Alternative Elections: 1844

Guest post by Jake Schenberg.

The importance of the presidential election of 1844 is overlooked as often as the man who won it. James K. Polk, an important yet largely forgotten president [Editor's Note: Hell yeah!], oversaw the fulfillment of Manifest Destiny, expanding the United States from ‘sea to shining sea.’  But what if he had been defeated by Henry Clay, a man famous for his many compromises? Would the United States still have gone to war with Mexico, the very conflict which historically resulted in Mexico’s cession of California and the New Mexico Territory?

President John Tyler had been pushing for Texas Annexation since he took office after the death of William Henry Harrison. Clay’s Whigs, who opposed the expansion of slavery and hostilities with Mexico that Texas annexation implied, defeated a treaty of annexation which Tyler had previously negotiated with the Texas government in June of 1844. Determined for Texas to be the feather in his cap, Tyler announced the formation of a third party, the Democratic-Republicans, as a vehicle for his reelection. In actuality his goal was to force the Democratic Party to nominate a pro-annexation candidate rather than the favorite, Martin Van Buren.  The ploy worked and the hitherto unknown James K. Polk was nominated instead.

Polk went on to win the election by a very narrow margin. Had Clay managed to win over five thousand more voters in the state of New York, perhaps from the abolitionist Liberty Party which was closely aligned with northern Whigs, he would have won the Electoral College and become the nation’s 11th President at a turning point in American history. Under President Clay, no joint resolution for the annexation of Texas would have been considered by Congress, which means no Mexican War (at least not this early) and subsequently a halt to westward expansion. The consequences of such a scenario are too numerous to explore completely, but a number of interesting possibilities present themselves when imagining President Henry Clay’s administration.

Map of North America when President Clay assumes office in March 1845.

Clay ran on a platform which included his constant support of the American System, a threefold plan which pushed for a strong central bank, high tariffs, and internal improvements funded by the sale of federal lands in order to promote commerce. In 1841, Clay championed an effort to charter a Third Bank of the United States, to be called the Fiscal Bank of the United States. President Jackson destroyed the second in 1836, prompting the Panic of 1837 which led to widespread bank failures and massive unemployment; the United States did not emerge from the depression until 1843. President Tyler vetoed the 1841 bill, but a Clay administration backed by a Whig congress and with the memory of the recent depression still fresh on everyone’s mind should be able to push through the Fiscal Bank of the United States in 1845.

The existence of a regulatory agency would have prevented the subsequent Panics in the 19th and early 20th century, assuming of course it were allowed to remain in place for its chartered twenty years and renewed consistently afterwards. In reality the issue of a central bank would again be a central campaign issue in the decades to come. The Jacksonian Democrats would not abide the existence of the thing their progenitor had destroyed, an entity they viewed as unconstitutional and felt threatened by. Thus, the narrative of the 1848 campaign may have shifted away from Manifest Destiny and towards domestic policy.

Interestingly, the term “Manifest Destiny” may not have been coined in this timeline. Newspaper editor John L. Sullivan first used the phrase in an 1845 essay urging President Polk to annex the entirety of the Oregon Territory. That argument must be seen in the rhetoric of the time; expansionists proclaimed “54’ 40 or Fight!” as Polk played hardball with Britain over the Oregon boundary dispute. By contrast, President Clay by nature would have been much more ready to compromise. He likely would have used President Tyler’s original proposal, which placed the border at the 49th parallel and ceded Britain the island of Vancouver and navigation rights along the Columbia River.  Such an easy settlement would have allowed Clay to focus on implementing the other two points of his American System.

In 1842, the Whigs pressured Tyler into signing what became known as the Black Tariff, which raised tariffs on imported goods to nearly 40%.  However, Clay was not able to push his program of federal land sales to fund internal improvements through congress.  Assuming as president he succeeded in doing so, the northern states would have industrialized even quicker due to more and better canals and roads linking the western Great Lake states to Atlantic ports.  Such a trend towards a more industrialized North at an earlier time would only accelerate the divergence between northern and southern interests while increasing the North’s political clout at a faster pace.

A growing North would vocally have supported Clay in opposition to the historical Walker Tariff of 1846, which entailed immense reductions in the tariff rates. This policy of continued high tariffs, coupled with a central bank unpopular among farmers who profited on speculation and a system of internal improvements which favored the industrialized North would seem to lead to early sectionalism in American politics. Clay certainly would have fared poorly in the south in 1848 and would need to carry most of the North to win a second term.

The issue of slavery in the territories would have reared its head earlier without expansion below the 36’ 30 (Missouri’s southern boundary). In our timeline, free Iowa and Wisconsin were admitted during what was Polk’s presidency after the slave state of Texas joined the Union.  Without Texas, any attempt by territories in what was the Louisiana Purchase to become states would be blocked by Southern legislators, unless a new compromise could be made. Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser, may have allowed slavery to spread farther into the northern territories, but abolitionists were growing in strength politically during this period and would certainly raise hell over such a compromise, if they could not stop it themselves.

What is clear is that the two halves of the ostensibly United States are moving farther apart in this timeline much sooner than they actually did. A civil war in the 1850s could take on an entirely new character. Whether it would be more or less successful is difficult to ascertain; this point of divergence gives wings to so many butterflies that a determined author could produced any outcome he or she wants.  Those butterflies run amok not just within the shrunken United States, but across North American.  I hope to cover some of these possibilities in future installments.

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Jake Schenberg is a student and aspiring writer. When he isn't staring at blank pages in Word, you can usually find him out running miles or inside curled up with a good book.

Showcase: A Giant Sucking Sound

Guest post by Sean Korsgaard.

Happy Election Day my dear readers! I hope the Americans reading this have taken the time to go out and vote, I don’t care for whom, just do so! In any event, I have a very special showcase for you today, the Turtledove Award winning A Giant Sucking Sound, by MaskedPickle!

As an American, it’s only natural to look at our two party system and think ‘what would it be like if we had a third?’ At least from an AH standpoint, it’s perhaps as much of a challenge to write a plausible third party TL as it is to get one elected in real life, mainly because in the last hundred years, you really only have two choices. The first is Teddy Roosevelt’s run as a Progressive in 1912. The second, is in 1992, and a particularly peculiar Texan billionaire named Ross Perot. Though shockingly little more than a footnote, his role as a third party candidate should not be underestimated – his run is likely why President Clinton was elected as opposed to President George HW Bush winning a second term, and his platform of balanced budgets, libertarian social values, decreased economic regulation and investing in technology, energy and infrastructure would prove decades ahead of its time, with both parties adopting bits of it since then. That said, he lost due to his own habit of gaffes and erratic behavior, and likely did the country a service in doing so.

