Bicentennial Man: Ford '76 and Beyond

[CountDVB]

Indeed, indeed. It's strange to think how ingrained the thought/ideology of Reaganism has been in the GOP and overall US political culture.

A competent Dem administration (i.e. not Carter IOTL, bless his heart) with huge margins in Congress can probably get some nice economic stimulus legislation pass and eventually pave the way for Ted Kennedy's healthcare plan. Which already changes the equation once a few years pass. Also unions will remain influential, not as important as before, but not destroyed as IOTL. That may make a NAFTA-type deal more difficult, or at least shift the focus to addressing its negatives. Some soft-neoliberalism is probably gonna seep its way in, like Bob Hawke in Australia IOTL iirc.

This may make it that social or cultural worries like crime or etc. are the main points of difference between the parties (will matter a lot how AIDS is addressed and future Court decisions) while the economic focus of the GOP will probably come in cutting taxes and bureaucracy but not outright "starve the beast" rhetoric. Fairness Doctrine remains, etc.

The dogwhistles probably remain up to a certain point.

Yeah, pretty much. It is a fascinating thing to explore (hence what influenced my current timeline, this what if something replaced it).

Yeah, the Dems will definitely be able to get more in, especially with the GOP being pretty powerless to fight back and some of the old guard still in to inspire some new blood to come roaring in full force. I reckon AIDS would be handled better and crime is well, a bunch of complicated stuff there

 

[KingSweden24]

Indeed, indeed. It's strange to think how ingrained the thought/ideology of Reaganism has been in the GOP and overall US political culture.

A competent Dem administration (i.e. not Carter IOTL, bless his heart) with huge margins in Congress can probably get some nice economic stimulus legislation pass and eventually pave the way for Ted Kennedy's healthcare plan. Which already changes the equation once a few years pass. Also unions will remain influential, not as important as before, but not destroyed as IOTL. That may make a NAFTA-type deal more difficult, or at least shift the focus to addressing its negatives. Some soft-neoliberalism is probably gonna seep its way in, like Bob Hawke in Australia IOTL iirc.

This may make it that social or cultural worries like crime or etc. are the main points of difference between the parties (will matter a lot how AIDS is addressed and future Court decisions) while the economic focus of the GOP will probably come in cutting taxes and bureaucracy but not outright "starve the beast" rhetoric. Fairness Doctrine remains, etc.

The dogwhistles probably remain up to a certain point.

You’ve got the right idea.

Of course, the Fairness Doctrine only really matters for radio rather than cable news/internet, but it’s removal was a complete fluke as it was (the Reagan admin was actually worried that it would increase media critique of him and opposed their FCC chair going solo on disposing of it, ironically enough)

 

[CountDVB]

You’ve got the right idea.

Of course, the Fairness Doctrine only really matters for radio rather than cable news/internet, but it’s removal was a complete fluke as it was (the Reagan admin was actually worried that it would increase media critique of him and opposed their FCC chair going solo on disposing of it, ironically enough)

Granted, how long before Fairness Doctrine is extended to television? I imagine by the 1990s it would be codified and updated.

 

[PresidentZinn]

Fantastic and realistic work on the primaries @KingSweden24!

As far as VPs go- for the Dems, have you considered Florida Senator Lawton Chiles? He would be a great pick to build bridges with Southerners and add legislative experience (assuming Askew himself isn't picked). For Republicans, I am guessing Reagan will need a Midwestern, moderate senator. Alternatively he could go for a "game change" pick and select a woman (OTL he considered Anne Armstrong).

 

[KingSweden24]

Granted, how long before Fairness Doctrine is extended to television? I imagine by the 1990s it would be codified and updated.

It applied to wavelength (read: public broadcast bandwidth) that the FCC regulated, so it did apply to broadcast television. Cable very specifically fell outside of that remit and would continue to as lines were generally (and still are) laid by private firms

 

[KingSweden24]

Fantastic and realistic work on the primaries @KingSweden24!

As far as VPs go- for the Dems, have you considered Florida Senator Lawton Chiles? He would be a great pick to build bridges with Southerners and add legislative experience (assuming Askew himself isn't picked). For Republicans, I am guessing Reagan will need a Midwestern, moderate senator. Alternatively he could go for a "game change" pick and select a woman (OTL he considered Anne Armstrong)

I’ve mulled a few options for Reagan’s VP nom but as so far undecided, to be honest. Armstrong would be an inspired choice and may help firm him up in Texas…

 

[Sir William Jol]

I think Carey getting elected President in 1980 over Reagan is almost a guarantee. I wonder if he'll pick Askew for VP and whether John Hinckley Jr. will take a shot a Carey in '81?

