TLIAW: Camelot Lost
- Thread starter Enigma-Conundrum
- Start date
I can see that, Brown is interesting in the sense that Brown was a Europhile (rather different from most Trade Unionists at the time) but also would have probably have been one termer as it were given his many inadequacies.
I can see that, I can see that he’s forced into an election where he’s ousted due to signing a treaty with Japan.My thought process was an interrupted term, so he’s in-out-in Harold Wilson style with a conservative interruption. Mostly wanted to indicate reformist liberalism and that Park’s coup didn’t happen
Great pair of updates, even if now I'm secretly hoping the Republican nominee is some gridiron player or something to solidify a Jock/Nerd party system. (In all seriousness, both writers have conveyed very well the differences, good and bad, between Stevenson and Kennedy's visions of the party, and how they've traded peace abroad for strife at home.)
JFK persisting as the failson version of Scoop Jackson is a fun thread so far, and I hope it doesn't end here--we already know from the first update he never gets to the top, but there's plenty of spaces in American politics to fill.
In terms of foreign affairs, Going to China before the Cultural Revolution gets into full swing and Mao can eliminate all his rivals is an interesting one that leaves a lot of opportunities open for the next person, and Young Andropov also bodes well for the Soviets going forward for certain very specialised definitions of "well". Anyway, viva comrade Lumumba, Congo Superpower 2020.
JFK persisting as the failson version of Scoop Jackson is a fun thread so far, and I hope it doesn't end here--we already know from the first update he never gets to the top, but there's plenty of spaces in American politics to fill.
In terms of foreign affairs, Going to China before the Cultural Revolution gets into full swing and Mao can eliminate all his rivals is an interesting one that leaves a lot of opportunities open for the next person, and Young Andropov also bodes well for the Soviets going forward for certain very specialised definitions of "well". Anyway, viva comrade Lumumba, Congo Superpower 2020.
This is very, very good work.
With the degree to which civil rights have been delayed here, I do wonder if things might end up getting very messy - a turn to violence, perhaps, if people conclude peaceful protest has failed. On the other hand, with the Republicans leaning that way (depending on who the next president ends up being ofc) and changes in congressional membership, it does sound like a bill is due to get passed.
With the degree to which civil rights have been delayed here, I do wonder if things might end up getting very messy - a turn to violence, perhaps, if people conclude peaceful protest has failed. On the other hand, with the Republicans leaning that way (depending on who the next president ends up being ofc) and changes in congressional membership, it does sound like a bill is due to get passed.
So Vietnam question: who’s currently in charge of the South and how are they doing in terms of trying to untangle that whole mess? All the diplomacy in the world won’t mean too much of the South is a complete cluster when the North inevitably breaks the truce.
(Don’t get me wrong, I do think a surrving South Vietnam can be done, there’s certainly enough of a base of anti communists, but the problem really does get down to the fact that Southern governance was a complete cluster.
(Don’t get me wrong, I do think a surrving South Vietnam can be done, there’s certainly enough of a base of anti communists, but the problem really does get down to the fact that Southern governance was a complete cluster.
Last edited:
Right now, it’s still junta-shuffling as mentioned in the Adlaipost - Big Minh was likely in charge through the peace talks and bought himself a little time in charge off of the ceasefire, but those Young Turks are looking mighty greedy and ready for power, and the rest is up to the future of the TL to discuss
I almost regret getting busy with my own thread again given that it's slowed me down commenting yet - I'll get there eventually - on this lovely, thoughtful TL. A TL that really does give us a meaningfully different Sixties - in many ways a sort of "Long Fifties" at least at the level of domestic and geo-politics.
@Oliveia, if Adlai had instead been from Anglo-French stock would that make him a Norman yolk? (Well, I am a dad, and it is a pun, so ...)
@Oliveia, if Adlai had instead been from Anglo-French stock would that make him a Norman yolk? (Well, I am a dad, and it is a pun, so ...)
"Long Fifties" has been said almost a dozen times in Enigma and I's messages, I'm glad you picked up on it! I hope you enjoy the guy I bring on next, I'm really proud of how I wrote him.
I suppose something like that. I always found it a bit rude that accounts of his passing said that his head cracked when he fell, but that was the verbiage they used. Didn't think of the implications of that one, I fear.
While we're here, I might as well admit that the reason I had Adlai die a year earlier was because I found the idea of potentially forcing Enigma to write a six-month president really funny. He didn't take the bait, though, but one day.
Great work so far!
I would say that I’m not sure how I feel about the type of world that’s being created here. On one hand, the Vietnam War is prevented and the US opens relations with China much earlier, but on the other hand - it looks as if progress on the Civil Rights Movement is stalling and that spells big trouble for race relations in America.
On the cultural side, I think there was always gonna be some sort of counterculture movement around either the 1960s or 1970s - mainly due to the backlash brought by the social conservatism of the 1950s (caused by the return to normalcy from the Great Depression and World War II) and the whole American Dream “Leave It To Beaver” aesthetic of the 1950s clashing with the realities of poverty and racism. But the real question is - what kind of counterculture?
With the reforms of the Civil Rights Movement being way slower, combined with the inevitable boom in crime and serial killers caused by leaded gasoline and the baby boom, this alternate counterculture movement could not only be way more nihilistic, but also burn hot before dying out by the early 80s like disco.
Thoughts?
I would say that I’m not sure how I feel about the type of world that’s being created here. On one hand, the Vietnam War is prevented and the US opens relations with China much earlier, but on the other hand - it looks as if progress on the Civil Rights Movement is stalling and that spells big trouble for race relations in America.
On the cultural side, I think there was always gonna be some sort of counterculture movement around either the 1960s or 1970s - mainly due to the backlash brought by the social conservatism of the 1950s (caused by the return to normalcy from the Great Depression and World War II) and the whole American Dream “Leave It To Beaver” aesthetic of the 1950s clashing with the realities of poverty and racism. But the real question is - what kind of counterculture?
With the reforms of the Civil Rights Movement being way slower, combined with the inevitable boom in crime and serial killers caused by leaded gasoline and the baby boom, this alternate counterculture movement could not only be way more nihilistic, but also burn hot before dying out by the early 80s like disco.
Thoughts?
Could the next Republican President be someone like Rocky? Or Romney who'll pursue Civil Rights like JFK did IOTL.
37. Thomas Kuchel (R-CA)
37. Thomas Kuchel (Republican-CA)
January 20, 1969 - January 20, 1977
“I think it is not only permissible but, indeed, vital that the Senate of the United States lead public opinion instead of following it. That is the difficult path but the only one to tread if our republic is to remain.”
January 20, 1969 - January 20, 1977
“I think it is not only permissible but, indeed, vital that the Senate of the United States lead public opinion instead of following it. That is the difficult path but the only one to tread if our republic is to remain.”