Of course, we’re in the business of asking what if – just what would a Ross Perot Presidency look like?

After getting elected by first, not withdrawing in August, and nominating populist Governor Jerry Brown as his running mate, Ross Perot is largely opposed by both parties out of a mutual desire to see the first Independent president since George Washington play ball by their rules. Needless to say, Perot chooses to destroy the two party system instead, forming his own political party, the Freedom Party, or Freedomites. Largely centrist, but attracts all types not represented by either wing or ignored by their own, it’s ranks include the likes of John McCain, Paul Tsongas, Ron Paul, Al Sharpton, Joseph Patrick Kennedy II, as well as the likes of Jon Stewart, Jello Biafra and Donald Trump. With the two party stranglehold broken, President Perot and the Freedomites begin implementing their agenda, whether or not they can reach a tripartisan agreement.

The Perot Presidency sees some great things done. Perot spearheads an international coalition of forces to intervene in Rwanda to prevent the 1994 genocide, as well as a more competent attack on Somalia which ends with a puppet regime installed in Mogadishu. In addition, he almost immediately starts pushing for national internet infrastructure akin to phone lines or highways, with the committee implementing such an approach headed by Steve Jobs. As promised, he pushed a balanced budget amendment through Congress and it passes once turned over to the states, though a similar one pushing for term limits to Congressmen failed. In addition, he enacts a version of gun registration not seen for years later in the aftermath of Waco. To top it all off, Perot prevents the implementation of NAFTA and stands up to China over Taiwan.

There are also some downsides of course. At home, in reaction to the harsher put down of Waco and Ruby Ridge, and inspired by other international terrorist movements, the brief 1990s militia movement has blossomed into a homegrown terrorist movement called Stormfront, led by the likes of David Duke, Richard Girnt Butler, Tom Metzger, David Leach and Matthew F. Hale, as the OTL lone wolf attacks are traded for attacks like the Oklahoma City Bombings and assassinations ranging from Paul Wellstone to Steven Spielberg. This was inspired in part because of the rise of doomsday cults in Asia and Islamic terror in Europe, both of which are far more successful at committing deeds far worse than OTL – one of the most stunning moments of the TL is when Aum Shinrikyo detonates a stolen nuclear bomb in Nagoya. Russia seems to have come under the grip of a would be fascist movement that is starting to make Vladimir Putin look positively warm and fuzzy, and Europe is locked in a war in Algeria combating Islamists.

Ultimately, the turmoil abroad and at home was enough that, when combined with an Perot finally snapping under the pressure, leads to Democrat Ann Richards winning in 1996. Richards, though she comes down hard on Stormfront, does so by enacting legislation that makes the OTL Patriot Act look tame, and between that and pushing for unpopular health care reform, she is in a vunerable position for reelection. Heading into the 2000 national election, one with chaotic details on all sides, including a brutally drawn out Freedomite convention, we are about to see Republican Jeb Bush, Freedomite Angus King, and even two fourth party runs from both Pat Buchannan and Jerry Brown challenge the vulnerable President Richards for the Presidency. It will be interesting to see who wins in upcoming updates.

The effects of Ross Perot’s Presidency on the United States are both good and bad. Perhaps most obviously, the end of the two party system has shaken American politics and American culture to the bone, mostly for the better. His push for improved infrastructure, especially the national internet network, in addition to proving a boon to the economy and the nation, is the sort of project we’d likely never see in the OTL two party system. That said, the rise of domestic terror due to backlash has had a telling effect on America in TTL, and the future of this America could go either way.

The international scene is just as radically different. Terrorism has become a global threat even more than OTL – ranging from the Islamic variety, which for a number of reasons, is focused largely on Europe and Russia, Aum Shinrikyo in Japan, to Stormfront in the USA. Lady Diana, who is still alive in this TL, has been vilified for marrying Dodi El Fayed and converting to Islam, which with the ongoing European War on Terror, has made her the most hated woman in Britain since Wallis Simpson. Japan’s economy has been further crippled by the terrorist nuclear attack on Nagoya. An increasingly fascist Russia led by Prime Minister Alexandr Lebed is taking steps toward reclaiming some of the neighbors. Somalia fragmented years ahead of schedule, one where Mogadishu is ruled by Hussein Mohammed Farrah Aidid. Though Perot intervenes against the genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda, ones in Congo and the Solomon Islands take its place. The map of the world has been radically altered, with independent nations like Mindanao, Somaliland, Kurdistan, and even Quebec, and hints of a federalized Europe in the future.

Yet another hallmark of the TL is the vivid alternate pop culture, which helps characterize the world even further. One of the most powerful moments of the TL is when famed Director Steven Spielberg is killed by Stormfront, with Saving Private Ryan dedicated to his memory and a number of other projects of his circulating around Hollywood in various forms. Brandon Lee has lived to become one of Hollywood’s biggest action stars, having stared in TTL Matrix movie (of which, there is only one) and another movie based on Metal Gear Solid. Kurt Cobain’s gunshot wound left him braindead, something which has affected rock music in ways even more than his OTL death. Television has seen a version of the West Wing with Sidney Poitier playing the President, and 24 with Charlie Sheen playing Jack Bauer. Other butterflies have seen Harrison Ford play Oskar Schrindler in Schrindler’s List, Russel Crowe land the role of Aragorn in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, Titanic going down as a box office bomb, and a grief stricken George Lucas handing the directing job for the Star Wars prequels to Sam Raimi.

Overall, the timeline does two things masterfully that next to no other AH works have achieved in terms of detail and plausibility – they made a successful modern third party, and a dystopian 1990s, and in the process showed just how close we could have had either. This timeline is rich, developed, often veers off in unpredictable directions, yet often funny or quirky, yet always worth a look and brilliant in ways – and after all, should a TL about Ross Perot be anything else? Give this masterwork a read if you haven’t already, and have a Happy Election Day!

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Soldier, scholar, writer and web-voyeur, Sean CW Korsgaard has been active in the alternate history community since 2006, and was recently elected to succeed Mitro as President of the Alternate History Online Facebook group. In addition to his contributions at the Alternate History Weekly Update, he writes for several websites, including his own, which can be found here.

Review: 43* by Jeff Greenfield

Guest post by Andrew Schneider.

