My views on the man aside, Reagan was a very popular president in his time, and I've seen it be said on this board that if there was no 22nd amendment, it's very possible that Reagan would've stayed in office for a very long time. So I wanted to posit the question: What would the 90s and early 2000s be like if Reagan remained in office until his OTL death in 2004 (Assuming he dies the same date)? How would the 9/11 response be different under his administration? Would things like the militia movement in the 90s still emerge with an arch-conservative like Ronald in charge? And how would the two parties be affected by a longer Reagan presidency?
WI Reagan re-elected until death in a world with no 22nd Amendment
- Thread starter Marklin
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He suffered from Alzheimer's
In Aug 94 he wrote the American peoples
I have recently been told that I am one of the millions of Americans who will be afflicted with Alzheimer's Disease ... At the moment I feel just fine. I intend to live the remainder of the years God gives me on this earth doing the things I have always done ... I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead. Thank you, my friends. May God always bless you.
So he might get a 3rd term but unlikely to get a full 4th
In Aug 94 he wrote the American peoples
I have recently been told that I am one of the millions of Americans who will be afflicted with Alzheimer's Disease ... At the moment I feel just fine. I intend to live the remainder of the years God gives me on this earth doing the things I have always done ... I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead. Thank you, my friends. May God always bless you.
So he might get a 3rd term but unlikely to get a full 4th
The Alzheimer’s thing would prevent him getting a third term, let alone a fourth. From what I’ve seen, even at the end of his second term there were doubts about his mental faculties.
The only way to get extra Reagan terms would be for him to win 1968, 1972, and/or 1976.
he came pretty close in 1976, so that one doesn’t need to be discussed much, if at all. Maybe the added stress makes his Alzheimer’s progress faster and he gets the 25th amendment used on him in his TTL’s 3rd term.
1968 is much harder, but if Nixon (for some reason) bows out, and Reagan is left as the only flag bearing conservative, and Rockefeller makes some serious mistakes, he could squeak it out.
1972 would require Reagan to win 1968, as like with Nixon, he would be the presumptive nominee as the incumbent president.
If you just wanna go by historical runs, then he could get 4 terms, assuming his Alzheimer’s didn’t progress faster, 1968, 1976 (maybe he sits out 1972, trying to set some precedent, and thinks his appointed successor is too liberal), 1980, and 1984. Anything before and he’s an unknown, anything after, and he’s too old.
The only way to get extra Reagan terms would be for him to win 1968, 1972, and/or 1976.
he came pretty close in 1976, so that one doesn’t need to be discussed much, if at all. Maybe the added stress makes his Alzheimer’s progress faster and he gets the 25th amendment used on him in his TTL’s 3rd term.
1968 is much harder, but if Nixon (for some reason) bows out, and Reagan is left as the only flag bearing conservative, and Rockefeller makes some serious mistakes, he could squeak it out.
1972 would require Reagan to win 1968, as like with Nixon, he would be the presumptive nominee as the incumbent president.
If you just wanna go by historical runs, then he could get 4 terms, assuming his Alzheimer’s didn’t progress faster, 1968, 1976 (maybe he sits out 1972, trying to set some precedent, and thinks his appointed successor is too liberal), 1980, and 1984. Anything before and he’s an unknown, anything after, and he’s too old.
My guess is he's reelected until 1996 or 2000 when his age catches up to him plus rising inequality and he has some lesser successor running. Expect a major rejection of reaganism as Kemp or Rumsfeld or whoever loses.
He was already suffering from the onset of Alzheimer's in his second term, but if the economy looks good and the Democrats run a failed campaign like Dukakis then he'd probably win a third term. But by 91-92 he'd be very obviously demented and the economy wouldn't be looking as good so he'd very clearly lose if the GOP renominated him.
Yeah, that dementia thing isn't looking too good for his odds. But for the sake of the scenario, let's add to the POD (aside from there being no 22nd amendment barring more than 2 terms) that Reagan's health is better in his later years and his dementia is either delayed or nonexistent. How does that affect things?
Broadwoodwidger
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At the risk of bringing current politics in where it isn't allowed, Obama was the last President who could be described as 100% compos mentis, and each tribe of American politics seems entirely willing to turn a blind eye to their preferred septuagenarian's evidently declining faculties. If only America could elect a President who is reliably coherent and on top of his/her facts! Maybe things were different thirty years ago, but given the way Reagan is lionised to this day by the American right (rather as the Tories here do Thatcher), I could easily see him not only winning a third term in '88 but also a fourth in '92 - but I think he'd have to stand down in '96, I don't see him lasting until the millennium. Even if the Democrats did try to draw attention to his declining condition, it would be easy for the Republicans to rebut that saying "you guys had Roosevelt, he kept going right to the bitter end despite his disability, why can't Ronnie do the same?".
Apologies if the above breaks any rules.
Apologies if the above breaks any rules.
Agree that not way Reagan who was becoming totally senile due Alzheimer would be re-elected in 1988. His memory begun to be pretty bad already during his second term. Even if Reagan with some way is elected in '88, he will be resigned or removed before '92 election. Re-electing him until his death is just simply ASB. Alzheimer was destroyed his memory totally by 2000. He even barely remembered anymore who he was.