From the outset, 1968 was seen—finally—as the reckoning of the Conservative Republican, a righting of wrongs decades in the making. President Fulbright’s mandate had practically evaporated, and now it was time for that stalwart knight Barry Goldwater to deliver the killing blow—a rematch to end all rematches, a comeback rivaling Adlai Stevenson’s!
For his part, Goldwater was actually excited to run. He did not need to be goaded, or drafted, he enthusiastically prepared for a rematch, boasted frequently how he’d “kick a boot so far up [Fulbright]’s ass that that hippie sonuvabitch will see stars!” Goldwater, however, was incredibly temperamental. His mood was liable of swinging wildly and his ability to connect to voters was seriously questionable. Since 1964 he also had burned basically every bridge possible in the sphere of campaigners. Those who drafted him had seen themselves pushed to the sidelines, those who weren’t had to wrangle him in so much that their arms were sore from pulling and hands red from rope-burn. Thus, that invisible yet pervasive veil of “The Establishment” saw it fit to rally around someone more presentable, more electable.
Thomas Kuchel wasn’t their first choice. The first choices could have packed a football stadium—Governors Romney and Rockefeller and Scranton and Hatfield; Senators Lodge and Fong and Morton; Representatives Judd and Ford. Some of them ran, most of them didn’t—knowing the race was too crowded and the chances too slim. Kuchel wasn’t unpopular, and some press buzzed around him with such a packed primary field, but he wasn’t particularly interested in running for a position away from California.
It was Earl Warren’s suggestion.
* * *
Despite the degrees of familiarity—friendship, even, if Tom was to be so bold—between the Senator and the Chief Justice, the busy timetables of Washington made mostly everything non-professional an impossibility. Heck, one of his chief staffers, good ol’ “Pop” Small (who had a resemblance so much like his old boss Warren that it was uncanny), had been urging him to return to California A.S.A.P. for fear of a successful primary challenge. And he wanted to, he really did. It just was so inconvenient. He was the Republican whip, and it was basically his life for the time being.
Not helping things was the fact that Earl Warren was something of a distant fellow. He never hosted guests back in California, but despite that it was clear that he cared about Tom and his political climb. He was, after all, the man who promoted him from State Senator to Controller, from Controller to US Senator.
So the chance to get a lunch together was surely something of a rarity in both men’s lives. But, early in 1968, they had managed to arrange their schedules to make it work. Poor Pop had to hurry himself to and fro to work it all out, but he was friendly enough with the both of them to not mind too much, God bless him.
That January had been remarkably kind for a stroll in the park—gray, damp winter as opposed to a strong white snow sheet. It wasn’t perfectly amicable to the two Californians, but it was good enough. They both had plenty of time to soak in the offices of Capitol Hill, anyway. So here they sat, on a mostly-damp bench, both buttoned up in shapeless dark winter coats. Tom smoked on a cigarette, while Earl didn’t—he’d given up smoking many years back, but never seemed to let that impede Tom.
After catching up a bit the conversation flowed to one of their most prominent similarities: politics.
“Well, Tommy,” Earl said, cheeks a warm pink in the cool air, “the election.” Here he was referring to the primaries.
“You know how I feel about Goldwater,” Tom stated simply. The two men had a good chuckle about that. “If they nominate him again, I think it’s a death wish. It’d be suicide.”
“And the opposition?”
“Oh, I doubt any one of them has a real chance. Rockefeller could’ve, but then there was—well, you know.” And here Tom was referring to Nelson Rockefeller’s divorce and remarriage several years previous, which had long ago made him damaged goods for moderates and liberals in the party.
“And with Rockefeller gone—?”
“I don’t think there’s anyone left to fill that void,” Tom said. “Not for a lack of trying, though. The big-wigs have asked darn near everyone about running against [Goldwater].”
“You included?”
“Me included.”
There was a bit of an awkward pause after that. There was nothing else to add to that conversation. The day was chilly, the sky was gray, and Thomas Kuchel was approached to run against Barry Goldwater. Earl breathed into his gloved hands, warming them. The second his head raised from his hands, Tom felt his heartbeat go faster, faster, faster. Anticipating the next question.
“Have you considered?” Earl asked. Others would have asked it with an air of innocence, or intrigue. But Earl Warren knew the weight of those words. He had been a margin of error away from being the vice-president, he had ran on his own accord afterwards. He knew what came with the territory. And Tom took a long drag on his cigarette, his heartbeat not slowing.
“I’ve—considered it.” He exhaled deeply, not proud of the answer. “It’s suicide, having Barry Goldwater on the ticket. We both know it. We also both know that I’m a soft touch,” a bitter half-chuckle escaped his throat, and then he sighed deep again. “I just—I want to be a good citizen, so I guess I’ll do it, but I really can’t afford the time.” [1]
* * *
More welcome than Goldwater, Kuchel wasn’t universally beloved by The Establishment either. He famously refused to endorse Republicans he didn’t get along with politically. Perhaps the most damning example of this was in 1962, when his refusal to endorse Richard Nixon likely single-handedly cost Republicans the Governor’s seat—it was a close race, decided only by a couple thousand votes.
But the field was divided and Kuchel’s maverick attitudes towards the Republican infrastructure won him a lot of love; he truly was something of an everyman, enough of an anti-establishment figure to annoy the Party, not enough of one to turn away the voters. Perhaps more importantly, though, he was everything that Stevenson-Fulbright Democrats weren’t. Kuchel paired a lucid but hawkish view of foreign policy with a heartfelt belief in civil rights—and he had a long history of bipartisan consensus making, to boot (here was the man who was responsible for assembling the coalition of moderate Republicans required to pass Stevenson’s proposal lowering the age of retirement).
By the end of the Convention, he had secured the nomination. It had been taxing and long and Kuchel cringed thinking about all the bills he missed, but it was part of the sacrifice for that sacred Greater Good, and that goal allowed the hesitant Senator to march onward.
In the age of the television, Kuchel was a bit of an oddity. His voice was deep and commanding, but in the black-and-white glare of the camera’s eye he was not particularly photogenic. His forehead seemed to unflatteringly bulge as he talked, he’d blink irregularly—here a minute without, here ten seconds with twenty blinks—and a general air of hesitancy befitting a politician and not a presidential contender. As such, when Fulbright made no mention of televised debates for 1968 Kuchel made no effort to argue against him. He much preferred commercials—short, effective, well planned and well executed. He preferred the radio, too.
An old guard of the newly-founded “Lincoln Republican” coalition, he was immediately popular as a bipartisan figure. But accolades from liberals across the aisle was not what sealed the election, but rather the brutal sweeping of Czechoslovakia in “Operation Danube.” After years of a hesitant thaw, it seemed that the chill breath of war had again frozen the politics of the era. “We believe strongly that bullies should be dealt with,” Kuchel’s voice echoed out of radios across America; those increasing numbers with television watched as he gently pounded his fist against the prop-desk to make his point, punctuating the word dealt. “Fulbright is too busy acting as President of the United Nations, not the United States.” The attack line had been floated by him, a scrapped attack meant for Stevenson before his expiration, but now seemed perfectly apt for the current moment. What went unsaid, naturally, was Kuchel’s history of policy approaching internationalism—he had been a key voice in making sure that the United States signed onto the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty during Stevenson’s Presidency, the kind of move that would have incensed some of his more hawkish supporters.