Few historical events have presented themselves so quickly as fodder for the game of “What If?” as the 2000 U.S. presidential election.  The race between George W. Bush and Al Gore is often oversimplified as having come down to a single vote. Had one Supreme Court justice switched his or her ruling and allowed the vote counting in Florida to continue, the argument goes, Gore would have ultimately carried the state and won the White House.

In his introduction to 43*, political commentator Jeff Greenfield (author of the Sidewise Award nominated Then Everything Changed) observes a Gore win in the Supreme Court wouldn’t have ended the matter. Florida’s Republican-run legislature was prepared to award the state’s votes to Bush in any event.  Instead, Greenfield gives Gore the win by using an earlier point of divergence. He imagines a different outcome to the case of Elián González, the six-year-old Cuban boy rescued from drowning off the coast of Fort Lauderdale on Thanksgiving 1999.

In our world, Elián was the sole survivor of an escape from Cuba involving his mother and her lover.  A prolonged struggle ensued over whether Elián would be returned to his father in Cuba. It ended only in June 2000, when federal agents seized Elián from the home of his Miami relatives. If Florida’s historically Republican-leaning Cuban-American community needed a reason to vote against the Democratic Vice President, they had one now, and they came out in force on Election Day.

Greenfield posits that if Elián’s mother had lived, and her lover had drowned, the last thing she would have wanted would have been to stay in Little Havana with the family of her estranged ex-husband. Had mother and son returned to Cuba of their own accord, he suggests, enough Cuban-Americans would have sat out the 2000 election to give Gore a clean win.

What happens next in this world, though, is anything but the dream scenario that many Gore partisans held to during the eight years George W. Bush occupied the White House. Like Bill Clinton throughout his last six years in office, President Gore is faced with Republican majorities in both houses of Congress.  Gore, lacking his predecessor’s charm or flexibility, finds much of his domestic agenda stymied -- particularly his environmental and clean energy policies.

The crux of 43* is how President Gore would have faced the threat of al Qaeda.  The Clinton Administration took years to come to grips with how serious a danger Osama bin Laden represented. But by the time Bill Clinton left office, his national security team classed bin Laden as the single greatest threat to the security of the United States. Those individuals went to great lengths to try to convince the incoming George W. Bush Administration that this was the case and were ignored.

A President Gore, Greenfield argues, would have taken the threat of bin Laden much more seriously. But Gore’s national security bureaucracy would have been hampered by the same lack of interagency communication that Bush’s did.  The result in 43* is that the 9/11 hijackers still make it into the U.S. undetected. And by having Gore take steps to make air travel more efficient -- steps that George W. Bush ended up taking towards the end of his own time in office – 9/11 turns into an even bigger catastrophe than it was in our own history.

One of the great strengths of 43* is that the author interviewed many individuals who worked closely with Gore and likely would have been part of his transition team, if not his actual administration. Greenfield says in his epilogue that these conversations gave him insight into how Gore would have behaved in office. The results are convincing to anyone who followed Gore as vice president and as a presidential candidate.

What is less than convincing is the degree of influence Greenfield attributes to the neoconservatives over not just the Republican opposition but American public opinion.  In 43*, as in our world, the neoconservatives blame Saddam Hussein for the 9/11 attacks. Soon, the public is clamoring for an invasion of Iraq. President Gore’s determination to keep the focus of US military efforts on Afghanistan and rooting out al Qaeda wind up costing him dearly.

Numerous accounts of the Bush Administration, notably Barton Gellman’s Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, have debunked the notion that the neocons drove U.S. foreign and security policy going into the Iraq War. The views of Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and others gained prominence not because of the neocons themselves but because those views happened to coincide with those of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It was these two, with their influence over the Bush White House, that led the U.S. to all but abandon the Afghan War and build the dubious case for war with Iraq. Subtract Cheney and Rumsfeld, replace George W. Bush with Al Gore, and the neocons would have had as little influence shaping US policy as they had either under Clinton or under the first President Bush.

It’s tempting to imagine that much of the pain of the past dozen years might have been avoided with a simple change of leadership.  Greenfield’s account reminds us that history is rarely that simple. But it’s possible to overdo things. Trying to argue that the Iraq War was as unavoidable for a President Gore as deeper involvement in the Vietnam War was for, say, a President Kennedy who survived assassination in 1963, is perhaps a step too far. Greenfield’s reluctance to stray too far from the script of our own history is perhaps the greatest weakness of 43*.

Had Al Gore actually won the presidency in 2000, he would now have been out of power for only four to eight years. A more plausible account of a Gore presidency will require some greater distance on events for reflection.

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Andrew Schneider is the business news reporter for KUHF Houston Public Radio. 

Top 10 Underrated Political Alternate Histories

Guest post by A.J. Nolte.

With the 2012 election in full swing, it’s worth taking a look at 10 alternate scenarios, themed around elections, which haven’t really been explored much in alternate history, but which could have dramatically altered the current American political landscape. I've tried to draw on both Republican and Democratic primary election changes. Most of them date from the twentieth century, but I’ll try to throw in a few nineteenth century scenarios to spice things up a bit. Thus, in no particular order, here are the scenarios:

Speaker Cheney

Long before he was the boogie-man of liberal anxiety during the Bush Administration, Dick Cheney was nominated by the first President Bush to be Secretary of Defense. However, Cheney wasn't Bush’s first pick for the position, and was only chosen as a safe alternative after the nomination of John Tower went down in flames. But what if Tower’s nomination had succeeded or Bush had picked a different secretary of defense? At the time, Cheney was actually senior to Newt Gingrich in Republican house leadership. Thus, it’s likely Republicans would have gone into the historic 1994 mid-term elections with Cheney, not Gingrich, at the helm. Would they still have won their crushing majorities absent the Contract with America?

It’s certainly plausible; a lot of debate remains about the role the Contract played in Republican victories verses, for example, a trickling down of southern realignment to the congressional level, Clinton’s health care failures and so on. Thus, it is very possible we could have seen a Clinton/Cheney, rather than a Clinton/Gingrich showdown. If that doesn't tickle your political fancies, just imagine Cheney and Gingrich battling it out for leadership of the Republican house caucus. The two men weren't exactly pals during their mutual house careers, so the battles between them could have been legendary.

A Different Democratic Hope

In 1992, Democrats were desperate for a figure capable of leading them out of their twelve-year electoral wilderness. By unlikely coincidence, they settled on a young southern governor named Bill Clinton. But Clinton’s coronation was anything but assured. In fact, the odds-on favorite for the Democratic nomination in 1992 was New York Governor Mario Cuomo. Its possible Cuomo was seen as too liberal by a victory-hungry Democratic Party establishment wary of the Dukakis disaster, or that Cuomo himself was wary of the seemingly popular President Bush, but it’s not implausible we could have seen a Bush/Cuomo general election.