 

[Nazi Space Spy]

Thanks! We’ll have some more around-the-world then get to the conventions and Carey’s overall GE Strategy

I'm pretty eager to see what's going on in Arabia, I really liked how you covered the Saudi situation so far!

 

[TGW]

And here we go! Carey vs Reagan, brash populist against brash populist. This feels like a boxing match and no mistake! Can't wait to see who they get to pick as Vice-Presidents!

 

[Curtain Jerker]

Didn't know a ton about Carey until I read about him after reading this update. Looks like this could be a hell of a fight in the general.

 

[KingSweden24]

I think Carey getting elected President in 1980 over Reagan is almost a guarantee. I wonder if he'll pick Askew for VP and whether John Hinckley Jr. will take a shot a Carey in '81?

We’ll have some Hinckley content but not a 1-to-1 attempt on POTUS like in OTL

I'm pretty eager to see what's going on in Arabia, I really liked how you covered the Saudi situation so far!

Thanks! There’ll be more Arabian content here soon… the Saud family is in for a ride

And here we go! Carey vs Reagan, brash populist against brash populist. This feels like a boxing match and no mistake! Can't wait to see who they get to pick as Vice-Presidents!

Didn't know a ton about Carey until I read about him after reading this update. Looks like this could be a hell of a fight in the general.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Carey had a bit of a boxing career in his youth…

 

[Kennedy Forever]

Reagan vs Carey! I had a feeling Carey would end up being the Dems nomination. Reagan too was a surprise enough though it makes sense he would be picked. Looking forward to who the VP's will be for Carey and Reagan. Great update

 

[PickledFish]

I wonder what’s in store for Mr Dole.

 

[Sir William Jol]

I wonder what’s in store for Mr Dole.

Perhaps he's the losing Republican nominee in 1984 to Carey or maybe he runs in 1988 when he has a better chance, but not guaranteed by any means, at the White House.

 

[KingSweden24]

Kaboom​

The warnings had been mounting for close to two months and the tremors more and more severe; on May 17, property owners had been allowed in to gather property and another run was scheduled for the following day, but that was not to be. On Sunday, May 18, Mount St. Helens erupted in southwestern Washington state, with much of the volcano liquefied leaving a cratered husk behind as its entire north face collapsed in the lateral explosion. The blast killed 212 [1] people, most notably geologist David Johnston who had tried in vain to get the Forest Service and Washington Governor Dixy Lee Ray to close access to the mountain; with beautiful weather and the chance to see what was expected to be a much smaller eruption, dozens of people had camped out on nearby ridges and at open campsites to try to get a view. Thousands of animals were killed, trees were flattened and mudslides draped most of the landscape; cities all over the Northwest were draped in inches of dark gray ash. As much as a quarter of those killed never saw their bodies recovered or identified.

President Ford toured the site once it was regarded as safe along with a number of Washington state officials, arriving via Marine One in an iconic photo with the blackened mountain in the background. An avid sportsman, he remarked "I have never seen in my life this kind of devastation, the remarkable force of nature reminding us how very small we are against its awesome power." Governor Ray's behavior at the press conference was widely pilloried by the local and national press, as was the hesitation by the Forest Service to listen to scientists and close access to the park; Secretary of Agriculture John Knebel eventually fired three high-ranking USFS officials and pledged a review of emergency practices...

[1] Quadruple OTL's amount; the justification for this is that the Forest Service and state government ITTL ignores warnings to close the national forest around the mountain and so its full of campers and onlookers when the blast goes off

(This is kind of a niche update but growing up in Washington state in the late 1990s/early 2000s I think we had at least one unit every year in school about the 1980 St. Helens eruption and at least two field trips there that I can think of - it was a seminal event for a lot of Washingtonians who lived in the state at that time and I think that colored how often it came up in elementary school curricula, because a lot of the teachers had stories about ash on their car or having to get evacuated from campsites on Rainier because of an ash storm. The site isn't as cool today now that most of the nature has recovered; I can remember as a kid in the mid-1990s that it still looked like you were driving on the moon more than a decade later.)