For most commentators, the results of 1968 were decided weeks in advance—a blowout victory for the Gentleman from California. Fulbright’s margins had been whittled down to the Solid South, but even there it was not perfectly guaranteed—a few of the most ardently anti-segregationist governments refused to pledge their electors to Fulbright, still burned from his endorsement of the anti-lynching bill. Instead they pledged their delegates to former governor George Wallace. (Wallace was, incidentally, himself a victim to the moderate backlash—his wife, Wallace’s surrogate while he was term-limited, lost the primary to the young moderate Ryan deGraffenried.) The landslide is not what stuck with Kuchel, though. Rather it was Fulbright’s final months as president. “When a politician doesn’t get elected, he usually takes the junket around the world… President [Fulbright] though, he stayed there until the very end. Defended himself, his positions, all the way to the last. I really respected him for that, leaving with a good taste in his mouth,” he recounted in an interview years later.
Unlike his beleaguered predecessor, Kuchel was greeted on January 20 1969 by a Congress that was friendly with him—both houses were suitably Republican (even if the Senate still remained stubbornly Democratic-majority) and suitably moderate enough to begin the shaping of his domestic agenda. The fight for a new civil rights act would be trying and difficult, but with the trust of the Senate leadership (Leader Johnson and Whip Humphrey, as well as Leader Dirksen and Whip Scott) he began the process of figuring out this new act. However, the first dances Kuchel would need to play vis-a-vis civil rights began not with legislation, but with the judiciary.
Chief Justice Earl Warren’s retirement was no secret. He had been vocal that he would retire as soon as the winner of 1968 was sworn into office. Naturally he had hoped that Kuchel was the winner, and despite Kuchel knowing this already he could not help wiping a tear from his eyes when the Chief Justice called him to say that “There is no man I am happier to have appoint my successor than you, Tommy.” It was well-appreciated, but the quest for a new Chief Justice was hard—especially one that was befitting of Earl Warren’s legacy. After a period of back-and-forths, Kuchel was able to convince Eisenhower Attorney General Herbert Brownell to head the Judiciary. There was some kerfuffle with his nomination, what with his use of office to enforce Brown v. Board of Education, but once it came to a vote those objections became quiet murmurs and the Brownell Court was sworn in. The runner-up to the Chief Justice position, Eisenhower’s second Attorney General William P. Rogers, was appointed to the Court to replace the Associate Justice George T. Washington when he died in 1971.
Shortly after the end of Election Day, Kuchel began making plans with the Senate leadership (though not including Pennsylvania senator Hugh Scott, who had not yet replaced Kuchel as Republican whip) on how best to codify civil rights in an attempt to quell the dissent of the ‘60s. Although Humphrey was an idealist (and later historians would note that Kuchel seemed receptive to Humphrey’s expansive proposals), his robust dreams of a massive Civil Rights Act were quickly watered down by the moderate Dirksen and the weary Johnson. Despite the lack of a strong Dixiecratic tendency in the hearty Republican minority, there still was a strong conservative underbelly and Dirksen expressed fears at his ability to whip them in line for an expansive bill. Johnson privately feared the same, although he would never admit aloud that his vote-collecting skills had waned with age. As such, the plan that would eventually become the Civil Rights Act of 1969 was radical on paper. Technically, the act enforced voting rights, forced businesses to desegregate, and made segregation as a whole illegal in public spaces—all while allowing an avenue for the Justice Department to aid in the desegregation process. In reality, though, most of these measures were lip service. Very few of the provisions of the CRA-1969 had any real power without a willingly liberal interpretation, and even then aspects of it were far more liberal than intended. The House of Representatives was responsible for tacking on the provision making segregation in public spaces illegal (a provision which did not spend much time indicating with “public spaces” or “segregation” were in the eyes of the law). Similarly, the clause desegregating the private sector gave businesses two years to start the process before the government was to get involved (a caveat added by Dirksen). Although technically a win for the Civil Rights Movement, most of its most vocal leaders called it what it was—toothless; too little, too late. Indeed, even in the 91st United States Congress it was late, having been introduced in February and signed into law in September.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had become well accustomed with prisons. It was natural for civil disobedience to be met with hostility—indeed, that was part of the point. In the age of television and news cameras, violent reactions to nonviolence helped change hearts; challenge minds. Georgia, however, was different. In other prisons, he was bailed out by sympathetic organizations. On his return trip to Georgia State Prison, that was not the case. He had not started any demonstrations, hadn’t organized any sit-ins or protests; he had simply arrived in Georgia and was swiftly arrested. He received no trial, read no rights, and sent to a jail cell with no trial. Attempts to pay his bail were met with silence—there was no prisoner, there was no bail to be paid. He was a political prisoner, a non-person. This was all according to the calculations of Governor James Gray, controversially elected by a fluke in the gubernatorial electoral process in Georgia who proceeded to adopt a powerful grip over the state. As President Fulbright rolled out his federal anti-lynching bill, Governor Gray roared from his podium that “They will not make a [EXPLETIVE]-lover outta me!” As Fulbright’s power declined, as a new wave of liberals found their home in the House, as Tommy Kuchel became the likely next president, Governor Gray watched in horror. He abolished the term limits of Georgia governors, promising that he was “the only thing standing between Washington and our laws and society!”
President Kuchel was different from President Fulbright in many ways, including a level of care for internal matters unlike the internationalist Fulbright. His father had waged a war against the Klan when it had invaded his home of Anaheim, California; in this way the fight for civil rights was especially personal for him. He demanded the release of Reverend King from Georgia State in strong language, and threatened punishment if no action was taken. Governor Gray, a former newspaper publisher, got a coalition of segregationist newspaper to publish in tandem the searing headline of “KUCHEL TO GEORGIA: DROP DEAD.” Despite this, the punishments from Washington were rather lackluster, if only because Kuchel feared causing rioting in the streets. However, after a year of these threats, a prayer was answered in the form of a peanut farmer.
“Jimmy” Carter was an unassuming small politician; he had run in 1966 for the governorship and had lost, but in the wake of increasing antagonism between Atlanta and Washington, in the wake of increased protests and ugliness, his slightly softer stances on segregation were seen as a blessing for the weary electorate. He did not campaign as against segregation, merely slightly to the left of the rabid Governor Gray. In an upset, Carter unseated the incumbent in the primary and won the general election handily (though a sore-loser run on Gray’s part made the Republicans perform abnormally well that year comparatively). Carter, however, was quick to reveal after assuming office that his segregationist stances were a front, declaring proudly that “the time for racial discrimination is over!” and released Reverend King from Georgia State. Carter then signaled that he would continue to follow Washington’s example. A similar coup occurred in nearby Mississippi, where outsider Bill Waller (himself a moderate like Carter) promised to move past the prickly relationship with Washington.
