An American Monarchy: A Parliamentary America TL by DKrol

[DKrol]

Having been in power for a little over two years, Prime Minister Jerry Ford was starting to feel comfortable in the national spotlight by the spring of 1975. Backbencher MP Pete McCloskey was ready to change that.

McCloskey, a liberal member of the Center Party who had been a Green Member of the California Parliament, began grumbling about Ford’s “lack of commitment to his own policy proposals” when Ford said he wouldn’t campaign in the 1975 Referendum. If the Yes campaign had lost, many analysts expected it would be McCloskey who would have triggered the leadership challenge against Ford. When McCloskey started a leadership challenger even though the Yes campaign won the referendum, many analysts were left scratching their heads.

On May 20, 1975, McCloskey initiated a motion of no confidence against Ford within the Center Party Parliamentary Group. He lobbied support from the liberal wing of the party, who were both upset at Ford for not campaigning for the National Assembly and for being what they perceived as being pushed around by his Coalition Partner. Under the Center Party rules that Robert Taft installed on his way out, it took at least 15% of the Parliamentary Group voting against the leader to open nominations for leadership. A candidate must gain support from 30% of the Parliamentary Group to trigger a leadership vote. With 251 MPs, McCloskey needed 38 MPs to vote against Ford. He needed 75 MPs to force an actual leadership vote.

In a backdoor meeting of the Parliamentary Group, McCloskey told his fellow MPs that Ford “has abandoned the principles we were elected on” and had “become a mouthpiece for the Nationalists”. Ford did not attend the meeting, telling ABC that he was not concerned by McCloskey and would “get on with” his job, leaving Foreign Minister Charles Percy to advocate for Ford. Percy said “We won the referendum, we’re getting the Assembly. Why would we kick out the captain in the middle of the cruise?” The vote was conducted via secret ballot by Center Party Chairman Malcolm Wilson on May 22. The motion of no confidence failed, but 39 MPs did vote against Ford, triggering the leadership election.

Within minutes of Wilson announcing the result, 200 MPs declared their support for Ford, including all of the Center Cabinet Ministers. Wilson, an ally of Ford’s, set a rapid timetable for nominations and gave McCloskey 24 hours to draw up enough support. McCloskey stumbled and failed, only acquiring the support of 33 MPs and failing to make the leadership ballot. On June 1, Wilson declared that Ford had been unanimously re-elected as leader of the Center Party.

In embarrassment, McCloskey resigned his seat as the Member of Parliament for Atwater, triggering a by-election where he stood as a Labor candidate. George Deukmejian, a local lawyer, stood as the Center Party candidate in the Atwater by-election, with Joe Shell, a local businessman, standing as the Nationalist candidate and Jerry Brown, a former Labor MP from Oakland, as the Liberal candidate. Many in the media watched the Atwater by-election for any indication of the leanings of the electorate. Held on August 12, 1975, the Liberals picked off their first Coalition seat as Brown won a majority of 2,114 over Deukmejian.

[DKrol]

The Middle East has long been a hotbed for violence and conflict. During the 1950s and 1960s American leaders turned their attention to Asia and largely left the Middle East alone. In the 1970s, that came back to haunt them.

In the winter of 1974 and the spring of 1975, the Palestine Liberation Organization had been working its way through Southern Lebanon. By the summer of 1975, the southern half of Lebanon was a firm base for the PLO. This worried Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, whose own position in Israel was tenuous and could easily slip if the PLO began a new wave of operations. Rabin chose to take preemptive actions and attack targets in Gaza and the West Bank that Israel intelligence said were either held by the PLO or were supportive of the PLO. These attacks, mostly conducted by either missile attacks or commando raids, only burned the fire in the PLO’s eyes even brighter. Large scale violence broke out on the Lebanese-Israeli border in August of 1975. The Lebanese Government, which was no fan of the existence of Israel, saw the violence as Israeli aggression and declared war, launching an invasion of Israel. Lebanese ally and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat also declared war on Israel, forcing a two-pronged assault. Iraqi President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr announced his government’s support for the PLO and began to offer strategic assistance in the war against Israel.

