservative. Only by electing me Governor can we keep Texas in conservative hands.”
His strategy of appealing to conservative Democrats to put shared ideology ahead of party lines worked. On Election Day, John Tower did the unthinkable: he became the first Republican to be elected to statewide office in Texas since the 1870s. After attending Tower’s inauguration in Austin, Bush began to think that if he followed his friend’s strategy, he too could get elected to office. The first target of opportunity was Yarborough’s Senate seat, which would be up for a vote in 1964. In Bush’s mind this was perfect: who better to take on than the bane of conservative Democrats? He enthusiastically believed “I can win.”
In his speech announcing his bid for the Senate, Bush hammered away at Yarborough’s liberalism and proudly promoted himself as a conservative Republican in the Tower-Goldwater mold. He said that Yarborough “is diametrically opposed to everything I believe in. He is a Federal interventionist. I believe in the finest concept of states’ rights – in keeping the government closest to the people.”
He attacked the incumbent Senator for supporting all of the Fair Deal, such as his 1961 vote for Medicare (which passed the Senate with a tie-breaking vote by the Vice President...only to die in the House of Representatives). Bush promised that if elected to the Senate, he would work with Connally instead of working against him like Yarborough constantly was. Like Tower, Bush emphasized shared ideology over party line. Unlike Tower, Bush wasn’t a Texan by birth and it showed during the speech. GOP operative James Leonard, whom Bush hired to be his campaign manager, cringed at hearing his New England-rooted vernacular. “He called Yarborough a ‘profligate spender’ and nobody knew what the hell that meant. It sounded like some kind of sexual thing.”
As George Bush and his wife Barbara hit the GOP primary campaign trail in the autumn of 1963, Leonard knew he badly needed to work on his man’s public image. If Bush wanted to convince Texans to send him to the United States Senate, sounding like a Texan and not an “Ivy League Yankee” would be a big help.
Bush’s confidence that he could unseat Yarborough reflected his party’s optimism in the autumn of 1963. The Republican Party had spent the past decade in the political wilderness, having last won a Presidential election in 1948. Since then, the GOP had lost three Presidential elections in a row (1952, 1956, and 1960). With 1964 on the horizon, Republicans confidently believed they could finally end their losing streak and regain control of the White House. They were after all facing a Democratic incumbent who was politically vulnerable and whose Gallup approval rating sat at a dismal 36%. Henry M. Jackson was unpopular with many Americans, who saw him as a weak and ineffective President. Despite the landmark passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1963, Jackson’s domestic record was sparse and made the electorate feel that the country wasn’t moving with him at the helm. The actions he did take split the Democratic Party apart, with angry primary challengers coming at him from both the Southern and liberal wings of the party. The economy was still recovering from the effects of the 1962 steel strike, which Jackson had badly mishandled. The Secretary of Agriculture and several other USDA officials were now sitting in jail for engaging in corruption and fraud which managed to eclipse even the Teapot Dome Scandal of the 1920s. Given his unpopular and troubled Presidency, it should perhaps come as no surprise that Democrats in late 1963 were wringing their hands at the prospect of re-nominating Scoop for a second term. During his November 24th appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press”, Democratic National Committee Chairman John F. Kennedy showed only lukewarm support for the President. JFK’s comments, which were more about defending his party’s record of the past ten years in general than defending his party’s standard-bearer in particular, struck many as evidence that the party in power was in an “anyone but Scoop” mood. “Scoop certainly felt he was being abandoned,” Presidential speechwriter Arthur Schlesinger later recalled. “What hurt him the most was seeing people he thought were his friends turning their backs on him.”
With Jackson’s chances for four more years in office growing dimmer, Republicans were eager to exploit anything that could help them drive home their message that it was time for a badly needed change. Thus when rumors emerged that autumn concerning a member of his Administration, they quickly jumped all over it.
