Former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis can never live down the fact he blew a 30-point lead in the 1988 presidential election against George H.W. Bush. Analysts concluded that the Democrats just weren't ready to govern again. It is easily forgotten that Bill Clinton in 1992 got a smaller percentage of the vote, 43%, than Dukakis did, 45%. Yet Clinton is widely perceived as a brilliant politician while Dukakis is seen as a dismal failure.
Dukakis attributed his loss to tactical errors -- a failure to respond quickly to Republican smears. In an extensive Boston Globe magazine article by Charles Pierce twenty years after his defeat, Dukakis suggested that in 1988 he could have talked much more in his campaign about the changes he saw in Russia with the rise of Mikhail Gorbachav. In 1988, Americans elected Bush 41 as the last of the Cold War presidents. Dukakis was perceived as too soft on the communists. Republicans charged that he was a, God-forbid, "multilateralist" -- which George H.W. Bush also revealed himself to be once he became president. In reality, Dukakis likes to think he was simply ahead of his time.
"I saw a story in 1987," Dukakis recalls, "and it had an account of what sounded like a speech that [Soviet premier Mikhail] Gorbachev had made, when in fact it was a paper he'd released, where he talked about expanding the authority of the UN, creating a permanent standing UN police force, and creating a kind of international EPA to deal with international environmental issues. I'd never seen anything like this coming out of a Soviet leader. I called Madeleine Albright, who was my foreign policy adviser at the time, and she faxed it to me, and I said, there's something different about this guy. That was about as far as it went at the time."
Not until the Soviets allowed the Berlin Wall to fall in November, 1989 did the world's perceptions change.
Ironically, if the Dukakis campaign hadn't sabatoged Senator Joe Biden's campaign -- accusing him of plagiarism, a charge his campaign didn't survive -- the two would have developed an alliance that gave Dukakis the foreign policy experience he needed since Biden had played a central role on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Plagiarism was a charge Barack Obama's campaign easily surmounted in 2008, though it had clearly borrowed speech passages from Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick.
And remaining supporters of Dukakis like to think he could have prevented the first Gulf War with diplomacy. If the United States had clearly warned Saddam Hussein before he invaded Kuwait that an international coalition would force him to remove his troops, that war, and the subsequent war in Iraq, would have been avoided. The war happened because the US gave Saddam the wrong signals diplomatically, according to this theory. He was not warned before entering Kuwait that the US would not allow his actions to stand.
Thomas Mallon, writing in The New Yorker on Nixon's 100th birthday, speculates:
"Nixon would have reached the Presidency a dozen years sooner, at the age of forty-four. He would have arrived in the Oval Office misshapen by politics, to be sure, as a bruising campaigner who’d been forced to balance his checkbook on live TV and then spend five years trying to figure out the ways of a maddening boss whom everybody else seemed to love. But he would not have undergone the psychological damage of two crushing defeats that still lay ahead, and he would not have been presiding over a country at war in Southeast Asia and with itself. If that had happened, who knows what this gifted, knotted-up man, this “one of us,” might have spared himself, and his wife, and every other one of us?" --"Wag the Dog: The Making of Richard Nixon."
I was intrigued to find a wiki (group-written blog) on alternative history called http://althistory.wikia.com.
There's also alteratehistory.com, mostly discussion boards about alternate American history.
What is Althistory? A "fictional genre which often presupposes a change of a minor historical event that produces an incredible series of changes in the world."
Some of the highlighted or best alternative histories are:
Napolean's World: Instead of invading Russia in the winter of 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte falls ill and stations his Grand Army in Borodino and Smolensk. That following spring, he launches an invasion of Russia, defeating the Russian army at Petrograd, where Czar Alexander perishes. The 'Imperial Wars' end shortly thereafter following the Forty Days Campaign to defeat the British, and Napoleon spends the next twenty years consolidating the Empire before his transference of power to his son, Napoleon II in 1832 and his death in 1844. The French Empire would continue to assimilate Europe and engaged the United States of America in the 20th century in a Cold War. Today, the French Empire is the world's superpower, competing only with the rival military powers of America and China.
