My tentative ideas for the electoral history of "The West Wing"

ColeMercury

Here's what we know from the show itself:
-- Bartlet was preceded by a two-term centre-right Republican, under whom Leo served as Secretary of Labor
-- Two fictional former Presidents are named: D.W. Newman (one-term Democrat) and Owen Lassiter (two-term Republican).
-- The last real-world President to be named in the show is Richard Nixon
-- There were four Republican presidents between 1969 and 1999 altogether
-- Newman used the same Air Force One as Bartlet
-- Lassiter's former staffers & Cabinet secretaries at his funeral are very old.

The first and last point in particular leads me to believe that Lassiter was not Bartlet's immediate predecessor. Plus the fact that Lassiter is clearly meant as that universe's cultural equivalent of Reagan, and serving 1991-1999 is too late.

So, here's the idea: TWW-universe election law is a little different than ours, in that the ascension of the Speaker of the House or lower to the Presidency triggers a special election that resets the presidential election cycle. And the major POD here is that Nixon resigns after Agnew but before a new Vice-President is appointed. This can be in late 1973 or early 1974, it doesn't matter -- either way a special election is now scheduled for November 1974. But let's say the latter, for simplicity's sake.

37: Richard Nixon (R) -- 1969-1974 [def. Hubert Humphrey & George McGovern]

The Presidency passes to Speaker Carl Albert. He doesn't want the job, so confirmation of a new Republican Vice-President now goes through the Senate, and Albert resigns. The new President is Gerald Ford, or his TWW equivalent (as in OTL, he was the only Republican the Senate would confirm). These guys are technically Acting Presidents like Glen Allen Walken, so although they count as presidents they don't get numbered.

--: Carl Albert (D) -- 1974
--: Gerald Ford (R) -- 1974-1975

The Democrats unite behind Hubert Humphrey for the special election, who chooses a more conservative running-mate to unite the party (perhaps the TWW equivalent of Scoop Jackson). The Republicans choose presidential & vice-presidential candidates as unrelated to Watergate as possible (say, Ronald Reagan/John Ashbrook). The Democrats still win the election.

38: Hubert Humphrey (D) -- 1975-1978 [def. Ronald Reagan]

Humphrey dies on schedule. [Scoop Jackson*] succeeds him -- as sitting President he is the presumptive nominee, but the public doesn't like him much and an economic downturn doesn't help either. The Republican candidate, a certain Owen Lassiter, wins. (Although Lassiter is the cultural equivalent of Reagan, perhaps he's more identified with John Connally -- as Nixon's successor in a "miss me yet?" kind of way. Like both Reagan and Connally, Lassiter is an ex-Democrat.)

39: [Scoop Jackson*] (D) -- 1978-1979
40: Owen Lassiter (R) -- 1979-1987 [def. [Scoop Jackson*] & [Ted Kennedy*]]

In the 1986 election, the Democrats run D.W. Newman; the Republicans run Lassiter's vice-president. Newman wins. Then in the 1990 election, the Republicans field a centre-right candidate (the equivalent of George Bush) who defeats Newman. The 1994 election is a three-way election, with an independent billionaire-businessman challenger (the equivalent of Ross Perot) -- this guy siphons votes off both parties and ends up getting around 10-15% of the popular vote. [George Bush*] wins reelection with a comfortable electoral-vote victory but the Democratic challenger, a DLP-type Democrat, wins a narrow popular-vote plurality. That's why they take third-party challengers so seriously in the show.

41: D.W. Newman (D) -- 1987-1991 [def. [Lassiter's VP]]
42: [George Bush*] (R) -- 1991-1999 [def. D.W. Newman, [DLP Democrat] & [Ross Perot*]

The 1998 election. The Republican nominee is [George Bush*]'s Vice-President. The Democratic nominee is, of course, Josiah "Jed" Bartlet. [Ross Perot*] also runs again. Bartlet wins with a plurality of the vote; [Ross Perot*] takes about half the votes he got last time. And then Bartlet wins reelection in 2002, as we know, Walken is Acting President for a time, and Santos comes next.

43: Josiah Bartlet (D) -- 1999-2007 [def. [Sitting VP], [Ross Perot*] & Robert Richie].
--: Glen Allen Walken (R) -- 2003
44: Matthew Santos (D) -- 2007-201? [def. Arnold Vinick]

There you have it. It fits all the criteria, and the only thing it doesn't explain is where Bartlet's predecessor was in the episode with Lassiter's funeral. Thoughts?
 

jycee

Why do the terms begging/end in different years than OTL? Is there a scenario where elections are put off course and occur in midterm years?
 