If you were in Washington, D.C. in the late 1950s and early 1960s, then chances are you knew who Bobby Baker was. Born in South Carolina in November 1928, Baker was a well-known figure in Washington who personally knew many of her high-profile players. He was especially close to Lyndon B. Johnson, who made him his secretary when he became Senate Majority Leader in 1956. Following the 1960 Presidential election, LBJ advised Jackson to appoint Baker to be his legislative liaison on the grounds that his secretary had a rapport with leaders on Capitol Hill which made him a natural for the post. Scoop obliged and for the next three years, Baker served as his personal representative in the halls of Congress. In late September 1963, Jackson began to hear rumors that Baker was doing more than simply serving as the middleman between the White House and Congress. Allegedly Baker had set up a side business in which he provided lawmakers and other influential men with what he called “party girls” and pocketed the profits. In other words, the legislative liaison in the Jackson Administration was making money from prostitution! Having endured a major corruption scandal, the last thing the President wanted or needed was a new scandal that was even more salacious. For the Republicans, it felt like Christmas had come early. They jumped at the chance to present the Administration as being scandal-ridden and full of ethically-challenged crooks who needed to be thrown out (although no one accused the straight-as-an-arrow President of having ethic problems). Republicans on the Senate Rules Committee launched an investigation into Baker’s “party girls” service, as well as other business ventures Baker was involved with that could be financially questionable – such as a business which provided vending machines to companies who were working for programs that had been established by Federal grants. These Republicans wanted to know how a man earning a government salary had been able to afford a town house, some pricey country real estate, and three luxury cars. With the Senate investigation generating public attention of the kind he didn’t want, the President tried to blunt the impact these sensational allegations were having on his Administration. On October 7th, he fired Baker and publically reiterated that corruption and ethic violations wouldn’t be tolerated by him. Unfortunately for Scoop, there was more to this scandal than just Bobby Baker renting out prostitutes.
With Baker being investigated, it didn’t take long for his closest friend to be drawn into the matter. Although there was no evidence tying Lyndon B. Johnson to the alleged “party girls” service, there was evidence that he had done other business dealings with Baker. Following the money, the Senate widen its’ investigation to look into the Vice President’s financial activities. They expected to dig up dirt; after all, this was LBJ they were talking about. This was a man who had committed voter fraud in the 1948 Democratic Senate primary in Texas and who had made jokes about having done so. This was a man who had the reputation of doing whatever it took to get his way – whether it was ethical or not. By the very nature of his character, Johnson had made himself vulnerable to scrutiny and had given curious investigators an opening to ask questions...and questions they asked.
“Where did Johnson get $500,000 to buy a 4,800-acre ranch in Texas? Why was it that the Johnsons owned the only broadcasting tower in Austin? What kind of real estate and banking deals had Johnson done? How did Johnson acquire a fortune worth $15 million?”
These were tantalizing questions and it turned out the probing Senators weren’t the only ones asking them. On October 28th, “Life” magazine opened their own inquiry into Johnson’s wealth. They too were curious about how someone who had been on the public payroll all his life had managed to make so much money. With suspicions about unethical behavior swirling around him, the Vice President denied that he had done anything wrong. He accused those who were investigating him of engaging in a politically-motivated fishing expedition for the sole purpose of damaging the Administration a year away from the next election. However, his denials were met with skepticism. Given that the Vice President was once again under a cloud of suspicion about his questionable activities, some within the Administration weren’t giving him the benefit of a doubt about this new round of allegations. They urged the President to either dump LBJ from the 1964 ticket because he was a tainted liability or ask him to outright resign, pointing to his very public commitment to dismiss any corrupt official from his Administration. Put between a rock and a hard place, Scoop chose to do nothing for the time being. He had already decided to keep Johnson on the ticket and he wasn’t a man who changed his mind very easily. He also wasn’t convinced yet that the rumors going around about Johnson’s wealth were true. After all, he had heard accusations about his Vice President being involved with last year’s scandal at the Department of Agriculture that turned out to be completely untrue. These new rumors also couldn’t be true, right?
I think that's the first AAR where I see the answer's section being almost as big as the update itself.
Scoop is in deep troubles if LBJ cannot prove he's innocent from the charges ASAP...
Scoop is in deep troubles if LBJ cannot prove he's innocent from the charges ASAP...
Well, Scoop is about the most doomed President ever XD I wonder if he will drop out of the race if it turns out his Vice President is corrupt. I do think we will not be seeing a President Johnson . On another note, if McGovern gets the nomination, I can see quite possibly the flip that the parties experienced, with the South going to the Republicans. Although the Republicans do have a good record on Civil Rights now, so it will be interesting to see what happens with a Republican President, and if the Republicans will deliberately court the South.