To write really good, plausible alternative history, you need to have a detailed knowledge of what actually happened. Otherwise alternative history is not persuasive or plausible to those who know more about the actual history than you do. The best alternative histories do not fly far afield of the facts as we know them.
Most of the posts on the alternative history wiki are not credible, but childish fantasies.For example, I view the creation of terminal illnesses to leading historical figures, such as Ronald Reagan contracting colon cancer in June, 1984, resulting in Walter Mondale's election as President, to be idle speculation. It's simply an acknowledgement that it's impossible to imagine Mondale winning without a mortal wound on Reagan.
"Create. Collaborate. Be Original" are the themes of wikia.com, where you can freely create pages for students or friends or those who share a common interest to post to. Intriguing tool for students. Wikia has more than two million users and more than 100,000 wikis. It grew 33% in 2012, and was voted one of the top 10 social networks by Nielson.
A very individualistic society like America gravitates easily to the "great man theory of history" (which would be modernized to include women):
"a 19th-century idea according to which history can be largely explained by the impact of great men, or heroes: highly influential individuals who, due to either their personal charisma, intelligence, wisdom, or political skill utilized their power in a way that had a decisive historical impact."
Certainly, George Washington is still viewed as "the indispensible man" who shaped America by his character, humility, and actions. It's hard to imagine the essential formation of the nation without him. The same could be said of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and Winston Churchill, to name just a few great world leaders.
But in most cases, great leaders aren't just born, they are made by the moments in which they live, the culture, and by the movements that lift them to essential leadership. They are most often swept up in the tides of history, rather than masters of their own destinies.
Such speculation raises questions about the role of Providence, or God. Does our destiny turn on the outcome of seemingly random events, or is a higher power in the universe trying to teach us something from these simple twists of fate?
In studying history, it's impossible to credibly pose the "what if" question to the great sweep of history. It's absurd to ask, or imagine, what if the Renaissance or Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution or Great Depression never occurred? These were forces or waves building up over years and beyond the scope of a single individual to alter. While one can argue that some traumatic events -- the American civil war, World War I, Vietnam -- were accidents of history that could have been avoided or turned out differently with better leadership -- individuals can no more stop great epochs of change than they can stop the ocean's tides.
Leo Tolstoy's classic novel, "'war and Peace," written in 1879 and set in 1805-1813, shows how families are helplessly swept up in the forces of history, in this case Napolean's invasion of Russia. Tolstoy challenges the Great Man Theory of History. From his perspective in Russia at that time, the individual actions of men rarely result in great historical events. Rather, he argues,
great historical events are the result of many smaller events driven by the thousands of individuals involved, (he compares this to Calculus, and the sum of infinitesimals). He then goes on to argue that these smaller events are the result of an inverse relationship between necessity and free-will, necessity being based on reason and therefore explainable by historical analysis, and free-will being based on "consciousness" and therefore inherently unpredictable.
“Why does an apple fall when it is ripe?" he asks. "Is it brought down by the force of gravity? Is it because its stalk withers? Because it is dried by the sun, because it grows too heavy, or because the boy standing under the tree wants to eat it? None of these is the cause.... Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own freewill is in the historical sense not free at all but is bound up with the whole course of history and preordained from all eternity.”
“To every administrator, in peaceful, unstormy times," he writes,
"it seems that the entire population entrusted to him moves only by his efforts, and in this consciousness of his necessity every administrator finds the chief rewards for his labors and efforts. It is understandable that, as long as the historical sea is calm, it must seem to the ruler-administrator in his frail little bark, resting his pole against the ship of the people and moving along with it, that his efforts are moving the ship. But once a storm arises, the sea churns up, and the ship begins to move my itself, and then the delusion is no longer possible. The ship follows its own enormous, independent course, the pole does not reach the moving ship, and the ruler suddenly, from his position of power, from being a source of strength, becomes an insignificant, useless, and feeble human being.”
He describes how Frenchmen and Russians were caught up in the tides of history:
“Millions of men, renouncing their human feelings and reason, had to go from west to east to slay their fellows, just as some centuries previously hordes of men had come from the east to the west slaying their fellows...It was necessary that millions of men in whose hands lay the real power -- the soldiers who fired, or transported provisions and guns -- should consent to carry out the will of these weak individuals...”