Dr. King returned quickly to the realm of activism, though in a more specialized field. He met with President Kuchel only two weeks after being released to talk with him about the progress the administration had made on civil rights. Although the exact specifics of this conversation has eluded historians, and is often discussed due to the conflicted civil rights record of Tommy Kuchel, future collaboration between the two shows that regardless of the conversation the two were on similar enough pages. In particular, King’s newfound activism on housing reform was quickly reciprocated by Kuchel, who spent no time in trying to jockey the House and Senate into passing a Housing Reform Act, and create a corresponding Department of Housing and Urban Affairs (HUA). Although still a controversial bill, forcing the desegregation of housing, it was able to pass both houses of Congress. Governor George Romney was swiftly appointed as the inaugural Secretary of Housing and Urban Affairs, and began his secretaryship by commanding a policy of “Open Communities,” a program to encourage open housing and desegregation. Seen by many detractors as rather piecemeal, it still helped begin the process of desegregation.
Despite the beginnings of reform, very little would quell that great throbbing beast of resistance that stretched from coast to coast. Its blood cells were agitators—college students, black activists, leftists and militants and a million others. They took heavy inspiration from the Beat culture of the early 1960s, although many key figures considered the beatniks a naive movement. They still adopted their anti-consumerist positions, though, synthesized with Marx and Lenin and Mao, spoken to life by Huey Newton or Malcom X. The nation felt kinetic, every day—every hour—ever minute there was a protest. Here a poor black kid got shot for walking the wrong side of the road, here a college student was beaten to death for a pro-civil rights picketing, here the televisions were making people complacent and drooling, here corporations were censoring the revolution. And on and on it went. Not all of them—not even most of them—were violent, but the ones that were found themselves plastered in black-and-white on newspaper pages and news programs. Three men died in clashes following the election of Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party to Oakland City Council. Smoke rose over an Atlanta street where a gunman had attempted to open fire on Dr. King. “It was truly something unholy,” recalled prominent Georgian student activist Clarence Thomas, “All this violence against us—all because we wanted the laws of man to reflect the laws of God.” And it wasn’t just in the South. Cities north of the Mason-Dixon similarly struggled with the issues of race. Ted Kennedy, soon-to-be Mayor of Boston, recalled an incident wherein he tried to encourage peaceful dialogue about bussing (near the end of his life he would admit with a great deal of shame that this was before he became a civil rights warrior in his own right) only to be assaulted by the crowd. He escaped with only a black eye and some sore muscles, but he would recall the incident often in interviews as being one of the key motivators in his running for mayor.
Outside of his domestic reforms, Kuchel sought to redefine the American foreign policy vision. Tired of the dovishness of the Stevenson-Fulbright Administrations, Kuchel promised a responsible and tough foreign doctrine—hawkish but not offensively so. Eager to separate himself from what he saw as the disgraces of the GOP, that caucus of Bircherites and Goldwaterites, he pledged to be tough but fair. “I will follow the intelligence gathered by the government, not wild fantasies of Chinese invasions.” Fittingly to that quotation, China was one of his quickest reversals from President Fulbright. A loyal benefactor of the China Lobby, Kuchel was quick to reaffirm US recognition of “Free China,” stationed in Taiwan. The speediness of this reversal was both personal and due to the internal happenings in Beijing. Shortly after China helped broker the Vietnam peace, Chairman Mao grew to fear that in the stagnation of Communist rule, that China had begun to calcify—that the Revolution had merely replaced the Qing aristocracy with a Communist aristocracy. To relieve this, Mao enacted his vision of a “continuous revolution,” one where the people shedded their old shells to ensure that the revolution never ended. Thus began the Cultural Revolution, a ghastly and bloody affair that involved the purging of disloyal government agents, the massacring of citizens, and the destruction of cultural relics.
The violent international reaction to the Cultural Revolution sounded alarm bells for some of those more conservative elements Mao was paranoid of. The fact that any President of the United States who was not Fulbright would have severed ties regardless of Chinese affairs was lost on them, and in their fear they concocted a coup plot. Lin Biao was their reluctant figurehead, having been conscripted by his son Lin Liguo. Scatterbrained and poorly thought out, Vice Chairman Lin was able to provide some sense of strategic thinking to the plot and in 1971 the act was successful in ousting Mao Zedong, who fled northwards to Mongolia.
Now-Chairman Lin Biao was an interesting fellow, and when Soviets began saber-rattling along the Manchurian border he made quick work of the empty threats, assembling an army along the border so fierce that the Soviets blinked in the game of chicken and backed down. However, his heart was not really in it—he had gotten his legitimacy from Mao, he had gotten his interest in politics from Mao; without Mao he was a good general with an Army that doubted his legitimacy. And while the United States was pleased that the Cultural Revolution was slowed down, it would reluctantly notice that Lin Biao was not particularly interested in stopping the sporadic bits of violence and destruction still done in its name. And it sat there, baffled and confused, when only two years later Lin Biao invited Mao Zedong back into the country—went one step beyond that, crowned him with the title of “Father of the Revolution,” a title that de jure meant nothing but in reality gave him much of the prestige he had lost in his coup. And, as Lin Biao began to rehabilitate Mao Zedong, the United States found it easier than ever to leave the People’s Republic in the dust.
While all of that conundrum was going on, the United States’ most pointed attacks against the People’s Republic of China was in the United Nations, where they contested heavily Fulbright’s allowing of the admission of Communist China and the dismissing of Nationalist China from the Security Council. It was a major offense to the conservative side of the United States, and the Cultural Revolution and subsequent instability made it seem undesirable to maintain its membership to the United Nations, to the permanent membership to the Security Council. Nationalist China, for its part, said that the method of voting was against the UN’s Charter. Despite picketing by the United States and her most fervent allies, the overwhelming opinion of the United Nations held that Communist China was overwhelmingly seen as more fitting for membership than Nationalist China. It was a staggering loss for Kuchel, but he took it in stride, accepting the opinion of the UN begrudgingly and moving instead to better relationships with Taipei over Beijing.
The PRC sitting in the Security Council was seen by many in the Third World as a major success, China being seen as a bastion of third-worldism. In fact, when U Thant moved to retire in 1971, China was an enthusiastic backer of Chilean Felipe Herrera, who would eventually be elected (not without some interrogating by the United States) as the next Secretary-General of the United Nations.