. On another note, if McGovern gets the nomination, I can see quite possibly the flip that the parties experienced, with the South going to the Republicans. Although the Republicans do have a good record on Civil Rights now, so it will be interesting to see what happens with a Republican President, and if the Republicans will deliberately court the South.
I should probably explain in greater detail why Japan should get rid of Article 9. You see the reason for it is not to have a large military like the United States, but to have a stronger defense (ironic i know). Under the current definitions of Article 9; Japan cannot manufacture or produce offensive weapons of war. This means Japan cannot have ICBMS, Nuclear Weapons, Aircraft Carriers, and bombers. While Japan would certainly not tolerate the usage of Nuclear weapons there are strong cases for the other choices. With a strong fleet using Aircraft Carriers, Japan can use this as a deterrent to Chinese aggression in Asian waters in order to prevent incidents such as the fishing arrest and protect islands that they claim as their own. With many veterans from Japan's Navy in WWII and U.S support Japan can easily build a strong blue water fleet in a couple of years. Also with the usage of bombers Japan can use this as a further deterrance to China that in the event of a Chinese attack Japan can also strike back directly at Taiwan and maninland China. With at least a modern millitary that is largely capable of self-defense and has no restrictions, Japan can easily act as a counter-balance towards China while taking part in regional collective security against the spread of Communism.
Also one part of the 1964 elections that I am interested in is whether or not Richord Nixon could become the Republican vice-president. While it is too early for him to become President; with the way you've been writing Nixon in the aar i assume that this would make him a strong candidate for vice-president and put him in a similar position to OTL Lyndon Johnson, though he would obviously have different goals such as taking his version of "Vietnamization" in the Vietnam war policy. Besides who wouldn't love a 1960's version of the Checkers speech.
P.S Bush for senate '64
Also one part of the 1964 elections that I am interested in is whether or not Richord Nixon could become the Republican vice-president. While it is too early for him to become President; with the way you've been writing Nixon in the aar i assume that this would make him a strong candidate for vice-president and put him in a similar position to OTL Lyndon Johnson, though he would obviously have different goals such as taking his version of "Vietnamization" in the Vietnam war policy. Besides who wouldn't love a 1960's version of the Checkers speech.
P.S Bush for senate '64
How will you cover the conflict when you'll play the mod? Will you focus more on the battles and campaigns of TTL Vietnam War or a more strategic and broad look at the conflict?
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Kurt_Steiner: I couldn’t help myself. In the process of responding to readers’ comments, I just found myself writing...and writing...and writing.
LBJ really was under investigation by the Senate in the autumn of 1963. This investigation prompted rumors that JFK was going to dump Johnson from the ticket in 1964 because he was now a tainted liability. When LBJ went to Texas in late November, he gloomily felt he would be dumped and his political career would be over.
Of course, fate then intervened in Dealey Plaza. With the country in mourning over the assassination of Kennedy and Johnson now President, the Senate didn’t have the heart to investigate him further and they dropped the matter altogether. What if there had been no Presidential assassination in November 1963 and the Senate had continued to investigate the Vice President? What might they have uncovered, if anything?
jeeshadow: I can just imagine Alf Landon from “Advantages without Obligations” patting Scoop on the back and saying “And you think your Presidency sucks?”
Jackson is a fighter by nature. He won’t drop out. As for Johnson, he seems to be the political embodiment of Rodney Dangerfield’s “I get no respect.”
If McGovern gets the nomination, I think Wallace could mount a third party campaign four years earlier. He may not like Jackson, but he isn’t going to be crazy about McGovern either.
Kaiser Chris: Japan already has an aircraft carrier: it’s called “Okinawa”. After I captured the island in my HOI game, I maxed out both the naval and air base to level 10 to support the US invasion of the home islands.
I understand the point you are making, but I don’t think Japan needs her own aircraft carriers and bombers. She after all has the military might of the United States and the United Kingdom on her side (which is ironic considering the war in the Pacific).
Besides, this is Japan we're talking about. They could develop giant mech robots or Mewtwo to defend themselves.