Average men were called to the service of "great men," Napolean and Czar Alexander. But in reality, " ‘Greatness,’ it seems, excludes the standards of right and wrong. For the ‘great’ man nothing is wrong, there is no atrocity for which a ‘great’ man can be blamed.”
Tolstoy seems to draw comfort from tragedies by embracing the idea that God is in ultimate control, and predetermines historical outcomes. "We are slaves to Divine Providence," an unknowable mystery. But he also clearly states that we cannot live full lives unless we believe that we as individuals have free will."
My friend Bruce Johnson has read Tolstoy but articulates a more modern view:
I'm inclined to think that God leaves us to the consequences of our exercise of free will - God respects the outcomes of elections, whether the Supreme Court does or not - but hope that in some way he helps shape our awareness of choices. The closest I can come to a hopeful view of that, which also makes sense to me, is that if Lincoln is right that "you can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time but you can't fool all the people all the time" and if King is right that "no lie can live forever" then in the long run God helps shape our wise perceptions in such ways that we stumble toward the truth, and he also helps to guide people to wisdom who may come forward as our leaders if we have the wisdom to recognize them.
For that reason, my earnest prayer throughout election years is that God will help us to choose wisely when we vote, in a way that responds to the better angels of our nature.
In the heat of a campaign or the immediate aftermath, it's natural for partisans to blame "stupid voters," or the candidate or a political party or the media. In the long run, it's easier to see that greater historical forces are at work than we can see at the time.
Why should we care about alternative history scenarios? Isn't it just mindless speculation that teaches us nothing?
British historian Niall Ferguson in his book, Virtual History, pointed out that raising "what if" questions and alternate scenarios are vital ways for individuals to learn from their mistakes and successes. In our personal lives, few human beings can avoid pondering "what if's" -- what if I didn't show up for that fateful encounter with the love of my life? What if my parents didn't meet and conceive me? Or as Ferguson speculates, "What if I had observed the speed limit, or refused that last drink?" And yet teachers of history often present material as if "events are in some way preprogrammed, so that what was, had to be." It makes the study of history deterministic, boring and often lifeless.
William Holmes, in reviewing What If's of American History on Amazon.com, points out that "History is often written as if outcomes were inevitable, as if the colonies were ordained to win the American Revolution or the Union to prevail in the Civil War. But history is contingent, and the only way to fully appreciate the significance of a given event is to think about what might have happened if things had turned out differently." Explaining the historical context of a given occurrence and then engaging in limited speculation about what might have happened if that event hadn't turned out the way it did can be "very illuminating," Holmes writes.
Grounding the "What If's" or alternate histories in conveniently forgotten facts, the small and seemingly insignificant decisions that have changed the course of nations and the world, we learn that details do matter and individuals can make a huge difference. They motivate us to be involved, to prepare the best we can, to discipline ourselves, to keep our minds open, not closed. Or that sometimes, even courageous individuals swimming against the tides of history cannot forestall the disasters that await, hence the nobility of the quixotic quest, to dream the impossible dream, that is worth the effort whether you win or lose.
To engage with great historical questions is essential for self-governing people. If we do not engage, we could find ourselves to be mere chattel or pawns in the power grasps of others. Because you didn't study the past or ask the right questions, or delve deep enough into the consequences of war, you might be asked to die for a mistake, in an avoidable war. Or because you were naive and clueless -- advocating "peace in our time," and "peace at any price" -- or easily manipulated by anti-war sentiment -- you could find your own country under the domination of a despot. Resources you depend on have fallen out of your control, your country's economy has collapsed, your personal dreams and ambitions are in tatters. All because you and your peers didn't study history or pay attention to current events and ask the right questions.