However, for me, another Democrat is a much more interesting possible candidate. Moderate Democrats were torn in 1992 between Clinton and Virginia governor Doug Wilder. If some of Clinton’s more…adventurous…lifestyle choices had come out earlier, might the Democratic Leadership Council types have gravitated to Wilder? This would have made Wilder, if he won, the first African-American nominee of either major party, and a full 16 years before Barack Obama. Could he have won such an election? Would President Bush have tapped war hero Colin Powell for his ticket in the 1992 election, in order to try and counter the narrative of a historic election? Would it have worked? Fascinating speculations, which could be the source of a crackling good electoral AH.

A Republican Primary without Ike

Dwight D. Eisenhower’s candidacy for the Republican nomination was by no means a foregone conclusion in 1952; it took a lot of arm-twisting from two-time Republican presidential candidate Thomas Dewey to get the popular war hero into the ring. Eisenhower also seriously considered not running for a second term in 1956. Either of these elections would have been a fascinating free-for-all without Ike.

In 1952, the Republican Party was dominated by the Dewey/Taft split, an internal party squabble between interventionist, east coast moderates and quasi-isolationist, Midwestern conservatives. Without Dewey, the Taft wing of the party would have been immeasurably stronger, possibly making Robert Taft the nominee in 1952, and throwing the election’s outcome very much in doubt. An equally intriguing possibility is that moderate but law-and-order governor Earl Warren could have won the nomination, with a conservative Taft supporter as his Vice-President.

In 1956, things were even more jumbled. Taft was dead, while Nixon was not trusted by many Dewey supporters, so might not have had the field cleared for him. Could 1956 without Ike have been the year in which Harold Stassen finally broke through, or would another Republican politician have emerged to take up the gauntlet? Needless to say, the impact on a different Republican nominee, and a different President of either party, would have been enormous for civil rights, the cold war and the near future electoral history of the U.S.

[Editor's Note: Or we could have had a President Disney.]

The Presidency of Aaron Burr

Imagine a situation where a Republican congress got to choose the President, with the catch that their options were Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama? This was the situation which faced the Federalist congress after the election of 1800, one of the bitterest and most divisive elections in American history (picture one party accusing the other party, openly, of being agents of a nation with whom we were at war, while being accused of serious abridgements of freedom themselves…and both accusations proving, in retrospect, to be sort of true). Their choices, in this case, were between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr.

Given that one of these men would end up rated by historians as one of our top ten presidents, while the other shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel then got involved in a number of extremely sketchy conspiracies, those bye-gone Federalists probably made the right choice. But picture this scenario instead. Aaron Burr promises to work with the Federalists more than Jefferson, and gets the nod from congress. He then actually confirms all of President Adams’ “midnight appointments”, thereby butterflying Marbury vs. Madison away, and possibly delaying or altering the American concept of Judicial Review. How different would a Burr presidency have been from Jefferson’s? There have been a few alternate history short stories on the topic, but its fertile ground for speculation.

A Second Coolidge term

Call this one the “Milton Friedman special”. It’s a common conceit of libertarian economists that a truly non-interventionist U.S. policy in the aftermath of the 1929 stock exchange crash would have dramatically changed the Great Depression. Keynesians, by contrast, argue that less intervention would have made the situation immeasurably worse. Both would have a field day with this scenario.

In 1928, Calvin Coolidge opted not to run for a second full term as President, and was replaced by Herbert Hoover. Hoover was certainly more of an economic interventionist than Coolidge, who reportedly told farmers coming to ask the government for help in a bad agricultural year to “take up religion”. Do you think a less interventionist economic policy would have decreased the Great Depression, or made it worse, possibly giving space to more radical demagogues? This electoral scenario would give perspective writers free range to counter-factually explore the assumptions behind their own economic beliefs.

1976 Democratic Primary

In retrospect, Jimmy Carter has been lionized by progressives as a tragic warrior who fought hard for many of their pet causes, and vilified by conservatives as an ideological president too far to the left for the country. Both of these characterizations would have shocked liberal Democrats in 1976, who encouraged California governor Jerry Brown and senator Frank Church to enter the Democratic nominating contest. Unfortunately for these progressives, they failed to fully understand the impact of the Democrats’ new primary-heavy nominating system.

By contrast Carter, a hitherto obscure governor from Georgia, grasped the importance of these new nominating contests, and used them to crush more established Democratic names. But what if some of these politicians had picked up on the importance of primaries sooner?

The list of Democrats running in 1976 runs from George C. Wallace to Birch Bayh (author of two constitutional amendments and a progressive hero), to Henry M. (Scoop) Jackson, a savvy cold warrior after whom Joe Lieberman seems to have modeled his senate career. Any one of them would have made a fascinating candidate to go up against Gerald Ford, and if you add in the contentious primary between Ford and an up-start governor from California named Ronald Reagan, the permutations of this alternate 1976 are almost endless.

George Wallace, civil rights moderate

When you think George Wallace, you probably instantly remember the now infamous phrase: “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” What most people don’t know is that, in 1958, the fiery racial populist was actually considered a civil rights moderate.

In 1948, Wallace refused to join Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrat walk-out of the Democratic convention. African-American lawyers in Alabama in the 1950s called Wallace “the most liberal judge” in the state, and there’s speculation that his granting of probation to some African-Americans may have cost him the 1958 gubernatorial election. His opponent in this Democratic primary, John Malcolm Patterson, ran with the support of the KKK, winning the primary by getting to Wallace’s right on race. Reportedly, Wallace vowed never to let this happen again after his 1958 loss.

If Wallace was a primarily opportunistic segregationist, it’s interesting to speculate what might have happened had he won in 1958. Would Governor Wallace still have beaten the drum on segregation quite so vehemently without the stinging results of this primary? Very possibly; as a populist, he likely would have seen this position as “what the people wanted”. Equally plausible, however, would have been a post-1958 Wallace who focused his efforts on other issues, such as economic development. And if he retained his somewhat moderate views pre-1958, it’s interesting to speculate about Wallace’s potential national future. Regardless of the possible result, it’s interesting to note how much losing an election can change a candidate’s future.