I have thought about either putting Nixon on the 1964 ticket as the running mate or giving him the Attorney General post in a Republican Administration. Doing either would give Republican Governor William Knowland a Senate seat to fill...which could go to the conservative Democrat-turned-Republican Ronald Reagan. Imagine “The Great Communicator” in the Senate...
I actually have imagined a 1964 version of the Checkers speech now that you mention it.
Many political figures in this alternate history have ended up in different positions than they were historically. If Bush wins his first Senate race in 1964, how might that affect the course of his political career? Could he be able to defend his seat against Lloyd Bentsen in 1970? What different opportunities might arise from being a Senator instead of being a Representative?
NickFeyR: My plan for writing about the Vietnam War mod will be basically stringing the major game events together in a coherent manner. I have taken a lot of screenshots of my game (I have played up to the beginning of August 1964) and will write a history book-style narrative based on those screenshots.
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The Commitment to Vietnam
From its’ humble origins as a technological curiosity, television had in the postwar years transformed American life. From broadcasting political conventions to advertising the latest refrigerator model, television – like radio before it and personal computers afterwards – was having a tremendous impact on how people were doing things. By 1963, television sets sat in over 90% of American homes. People from coast to coast could turn on their television sets and laugh at the same jokes or receive the same news all at the same time. So many people were watching TV that for the first time, more Americans were getting their news from television than they were from newspapers or radio. Recognizing this shift in getting information, CBS became the first of the Big Three television networks to expand her weeknight news coverage from 15 to 30 minutes. At 6:30 PM on September 2nd, 1963, anchor Walter Cronkite welcomed television viewers to the first half-hour edition of the “CBS Evening News”.
To kick off the first half-hour broadcast, Cronkite aired footage of his exclusive interview with President Henry M. Jackson. The interview had been filmed at Camp Ewing, the Presidential country retreat in Maryland. Sitting opposite his interview subject, Cronkite asked the President questions about the leading issues of the day such as the pending Congressional passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1963. He also brought up the Vietnam War. Given that the war in that country was primarily between the South Vietnamese Army and South Vietnamese Communist guerrillas called the Viet Cong, Cronkite asked Jackson why he felt it was necessary for 40,000 American combat troops to get involved in someone else's war. Shouldn’t this war be left to the South Vietnamese people to deal with? Jackson replied that the South Vietnamese Army quite frankly needed America’s assistance if they were going to crush the Viet Cong and restore order. “General [Maxwell] Taylor [the commanding US General in South Vietnam] has carefully reviewed the South Vietnamese Army and it is in his expert judgment that they are not yet in a sufficient position to quell this Communist uprising that we are seeing on their own.”
According to the President, the guerrillas’ campaign of assassinating officers in their own villages and making life generally miserable for the common soldier was having the adverse effects of lowering their organization as well as their morale. It was for that reason that the better organization and higher morale of American soldiers were needed to fight the Viet Cong effectively while the South Vietnamese Army recovered both. As for not allowing the South Vietnamese people to deal with this war on their own, Scoop warned that “if we do not intervene, the Chinese will.”
He reminded Cronkite that the Republic of China had intervened in the Laotian Civil War in 1961 and had brought “peace” to that war-torn country by setting up at gunpoint a puppet regime which was looking to Nanjing for “guidance”. “The Chinese want to do the same thing in Vietnam, and it is our presence there which is stopping them.”
A heart and soul believer in the Domino Theory, Jackson said matter-of-factly to Cronkite that if South Vietnam fell to the Chinese-backed guerillas, Cambodia would most likely be the next domino to topple and Thailand would become the frontline of China’s expanding sphere of influence in Southeast Asia. The way to stop this scenario from playing out was to make a strong show of force in South Vietnam, where the Chinese could be halted dead in their tracks.