No student of American electoral history since 1960 can argue that voting doesn't matter. In 1960, 1964, 1968, 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 2000, 2004, and 2008, the decisions of a minuscule number of either office-holders, advisors, journalists, or primary or general election voters determined the leadership of the American nation. Different leaders, different decisions, or tiny twists of fate would have led the U.S. and the Soviet Union to nuclear war in 1962. Different leaders would have ended US involvement in Vietnam in the 1960s instead of 1973, saving tens of thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese lives. With different leadership, the nation could have avoided the disillusionment of Watergate, the permanent cynicism and disrespect for authority resulting from it, the excesses of the counter-culture and the "culture wars" that have permeated politics since the 1960s.
Different decisions by a handful of office-holders, advisors, or voters meant the US could have lurched to the right in 1976 or to the left in 1980.
Few today remember what a close call the first Gulf War in 1991 was because the outcome seemed so uniformly positive, with few downsides for the Americans. But different leaders -- Michael Dukakis, Ted Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Gary Hart, John Kerry -- would have decided against it.
One of the bitter ironies of American presidential politics is that with the winner of the popular vote, Al Gore, in the White House instead of George W. Bush, the war likely would not have been launched.
It's true that the average high school student, equipped with hindsight, has more "wisdom" than the most informed leaders who are forced to make decisions on the fly without the benefit of knowing the future. But we can always hope for better informed voters and leaders with better judgment. Examining the "what if's" of recent American history is a way of making them, and ourselves, accountable for our decisions.
Over the years, I've written a lot on this blog about the ironies of American political history, focusing sometimes on the great "what if's." These posts can, I believe, spark an interest among contemporary students of politics in some of the great accidents of history. As an experiment, I'm going to compile these essays into an ebook, slap on a small price, and see how many downloads I get.
More on the "What If's" of American political history, and how history turns on a dime:
Few people born after 1970 remember this bit of political trivia, but if Democratic frontrunner Gary Hart in 1987 hadn't allowed a certain picture to be taken as he boarded a boat called the "Monkey Business," he very well might have won the Democratic presidential nomination. He was one of the most appealing candidates in a weak field. He very well might have gone on to win the 1988 presidential election against George H.W. Bush, who wasn't especially popular but seemed more upbeat and competent than the dismal Democratic nominee, Michael Dukakis, who blew a 30-point lead.
Hart, a senator from Colorado, initially ran for president in 1984 against Carter Vice President Walter Mondale. He shocked pundits by winning the New Hampshire primary handily, and fought to a draw in the "Super Tuesday" primaries. He won states in the West as well as New England and Florida, Ohio and Indiana.
Hart's biggest problem in 1984 was financing -- the inability to quickly process contributions from the grassroots. His campaign wasn't able to quickly mushroom from a small operation once he won primaries and was discovered by a national constituency. In contrast, Mondale, the veteran national campaigner, had big union and special interest support. If online or credit card fundraising was widely used in 1984, Hart may well have beat Mondale.
Hart's pitch in 1984 for "new ideas" proved to be too vague and not fully developed. Mondale successfully retorted with a "Where's the Beef?" response, mimicking a popular Wendy's hamburger ad at the time. Ironically, Mondale himself was unfamiliar with the Wendy's ad, and wouldn't have made his most memorable quip if an aide hadn't suggested it.
Hart's essential message, suggesting that the only way Democrats could regain the White House was to adhere less to conventional dogma and declare independence from certain special interest groups within the party, proved to be an inspiration for Bill Clinton's more successful campaign in 1992. (One wonders if Hart's campaign holds lessons for the Republican Part party today?)
Hart's personal life proved to be an issue in both campaigns. In 1984, it was revealed that he and his wife Lee had separated several times. His 1988 campaign self-destructed after a suggestive photo appeared in The National Enquirer, and after stalking reporters for the Miami Herald, hiding in the bushes near his Washington residence, observed an attractive model entering and leaving the property. Hart assumed that the media still operated under the gentleman's agreements of the 1960s, when the sexual activities of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were considered "off-limits" to journalists in a society that in many ways still internalized Victorian morality. But in the intervening years, a sexual revolution took place. Politicians' hypocrisies and double-standards became fair game for public disclosure, to the point of creating media feeding frenzies and hysterical leaps to conclusions without much of a sense of proportionality or perspective.