The Middle Eastern Situation, as the press called the conflict in its early stages, immediately embroiled the House of Commons. AIP leader George Wallace used PMQs to attack Prime Minister Ford for failing to stand up and defend Israel, which led Opposition Leader Roman Gribbs to attack Wallace, in turn, for war mongering. Ford and his cabinet spent many hours huddling behind closed doors to develop an answer to the Middle Eastern Situation, with Nationalist Defense Minister John Tower advocating the use of the newly-developed Strategic Defense Initiative missile system to destroy Lebanese, Egyptian, and Iraqi strategic command locations but leave the bulk of the fighting up to the Israelis. This put Tower at odds with most of his party, which support a large, active military campaign.

Ford was initially supportive of Tower’s limited approach but came under fire from his Coalition partners for advocating such a moderate response. Nationalist leader John Connally told Ford “These Arabs are backed by the Soviets. If we show weakness and Israel falls, we will have lost the whole damn thing to the Commies.” Connally and his more aggressive allies called for the deployment of nearly 50,000 American troops to Israel to defend Jerusalem and American interests in Israel, effectively working as a backup plan for Prime Minister Rabin. Torn, Ford went to his trusted adviser, Henry Kissinger, for counsel. Kissinger told Ford it was a catch-22 and he would lose either way; if he took Tower’s minimalist approach he would upset the Nationalists and may lose his parliamentary majority, if he took Connally’s aggressive deployment he would upset the people and may lose at the General Election.

On August 27, 1975, Ford announced he would be instructing the senior commanders of the Armed Forces to pursue “an aggressive plan of action, to defend our friends in Israel and protect the only true democracy of the Middle East”. When the plan, codified as the Israeli Defense Plan Act of 1975, was introduced into the Commons, Defense Minister Tower announced his resignation from the post, saying “I cannot, in good faith, work with our military commanders to implement a plan I believe is fundamentally flawed”. Even with Tower’s opposition, the bill passed on August 29, with 395 aye to 255 nay and the American Armed forces began operations the following day.

The first week of September, OPEC held an emergency meeting and voted to ban the sale of oil by any OPEC nation to the United States or the United Kingdom in response to their support for Israel. By September 15, the price of the barrel of oil in the US rose to $17 and price of a gallon of gasoline at the pump jumped to 59 cents. Ford’s approval ratings slumped to 41% as he attempted to reshuffle his cabinet (He ultimately decided to allow Connally to appoint the new Defense Minister in order to keep the Coalition strong), from a high of 59% immediately after the Assembly Referendum. While nowhere near as unpopular as Mike Mansfield was at the end of his term, Ford would need some work to in order to go down in history as the first successful American Prime Minister.

First Ford Government, August 1975
Prime Minister: The Rt. Hon. Gerald R. Ford, Jr. (C)
- Leader of the Center Party
Deputy Prime Minister: The Rt. Hon. John B. Connally, Jr. (Nat.)
- Leader of the National Party

Minister of Foreign Affairs: The Rt. Hon. Charles H. Percy (C)
Minister of Finance: The Rt. Hon. George H. Mahon (Nat.)
Minister of Defense: The Rt. Hon. Ronald W. Reagan (Nat.)
Minister of Justice: The Rt. Hon. William B. Saxbe (C)
Minister of Interior Affairs: The Rt. Hon. John Ben Shepperd (Nat.)
Minister of Trade, Industry, and Business: The Rt. Hon. George L. Murphy (Nat.)
Minister of Labor and Employment: The Rt. Hon. Edward W. Brooke, III (C)
Minister of Health and Social Affairs: The Rt. Hon. Margaret Chase Smith (C)
Minister of Education: The Rt. Hon. Elliot L. Richardson (Nat.)
Minister of Agriculture and the Environment: The Rt. Hon. Ralph Nader (C)
Minister of Transportation: The Rt. Hon. William E. Brock, III (C)
Minister of Infrastructure and Housing: The Rt. Hon. John V. Lindsay (C)
Minister of Veterans Affairs: The Rt. Hon. Maxwell D. Taylor (Nat.)
Minister of Native Affairs: The Rt. Hon. Theodore F. Stevens, Sr. (Nat.)
Minister of Sports, Media, and Culture: The Rt. Hon. John L. Harmer (Nat.)
 
