Unconditional Surrender Truman
Harry S Truman
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« on: October 03, 2016, 09:11:26 PM » |
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With his narrow victory over Socialist William Green in the election of 1916, William Howard Taft became the first president elected under the Liberal banner since the days of Jose Maria Iglesias and the first ever elected from the National Liberal Party. A celebrated jurist, his experience was almost entirely judicial; he had a wide circle of admirers among the press and on the bench but virtually no history of involvement in policy making. Apart from a brief stint as Governor of the Caniapiscau Territory, he had no executive experience. Thus, like Charles MacDonald before him, on matters of politics he was to be reliant on the counsel of wiser men, while he himself tended to the growing disorder at home and in the world abroad.
Early in his term, Taft made two important appointments that were to shape the course of his presidency. The first was the selection of Thomas James Walsh, a senator and former presidential candidate from Montana, as his vice president; the second was the nomination of Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. to become Secretary of Foreign Affairs. Both men were gifted politicians and veteran lawmakers; while Walsh's time in the Senate and his prominent role within the caucus of the Center Democratic Party made him the ideal choice to represent the administration's legislative agenda in Congress, Roosevelt's outspoken advocacy for the French gave him credibility on the issue nearest to Taft's heart: the "reconstruction" of the French Republic after the devastation of the Great War.
The closeness of the 1916 vote meant that while the Liberals had gained more than 100 seats in the House of Commons, they were still several dozen short of a majority. The Socialists, who before the election had commanded 354 of the 577 seats in the lower house, were reduced to 260 votes; the remaining 317 were apportioned among Taft's Liberals, Walsh's CDP, and the Concordites. As both the Liberals and the CDP had supported Taft's candidacy during the campaign, an alliance between these two parties was natural; the Concordites, however, were not willing to join the governing coalition without important concessions on Taft's party. A shadow of their former strength, the Concordites controlled just 98 seats in the Commons after 1916, a number that was nevertheless enough to tip the balance in Congress towards the president. Led by the aging Theodosius McLaughlin , the Concordites offered their support to Taft in exchange for a promise that Taft would oppose efforts to expand the national health insurance system and support legislation to crack down on anarchist groups. Reluctantly, Taft agreed.
Over the course of the next four years, Congress passed a series of bills undoing many of the socialist reforms of the Green era. The most significant of these was the Hart-Cellarer Act of 1918, which repealed the act of Congress that had nationalized the oil and steel industries in 1913. The following year, Taft prevailed upon Congress to secure passage of the Customs Act aimed at reducing corruption in the customs office. Finally, the Sedition Act - passed by strong majorities of both houses of Congress - criminalized membership of any anarchist or "Czolgosist" society in response to the Blackwater Square Riots of 1915.
Success on the world stage proved more elusive. In 1918, when Ohio's Thomas R. Marshall introduced legislation in the Commons appropriating half a billion dollars in foreign aid to the French Republic, Taft eagerly signed on to the proposal, convinced it would restore friendly relations with France strained by American neutrality in the Great War and do much for the welfare of the French people. Many in Congress, however, were unwilling to grant so large a sum to a foreign power. With his coalition in revolt, Taft was forced to accept a compromise bill offered by Congressman Charles W. Bryan of Kansas. Under the new bill, the $.5 billion would be paid in four installments over the course of two years, with the added requirement that the money be repaid within ten years. Even with this compromise, the vote on the Marshall-Bryan bill was uncomfortably close. In the Commons, the proposal passed by a vote of 285-282; in the Senate, Vice President Walsh broke the tie in favor of the administration. The following spring, at a conference convened at Geneva between France and her conquerors, Britain and Germany, Secretary of Foreign Affairs Roosevelt prevailed upon the victorious powers to reduce the reparations owed by France under the terms of the Treaty of Berlin from an outstanding $10.51 billion to $7.6 billion.
Governor Jonathan Rolland Edwards of South Carolina [Concordite]
A dignified southern statesmen of the Blanchetesque tradition, Edwards has been nominated by a party seeking to prove its relevance in the face of declining national fortunes. Having lost the last two elections in veritable landslides, few Concordites expect to regain the presidency in 1920; rather, they hope that a strong showing by Edwards will replenish their party's Congressional caucus and lay the foundation for a successful campaign in 1924. The venerable Edwards seems custom-made for this task: a three term governor and former Congressman, he is a devoted disciple of the ideals upon which his party was founded: free trade, free markets, and hard money. He supports the privatization of the railways, the repeal of the National Health Act, and opposes further foreign aid to France with the much-quoted refrain that "America is not Europe's Santa Claus." He has criticized Taft for perceived softness towards Czolgosist radicals, promising to outlaw the Communist Party and use federal power to crack down on anarchist groups.
Governor Franciso Ignatio Huerte of Mexico [ASWI-SDP]
With the end of the Mendez Era, Mexico and the Spanish provinces of the Southeast have swung decisively leftward, a trend exemplified in the person of Francisco Huerte. Nominated by both the ASWI and the SDP, Huerte has promised to restore the socialist reforms of the Green Administration, expand the National Health System, establish a system of national unemployment insurance, and pass the first-ever national minimum wage law. Controversially, he also supports the repeal of the Sedition Act, calling it a "vile attack" in the democratic principles of the Commonwealth Charter. He supports moderate levels of foreign aid to France but opposed the Marshall-Bryan Act as too great a sum.
President William Howard Taft of Ohio [National Liberal-CDP]
Though some speculated that he would seek to retire after the 1920 elections, "Judge" Taft has accepted the nomination of his party to a second term as president, running on a joint ticket with the CDP. Taft is running on the accomplishments of the last four years, casting himself as the candidate of free enterprise, free speech, and friendly relations with the world abroad. He has stood by his support for the Sedition Act, arguing that Huerte's repeal policy would return the country to the chaos of Blackwater Square, while simultaneously criticizing Edwards for seeking to silence unpopular opinions. On the international stage, he remains the "steadfast friend of France" and has vowed to extend the Marshall-Bryan Act, whose repeal he warns would plunge Europe once more into bloody anarchy.
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