Jeff Greenfield in "Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics" makes a plausible case that Gary Hart could have emerged as a Clinton-like Democratic winner in the 1980s, appealing to "Reagan Democrats" by advocating "workfare," empowerment zones in poor neighborhoods, other decentralized government programs, a leaner military and tougher diplomacy than either Mondale, Dukakis or that quintessential liberal Ted Kennedy were advocating at the time.
After Hart was driven from politics by scandal, he did go on to maintain a substantial career as an international lawyer, expert in national security issues and terrorism, and to write more than a dozen books. And he and his wife Lee stayed married, celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. So one has to ask what business did the press or the public have in judging Hart's marriage back in 1987?
While he was an aloof and enigmatic personality, there is little doubt that his campaign of "new ideas" paved the way for Bill Clinton's success.
Without Hart or another "new Democrat" as the nominee, it's nearly impossible to imagine any plausible scenarios that could have changed the outcome of the 1984 or 1988 presidential elections. Old-fashioned liberal Walter Mondale managed as best he could to unite the base of the Democratic Party, giving a disproportionate role to labor unions, minorities, and big government types. Most pundits at the time said he won the first debate with President Ronald Reagan. But with a recovering economy, and expertly managed Reagan re-election team that solidified his governing coalition, the result was almost a foregone conclusion. Reagan won 49 of the 50 states and 58.8% of the vote to Mondale's 40.6%.
In 1988, Michael Dukakis began the general election ahead in the polls, but he was easily pegged as an elitist Massachusetts liberal who opposed capital punishment, "a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union" with a permissive approach toward flag-burning. He made a series of arrogant, amateurish mistakes, refusing to respond to attacks and allowing George H.W. Bush to win the election with 53% of the vote.
The election was ultimately winnable for a Democrat like Hart with a less conventional, less dogmatic approach. But it took Democrats three straight losses before they learned to flex their muscles, respond instantly to attacks, and broaden their appeal.
If guards protecting the American embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979 fired a few shots in the air, scaring off the protesters, might Jimmy Carter's presidency have been saved?
Probably the biggest what-if of the 1980 election cycle remains, "What if Iranians hadn't taken Americans hostage, or what if the hostages were freed before the election? Might Carter have won?"
Indeed, the initial plan of the Iranian students who stormed the US embassy on November 4, 1979 was to occupy it for only a short time. But chaos and anarchy ensued until Iran's leaders perceived they had an interest in detaining the Americans for at least a short while. A close study of the hostage crisis reveals dozens of "what if's" -- from "what if guards protecting the embassy had used deadly force to protect it initially instead of letting the students storm in?" to numerous times when negotiations to free the hostages broke down for relatively frivolous reasons.
The stalemate over the hostages, fanned into crisis by daily hype on American television, cast a pall over the last 14 months of Jimmy Carter's presidency, making him look weak and ineffectual. By holding his fire on the Iranians, Carter ultimately saved the lives of all of the American hostages. But his presidency may have been a casualty of his forbearance.
Initially, the crisis worked in his favor. The Iranian embassy was stormed the day Ted Kennedy announced his challenge to Carter, essentially crowding Kennedy's statement out of the top news. At the time, polls showed Kennedy far more popular than Carter for the nomination. When the hostages were seized, Carter was able to credibly announce a "Rose Garden Strategy" to avoid engaging or debating Kennedy, claiming he was too busy working for the hostages' release to engage in partisan politics. Carter's strategy worked. He overwhelmingly won the Iowa Caucuses and even New Hampshire and Illinois, pretending there was no need to ever debate Kennedy. Carter advisors later admitted this was a strategic error, prolonging the frustration and bitterness of the Kennedy forces so they withheld strong support for Carter once he was nominated.
Without the hostage crisis, Carter would have no excuse but to engage and debate Kennedy. This would have either led to resolution of the conflict -- Kennedy forces would acknowledge they lost the nomination fair and square -- or so many gaffes and misstep by Carter that Kennedy would have won the nomination.