While Kuchel put distance between Washington and Beijing, he made sure to reverse course elsewhere—Tel Aviv. Adlai Stevenson, for all his flaws, tried to be more supportive of Israel than Eisenhower had been. But his meager weapons supplying was paired with the persistent pleading to play fair with Palestinians. “REPATRIATION OF ARAB REFUGEES,” internal memos in the State Department said in 1961, “IS THE BOTTOM LINE FOR THE ADMINISTRATION -- PRACTICAL SAFE PROGRAM; REPATRIATION - RESETTLEMENT - COMPENSATION.” Israel did not feel amicable to those conditions, naturally. The Americans did not understand what it was like, enemies all around you—did not understand the threats poised by Egypt and Jordan. But Stevenson was more acceptable than Fulbright, at least. Fulbright was silent, refused to treat Israel as anything more than a nation among many, as opposed to an ally in a strategic region. Kuchel didn’t feel that way, and once he got C. Douglas Dillon in charge of State he made sure that the State Department let Israel know that Washington saw it as a key ally.
The rumor came from somewhere, some apparatchik whispered to some diplomat whispered to President Nasser about an Israeli build-up along the Egyptian border—a war on the horizon. By all accounts, Nasser doubted the authenticity of those reports, but knew that with the Kuchel Administration sending munitions and materials to Israel that calling that bluff was a gamble. He returned in kind, sending men to the border. And with that escalation, the great beast of war reared its head in the Middle East once more.
The war put President Kuchel at a complex crossroads—he wasn’t afraid of war, like Stevenson or Fulbright. However, he wasn’t frothing at the mouth for blood, either. The State Department estimated that the war would only take two weeks at most, before both sides burned through their munitions and the war ground to a halt. So, it was decided that sending men out would be a waste of resources and time. Peace was far more important in such an unstable region, so a council of peacemakers—headed by Ambassador to Israel Malcolm Toon—were sent out to Tel Aviv to try to hash out a deal. He also discussed with John S. Cooper, his Ambassador to the United Nations, the ability to mobilize UN peacekeepers into the region to try to control the flames.
As it would turn out, there was nothing to be done to control the flames. The two week estimate proposed by the Department of State was mostly accurate. Within days the two forces were stalemated in a tit-for-tat, with Israel capturing most of the Sinai Peninsula after heavy fighting. However, nearing the end of the second week, the Egyptian forces seemed poised to re-occupy, building up all their military might for one last push. Prime Minister of Israel Yoself Serlin was adamant that it would not come to that. It was time to show something to the world.
A test.
* * *
“And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.” (Exodus 3:2)
And in the desert of the Sinai, a great burning appeared, a pillar of light and flame turned the desert floor to glass and the Earth quaked with the power of the LORD out of Heaven. It was not a burning bush, but instead a tree or perhaps—a mushroom.
“And the LORD said unto Moses, Get thee up into this mount Abarim, and see the land which I have given unto the children of Israel.” (Numbers 27:12)
And from that great Mount Sinai, where the Prophet Moses was given the Commandments that would forever govern the Jewish faith and the Children of Israel, one would have been turned to a pillar of salt seeing the proof that the Children of Israel had not just been given their land, but had the power required to defend it.
* * *
It had caught the world by surprise. There had been whispers for ages about an Israeli nuclear war program, but it was just that—whispers. There were no casualties, that was not the point. The point was to make a point.
Thomas Kuchel, upon hearing the news, put his head in his hands and sighed. He wanted to say something, but there was nothing to say. He felt a pit in his stomach, felt like a part of this outrageous development was his fault. As an opponent to nuclear weapons testing, the development in the Middle East was deeply troubling. To the press the morning after, he said with a strong voice—though his words would briefly warble once or twice, betraying his fear: “The United States has been a firm supporter of Israel and her people, and that is a fact that I am very proud of. But that does not excuse the reckless actions that have occurred over the past two-four hours. Nuclear weapons are not play-things, and it is the express opinion of the United States that the continuation of an Israeli nuclear weapons program would herald a new and ominous chapter in the nuclear arms race.”
The New York Times would call the incident “THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL,” but for the Middle East it was not a day—it was weeks, months even. The Sinai Peninsula stayed in a territorial limbo, the Suez Canal shut down, the nations holding their breaths. There was something pulsing underneath, that primal fear—a nuclear arms race, as Kuchel warned.
Eventually, the Earth ceased to stand still. The world was already fearful of nuclear armageddon, after all, so what difference did one missile make?
Within the shadow of the atom bomb, Washington turned its eyes southerly, to Africa. As the continent wrestled with the depths of imperialism and its legacy, the President felt it time to flex the new “Kuchel Doctrine” of foreign policy—ironically taking a page from President Truman.
Like his predecessors, Kuchel was not particularly opposed to the United Nations. In fact, he saw it particularly well-suited to build international coalitions pursuing American foreign policy goals. Detractors would well remember the Korean War and sneer at the use of “international coalitions,” but that did not matter to Tommy. His eyes were set primarily on the twin uprisings in Angola and Mozambique, which had gone without American input for far too long.
The fears in many American foreign policy circles was that during the Stevenson-Fulbright “revolution” in foreign policy, the United States had lost its edge in sponsoring movements like those rising up against the Portuguese empire—that in that vacuum, Soviet-backed communism became the face of resistance as opposed to America-backed liberalism. And indeed, many of the insurgencies in Angola and Mozambique were some stripe of leftist—Marxist-Leninist, Maoist, etc. Indeed, the primary insurgent organization in Mozambique was explicitly communist. In Angola, however, the United States was able to find an in. Holden Roberto was one of the most outspoken proponents of a certain independence from Portugal relatively early on—early on enough that Eisenhower had sent him money, and when Stevenson moved away from direct involvement in the region countries like Ghana picked up the slack. They also found assistance in the form of eccentric leader Jonas Savimbi, who initially proclaimed himself and his splinter organization Maoist but swiftly changes his tune on the back of the United States dollar. The two men, now opposed, had originally been part of the same insurgent organization, but Savimbi had quickly split off after finding Roberto’s north-exclusive organization damaging to the cause. Roberto, a Bakongo nationalist, disagreed. The United States didn’t much care about these doctrinal disagreements, so long as they won out over the repressive Portuguese and the Soviet-backed Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola.
In pursuing Kuchel Doctrine, John S. Cooper—Kentucky Republican and now Ambassador to the United Nations—unofficially became one of the most powerful members of Kuchel’s administration. And in the wake of US interest focusing back to Africa, it became Cooper’s job to try to sell intervention. The argument itself was very simple, that in suppressing local movements and disenfranchising the indigenous populaces of her colonies, Portugal was in violation of the Charter, thus necessitating UN intervention. The fallout from this proposal was intense: Soviet ambassador Yakov Malik questioned why the United States’ proposal said that it would support “any indigenous movements rising against Portuguese oppression” but did not include the most prominent one—the Popular Movement; the Portuguese ambassador (who was not a member of the Security Council but, due to the nature of the crisis, was present nonetheless) strongly condemned the attempted assault on Portuguese “domestic policy” in clear violation of United Nations’ policy of being a peacekeeping organization. Perhaps most strongly, though, was Syrian representative George Tomeh who served as that month’s President of the Security Council, who lauded the Angolans’ fight for decolonization but reprimanded the United States for “attempting to turn the decolonization of Africa into imperialist grandstanding.” Although Kuchel was eventually able to create a non-UN coalition of allies to chip in in Angola, his attempt to bend the United Nations’ will to the US proved unsuccessful.