Minister without Portfolio: The Rt. Hon. Otis R. Bowen (Nat.)

[DKrol]

Just because the Prime Minister is unpopular doesn’t mean he should sit home and govern from behind a closed door. Maybe Jerry Ford should have.

In January of 1976, after 4 months of active combat in Israel and a status-quo being largely maintained, Ford took a vacation to visit former Conservative Party chairman Richard Nixon in Yorba Linda, California. While in California, Ford decided to make a trip up to Los Angeles, to tour some local businesses and schools and try to drum up support for himself, his party, and his government. His motorcade was met with protesters, but not enough to really impact the trip, as there were some supporters to counter the anger.

A large crowd of angry protestors built up outside of the Somerset High School, where Ford was talking to students and discussing education policy with administrators. After visiting the school for a little over an hour, Ford exited the building. As Ford made his way towards the car, the protesters pressed against the police barricades, forcing them to circle around the Prime Minister and push him towards the car. He was still 10 feet from the car when three shot rang out. No one was sure if Ford had been hit, but Ford’s security chief, John Simpson, made the final push and got the Prime Minister inside the car as the crowd panicked at the gunshots.

The car sped off towards the Stanford University Hospital, on orders from Simpson. Even if the Prime Minister hadn’t been injured, it would be easier to lock down the hospital and protect him there, Simpson reasoned. It was so loud in the car from the security detail’s radio communications and the chaos in the streets that Simpson couldn’t hear the Prime Minister gasp “They’ve got me, John. John, I’m hit” as the car hit the freeway and the speedometer peaked out at 100 miles per hour.

When the car pulled up to the hospital and the advance team opened the doors to extract the Prime Minister, they found Simpson dead and Ford bleeding. The medical team found that Ford had been struck by one bullet in his back while Simpson had sustained a blow to the head while moving the Prime Minister through the crowd and developed a brain bleed while en route, dying in the Prime Minister’s arms. LAPD arrested Lynnette Fromme an hour after the Prime Minister was attacked, after a gun was found in a trashcan with her fingerprints on it. The bullet that hit Ford collapsed his left lung and pierced one of his kidneys, requiring several hours of surgery and several weeks of recovery.

Deputy Prime Minister John Connally stepped up and lead the Government while Ford was recovering at Stonewall, a residence of the Prime Minister in Stonewall, Texas. There were some squabbling from the Pete McCloskey-like members of the Center Party who wanted Deputy Party Leader Ralph Nader to lead the government, but almost everyone in the Commons knew Nader wasn’t a strong enough figure to lead the Government during a war and fuel crisis.

[DKrol]

Commentators thought that Deputy Prime Minister Connally would lead a caretaker government, simply managing by and not taking any major initiatives. Those commentators did not know John Connally.

Within a week of assuming caretaker status, Connally convened a cabinet meeting and announced that the government would be introducing a new bill to alleviate some of the stress of the economic recession. This drew some grumbling from the Center Party ministers, who would have preferred waiting for Ford to return, but Connally and Finance Minister George Mahon held strong. Their bill, the American Tax Relief Act of 1976, implemented several National Party platforms planks. Under the bill, every tax filer would receive a $40 rebate and each dependent would receive a $20 rebate. It would also increase the investment tax credit by 10%, allowing greater freedom to invest in the weak market.

As the bill made its way through the Commons, it drew opposition from the Opposition. Opposition Leader Roman Gribbs assailed the bill’s investment tax credit as “being crafted in the pocket of big business for big business.” Connally responded by saying “the investors the Opposition Leader assails as big business are the drivers of this economy.” Gribbs and Connally debated the bill back and forth, with Shadow Finance Minister Joseph Barr and George Mahon sparring over the rebate. The bill passed on party lines, 399 Aye to 251 No.