Public opinion began to sour on Carter's handling of the crisis when an ill-conceived hostage rescue mission failed; helicopters crashed in the Iranian desert, flying too low to detect Iranian radar and encountering a sandstorm. Thirty-one years later, greatly improved technology and advanced training made Barack Obama's similarly improbable mission into foreign airspace -- to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan -- successful.
Carter later gave credence to the view of his National Security Advisor, Gary Sick, that "individuals associated with the Reagan-Bush campaign of 1980 met secretly with Iranian officials to delay the release of the American hostages." Sick charged in his 1992 book, October Surprise: America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan, that the Reagan campaign had engaged in political corruption if not treason. Sick's allegations are still being debated to this day, and the truth will probably never be known.
The 1976 election cycle included several "too close to call" moments for the Republicans. The race for the GOP nomination between President Gerald Ford and former California Governor Ronald Reagan, leader of the party's conservative wing, was not resolved in the primaries. Neither entered the 1976 Republican convention with enough votes to clinch the nomination. After numerous maneuvers and arm-twisting, Ford squeaqed out a nomination victory by just 117 delegate votes. Then Reagan gave a magnificent concession speech, and there was a palpable sense among the delegates that they had nominated the wrong guy.
Of course, if Reagan had been nominated, he would have had a more difficult time quashing the rising star of Democrat Jimmy Carter than he did in 1980, when incumbent Carter was beleaguered by the Iranian hostage crisis and a bad economy.
And if Reagan had won the presidency in 1976, his reputation today would probably be far different, and not nearly as successful. The nascent conservative movement had not solidified in 1976. There were no tax revolts, no calls for "supply-side economics," nor was there a religious right political movement -- things that fueled his 1980 candidacy. He might have edged out Carter, but once elected, he would have faced different obstacles than he did in 1981.
Dominic Sandbrook has a clever piece on what would have happened if Ronald Reagan had edged out Gerald Ford for the 1976 Republican presidential nomination, and beat Jimmy Carter for the presidency that year. Sandbrook contends Reagan would have been perceived as a disaster as president 1977-81, and would have lost badly to Ted Kennedy in 1980. But because he ran successfully in 1980, he appeared to be on top of events 1981-89, and was perceived to be a good president instead of a bad one.
President Ford in 1976 lost to Carter by just 1.7 million votes -- 50.1% to 48%. His gaffe in the debates, claiming that Poland was not under the domination of the Soviet Union, offended Reagan Cold Warriors who thought Ford's detente policy was soft-headed, not tough-minded. It cost him a week of bad press reviews and may have cost him the election. What if Ford had quickly corrected himself and gone on to win the 1976 election? Jeff Greenfield, in "Then Everything Changed," offers a plausible account of how that would have changed history.
Drill Deeper:
Dominic Sandbrook's clever piece on Reagan's 1976 victory and 1980 defeat.
Jeff Greenfield's plausible account of Ford's 1976 victory and 1977-81 presidency in "Then Everything Changed."
Here's how history hangs on a thread. Frank Wills, a sharp-eyed night watchman at the Watergate Hotel in June 1972, discovered the break-in at Democratic headquarters by chance. A less vigilant watchman may not have done so, meaning Richard Nixon's cover-up would probably not have been discovered before he left office; and he may not have been forced to resign on threat of impeachment two years later. Though despised by liberals, Nixon may have gone down in history as the last of the liberal presidents -- his chief legacies could have been creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, a national health care initiative quite similar to Obamacare (proposed but not passed), ending the Vietnam War, showing America not to be a "pitiful, helpless giant" but achieving "peace with honor," and opening diplomatic relations with the People'e Republic of China.
But Frank Willis unwittingly destroyed Nixon's chances at greatness. The New York Times obituary of Willis in 2000 described what he did:
He was working the midnight shift on June 17, 1972. He discovered tape over a lock on a basement door, and thinking some worker had left it to make it easier to get in and out, he removed it. On another inspection round, he found the lock taped over again, and called the police. They locked the doors, turned off the elevators, and started checking darkened offices. About 2 a.m., at the sixth-floor headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, they found five men: Bernard L. Barker, Virgilio Gonzales, Eugenio Martinez, James W. McCord Jr. and Frank Sturgis.