Back home, the midterms rebuked the temporary Republican revolution. Losing their razor-thin margins in the House, the Republicans receded to the minority position. There, they went through a chaotic couple years in terms of leadership, infighting between moderates and conservatives in the Party. The Democrats, returning in full force, replaced the ineffective Carl Albert with Louisiana representative Hale Boggs, who was willing to work amicably enough with the Republican administration but held on hope for a Democratic administration sooner or later. His hopes were dashed in 1972, however.
The 1972 Democratic primaries are remembered primarily for their tragedy. The apparent frontrunner for much of the election season was Massachusetts Senator John Kennedy, whose old ghosts from Europe had faded with age. But also with age came health problems, and on May 6, 1972 he collapsed after a campaign event and was pronounced dead the morning after. In his absence, many of the star players in the Democratic Party were unable to run. Hubert Humphrey feared his own health issues and stayed out, Lyndon Johnson floated a last-hurrah run but obviously was considered too old by party bosses. The Segregationist wing, dulled with the rising annoyance towards that particular caucus, was unable to field a successful candidate—but so too were the New South, as their new sweetheart Jimmy Carter considered himself too inexperienced to run. So then did the stars align for North Carolina Governor Terry Sanford, who was broadly appealing to both halves of the party. He was something of a born-again when it came to civil rights, he was well-respected in his state and abroad; he was inoffensive and kind and he secured the nomination without much fuss.
The 1972 Republican primaries are remembered primarily for their dramatic nature.
* * *
Leon Panetta, a White House staffer imported from California, hurried into the Oval Office. Thankfully for him, the President was in a regular meeting with Secretary of State C. Douglas Dillon. Nothing important was being discussed, more of a check-up than anything. It could wait.
“What is it?” asked Kuchel, an eyebrow raised. He knew his staff well enough to know the expression on his young staffer’s face—nervousness.
“Ronald Reagan has announced his intention to run in the primary.” There was an awkward beat. “Against you,” he clarified.
Kuchel deflated—not out of loss, but out of annoyance. “That son-of-a-gun” he muttered. “Maybe [President] Stevenson was right about television.”
* * *
Ronald Reagan was the face of the scorned Goldwater Wing who, despite Kuchel’s relatively high popularity in 1972, saw him as an embarrassment to the Party. He was soft, he kowtowed to the rioters who were tearing up the country. (“If a person is looting and he’s ordered to stop and he doesn’t, I think the law enforcement officer then can make a value judgment as to whether to proceed to arrest them—and surely he ought not to be ordered under all circumstances to kill him,” a response he made to reports of police violence in response to protests, was played as a political ad by both pro-Kuchel and anti-Kuchel camps.) He didn’t fight hard enough against Communist China, he didn’t fight the United Nations when it spat in America’s face. Although not officially affiliated with the movement, Reagan’s core support base was the John Birch Society, who were already heavily opposed to Tommy Kuchel and worshipful of Ronald Reagan.
Publicly, Kuchel’s response to the primary challenge was swift and brutal. “A fanatical neo-fascist political cult of right-wingers in the GOP, driven by a strange mixture of corrosive hatred and sickening fear, is recklessly determined to control our party,” he announced. Smooth-voiced Reagan was offended—or, at least, seemed offended. (A slave to his own quotes, as an actor he too spent half his waking hours in fantasy.) “I am shocked and appalled that the President compares a movement as patriotic as ours as something approaching Nazism. We are a movement representing the ideals of those same poor souls who died to stop the Nazi Empire.” Kuchel—an angry, fed-up, tired Kuchel—gave newspapers the curt response of “I am sure Ronald Reagan’s movies fought valiantly in Europe.”
And soon came the attacks. The first were expected, policy-related; primarily focused on Kuchel’s reinstating of the Bracero program undone under President Stevenson. Although Kuchel saw the program as a necessity, saw it as more sound fiscally—declaring once that “If we were to import our fellow human beings from the elsewhere in the United States and only offer them a few months work each year in California, what is to happen to them during the remainder of the year? Are they to become welfare burdens on the property taxpayers of that State?” [2]. He still saw opposition from further-right Republicans, who saw the relationship as hurting native-born citizens and being too kind to immigrants who disturbed suburban America. He was attacked for the creation of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the conservation of many tens of thousands of redwood forests via the Redwood National Park (which was soon joined by several state parks that increased the acreage into the hundreds of thousands). And here Kuchel was in his flow, defending his policies.
And then came the whispers, the personal attacks. The first target was the “Communist infiltration of the current Administration,” exemplified through the attacks on White House Chief of Staff “Pop” Small. Small was no communist, but his father had been one—had supported Eugene Debs at the start of the century. Kuchel called the attacks deeply insulting, and although Small offered to quit, Kuchel considered him too valuable a friend to leave to the wayside. In short order the attacks on Small would be forgotten, because Birchers tried to dig up a different avenue of attack, taking a page from decades previous. Conservative newspaper outlets along the East Coast—predominantly in New York and New Jersey—as well as outlets along California’s suburban publication landscape began publishing a story alleging that Tommy Kuchel had been arrested decades previous while having sex with another man, and that he was a homosexual. Almost immediately, Kuchel got in contact with the L.A. District attorney Evelle Younger and U.S. Attorney for D.C. Oliver Gasch, asking them to investigate, and almost immediately the LAPD was with one less officer and a New Jersey conservative publisher was sued for libel. The incident did not last long in the papers or on the airwaves (although some of the more radical radio shows would continue to insinuate sexual impropriety on the President’s part for years to come), but by all accounts Tommy Kuchel took the slanderous attacks poorly. For at least the next year he felt no joy in politicking and at numerous points he considered retiring altogether.
With time he would regain some of his faith in the political world, but the whole episode made his campaigning apparatus lethargic and slow, an apparatus already damaged by Kuchel’s disdain for fundraising. Personal popularity helped tremendously, and gave his machine some fat to burn when it came to a decline in appearances and a refusal for anything beyond a few radio debates against Reagan. In those debates he would alternate between generalized statements and pointed attacks on Ronald Reagan. This unpredictable debate style (though “style” is too generous a word for Kuchel’s treatment of those radio debates) proved difficult for Reagan to manage, trying to eloquently weave together rebuttals, attacks and defenses to an opponent that had no care about the theater of debates anymore.