Scenarios which don’t involve Wilson or Roosevelt

Many historians have speculated about the outcome of a TR victory in 1912. Surprisingly, however, there’s been very little discussion of the outcome if William Howard Taft, the incumbent Republican, had managed to beat Wilson in 1912. The idea isn't entirely implausible of course; a little less ego from one, a little more compromise from the other, and the Taft/Roosevelt split might well have been patched up short of an open breech in the Republican Party.

One possibility would be to make Archibald Butt, a military officer with a foot in both camps, miss his boat in April 1912. He was, of course, one of the passengers on the RMS Titanic. But perhaps more intriguing is a brief mention in several sources that Governor Herbert S. Hadley was considered as a compromise candidate, but declined to be nominated due to tuberculosis. Absent this illness, could a different little-known politician from Missouri have risen to the nation’s highest office, just in time to face a world war?

A Different Bush, A Different McCain

With Jeff Greenfield’s short story 43*, we've now seen a realistic attempt to envision what a Gore presidency would have looked like. But as it turns out, it’s not that hard to butterfly away the presidency of George W. Bush without a Gore victory.

In 1994, two Bushes ran for the governorships of two different states: George W. in Texas and Jeb Bush in Florida. It was always broadly assumed by the Bush inner circle that Jeb, not George W, would be the next Bush to run for the White House. Jeb, however, lost his run for governor in 1994, only to come back and win in 1998. It was George who, after a term and a half as governor, ran for the top job in 2000.

Flip those 1994 electoral outcomes, and a very different Bush—possibly holding some rather different views—would have been a likely candidate for political office. Of course, an equally likely possibility is that both Bush sons lose in 1994, leaving a wide open Republican field in 2000. Possible candidates include Michigan governor John Engler, Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson, Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, New York governor George Pataki, Utah senator Oren Hatch, and—because I have a fondness for dark horses you've never heard of—North Dakota governor Ed Schafer.

However, the odds-on favorite, absent a Bush, was probably Arizona senator John McCain. Healways had a bit of a right flank problem in the 2000 Republican primary, but assuming his primary competition came from an openly pro-choice candidate like Ridge, might social conservatives have gravitated to him? How would his broad, moderate appeal in 2000 have weathered a tough campaign against the Vice President, who he promised he would “beat like a drum”? And how would a President McCain, if victorious, have responded to the events of 9/11? All of this would make for a fascinating alternate history.

Election 2008, Without Obama or Palin

2008 was an election marked by the meteoric rise of two hitherto obscure politicians into the national spotlight. Barack Obama’s rise to the White House began in 2004, while Alaska governor Sarah Palin didn't truly make her mark until 2006. However, life could have turned out very, very differently for both Obama and Palin.

There are several interesting paths for Obama, but in my mind, the most interesting would have been an Obama victory in the 2000 Democratic congressional primary against Representative Bobby Rush. Would Congressman Obama, representing a very progressive African-American district, have been able to tack to the center sufficiently to maintain his national profile? Or, would he have been seen, like Newark mayor Corry Booker, as simply one of many rising young African-American politicians focused on reform? Of course, there are plenty of ways to prevent Obama from winning in 2004, from a more successful campaign by his primary rival Blair Hull, to the divorce records of Republican nominee Jack Ryan either not coming out, or coming out before the Republican primary, thereby allowing Republicans to pick another nominee.

Of course, the easiest alternate history in this regard would be for Peter Fitzgerald to run for reelection. He would not have been a shoe-in, of course, and the Illinois Republican Party would almost certainly opposed him in a competitive primary, but the eventual winner would have given state Senator Obama a real fight in November, particularly in the good Republican year of 2004.

For Palin, the butterflies are much easier. She could have lost the 2006 Alaska gubernatorial election, either in the primary or general election. She might very well have decided to run against Lisa Murkowski for the senate in 2004. It’s an open question whether she would have won such a fight, but if she did, her rise to the national spotlight would have happened earlier, more gradually, and probably with less fanfare. This in turn would probably have made her less attractive to John McCain, who was looking for a game-changer in the race. The easiest solution would have been for McCain to simply not pick her. Other potential candidates, such as Joe Lieberman, Carly Fiorina and Tim Pawlenty, received trial balloons prior to the Palin pick, and McCain could have gone with one of them.

But how would these different circumstances have changed the 2008 election? Palin is the easiest variable to predict; McCain would still have lost. Faced with the first African-American presidential nominee of either major party, and given the image problems Republicans had in 2008, there was simply no way McCain was going to pull out a win, absent a major, positive game-changing moment. Additionally, McCain ran on the premise that 2008 would be a foreign policy election, and was a self-admitted novice on the economic issues which proved to dominate the election.

Without Obama, the picture becomes murkier. I submit that some sort of organized stop Hilary Clinton movement was almost inevitable, given the level of visceral hatred Republicans and many independents held for her at the time (what a difference 4 years makes). It’s also worth keeping in mind that many progressive Democrats weren't exactly enamored of the Clinton legacy. Would Democrats have rallied around John Edwards—an unfortunate choice in retrospect—or perhaps gone for a different historical first with then New Mexico Governor—and Latino—Bill Richardson? Or would anti-Hilary Democrats have turned, as their party has so often in the past, to a popular southern governor like Mark Warner or Phil Bredesen? The speculative possibilities are endless, and endlessly fascinating.

Honorable Mention: Third party scenarios?

We hear a lot from election to election about how nice it would be to have a viable third party candidate, or a third party president. But, realistically, how plausible is such an outcome post-1900? The short answer, in my view, is not very, but not for the reasons you might think. In fact, the reason we don’t have a viable third party in the U.S. is precisely because every third party focuses like a laser on running a candidate for president. However, generally-speaking, you don’t get to be President unless you've run for and won an office previously, and all-too-often, third party candidates are first-time candidates.

There’s another reason why the presidency trap kills third parties; it prevents them from building a viable party organization in any one of the fifty states. You can’t win an election without hundreds of thousands of people knocking on doors, making phone calls, pushing their friends to vote for you and giving you money. Unfortunately for them, most third parties focus so totally on their quixotic quest for the matching funds 5% of the popular vote in a presidential election would bring, that they utterly fail to do the incredibly difficult-but-essential work of building up local party structures.

If you want to talk about third party scenarios, I suppose the most plausible would be 1948, 1968, 1980 and 1992. In each of these cases, third party candidates actually won significant portions of the popular vote. However, if you look at the Electoral College map, only Wallace and Strom Thurmond won actual electoral votes.

