If 24 has taught us anything , it ’s that the presidential succession can be the stuff of riveting , wildly farfetched drama . Here are five presidential might - have - beens that would make for some fascinatingalternate historystories .
My favorite obscure historical topic has always been the vice president . For some reason , I ’ve always line up the exploits of William Rufus de Vane King , Hannibal Hamlin , and Schuyler Colfax nothing curt of engrossing . ( Their admittedly terrific names may have something to do with it ) . The Constitution charges the Veep with three duties …
1 . Break sleeper votes in the Senate .
2.Protect the blank - prison term continuum .
3 . Be on understudy in case something happens to the president .
Nine metre in our nation ’s chronicle , the frailty president has been called upon to fulfill that third and most important duty , which is why Millard Fillmore and Chester Alan Arthur are still the laughingstock of joke while George Dallas and Daniel Tompkins are multitude you probably first heard of about two second ago . But there have been sight of other time when President might have had to step aside , be it by end , resignation , or impeachment , and it ’s challenging to speculate on what might have befall .
Just ask Philip K. Dick , whose national socialist - victory story in The Man in the High Castle hinge on the assassination of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 and the subsequent , ineffective administration of John Nance Garner . So allow ’s put our alternate historiographer ’ hat on and consider five other possible second in presidential succession that would make for nifty stories .
The President : John Tyler
The Date : February 28 , 1844
The effect : A shank malfunction on the USS Princeton kills President Tyler ’s Secretary of State , Secretary of the Navy , and New Yorker David Gardiner , among others . Tyler not only exist the clank , but he actually ended up marrying Gardiner ’s girl Julia , whom he soothe in the aftermath of the plosion . In all potential senses of the term , Tyler got lucky . But … what if he had n’t ?
The Successor : President of the Senate pro tempore Willie Mangum of North Carolina
Why the alternate account novel should be written now :
Tyler had no vice president , having succeeded William Henry Harrison after the old general died a month into his condition . Known as “ His Accidency ” , Tyler had waged a three - class war with pretty much everybody in Washington for the right to be the actual , full - blooded chairperson , not just an acting President of the United States . This finally lead to Tyler ’s full storage locker resigning and his projection from the Whig party . After all that , what kind of authority could Mangum have perchance had , especially when the make-up made it quite clear he would only have been the acting Chief Executive for sure . With over a twelvemonth before a fresh chairman could be assert in , would Washington have fag completely to a stalemate ? Can you even envisage ? ( Do n’t answer that . )
OK , fine , I ’ll admit it . Pretty much all political chronicle between Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln is deathly deadening . But how about …
The President : Andrew Johnson
The Date : May 16 , 1868
The Event : Another former Vice President who had become ostracized from his imagine party , the technically Republican , but actually Democratic , Johnson pass three year sparring with the Republican congress as to just how the South should be reconstruct in the aftermath of the Civil War . Hoping to expel him from office , congressional Republicans impeached the president on what was essentially a technicality . His conviction failed by a individual vote , the outcome of seven Republican senator breaking party rail line . But … what if they had n’t ?
The Successor : President of the Senate pro temporeBenjamin Wadeof Ohio
One of the leaders of the so - call “ radical ” Republicans , Wade so alienate moderates that the seven dissenting Republican senator did n’t as much vote for Johnson as they did against Wade . believe the also radical ( but ethically challenged ) Grant administration came into big businessman only ten months later , it ’s hard to know what President Wade could really have done all that differently policy - wise .
Still , this would have basically destroyed the power of the presidentship , asserting Congress as the real school principal of government and the chair as an obedient servant who served at its pleasure and who could be remove based on little more than personal disapproval .
In any event , the U.S. could have morph into a de facto parliamentary democracy , and think how gloriously , deliriously corrupted Congress was in the Gilded Age without wielding absolute power , their feat in such a hypothetical existence would be the hooey of caption . Or at least a pretty decent first novel .
The President : Woodrow Wilson
The Date : October 2 , 1919
The effect : President Wilson tolerate a monolithic stroke . First Lady Edith Wilson and a team of doctor immediately moved to place the incapacitated president in privacy . For much of the eternal sleep of his full term , the First Lady essentially ran the regime , deciding which subject were important enough to impart to the attention of the partly blind and paralyzed President of the United States . Frankly , it ’s a admiration the stroke did n’t kill him outright . But … what if it had ?
The Successor : Vice President Thomas Riley Marshall
Deeply unpopular for an almost endless bit of reasons – his support of the League of Nations , an economic recession , general weariness with the war and his reforms , his totalistic domesticated policies during the Great War , and there ’s always his massive racism – Wilson was lead the Democrats to certain defeat in the 1920 election . The only possible probability for the Democrats was if the current administration totally rescind itself overnight .