Along with civil rights, Vietnam was one of the major issues which defined Jackson’s Presidency. Determined to lead and not look hesitant about using America’s military might, the President in April 1962 approved General Taylor’s plan to defeat the Viet Cong using just 40,000 soldiers in order to prevent South Vietnam from being taken over by them. He then stuck to his decision despite stiff opposition from the liberal wing of his political party who felt that he was taking the country down the dangerously wrong path. They saw the Vietnam War as being both unnecessary and unwinnable; after all, these soldiers would be fighting guerillas in a jungle environment where the latter enjoyed having the advantage of knowing the terrain. South Dakota Senator George McGovern was so strongly opposed to getting involved in Vietnam that he launched a primary bid against the President in an effort to stop the war “before we get dragged in any further.”
Despite – or perhaps because of – the opposition, Scoop remained committed to winning the Vietnam War. As he explained repeatedly to the American people, victory would be achieved when two objectives had been fulfilled:
On November 1st, 1963, the last of the 40,000 soldiers Taylor had requested arrived on the ground in South Vietnam. For months American soldiers had been fighting the Viet Cong in limited firefights in order to gain combat experience for the more aggressive campaign to come. Now that his force was in place, Taylor was ready to launch the military campaign that would fully eradicate the Viet Cong and create the security conditions necessary for the Americans to start drawing down their presence in the country. The Viet Cong in late 1963 had two main bases of operations:
The air attack took the Americans completely by surprise. They hadn’t expected the North Vietnamese to be able to do such a thing. Although the bomb damage wasn’t significant, the New Year’s Day Attack symbolically showed that North Vietnam had the reach to strike at the heart of South Vietnam. In the wake of the bombing, Taylor ordered his air force to conduct Air Superiority missions in an effort to secure the air space over South Vietnam. On January 8th, the Americans intercepted North Vietnamese planes in the skies above Darlac and defeated them. Meanwhile on the ground, US combat troops were slowly but surely pushing the Viet Cong back. On February 6th, the Americans reached the outskirts of Rach Gia. Taylor ordered a month-long siege to pound the main base, softening up the defenders for the final attack which would wipe them out. Strafing and bombing Rach Gia from the air were carrier planes belonging to the USS Kitty Hawk, which was stationed in the East Gulf of Siam. On February 29th, the order was given to launch the final ground assault the next day. Taylor was confident the enemy had been shell-shocked enough to not put up a strong resistance despite being well dug in. Indeed, the Battle of Rach Gia ended in an American victory and the South Vietnamese flag was raised over the base on March 7th.
When Rach Gia fell, Taylor fully expected the defeated Viet Cong defenders to surrender. Instead, they slipped across the border into Cambodia. This unexpected turn of events was compounded by reports coming into American headquarters from pilots that Viet Cong divisions were being sighted across the border in Cambodia. With all the pieces of the puzzle put together, Taylor realized that the Viet Cong had infiltrated the country and were moving about freely. Despite the fact that the Cambodian government was US-friendly (the CIA had made sure of that when they engineered the overthrow of the China-friendly government in what they codenamed Operation Matas), the Cambodians were either unable or unwilling to halt the movement of Viet Cong guerrillas in their territory. On March 8th, the commanding US general cabled Washington the troubling news and requested that additional forces be sent to South Vietnam to clear Cambodia of Viet Cong divisions and secure the country against further enemy encroachment. The day after he sent the cable, Cambodia became the least of Taylor's problems.
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Finally, I can truly call this AAR "The Vietnam War Edition".
LBJ really was under investigation by the Senate in the autumn of 1963. This investigation prompted rumors that JFK was going to dump Johnson from the ticket in 1964 because he was now a tainted liability. When LBJ went to Texas in late November, he gloomily felt he would be dumped and his political career would be over.
Of course, fate then intervened in Dealey Plaza. With the country in mourning over the assassination of Kennedy and Johnson now President, the Senate didn’t have the heart to investigate him further and they dropped the matter altogether. What if there had been no Presidential assassination in November 1963 and the Senate had continued to investigate the Vice President? What might they have uncovered, if anything?
jeeshadow: I can just imagine Alf Landon from “Advantages without Obligations” patting Scoop on the back and saying “And you think your Presidency sucks?”
Jackson is a fighter by nature. He won’t drop out. As for Johnson, he seems to be the political embodiment of Rodney Dangerfield’s “I get no respect.”
If McGovern gets the nomination, I think Wallace could mount a third party campaign four years earlier. He may not like Jackson, but he isn’t going to be crazy about McGovern either.