Take Ross Perot as an example here. Eighteen percent of the vote is a very respectable share of the vote for a third party candidate, and Perot used this as a platform to create the Reform Party. Unfortunately for Perot, and the third party ideal, he focused on attempting to repeat his performance in 1996, rather than carefully building up state and local party organizations, running strong candidates for state legislative and congressional races, and thereby forging the types of coalitions he would have needed to actually one day win a presidential election. The utter collapse of the Reform Party post-Perot, and its vacillation between Pat Buchanan in 2000 and Ralph Nader in 2004, demonstrate my point about the problems of candidate-centric third party efforts quite powerfully.

* * *

A.J. Nolte is a PHD candidate in international relations at Catholic University and an aspiring sci-fi and alternate history writer . He is knowledgeable in Byzantine, medieval, ACW, Cold War, Islamic and post-colonial history. Also, he'll read almost anything once if it's got an airship in it.

DD Date 1984.01.21

January 21, 1984

Winter has been milder than scientists ever thought a "nuclear winter" would be. In fact, we are experiencing a rather warm and wet winter here in South Carolina. Or at least in our little corner of that fine state. From what has been gathered so far by authorized explorations - gasoline and diesel being scarce as it is with no new deliveries in over three months - the state south of Laurens county may have been largely destroyed. Nobody seems to be coming up the interstate since the first of December, so whoever is still living counties outside of the upstate are keeping to themselves nowadays.

Local politicians, not knowing what is happening nationally, nevertheless are busy gearing up for the presidential race in November. The Democratic party is all excited about the candidacy of local hometown candidate Jesse Jackson - presently living and working in Chicago. Of course, like all big cities in a nuclear war, Chicago may have suffered like Charlotte and Atlanta did. But anyhow, talk is all around town - especially among the black community - that Jackson has a chance against former vice president Mondale. The Iowa caucuses are a month away - and if anywhere survives today it would be Iowa! - and both Jackson and Senator Hollings are on the ticket then. Of course, if the world beyond our state is like what we have seen so far, there probably hasn't been any campaigning going on. But still, you never know.

If there is an election, though, I think President Reagan can beat anybody the Democrats end up with. I really wish we'd get at least some radio coverage from somewhere. I mean, we've got some electricity and there are at least some radios that didn't die from the electromagnetic pulses. The mayor's office and county counsel insist that everything is being done to restore communications with the rest of the world, but I'm not so sure anything can be done. Well, it's time for my ride to work to get here, so I'd better turn out this light and say good night to Debbie.

Previous Entry: DD Date 1984.01.11
Next Entry: DD Date 1984.01.25

DD Date 1983.12.30

December 30, 2011

Well, this ends three months of weekly diary entries to try to make some sense out of life after the "unthinkable" has happened. It is a wonder that civilization here in the USA has not collapsed. Of course, it may have outside of our immediate area. As far as I know there have been no expeditions beyond short ones across the state lines to Georgia and North Carolina, and no one has received any messages from further away.

So, while I still have some notebook paper, I guess I will write what I remember of the "last year of the United States of America." I don't follow world events too much, so this will be somewhat short.

Back in January, President Reagan surprised many when he nominated a woman from North Carolina, Elizabeth Dole, to oversee the Department of Transportation. She is the second wife of Senator Bob Dole of Kansas. We got a preview of "hard times" to come when the Independent Truckers Association went on strike in response to the federal tax on fuel going up. Some stuff got scarce for about two weeks. The trucks stopped running three months ago and we are learning that the shelves don't restock themselves!

February saw the first of a bunch of Democrats after Reagan's job in 1984. In all I think seven -- including Fritz Hollings! -- had declared their intent by the end of September. Personally, I think American hero, now Senator, John Glenn is the best among them all. We can assume president Reagan was waiting to announce his intentions sometime this winter. I don't think there is any question that he will be the candidate -- if there is an election next year and he is even alive. It's hard not knowing what's happening around the world! Bringing a 'light note' to a bad situation (the Korean War), the television show M*A*S*H ended a series that lasted three times as long as the war it portrayed. -- I missed that show but caught it on the summer reruns!

Spring time saw more conservatives in high places -- Germany elected Kohl and in England Margaret Thatcher got re-elected. It was looking good for us conservatives. Reagan has been talking tough against the remaining Communists out there and I think we may have been winning that ideological battle before what I guess is World War III -- still no draft or anything -- began. I think the "new enemy" we were facing was a religious one in Israel and surrounding countries. The Muslim fighters don't hesitate to kill others by killing themselves. They showed the world that the US was their enemy by blowing up the US Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon!

In America, though, the Supreme Court made what could be a "liberal" decision concerning what would seem to be a freedom of assembly issue -- against Bob Jones University! Back when I was there I let it be known that I thought some of their policies didn't go along with my interpretation of the Bible. One of the things I disagreed with was their stand on 'inter-racial' dating. Heck, I had a great 'preacher boy' in a group that I ministered with that was from the Caribbean that was of 'mixed race' heritage. Anyway, the school would not change this on threat of 'losing' its tax exempt status. Well, its seems that the IRS can trump the constitution! The school lost its exemption. From now on, any contributions to the school cannot be counted as deductions.

The Summer saw more terrorism - hijackings and bombings - around the world. From the Mideast, to South Africa, to the Pacific, things started going bad. I don't understand how people can be so deranged as to kill themselves to make a political point. Assassinations at least make sense - going back to ancient Rome and beyond - but suicide bombs are insane! There was a major assassination, in fact, in the Phillipines -- Aquino, I think, sometimes this past summer. Anyway, the summer ended with the mess between the US and Russia - first the downing of that Korean jet with Americans on it -- a congressman from Georgia being one of them -- on September first. I'm sure that probably had something to do with the beginning of the war that perhaps has destroyed this country. And then, three weeks later we get the world as we NOW know it!

The fall months were a time of getting used to the weirdness of life without the pleasantries of the twentieth century - at home anyway. I am sure that the emergency generators in use won't last much longer either. According to the authorities - as posted on bulletin boards and spoken in town meetings - the nuclear power plant is a long way from being fixed. Other power alternatives - such as the coal powered facility in Pelzer, are closer to being on line, but the EMPs that wiped out electronics all over the place mean that re-wiring and re-engineering will take quite some time.

And so, there it is, what I remember about this year. I'm sure it won't be part of any history archives anyway, but it helps me put things in perspective as I look forward to a new year coming up this weekend. I will be working, of course, and probably won't actually 'celebrate' 1984 -- the year of "Big Brother"! getting here. Ironically, I suppose, the computers that were predicted to usher in that socialist era have been largely silenced. Wow. I wonder if that means we win after all.