 

[Aisha Clan-Clan]

Given the negative-sum environment of the era, you'd still see as negative-sum of policy as OTL but it'd be distributed differently in who loses out post-1981 in TTL. This goes double especially the probably Russia 1993 Black October style crisis following Carey's election and Reagan's loss creating a backlash exploited by the ATL democrat majorities.

OTL saw the 1% and top 20% professional-managerial class winning out, getting to suck up economic gains along with impoverishing the rest. This ATL sees instead the old money parts of the 1% along with the bottom 80% winning out. the PMC and new money, especially finance/tech parts of the 1% get screwed the same way the bottom 80% have been.

In regional terms this means that Rust and Sun belts do well compared to OTL while the paper belt of the northeast and silicon valley get deeply screwed compared to OTL. NYC and SF both much less shiny than OTL.
What this looks like in policy terms is more redistribution[1], higher if rather simpler taxes[2], different distribution of regulatory burden(more consumer/environmental protection, less creating cartels/monopolies). There is significantly less inequality than OTL but this is more because of differences in who gets screwed rather than any serious improvement in economic growth over OTL[3].

[1] Basic income, national healthcare, probably trying to maky humphrey-hawkins a thing. This doesn't get you to a situation where wage labor is socially/economically optiona, a capitalism between consenting adults or even to what people would agree as "full" social democracy but it'd be closer than OTL.
[2] Think about all the jobs a super complex tax code creates for lawyers/"tax professionals" OTL.
[3] US GDP a quarter larger than OTL but this is due to wasting less resources on a pointlessly complex healthcare system and improvements from fewer "profesional" intermediaries inserting themselves to make every economic transaction more costly rather than the US doing radically well. However, you have fewer ruined inner cities, fewer despairing rustbelt communities even if you don't have shiny neon. As @Sam R. would put it something closer to a 1970s type consumption basket.

 

[Knightmare]

President Ford toured the site once it was regarded as safe along with a number of Washington state officials, arriving via Marine One in an iconic photo with the blackened mountain in the background. An avid sportsman, he remarked "I have never seen in my life this kind of devastation, the remarkable force of nature reminding us how very small we are against its awesome power." Governor Ray's behavior at the press conference was widely pilloried by the local and national press, as was the hesitation by the Forest Service to listen to scientists and close access to the park; Secretary of Agriculture John Knebel eventually fired three high-ranking USFS officials and pledged a review of emergency practices...

To be fair, Ray realllllly dropped the ball. She made a supporter's kid in charge of the emergency response department with no qualifications, left the sheriffs and forestry services to spar with Weyerhaeuser over safety zones, once a proper one was set up, cut that one to the bone and faffed about signing them into law, refused to properly lock them down for some time while the idiots outside kept acting like it was their god given right to go up onto a volcano that might go active....

And let's not forget actually blocking it would be nigh impossible given all the lumber roads around, so block Route 253, they go find Route 834, and slip past.

My source.

 

[KingSweden24]

To be fair, Ray realllllly dropped the ball. She made a supporter's kid in charge of the emergency response department with no qualifications, left the sheriffs and forestry services to spar with Weyerhaeuser over safety zones, once a proper one was set up, cut that one to the bone and faffed about signing them into law, refused to properly lock them down for some time while the idiots outside kept acting like it was their god given right to go up onto a volcano that might go active....

And let's not forget actually blocking it would be nigh impossible given all the lumber roads around, so block Route 253, they go find Route 834, and slip past.

My source.

Yeah to be honest, considering what a shitshow administrator Ray was, its remarkable that the eruption’s OTL casualty count was as low as it was

Given the negative-sum environment of the era, you'd still see as negative-sum of policy as OTL but it'd be distributed differently in who loses out post-1981 in TTL. This goes double especially the probably Russia 1993 Black October style crisis following Carey's election and Reagan's loss creating a backlash exploited by the ATL democrat majorities.

OTL saw the 1% and top 20% professional-managerial class winning out, getting to suck up economic gains along with impoverishing the rest. This ATL sees instead the old money parts of the 1% along with the bottom 80% winning out. the PMC and new money, especially finance/tech parts of the 1% get screwed the same way the bottom 80% have been.

In regional terms this means that Rust and Sun belts do well compared to OTL while the paper belt of the northeast and silicon valley get deeply screwed compared to OTL. NYC and SF both much less shiny than OTL.
What this looks like in policy terms is more redistribution[1], higher if rather simpler taxes[2], different distribution of regulatory burden(more consumer/environmental protection, less creating cartels/monopolies). There is significantly less inequality than OTL but this is more because of differences in who gets screwed rather than any serious improvement in economic growth over OTL[3].