Kaiser Chris: Japan already has an aircraft carrier: it’s called “Okinawa”. After I captured the island in my HOI game, I maxed out both the naval and air base to level 10 to support the US invasion of the home islands.
I understand the point you are making, but I don’t think Japan needs her own aircraft carriers and bombers. She after all has the military might of the United States and the United Kingdom on her side (which is ironic considering the war in the Pacific).
Besides, this is Japan we're talking about. They could develop giant mech robots or Mewtwo to defend themselves.
I have thought about either putting Nixon on the 1964 ticket as the running mate or giving him the Attorney General post in a Republican Administration. Doing either would give Republican Governor William Knowland a Senate seat to fill...which could go to the conservative Democrat-turned-Republican Ronald Reagan. Imagine “The Great Communicator” in the Senate...
I actually have imagined a 1964 version of the Checkers speech now that you mention it.
Many political figures in this alternate history have ended up in different positions than they were historically. If Bush wins his first Senate race in 1964, how might that affect the course of his political career? Could he be able to defend his seat against Lloyd Bentsen in 1970? What different opportunities might arise from being a Senator instead of being a Representative?
NickFeyR: My plan for writing about the Vietnam War mod will be basically stringing the major game events together in a coherent manner. I have taken a lot of screenshots of my game (I have played up to the beginning of August 1964) and will write a history book-style narrative based on those screenshots.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Commitment to Vietnam
From its’ humble origins as a technological curiosity, television had in the postwar years transformed American life. From broadcasting political conventions to advertising the latest refrigerator model, television – like radio before it and personal computers afterwards – was having a tremendous impact on how people were doing things. By 1963, television sets sat in over 90% of American homes. People from coast to coast could turn on their television sets and laugh at the same jokes or receive the same news all at the same time. So many people were watching TV that for the first time, more Americans were getting their news from television than they were from newspapers or radio. Recognizing this shift in getting information, CBS became the first of the Big Three television networks to expand her weeknight news coverage from 15 to 30 minutes. At 6:30 PM on September 2nd, 1963, anchor Walter Cronkite welcomed television viewers to the first half-hour edition of the “CBS Evening News”.
To kick off the first half-hour broadcast, Cronkite aired footage of his exclusive interview with President Henry M. Jackson. The interview had been filmed at Camp Ewing, the Presidential country retreat in Maryland. Sitting opposite his interview subject, Cronkite asked the President questions about the leading issues of the day such as the pending Congressional passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1963. He also brought up the Vietnam War. Given that the war in that country was primarily between the South Vietnamese Army and South Vietnamese Communist guerrillas called the Viet Cong, Cronkite asked Jackson why he felt it was necessary for 40,000 American combat troops to get involved in someone else's war. Shouldn’t this war be left to the South Vietnamese people to deal with? Jackson replied that the South Vietnamese Army quite frankly needed America’s assistance if they were going to crush the Viet Cong and restore order. “General [Maxwell] Taylor [the commanding US General in South Vietnam] has carefully reviewed the South Vietnamese Army and it is in his expert judgment that they are not yet in a sufficient position to quell this Communist uprising that we are seeing on their own.”
According to the President, the guerrillas’ campaign of assassinating officers in their own villages and making life generally miserable for the common soldier was having the adverse effects of lowering their organization as well as their morale. It was for that reason that the better organization and higher morale of American soldiers were needed to fight the Viet Cong effectively while the South Vietnamese Army recovered both. As for not allowing the South Vietnamese people to deal with this war on their own, Scoop warned that “if we do not intervene, the Chinese will.”
He reminded Cronkite that the Republic of China had intervened in the Laotian Civil War in 1961 and had brought “peace” to that war-torn country by setting up at gunpoint a puppet regime which was looking to Nanjing for “guidance”. “The Chinese want to do the same thing in Vietnam, and it is our presence there which is stopping them.”
A heart and soul believer in the Domino Theory, Jackson said matter-of-factly to Cronkite that if South Vietnam fell to the Chinese-backed guerillas, Cambodia would most likely be the next domino to topple and Thailand would become the frontline of China’s expanding sphere of influence in Southeast Asia. The way to stop this scenario from playing out was to make a strong show of force in South Vietnam, where the Chinese could be halted dead in their tracks.