Previous entry: DD Date 1983.12.21
Next entry: DD Date 1984.01.04

Warning about Politics and Alternate History

[Editor's Note: Updated 10/23/12]

The only time I ever had to act like a moderator with my alternate history Facebook group (Alternate History Online) was whenever it was an election year in the United States of America.  Discussions would always degenerate into ideological brawls and as soon as the elections were over, someone would always ask what if the outcome was reversed, as if we had enough information the day after the elections to plausibly speculate on the future.  As someone who witnessed what politics could do to an online community, I felt no remorse when I told people to cut it out and told them that if they wanted to talk politics there were plenty of places where they would be welcome, but it was not here.

While there is no denying that a good portion of alternate history involves politics, whether it is directly or indirectly related to the point of divergence.  I should clarify, however, that when I discuss government changes I usually means democratic elections and since the largest community of alternate historians tends to come from the English speaking world, the elections usually important to alternate history are the presidential elections in the United States.

Alternate history scenarios involving the President of the United States are very popular.  Next to American Civil War alternate histories, however, these alternate histories are probably the easiest type to ruin. In those timelines the author's political bias is blatantly obvious. Generally these timelines fall into one of two categories:

1) This is how better the world would be if my candidate won.

OR

2) This is how worse the world would be if my candidate lost.

Now there are always exceptions to the general rule. If done right, an alternate US presidential election timeline can become a plausible alternate history. The Alternate History Wiki promoted such a timeline to featured status and even I gave Then Everything Changed a good review. Nevertheless, these timelines tend not to be very convincing and often lead to heated arguments between rival political factions existing in online alternate history communities.

Another issue with political alternate histories is the belief of the "lost opportunity".  I already touched on this a little with my opinion piece on American Civil War alternate histories when I discussed the common POD of having Abraham Lincoln survive his assassination.  Another assassination that gets a lot of attention among alternate historians (and speculative fiction writers in general) is John F. Kennedy's assassination.  An excessive amount of AH has been written about this event (see all the listings for 1963 on Uchronia) and just recently even horror author Stephen King came out with his own alternate history tale of the event.  The event was a powerful turning point in American history and the reason why was best summed up by author Greg Ahlgren:

I am 59 years old. To my generation the JFK assassination is what the Pearl Harbor attack was to my parents, and what the 9/11 terrorist attacks were to my daughter. It is a reference point that benchmarks history. Prior to November 22, 1963 the U.S. was a different place - peaceful, confident, and smug. Assassinations were things that only happened in far away South American juntas, not in OUR obviously superior democracy.

Dallas changed all that. It may have been coincidental that racial unrest, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the student protests, and the decade's social and gender upheaval, all happened after Dallas - but one from my generation will always be tempted to succumb to the nagging suspicion that November 22 was somehow causal - the proverbial watershed in American history - just like WWII and its social aftermath was for our parents.

With all of these emotions tied with the assassination, a writer must tread carefully.  There are people out there who will zealously defend JFK in their alternate history and there are those who will do the exact opposite.  Things become even worse when a strong emotional bias is entangled with a strong political bias.

So be warned. All alternate historians should approach politics with caution. Do your research and do not let your political beliefs override your common sense.  Alternate historians should always strive for plausibility in their works, so unless the POD is earlier enough in a person's life, they are unlikely to make decisions that do not go along with their personality and experiences.  Avoid succumbing to the biased arguments that are likely to arise when you produce your work.  Just stick to the facts and everything will turn out OK...hopefully.

* * *

Matt Mitrovich is a long-time fan of alternate history, founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update and a volunteer editor for Alt Hist magazine. His fiction can be found at Echelon Press, Jake's Monthly and The Masquerade Crew. When not writing he works as an attorney, enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana and prepares for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. You can follow him on Facebook or Twitter.

Weekly Update #31

Editor's Note

We broke our monthly page view record last month.  The most page views in a single month is now at 4404.  That is the second time in the row this blog has broken the record and I assure you we are going for three in the row this month.  Got some good stuff coming to you this week in an effort to reach that goal, including a new showcase by Korsgaard.  War Blogger also might have some posts next week once he finishes writing the first chapter to the sequel of Wolf Hunt.

If you have not seen it already, take a look at the new poll in the right side column.  I am planning on putting ads up on this blog, but I wanted to get the readers' opinion on this.  So please, answer the poll and help me make an important decision about the future of this blog.

Meanwhile we got our first reader from Thailand, Saudi Arabia and Blangadesh.  Welcome!

And now the news...

What Can President Gingrich Do For Alternate History?

I and others have mentioned before that alternate history is an obscure genre.  It helps, however, when a well known mainstream author, like Stephen King, writes an alternate history novel.  The spotlight shines on everyone who works in the genre, but only for a little while.

So...what if an alternate history author becomes President of the United States of America?

For those not paying attention to the upcoming United States presidential election of 2012, one of the current front runners for the Republican nomination is former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.  Not only is Gingrich a history professor, but he is also an author of alternate history.  He has co-authored several alternate history novels with William R. Forstchen and Albert S. Hanser, usually set in either the American Civil War and World War II.

Now that Gingrich has become the new front runner in the Republican race, the news agencies have been buzzing about his alternate history credentials.  Mark Whittington at Yahoo! Voices discussed several of Gingrich's works and said they symbolized Newt's "fascination about how history can be shaped by individual decisions by people who happen to be in the right place at the right time." William Bradley at The Huffington Post described Gingrich's alternate histories as being "filled with colorful mavericks, technophilia, loathing for bureaucratic norms, and an evident zest for conflict."  Otis L. Sanford at The Commercial Appeal, however, has a different view of Gingrich's fondness for alternate history when he quotes Andrew Ferguson by saying "a counterfactual account of history appeals especially to people who are disappointed in the real thing. Settled fact is unsatisfying; history as it occurs seems somehow a cheat...It is true that history hasn't worked the way Newt Gingrich envisioned it."

This blogger cannot help but speculate what would happen if Gingrich not only won his party's nomination, but also defeated President Obama in 2012.  What would a President Gingrich do for the genre?  Would his novels act as gateways to a larger library of fiction as people read them to see what the new President did before he was elected?  As I have stated before, Alternate History Weekly Update has a "No Cross, No Crown" policy, but such a future does not seem that bad to this blogger.