[1] Basic income, national healthcare, probably trying to maky humphrey-hawkins a thing. This doesn't get you to a situation where wage labor is socially/economically optiona, a capitalism between consenting adults or even to what people would agree as "full" social democracy but it'd be closer than OTL.
[2] Think about all the jobs a super complex tax code creates for lawyers/"tax professionals" OTL.
[3] US GDP a quarter larger than OTL but this is due to wasting less resources on a pointlessly complex healthcare system and improvements from fewer "profesional" intermediaries inserting themselves to make every economic transaction more costly rather than the US doing radically well. However, you have fewer ruined inner cities, fewer despairing rustbelt communities even if you don't have shiny neon. As @Sam R. would put it something closer to a 1970s type consumption basket.

This warrants a more substantive response than I have time today to compose but in the broad strokes you’re correct, though a lot of the macro changes occurred across the West and had been “baked” long before 1981 (I’m thinking specifically about the complete allergy to innovation within the US steel and automotive industries).

That said, a change in macroeconomic policy response would have a big difference

 

[Aisha Clan-Clan]

Yeah. I didn't say "pre-1981 policy" forever for a reason.... or that the US Steel and automotive industries would necessarily do any better than OTL[1]. More jobs in the rustbelt? Yes but that'd be more due to overall tariffs, not having to do as much short term thinking plus US healthcare costs being reduced, making US employees cost as much as any other first world employee helping keep overall number of jobs there up. Even in this lower-inequality than OTL ATL suspect many of the saved jobs in the rustbelt would pay significantly less and have less lavish benefit than pre-1980 jobs. Better than OTL, sure but well this is a "Ford in '76" world, not "save the rustbelt"

Ending the "need" for employer insurance with national healthcare and to a lesser if still significant extent pensions(implementation of unconditional basic income) opens up options for uh austerity for various business to respond to economic headwinds or compensate shareholders a bit more.

Shifting more towards value-added goods/capital goods and moving industry towards producing higher technology goods produces different social/economic outcomes than OTL's strategy of betting everything on finance, insurance, real estate and tech bubbles. Probably as big of shifts inord 76 type ATL's "Red Decades" of the 80s and 90s or the resulting GOP era[2] of the 00s and early 2010s.

[1] I tend to think "No" for both... then again I am pretty cynical.
[2] Think the previous POTUS, but more his campaign rhetoric, or if you want a less Current Politics figure than him as an example, Pete Wilson could work too. Nativism, protectionism, probable corporatism/de facto corporatism. "Backlash" politics in the ATL got Nixon/watergate and then Reagan's goldwater-tier failing.

 

[KingSweden24]

Yeah. I didn't say "pre-1981 policy" forever for a reason.... or that the US Steel and automotive industries would necessarily do any better than OTL[1]. More jobs in the rustbelt? Yes but that'd be more due to overall tariffs, not having to do as much short term thinking plus US healthcare costs being reduced, making US employees cost as much as any other first world employee helping keep overall number of jobs there up. Even in this lower-inequality than OTL ATL suspect many of the saved jobs in the rustbelt would pay significantly less and have less lavish benefit than pre-1980 jobs. Better than OTL, sure but well this is a "Ford in '76" world, not "save the rustbelt"

Ending the "need" for employer insurance with national healthcare and to a lesser if still significant extent pensions(implementation of unconditional basic income) opens up options for uh austerity for various business to respond to economic headwinds or compensate shareholders a bit more.

Shifting more towards value-added goods/capital goods and moving industry towards producing higher technology goods produces different social/economic outcomes than OTL's strategy of betting everything on finance, insurance, real estate and tech bubbles. Probably as big of shifts inord 76 type ATL's "Red Decades" of the 80s and 90s or the resulting GOP era[2] of the 00s and early 2010s.

[1] I tend to think "No" for both... then again I am pretty cynical.
[2] Think the previous POTUS, but more his campaign rhetoric, or if you want a less Current Politics figure than him as an example, Pete Wilson could work too. Nativism, protectionism, probable corporatism/de facto corporatism. "Backlash" politics in the ATL got Nixon/watergate and then Reagan's goldwater-tier failing.

Yeah the healthcare component is a big one - current US health policy is a tax that isn’t formally a tax, so nobody thinks of it as the massive and onerous tax that it is (well, economists do, but not the general public)