Along with civil rights, Vietnam was one of the major issues which defined Jackson’s Presidency. Determined to lead and not look hesitant about using America’s military might, the President in April 1962 approved General Taylor’s plan to defeat the Viet Cong using just 40,000 soldiers in order to prevent South Vietnam from being taken over by them. He then stuck to his decision despite stiff opposition from the liberal wing of his political party who felt that he was taking the country down the dangerously wrong path. They saw the Vietnam War as being both unnecessary and unwinnable; after all, these soldiers would be fighting guerillas in a jungle environment where the latter enjoyed having the advantage of knowing the terrain. South Dakota Senator George McGovern was so strongly opposed to getting involved in Vietnam that he launched a primary bid against the President in an effort to stop the war “before we get dragged in any further.”
Despite – or perhaps because of – the opposition, Scoop remained committed to winning the Vietnam War. As he explained repeatedly to the American people, victory would be achieved when two objectives had been fulfilled:
- The Viet Cong had been eliminated as a threat in South Vietnam.
- The security situation in South Vietnam had been stabilized to the point that the South Vietnamese Army could defend the country largely on their own.
On November 1st, 1963, the last of the 40,000 soldiers Taylor had requested arrived on the ground in South Vietnam. For months American soldiers had been fighting the Viet Cong in limited firefights in order to gain combat experience for the more aggressive campaign to come. Now that his force was in place, Taylor was ready to launch the military campaign that would fully eradicate the Viet Cong and create the security conditions necessary for the Americans to start drawing down their presence in the country. The Viet Cong in late 1963 had two main bases of operations:
- Rach Gia, from which they could operate in the Mekong Delta
- Saravane, which gave them a presence in the northern part of the country near the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Vietnams
The air attack took the Americans completely by surprise. They hadn’t expected the North Vietnamese to be able to do such a thing. Although the bomb damage wasn’t significant, the New Year’s Day Attack symbolically showed that North Vietnam had the reach to strike at the heart of South Vietnam. In the wake of the bombing, Taylor ordered his air force to conduct Air Superiority missions in an effort to secure the air space over South Vietnam. On January 8th, the Americans intercepted North Vietnamese planes in the skies above Darlac and defeated them. Meanwhile on the ground, US combat troops were slowly but surely pushing the Viet Cong back. On February 6th, the Americans reached the outskirts of Rach Gia. Taylor ordered a month-long siege to pound the main base, softening up the defenders for the final attack which would wipe them out. Strafing and bombing Rach Gia from the air were carrier planes belonging to the USS Kitty Hawk, which was stationed in the East Gulf of Siam. On February 29th, the order was given to launch the final ground assault the next day. Taylor was confident the enemy had been shell-shocked enough to not put up a strong resistance despite being well dug in. Indeed, the Battle of Rach Gia ended in an American victory and the South Vietnamese flag was raised over the base on March 7th.
When Rach Gia fell, Taylor fully expected the defeated Viet Cong defenders to surrender. Instead, they slipped across the border into Cambodia. This unexpected turn of events was compounded by reports coming into American headquarters from pilots that Viet Cong divisions were being sighted across the border in Cambodia. With all the pieces of the puzzle put together, Taylor realized that the Viet Cong had infiltrated the country and were moving about freely. Despite the fact that the Cambodian government was US-friendly (the CIA had made sure of that when they engineered the overthrow of the China-friendly government in what they codenamed Operation Matas), the Cambodians were either unable or unwilling to halt the movement of Viet Cong guerrillas in their territory. On March 8th, the commanding US general cabled Washington the troubling news and requested that additional forces be sent to South Vietnam to clear Cambodia of Viet Cong divisions and secure the country against further enemy encroachment. The day after he sent the cable, Cambodia became the least of Taylor's problems.
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Finally, I can truly call this AAR "The Vietnam War Edition".
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The Vietnam mod has finally arrived... after 99 pages of AAR
Now Cambodia... and Laos, as Severane is there... Well... the war doesn't look now to be a short one. And Taylor asking for more soldiers...
Now Cambodia... and Laos, as Severane is there... Well... the war doesn't look now to be a short one. And Taylor asking for more soldiers...