In 1972, candidates Kuchel and Sanford were able to agree to a presidential debate—Sanford seeing a chance to give his underdog campaign new life and Kuchel not caring enough to deny the offer. (Several prominent campaign operatives told Kuchel that the debate presented an opportunity to “shake off” a lot of the hesitancy towards politicking that Reagan had elicited.) Sanford’s hunches were proven well-grounded when he had a surprisingly successful debate night, Kuchel saying shortly afterwards that his performance was “something less than brilliant.” While the North Carolina governor was alert and lucid, the President seemed by all accounts distant, only making generalized statements and often refusing chances to respond to his opponent. Although Kuchel’s voice was far more presidential, Sanford’s way of speaking created a sense of calm collectedness that created a sense of security (according to supporters) or put people to sleep (according to detractors).
Even though Sanford was undoubtedly the debate winner, and Kuchel’s performance left much to be desired, it did not matter much in the end. Much of the public simply took the President at his word when he later explained that his uninspiring performance was due to him being tired. He may have been unpopular amongst the most radical of Republicans and Democrats, but among the vast middle-ground he was well-loved. Sanford did do some good, though, for the Democratic Party—regaining key states in the North that had chosen Kuchel over Fulbright four years prior while also being competitive in a great many states that Democrats hoped to make inroads with.
It was not universally a great time for Democrats, though. Only two days after Thomas Kuchel was sworn into his second term, Majority Leader Johnson passed away at the age of 64. Although Hubert Humphrey succeeded his boss without much fuss, he was never able to whip votes quite as efficiently as Johnson—perhaps nobody ever could. In Humphrey’s on words, “He knew everything about everybody in Congress and he knew their prejudices, their hopes, their fears, and their aspirations… He wasn’t tagged liberal or conservative. He refused to be southern or northern. He said I am an American and some people used to think of that as a bit corny.” For all of his skills, Humphrey was never Johnson, and he never could have been. He was a social-democratic reformer, a civil rights warrior, the golden boy of the Liberal North. He was not apologetic for it, but it still made Southern moderates and conservatives more unruly. As a sort of retaliation, the Democratic Whip position went to Louisiana dynast Russell B. Long, who had a complicated history with the civil rights movement in his own right.
That unstable split seemed to be a pattern in the Senate. When Everett Dirksen of Illinois passed away in 1969, the liberal Pennsylvanian Hugh Scott replaced him as the Republican leader in the Senate—but that didn’t stop conservative Nebraskan Roman Hruska from filling in the whip position. Even then, some pointed to Hruska’s election as a sign of the shifting tides within the Republican Party, how even though he was among the conservative Republicans that he had been in favor of Kuchel’s civil rights agenda.
Other than the unexpected reshuffling of the majority leadership, Kuchel’s second term started off slow: a trickle of news about the goings-on in Angola (where, in a few years’ time, the United States would welcome a new ally in the form of Holden Roberto’s Kongo—a nationalist anticommunist bastion with a curious reinstallation of the old Bakongo monarchy and political hierarchy; it would also welcome an enemy in socialist-adjacent Angola, where the Popular Movement won out but would be harassed by Savimbi for years to come), while the cogs of the Senate slowly turned as Humphrey began reassembling some of the power that Johnson had put together after decades in leadership. This suited President Kuchel just fine, as he slowly started healing the bruises inflicted by Bircherites and Reaganites.
And then something beyond words happened. Not like the Israeli weapons testing, but something far greater, far more important, far more incredible and beautiful and infuriating and damning all wrapped into one. The newspapers had been there since the beginning, writing of the event’s beginnings—there was video, then, too. But the video footage would only be released afterwards, after success had been assured. And then, on the night of July 3rd, 1973, television channels across the globe almost immediately cut to live footage.
* * *
A suited man, climbing down a ladder. The landscape behind him a dusty gray. He mutters something under his breath, but it’s not audible. At the bottom rung—the audience, not knowing the full length of the ladder, has to assume it’s the bottom rung—he hesitates, as if the weight of this indescribable moment has just hit him at that moment. (Years later, he would admit in an interview with a laugh that the primary reason he had stopped was because he had to hold back a sneeze.) After an eternal pause, he finally lets go of the handles of the ladder, and floats like a feather off that last step. And then a pause, as he thinks of the words to name the feeling of his feet upon lunar soils. And then he speaks.
Moments later, a translation of his words appears at the bottom of the screen. It is simple and eloquent and carry so much weight with so few words:
MAN IS NOW ON THE MOON
* * *
* * *
The two-man mission of Alexei Leonov and Valery Bykovsky in 1973 is perhaps one of the most known moments in all of human history. No words can do justice just how deeply the event was felt, how powerful its ripples affected day-to-day life.
Too, nothing can be said to describe the boiling rage that many Americans felt that emblazoned on the cosmonauts’ helmets were the letters CCCP; that the words to herald in this new era of human history were spoken in Russian and not English; that the banner planted on the Moon’s surface was red and not red-white-and-blue. The vast majority did not feel that way, at least not wholly, but many did feel it. Tommy Kuchel did, at least a little. Eisenhower had started the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and while a few since then had paid it lip service, few had given it the nutrients it needed to grow and prosper. Kuchel was never on the committee working with NASA, but he visited its meetings with a consistent regularity that outshone some of the bona-fide members of it. But then the procession came around—Stevenson spent a little time with NASA, but saw it mostly as a novelty, far too busy concerned with Spaceship Earth than he ever was with making actual spaceships to explore the world outside of Earth; Fulbright treated most things domestic as a curse rather than an interest, and if he even knew that the Administration existed he paid it no attention. Kuchel, then, had to take on the Herculean effort of derusting the machinery and getting NASA back in some semblance of shape.
And then the Soviet moon landing happened and suddenly all of the world was staring at the inadequate and poorly-funded space apparatus of the United States, constantly lagging behind the Soviets at every step. The added attention at least allowed the Administration to channel Department of Defense money into the starving NASA. Despite that, Kuchel and Ambassador to the USSR Malcolm Toon reached out to the Soviets and made it known internationally that both the US and the USSR would avoid the militarization of space, a declaration that was met with its usual broad support and pointed criticism among the hard-conservative flank.
However, by 1976 there had been no big groundbreaking thing for the Americans yet. The Soviets had been still, too, trying to help shore up enough money to keep the expensive business of spaceflight alive. The next step was oft-debated, however: a moonbase, men to Mars—Venus, maybe even! None were selected as final targets, but all experimented on over and over again, tweaked here and there as new ideas and new conundrums came up in research. Administrator George Low described the work, perhaps derogatively, as “tinkering.”
In 1975, Kuchel made his fourth and final appointment to the Supreme Court, replacing the Honorable William Douglass. (His third appointment, to replace Hon. John Marshall Harlan II, had been the controversial Frank Minis Johnson; Southern radicals opposed him vocally for his help in enforcing desegregationist policies in Alabama, but with key whipping by Lyndon Johnson eventually the segregationist filibuster was shattered.) Finally, in 1975, Kuchel felt ready to make a momentous appointment—the first Black Justice to the Supreme Court. After much vetting he finally selected the man he felt most well-suited for the job, the Ohioan judge Robert Morton Duncan.