Vosem

I once considered making a West Wing timeline on another website (this was many years ago, when I was first discovering AH, and I dumped it in the mid-'80s) but the list I had planned was like this:

Richard Nixon (Republican, 1969-1973)

Watergate breaks rather earlier, so Nixon resigns about a year earlier. This raises Albert to the Presidency; the SC rules that he is permanently President, not Acting, so the House can't replace him with another Speaker. After political deadlock results in no forthcoming V.P. appointment, Albert finally convinces Congress to push the 1976 election to 1974; the whole Amendment process takes about a month. (Also, I had the three-month lame duck period cut to just one month...)

Carl Albert (Democratic, 1973-1974)
Ted Kennedy (Democratic, 1974-1978)

Kennedy runs in '74, and beats Republican nominee Nelson Rockefeller in a landslide. Kennedy's first term is marred by economic problems, so he is defeated for reelection by Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan (Republican, 1978-1986)

The economy improves during Reagan's first term, and he pretty easily beats Kennedy's V.P., Terry Sanford, in 1982.

Gary Hart (Democratic, 1986-1990)

Hart narrowly beats Bob Kasten (who served two terms as Governor of Wisconsin ITTL) in a "Young Guns" election in 1986. The "Fall of Communism" happens during Hart's term, but is less complete and significantly more violent and gradual, involving several coups and countercoups in the USSR, which ultimately returns to pretty hardline communism by 1990; during the process I envisioned the Iron Curtain pushed further east and Tiananmen being much more successful. In the post-war environment, Hart is considered the overwhelming frontrunner (a la Bush '92), but a post-war recession and a sex scandal result in his pretty decisively losing to Phil Gramm.

Phil Gramm (Republican, 1990-1998)

The economy mostly recovers in Gramm's first term due to a slightly earlier Internet boom, and Islamic terrorism becomes a serious issue when a 9/11-style attack occurs in 1994, after which Gramm's Presidency is mostly dominated by foreign affairs. Gramm beats Claiborne Pell, who had been Hart's V.P., in 1994.

John Durkin (Democratic, 1998-2006)

The Josiah Bartlett analogue, pretty much. I cast Jim Thompson as his '98 Republican opponent and Jeb Bush in '02. His first V.P. was John Edwards, who entered politics earlier ITTL, and his second was Gary Hart himself (who I envisioned being 'recruited' to become Democratic House leader in the 1990s). I cast Jim Talent as the Glen Allen Walken analogue.

Tony Sanchez (Democratic, 2006-2010)

(IOTL, the Democratic candidate for Governor of Texas, 2002). Beats Edwards and Hart's comeback in 2006 at the Convention, and then loses the popular vote to Pete Wilson. His initial V.P., Erskine Bowles, dies on Election Night, and he's replaced by Tom Daschle.

Jim Talent (Republican, 2010-present)

(...to some extent ripped off of Marky Bunny's excellent extension on this very site.) Although the late-'00s recession is milder ITTL, it still happens, and Sanchez loses reelection to Jim Talent, who beats Stanley Klos (IOTL chairman of the West Virginia Republican Party in the early '90s) in the Republican primary. The future? Who knows.
 

January First-of-May

jycee said:
Why do the terms begging/end in different years than OTL? Is there a scenario where elections are put off course and occur in midterm years?
Click to expand...

That's kind of the point of West Wing, I believe :confused: (as well as the reason why it's so hard to make a believable timeline for it without screwing up American electoral history entirely).
I think the still-ongoing (last time I checked) "2010 presidential election" game had been fleshed out enough that there's a full "official" (in-game) list of Presidents. No idea if that's correct though.
 

ColeMercury

An alternative: for the 1974 election, rather than defeating Reagan, Hubert Humphrey defeats Nelson Rockefeller. This allows Lassiter to be the ATL equivalent of Reagan in every way.
 
Prometheus_2300

Prometheus_2300

January First-of-May said:
That's kind of the point of West Wing, I believe :confused: (as well as the reason why it's so hard to make a believable timeline for it without screwing up American electoral history entirely).
I think the still-ongoing (last time I checked) "2010 presidential election" game had been fleshed out enough that there's a full "official" (in-game) list of Presidents. No idea if that's correct though.
Click to expand...

There was...I was in charge of making the list graphic. I will post what we had.

Basically, since Reagan was mentioned on the show, that limited a lot of options for where to put things.

We came to the conclusion that in July of 1985, Reagan suffered a stroke, and there was a bit of a constitutional crisis. The problem was that the Vice President refused to sign the letter, and the cabinet was all away for the weekend. So George P. Bush (AH person unrelated to the OTL Bush) became Acting President. The Congress and the Supreme Court, along with Acting President Bush, moved up the elections by 2 years since 1984 just got done. Sort of works.

presidents3.png
 
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