If, before the election, Nixon was fully exposed to be the criminal that he turned out to be, could Democrat George McGovern have won the presidency? Probably not. Nixon's forces would have retorted with an "everybody does it" and a "It Didn't Start With Watergate" defense. The American people did not turn against Nixon until two years later, when the steady "drip drip drip" of disclosures from the Watergate cover-up made it clear he was "twisting slowly in the wind" and could no longer govern effectively.
The suspicious outlines of the Watergate break-in and Nixon's dirty tricks were known before the election, and did not prevent Nixon from winning a landslide.
Even with the discovery of the Watergate break-in, it's hard to imagine how the Democrats, deeply divided over the Vietnam War, civil rights, and women's rights, could have won the presidency in 1972. To garner favor with his young supporters, McGovern in the primaries came out in favor of decriminalization of marijuana, amnesty for Vietnam draft dodgers, and legalized abortion. This was the first year 18-21 year-olds were allowed to vote, and McGovern's hope was their participation would lead to a far more pro gressive electorate. In reality, young people that year voted in smaller percentages than other groups, and the ones who voted proved no more liberal than other segments of the population. But the positions McGovern staked out in the primaries led opponents to portray him as a radical left-wing extremist in the general election. One Democratic leader referred to McGovern as the candidate of "acid, amnesty and abortion," and that became a refrain among "Democrats for Nixon" in the fall campaign.
The biggest "what if's" of the 1972 election, aside from the discovery of the Watergate break-in, involved McGovern's sloppy selection of Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice presidential candidate -- weeks later, Eagleton had to resign when it was revealed he had undergone shock treatment for depression -- the toppling of the Democrats' best hope, moderate frontrunner Edmund Muskie of Maine in the primaries, and the shooting of Alabama Governor George Wallace just as he was racking up primary victories.
The Eagleton resignation mortally wounded McGovern. He wouldn't have won the election without that mistake, but he might not have lost by historic proportions. He was also damaged by a Democratic convention that seemed to embrace counter-culture elements and was starkly out of control. McGovern's 3AM acceptance speech, which few swing voters saw on television, meant he never had a chance to make his case to the American people.
The Democrats would have fared far better if they nominated Muskie. Well before the primary season began, journalists constantly predicted that Muskie would sweep all the primaries and was a "shoe-in" for nomination. Muskie's forces did nothing to dampen expectations. As a senator from Maine, Muskie was projected early on to win the neighboring New Hampshire primary handily. But before the primary, it was reported that a letter on Muskie campaign stationary used an ethnic slur (calling the French-Canadians population of New Hampshire "Cannucks"). This was actually a dirty trick by the Nixon campaign. It was also reported that Muskie burst into tears at criticism of his wife Jane by The Manchester (NH) Union-Leader. This also turned out to be untrue. Muskie was the victim of media hype and dirty tricks by the Nixon forces. But voters, or at least journalists, began to wonder if Muskie had the toughness and stamina to be president. Though he did achieve more than 50 percent of the vote in New Hampshire, the news coming out of the state was that Senator George McGovern did far better than expected. McGovern had passionate anti-war activists behind him and a better ground organization than Muskie. After losing the Florida primary, Muskie withdrew his candidacy for the Democratic nomination, and his party's chances for the presidency that year faded. To this day, one wonders if media hype and Nixon's dirty tricks killed his promising candidacy.
As for Wallace, as a Southerner, he led a backlash campaign against the national Democratic Party positions on integration and the war in Vietnam. Surprisingly, he won every county in the Florida primary, as well as primaries in North Carolina (against favorite son Terry Sanford), outside the South -- in Maryland and Michigan. Most Wallace supporters voted for Nixon in the fall. If he had not been disabled by an assassin's bullet, one wonders what additional mischief he may have caused for the national Democratic Party. But by 1976, he was back in the fold, endorsing Jimmy Carter for President and attending the Carter inaugural.
Dominic Sandbrook in The New Statesman speculated on what would have happened if that night watchman at the Watergate hotel in 1972 hadn't been so alert to discover the Watergate break-in. Might Nixon have gone down in history as a great president?
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