McGovernation

[Liberté]

Prologue

"Life is change
How it differs from the rocks..."

Rolling Stone Magazine
August 2nd, 1972

Nixon's Mistress Speaks Out
Hunter S. Thompson

Marianna Liu is a sad-faced, rather dull woman, suffering the onset of those middle-aged doldrums which always seems to hit Asian women harder than most. She is sitting in the foyer of a fashionable Georgetown parlor when I find her. Her deep, sad eyes well up in front of me like black holes, and for a minute I'm going down, down into the pit where their fire quencheth not and the smoke of their torment...

Where was I? Ah, yes, about to crown George McGovern the next President of the United States. Marianna stars at me vapidly as I hunch over my Pabst Blue Ribbon. I wonder if she can sense the anticipation with which I've waited for this day - or the fear that base cruelty welling up in me fills me with...

Liu says she remembers very well that cool Asian evening in 1966 when she first met her paramour. They were introduced, she says, in the Hong Kong Hilton cocktail lounge where she'd been working. "He seemed shy and sad and, somehow, nervous in my company," she tells me. "I wasn't to socialize with him, but I was drawn to him..."


The New York Times
October 1, 1972

WATERGATE CONTROVERSY TAKES CENTER STAGE; RICHARD NIXON EMBATTLED IN DESPERATE QUEST FOR POLITICAL SOLVENCY

... The White House today issued another denial that President Nixon's relationship with Marianna Liu was anything but platonic... but other storm clouds seem to be gathering on the horizon at Pennsylvania Avenue: Frank Sturgis' recent confession to the break-in at the Watergate Hotel, under the orders of Harry Haldeman, has threatened to completely de-rail the President's re-election campaign...


Excerpt from the final campaign speech of George McGovern, November 6th, 1972
Boulder, Colorado

... And I say to you once more, as I have said so many times on this campaign of ours: it's time for America to come home. Home to the values that built this nation and which seem to be slipping from our grasp in the midst of material prosperity: of individual freedom and of morality in the public sphere. I have tried, as much as possible, to defend myself from the attacks on my character that have so often been hurled at me in this campaign by my opponents. I believe that I am entitled to say this in my defense: I will restore human decency to the White House, decency which, in these dark times, seems to have all but gone out in our land. This is the last, best hope to preserve our traditions...


November 7th, 1972
Election Day

George McGovern/Sergeant Shriver: 271 electoral votes, 48% popular vote
Richard Nixon/Spiro Agnew: 269 electoral votes, 46% popular vote
John Schmitz/Tom Anderson: 0 electoral votes, 6% popular vote

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Eager to see where this goes. (not that I'm happy that McGovern's President)

[Robespierre's Jaw]

Awesome! Eagerly anticipating the upcoming posts.

Reminds me, I started a McGovern timeline not too long ago...

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Reminds me, I started a McGovern timeline not too long ago...

Reminds me of how you were defenstrated not too long ago...

[Liberté]

Part I

"I've seen their ways
Too often for my liking..."

January 20th, 1973
Inauguration Day



"... This century, which was promised to us as one of peace and progress, has seen conflict on a scale unprecedented in the annals of recorded history. Twice already mankind has plunged itself into the abyss of fratricidal mania, and today the threat of a third World War looms over our head like the blade of Damocles. It is becoming clearer to us with every passing day that we ourselves have not been wholly innocent in the creation of this sad state of affairs. This is not to levy the blame for mankind's failings solely upon the shoulders of the United States, but to recognize soberly and with all possible earnestness that we now live in a global society in which the actions of one become the reality of all. If, by our actions, we send out ripples of hope into the world, it is necessary for us to recognize that we can also send out ripples of terror.

But there is a light in the darkness. Americans today, as at no other time in their history, are waking up to the fact that man need not despair, that he need not live alone, as an isolated and atomized unit around which the rest of society passively constructs itself. We are divided, but we need not be divisive. Towards this end, and in keeping in good faith with my fellow countrymen, I see my task as President of our country to empower individuals to change their communities and, from there, the wider world. I fear that my vision for our future may have been distorted in the heat of the recent campaign. And so I offer to you the broad details of this new course:

I said in my acceptance speech in Miami that I would end that "system of economic controls in which labor is depressed, but prices and corporate profit run sky-high." And I mean to keep my word. I understand that this will upset many of the vested interests both within my Party and without who feel that inflation cannot be kept in check without such controls. But it is my belief, my conviction, that the broader social movement which I wish to see spread outwards over this our land requires it. The community is the nucleus of society, and local interests have always been more capable of overseeing the work of their economy than Washington bureaucrats. Under my watch, we will rejuvenate the American dream by restoring to the community the regulatory authority now invested in the national political establishment.

I further intend to pursue a policy of tax reform. Again, I expect to fight this battle mostly alone, a bomber in the blue whose only companion will be my co-pilot, Vice-President Shriver. But we can do this, and we must. I intend to establish a more equitable system of taxation, not through increasing it, but by ensuring that taxes are never so regressive as to penalize the working class while rewarding those economic interests who manipulate the system.

The final issue, and by far the most contentious, is inflation. We as a people must recognize that inflation cannot be isolated from the greater operations of our civilization. As President Eisenhower said so eloquently what seems a lifetime ago, "every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." But this theft comes in many ways: not least of which is the inflationary pressure which a bloated military complex inflicts on the economy as it winds its way towards implosion. The fight against it will be hard and it will not, initially, be popular. I realize this. And I also realize that I must wage it, to end the theft and return to the American people the nation and the system of government that belongs to them...

[MAINEiac4434]

I don't know how I feel about McGovern being president. While I despise Nixon, I find that McGovern doesn't have the leadership skills necessary to be president.

It would've been better if the Dems chose ME Sen. Edmund Muskie. A much stronger candidate than McGovern in my opinion.[/fanboy]

Either way, this seems intriguing.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

What will McGoverns cabinet look like?

[Jackson]

I would personally swap Washington to the Democratic column.