The shockwaves were felt immediately, and very early many prominent Dixiecrats and right-wing Republicans complained about a lack of experience; however, as Roman Hruska pointed out, Duncan’s half a decade in judicial politics made him more experienced than Associate Justices like Harlan II. After very heated backs-and-forths, eventually both Democrats and Republicans were able to gather the votes to ensure that the Brownell Court had the first African-American Justice in American history, to much rejoicing among Black America.
Before that, though, back in ‘73 and ‘74, the Democratic House and Senate began suggesting a piece of legislation designed to make good a promise that Democratic presidents had made for decades yet had always fell short of resolving—the health sphere. With a humanitarian heart and a wide bipartisan mandate, Tommy Kuchel seemed perhaps the most well-suited man to finally make pushes that had been denied to predecessors. The legislation would expand the Social Security program to include programs for impoverished families and the elderly, to lessen the burdens of health insurance on them. However, those robust dreams would never survive the grueling process of fiscal restraint and ideological concerns. In the end, Kuchel was able to sign into law “Eldercare,” which provided a voluntary government financial services to cover physician care, surgery costs, drug prices, nursing home costs, and lab services like X-ray scanning. Although a sister program for impoverished Americans died in conservative backlash and well-meaning all-or-nothing progressive stances among Democrats, Kuchel was still be all accounts immensely proud of the Eldercare program, saying that “If it weren’t for Eldercare today, there would be tens of thousands of American elders living in the poorhouse, with no care.”
Those robust promises of Senate Majority Leader Humphrey, though, led something more to be desired for Kuchel. And here is when conservatives decry the devil-on-the-shoulder John W. Gardner, Secretary of Health-Education-and-Welfare and public advocate for the rights of urban poor and electoral reform. Gardner, so says the right wing, whispered sweet little nothings in Tommy Kuchel’s ear, scarlet words in red-velvet whispers about socialized medicine and Bolshevik government models. Regardless of those conspiracies, Kuchel by all accounts seemed to have uncovered an insatiable itch in those promises of healthcare reform and after years of hard politicking, in the final months of his presidency, he was miraculously able to sign into law the system of Childcare, designed to alleviate the money problems associated with youth. It passed in December 1976, and in that way shows Kuchel’s odd aberration:
In keeping of his future compliments of former President Fulbright, Kuchel seemed particularly engendered by the final stretch of his presidency, and it was through that odd relationship with the lame-duck era that Kuchel was able to pass one of the most groundbreaking acts of his presidency. Fellow progressive conservatives lauded it as being exactly the principles that Tommy Kuchel swore to protect—giving all young Americans the same opportunities in youth to allow them to follow the principles of rugged individualism in their middle age, only to return back to the care of others in old age. To arch-conservatives, however, they saw something more malicious. “Tommy Kuchel,” wrote conservative pundit William Buckley, “has made sure to cover welfare in the cradle and in the grave so the next Democrat can fill in the middle!” [3]
Historiography has played with Tommy Kuchel in interesting ways, but he has always been seen as one of the better presidents—typically earning a spot around Number 10. He was immensely popular by Middle America, he passed legislation that was—although in its time controversial—immensely popular in hindsight. He stood for a model of progressive conservatism that was contrary to the far-right flank of the party that was represented by Goldwaters and Reagans, citing the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli when he said that “The main purpose of government is to distribute the amenities of life on an ever-increasing scale to an ever-increasing number.” But, too, as the years have gone on, critiques of Kuchel have grown more common. His civil rights legacy, many will say, is overblown and he was too cowardly to pick the right fights; despite his grandstanding about making public opinion as opposed to following it, he still would scurry out of harm’s way when push came to shove. The right-wing of America will forever hold him with contempt, it would seem, ever since his snubbing of Goldwater and rebuke of Reagan, ever since his big-government domestic policy. But to that comfy, mindless middle ground, he is remembered as one of the greats. Despite him leaving office with his approval ratings the most divided in his presidency, his image was repaired in no small part by his fleeing from politics.
On January 20, 1977, Thomas Kuchel was free from his burden. With a hand on a Bible and a swearing of an oath, a parade and promenade, the 38th President of the United States of America had come into power, and Number 37 never had to take on the burdens again. Tommy hurried himself back to his home in Anaheim, California, and elected to return to the family trade and became the editor and owner of the newly-revived Anaheim Gazette. He didn’t necessarily remove himself from politics, but chose instead to watch from the distance. He would die almost twenty years later, in 1994, of cancer. He refused much of the exorbitant funds given to former presidents, was gifted a modest presidential library not far from his hometown. His funeral was a private affair and in accordance to his will he was buried in Anaheim, not in Arlington nor in his presidential library. He left behind no memoir, endorsed no biography, and only occasioned himself to a couple interviews.
[1] The end of this sentence is adapted from a wildly different context, taken from EARL WARREN: FELLOW CONSTITUTIONAL OFFICERS, a collection of interviews as part of the Earl Warren Oral History Project. Page 4 of Kuchel’s interview. Again, a wildly different context but it is very fitting for how Kuchel’s administration goes.
[2] Adapted almost wholesale from Kuchel’s testimony defending the Bracero program—yes, he did subtly imply that Mexicans weren’t human beings. Welcome to the 1960s!
[3] Thanks Vidal for this one—his spitball of a quote that I felt worked way too well to leave in the dustbin.
Only one modern president won reelection while doing worse in the popular vote: Barack Obama.
James Madison and Andrew Jackson did as well. Grover Cleveland too if you count his non-consecutive election. Franklin Roosevelt joins the list if you compare his first victory to his narrower third and fourth.
I figure it makes sense! He experienced attacks much like the ones I described in the 1972 primary and it seemed to more-or-less kill his interest in staying in national politics in real life. The momentum of being President of the United States makes something like that very hard, but for the entirety of the election season his campaign is incredibly lethargic despite himself remaining a popular president.
Its kinda funny how this short little detente with our eccentric democratic presidents reveals how much just a return to form with a normal run-of-the-mill hawk who isn't even that much of a cold warrior implementing largely OTL policies in a lot of areas, is in fact doing a bunch of horrible shit, as OTL but slightly exaggerated. I mean for God's sake, just Jonas Savimbi alone...
And on the flipside, its pretty funny that this is also very nearly the timeline of the inevitable historical force of the people's revolution continuing unabated, what with no final pivot of China into Dengism just yet and a true landing on the Moon for all the workers of the world.
And on the flipside, its pretty funny that this is also very nearly the timeline of the inevitable historical force of the people's revolution continuing unabated, what with no final pivot of China into Dengism just yet and a true landing on the Moon for all the workers of the world.
Oh, yeah, totally. Something that will come up as we continue is how Stevenson's dovishness has made things frankly so much better in a ton of countries around the globe, even if Kuchel allows the CIA to start teething again. (Enigma will touch on that as we continue.)