Coming Soon: Boneshaker the film

Perhaps the film industry is experiencing a love affair for alternate history films.  Just last week I learned that Hammer Films has acquired the rights to make a film based on Cherie Priest's Boneshaker.  According to Uchronia, Boneshaker is a steampunk adventure set in a world in which the American Civil War has dragged on for 20 years...and there are zombies!  While the idea of steampunk zombies hunters in a war-torn America excites me to no end, we should not get our hopes up.  Many successful novels are optioned all the time and are never made into films, it is just part of the business.  Still I congratulate Priest on her success and if Hammer films notices that there is  a strong interest in this film being made we might just see Boneshaker on the big screen.

You can learn more about this story here and here.

Baen Books Christmas Carol Contest

Baen Books is holding a contest to see who can make the best alternate history Christmas Carol.  Submissions should include at least a verse and chorus. You also have to name the OTL traditional carol on which your lyrics are based.  Alternate history author Robert Conroy and the Baen editorial staff will pick the winning submission.  Lyrics will also be published in the January newsletter. The winner will receive an advanced reading copy and hardcover of Robert Conroy’s Himmler’s War, both signed by the author.

If you plan to enter the contest, please inform Alternate History Weekly Update.

Links to the Multiverse

Articles

Alternate History: A Lesser Known Genre Of Literature Which I Love by Dan Levy at Levy News Network.

Some Thoughts on Writing Steampunk Fiction by Frank Chadwick at Space 1889 Blog.

In an alternate reality, this pyramid is the Lincoln Memorial by Cyriaque Lamar at iO9. 

When novels change history by Stuart Kelly at The Guardian.

Online Alternate History

A counterfactual history of Tim Tebow as a Jacksonville Jaguar by Jeremy Stahl at Slate.

What if ... the FIFA World Cup had been played in a different year by Adam Bate at SI.com

Books

Lois Tilton reviews Short Fiction, late November (two alternate history short stories are present in the review)

Review of 11/22/63 by Stephen King, reviewed by Ron Capshaw at Big Hollywood.

Review of The Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove, reviewed by Rosboch Book Reviews.

Review of The Iron Thorn by Caitlin Kittredge, reviewed by San Jose Public Library.

Well Lit: Alternate histories by Umapagan Ampikaipakan at New Straits Times.

Video Games

Preview: BioShock Infinite by Duncan Geere at Wired.co.uk.

* * *

Mitro is founder, editor and contributor of Alternate History Weekly Update. When he is not busy writing about his passion for alternate history, he spends his time working as a licensed attorney in the state of Illinois and dreams of being a published author himself one day.

Review: "Then Everything Changed" by Jeff Greenfield

I've made no secret on how I disprove of America presidential alternate histories.  Next to the American Civil War, it is one of the easiest alternate histories to get wrong.  When an alternate historian changes the results of an election they are doing one of two things: either the world will be a utopia when the loser wins or the world will be a dystopia when the loser wins.  There is rarely any middle ground.

Then I read Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics JFK, RFK, Cater, Ford, Reagan by Jeff Greenfield.  The book is a collection of three novellas covering American politics from the 1960s to the 1980s.  An Emmy-award winning veteran of politics and news, Greenfield bring his first-hand knowledge of the American political system and supports it with detailed research.

The first novella diverges in 1960 when John F. Kennedy is killed by a suicide bomber days before the Electoral College would have voted to make him president.  After a short constitutional crisis, Lyndon Johnson became president in 1961. The start of his presidency is highlighted by forcing through the Voting Rights Act of 1961, but it is overshadowed by Soviet missiles that are discovered in Cuba.  Johnson's handling of the crisis is vastly different from how JFK did it in OTL, but thankfully I do not have to read When Angels Wept again.

The second novella diverges in 1968 when Robert Kennedy narrowly avoids his assassination by Sirhan Sirhan.  Kennedy's manages to defeat Humphrey for the Democratic nomination and Nixon for the presidency.  LBJ carries out the withdrawal from Vietnam and Nixon helps RFK open China to trade without making the president look like he is being weak toward communism.  Issues arise, however, when a Democratic supporter is caught attempting to steal documents from the Republican election headquarters...

The third and final novella diverges in 1976.  A unique POD for using historical characters that are generally ignored in most ATLs (especially my favorite jurist of all time).  History changes when Gerald Ford corrected himself after misspeaking during a presidential debate against Jimmy Carter.  He goes on to win the Electoral College vote for president, but not the popular vote, and then goes on to serve a full term complete with an economic meltdown and a very different Middle East (Iraq and Iran allied with Israel?).  The 1980 presidential campaign gives us a Ronald Reagan who is unable to run as the candidate for change and the long-shot Gary Hart seeking to overturn Ted Kennedy's presumed coronation as the Democratic nominee.

Greenfield has managed to craft an engaging tale of American politics, especially during a period of time when most Americans would ignore politics to watch Jersey Shore.  More importantly, he managed to capture the American political system, warts and all, without offering any apologies for it.  The idealists and crooks are presented side by side and treated the same by the author.  Then Everything Changed both informs us about the America political system and entertains us by once again proving that plausible, well-researched alternate histories are far superior than the "rule of cool" timelines that dominate the genre.

Is the book without faults?  Of course not.  Greenfield often uses events and people throughout the book to reference OTL political issues that would happen in the future.  At first they are entertaining, but they happen so often and lack any subtlety that the reader sometimes feels that Greenfield is standing behind bringing a hammer down on his head again and again shouting "GET IT!" Greenfield also spends the last 10% of the book discussing the research he did when crafting his alternate history.  The reader is presented with a series of short fact blurbs that interrupt the momentum of the book and could probably be skipped unless you have taken issue with one of Greenfield's assumptions and want to read his argument.  Perhaps Greenfield was simply trying to prevent the inevitable "this is ASB" comment on AH.com, but footnote/endnotes would have been more preferable in my opinion.

I still recommend this book, especially for the message contained in it.  Consider the fact that all three alternate presidents in Then Everything Changed are Democrats, yet they tend to be centrist, appealing to both liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats.  In our polarized society of American politics, where radical groups like the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street are competing for the attention of the American people, one can wonder whether the ideas of compromise and moderation can make a comeback.

There, now that I have violated my No Cross, No Crown rule, go and read the damn book.

* * *

Matt Mitrovich is a long-time fan of alternate history, founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update and a volunteer editor for Alt Hist magazine. His fiction can be found at Echelon Press, Jake's Monthly and The Masquerade Crew. When not writing he works as an attorney, enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana and prepares for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. You can follow him on Facebook or Twitter.