GOOD MORNING VIETNAM! Now we can finally see the kickoff of what can possibly be America's greatest triumph or failure in the Cold War. So far everything is going better than OTL but i suspect that in the next update Taylor's worry could be either a coup in South Vietnam or the Northern Commies invading. Unfortunately now it looks like the ground war will have to extend to Cambodia along with a possible increase to what i think might be 100,000+ troops, looks like Scoop's really going to regret the emphasis on timetables. One way i see to help the situation is to call on your SEATO allies along with South Korea to help increase defense. By the way i've been wondering what type of bombing campaign you'll use, will you go for the tactical route or go full Linebacker on the Commies? Also with the Ho Chi Minh trail how will you be able to shut it down now that the Chinese practically run Laos?
Finally i see your point on the whole Japan ordeal so i'll stop making a fuss about it. Hopefully they'll be able to complete research on Gundams and take the fight to the Viet Cong.
Finally i see your point on the whole Japan ordeal so i'll stop making a fuss about it. Hopefully they'll be able to complete research on Gundams and take the fight to the Viet Cong.
Well, the war has begun. It shall be interesting how this goes... I can't wait to see what terrible things await Taylor!
So still not to the election, the suspense is killing me.
On '64, I could see Goldwater winning in a three way race with McGovern and Wallace. With the mixture of the three extremely devoted fanbases of these men it would be an odd race. I could see a lot of Dem voters lose enthusiasm and with an ultra segregationist demagogue on one side and lily white Plain Stater lefty who snatched the nomination from an extremely proactive Civil Rights president, Goldwater could even do well with African Americans this time around. Without the Johnson negative ad assault on his campaign, and these opponents, its likely he'd seem a lot less extreme. He'd also have Democratic fatigue on his side this time. If nothing else it would be an interesting race; not as interesting as the current Presidential race, but still interesting none the less.
As for Vietnam, it seems like it could go either way. Its probably gonna get worse. I wonder if Cambodia gets to avoid Pol Pot this time around because there seems to be a trend in this AAR of Asian countries missing some of their worst moments, Chinese Great Leap Forward, North Korea. There was Operation Downfall though.
Hey Nathan! Kaiser here, I was wondering as a white Hispanic Catholic if for future updates you could include entries on both the Hispanic Civil RIghts Movement and the Vatican II council. For Vatican II you don't really need to fill out an entire entry and i would mostly be fine with a small paragraph or bullet on the monthly current affairs, just wanted to see it included since it was ongoing in 1963 and there has been no mention yet. As for the Hispanic Rights movement i was thinking that since Barry is the frontrunner for '64 presidency and he is the senator from Arizona that he would push for extended civil rights legislation to extend to Hispanics (and Native Americans from an earlier entry). This would not only give him massive support from the Hispanic community (many of whom were socially conservative), but it would further help to create an image for the Republican party of one that stands for the rights of minorities in America, creating an image of a champion for civil rights of Barry Goldwater equal to that of Scoop Jackson.
Also for the Goldwater vice-presidency i just had a brilliant idea, why not make Prescott Bush the Goldwater VP? Not only were Goldwater and Bush close friends within the party, but Goldwater probably actively supported Bush in the 1960 election. This would not only signal the beginning of the Bush dynasty in Republican politics but also help George in his campaign by making him seem the most viable candidate as the son of the VP for the conservative ticket. Nixon could be the VP but since in OTL Goldwater had rocky terms with Nixon i don't know what the chances could be of Barry choosing him for the ticket.
Thanks for the active writing and looking forward soon to unification of Vietnam under Saigon.
Also for the Goldwater vice-presidency i just had a brilliant idea, why not make Prescott Bush the Goldwater VP? Not only were Goldwater and Bush close friends within the party, but Goldwater probably actively supported Bush in the 1960 election. This would not only signal the beginning of the Bush dynasty in Republican politics but also help George in his campaign by making him seem the most viable candidate as the son of the VP for the conservative ticket. Nixon could be the VP but since in OTL Goldwater had rocky terms with Nixon i don't know what the chances could be of Barry choosing him for the ticket.
Thanks for the active writing and looking forward soon to unification of Vietnam under Saigon.
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