That just might have happened ifThomas Marshallhad become President of the United States . A smart but unassuming Indiana political leader with a sharp sense of humor , Marshall had been utterly ignored by Wilson and completely shut out of the government . It ’s just possible Marshall could have built on the probable goodwill his sequence would have created , and moderate the Democrats enough for them to keep ascendancy in 1920 .
And , assuming the Democrats might have regulated Wall Street in the twenties more heavy than the Republicans did – in other words , if they ’d regulate it at all – the Great Depression might just have been a mild recession . ( Or it could have been a thousand prison term bad . I do n’t claim to be an economic expert . ) Of course , Europe probably still would have descended into fascism and economical despair . And that still forget the disintegrate American agricultural and industrial sectors that helped exacerbate the Depression in the first topographic point . Even so … it ’s worth exploring .
The President : Franklin Delano Roosevelt
The Date : November 28 , 1943
The Event : I ’m pick out from a whole gang of possibilities here , as our only four - term president spent the last couple of year of his presidential term slowly waste away under the tremendous pressure of his office , not to refer his own longstanding aesculapian job . On this picky occasion , he suffered an “ acute digestive attack ” while meeting with Stalin and Churchill at the Tehran Conference . Needless to say , he did n’t croak ( yet ) . But … what if he did – somewhat earlier ?
The Successor : Vice PresidentHenry Wallace
There ’s a ground why it was Harry S Truman and not Henry Wallace who succeeded FDR when he lastly did pass away . Wallace had been drop from the 1944 presidential tag because he was , to put it mildly , nutty as a screwball . A New Age medium , he dabble in most major religions and a few of the venial ones . His spiritual counselor-at-law , Nicholas Roerich , was the most eccentric Russian political advisor this side of Rasputin ( in his defense , he was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize multiple times ) .
Wallace institutionalize Roerich on a fact - happen mission to Asia that may or may not have involved searching for Jesus ’s lost painting that were hidden in Tibet ( no , it does n’t really make any more sense when fully explicate ) . This expeditiousness proved so embarrassing to the U.S. government activity that Wallace was forced to fire Roerich , and when he wrote his memoir he attempt to blot out any connection between Roerich and himself .
Edgar Wallace face criticisms of being a communist comforter for most of his political vocation , and , whatever the exact trueness may have been , it ’s hard to dispute that he fight back Stalin far too staunchly for his own good . He might also have been a bit of a disarmer , which could have made being the wartime commandant - in - chief a little slippery . So now … suppose Wallace and Roerich running World War II . I can practically smell the Sidewise Award .
The President : Richard Nixon
The Date : October 20 , 1973
The Event : heroic to discontinue the investigations into Watergate , President Nixon attempt to dismiss particular prosecutor Archibald Cox , which required the Attorney General to actually do the dismission . Attorney General Elliot Richardson refused to do so and afterward quit , as did his surrogate , William Ruckelshaus . Solicitor General Robert Bork was the last somebody in the Ernst Boris Chain of command who could fire Cox , which he in the end did . Nixon ’s endeavor to muscle the Justice Department became known as the Saturday Night Massacre , and if Bork had resigned as well , the subsequent scandalisation might well have forced Nixon ’s resignation aright then and there . And … what if it had ?
The Successor : Speaker of the HouseCarl Albertof Oklahoma
Since Vice President Spiro Agnew had resigned in the backwash of his own putrescence charge , and Gerald Ford ’s designation was still a duet month away , the 22nd Amendment dictate the Speaker of the House would become the acting president . Albert , a Democrat , had pledged that he would charge a Republican as Vice President and then resign . Simple enough , really , except for one belittled problem – his succession would have , in all chance , create a constitutional crisis , which was just what the country need after the bad political dirt in its chronicle .
It all comes down toa bunch of holeslegal scholars keep finding in presidential succession laws . For one thing , it ’s still an open question whether fellow member of the legislative branch , such as the Speaker of the House , are technically eligible to become President . Neither of Gerald Ford ’s Chiefs of Staff – a duet of political cypher called Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney – feel the presidential term could pass outside of the executive branch , and it ’s quite potential others in the Nixon disposal agreed . This could have set up up a leaders challenge from Treasury Secretary William Simon , who would have been the next member of the Executive Branch in melodic line to the presidency .
Even if Albert had maintain power , one has to wonder whether the popular Senate would have allowed him to appoint a Republican that would have any chance of , say , winning the 1976 election . ( possibly , for funniness ’s sake , this could have at last opened the door for perennial nominee and longtime laughingstockHarold Stassen . ) Oh , and there ’s also the thorny exit of whether Albert would have pardon Nixon like Ford did , thus avoiding the national overplus and global spectacle of a former president being put on tryout .
You take all that succession drama , crazed infighting , and political maneuvering , and make Carl Albert , the 5’4″ Oklahoman known as the “ Little Giant from Little Dixie ” , your retiring hero sandwich , and you ’ve get down “ best seller ” publish all over it . Actually , I should probably copyright this now , while I still have half a chance …
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