My thoughts too. His health eas already deteriorating by 1988. If he ran for a third term, he would probably win, but his Alzheimer catching up with him much earlier through the strains of the fall of the Soviet Union and the first Gulf war, he will probably just be a figurehead and let his vice president George Herbert Bush effectively make all decisions. By 1992, some pundit will remark that these days one sees less of Reagan than of Gorbachev or even of Brezhnev in his final years and that will be all that is needed to not have him run for a fourth term.
I'd say that Roosevelts disability is from a different order than alzheimer. One can be a president if sitting in a wheelchair if the mind is OK. With alzheimer the mind is far from OK, and only gets worse.
It is quiet different thing that legs are not working than saying that brain is not working. Guy who can't walk can still think clearly but guy who can't think properly and can't even remember anymore where to put his pen ten seconds ago can't be president with any way.
Reagan realises his Star Wars Program in first years of his presidency, although its likely to be a secret thing, with black funds diverted from Congress a la Iran-Contras. The military buildup alarms the Soviets who rightly see it as an attempt to neutralise their offensive capabilities and so a step toward a plan to launch a preventive attack against Soviet Union without fearing the reprisal. With such preconditions the pressure on Soviet leadership to attack before the system is ready grows until the 1983 Scare turns a full WWIII. Both nations suffer incalculable damages and billions of deaths but Star Wars satellites shield at least partially US, allowing Washington (well, in fact an other minor city turned national capital) to declare itself the “winner” of this partial nuclear exchange. Reagan becomes immensely popular for his victory in WWIII and for leading US reconstruction, basically turning him in a Republican FDR, and with major part of the political class dead and the country severely damaged and on brink of balkanisation his figure quickly becomes indispensable. Guy Vander Jagt’s proposal to abolish 22th Amendment to allow Reagan reelection is passed in a rush. When the President’s health issues start to be evident he is gradually isolated, leaving the government affairs to Nancy and his VP/Cabinet while the media continue to use past footage to present him as a capable and active leader (a la Brezhnev). So, we get him: the Eternal Reagan.
One of three things would have happened
1. The public would have gotten sick of him and his cruel policies ala Thatcher and he would have been tossed out by 1992 at the latest (possibly by Bill Clinton who was likeable without being cruel).
2. His alzheimers would have caught up with him and he would have had to retire in 1988
3. Or the Democrats would have impeached and removed him for Iran Contra which was almost cartoonishly illegal but came so late that the Democrats let it go for political reasons.
1. The public would have gotten sick of him and his cruel policies ala Thatcher and he would have been tossed out by 1992 at the latest (possibly by Bill Clinton who was likeable without being cruel).
2. His alzheimers would have caught up with him and he would have had to retire in 1988
3. Or the Democrats would have impeached and removed him for Iran Contra which was almost cartoonishly illegal but came so late that the Democrats let it go for political reasons.
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Are you kidding? What was wrong with Bill Clinton's brain or either of the Bushes for that matter? Even Jimmy Carter was fully in control of his faculties and so the last 5 to 10 years of his life. What on Earth are you referring to?
Broadwoodwidger
Banned
You seem to have misunderstood what I was saying. Obama was the LAST President who was 100% compos mentis. All those others came before, so cannot be the last.
Broadwoodwidger
Banned
Yes, but since when have politicians allowed facts like that to get in the way of their hypocrisies? Besides, your last two Presidents have a hard time just climbing stairs or finishing sentences. One of them made rather a big deal at a rally about how competent a water-drinker he was... and if even he views something that trivial as an achievement... the other one is a shadow of his former self in terms of speaking ability, watch some videos of him in action in the 80s or 90s and compare to today - whatever you think of the content of his arguments, he was vastly more coherent and incisive then, using much longer sentences. Both he and his predecessor were and are long past their prime and should have been consigned to the care home for the terminally bewildered well before either of them could get near the White House. I wonder whether the American electorate (or media) were so forgiving of such evident senility in Reagan's time...
Even Edmund Morris, who is skeptical of Ronald Reagan', Jr.s asssrtion that this father already had Alzheimer's when in the White House , acknowledges that " By then [the 1994 announcement] all of us who closely watched him had noticed *for at least four years* that he was becoming strange." [emphasis added] https://www.newsweek.com/edmund-morris-reagan-and-alzheimers-66943 By 1992, it would simply be impossible to hide. (It could be hidden in OTL because Reagan out of the White House didn't have to be in the public eye much. Even so, "He grew pathetically dependent on his wife in public appearances. At his 82nd-birthday party on Feb. 6, 1993, he alarmed guests by repeating a toast to Margaret Thatcher, with identical words and gestures.") Nancy certainly recognized it, and she would insist he not run for another term. in 1992.
In fact, Reagan, well aware that people were concerned about his age, would likely promise in 1984 not to seek more than one additional term. He would point out that FDR was the only person to have served more than two terms, and then only under the cirumstances of world war. (And even if he made no such promise, Nancy, aware of his deteriorating mental state by 1988--even if there was no diagnosis of Alzheimer's yet-- would strongly urge him not to seek a third term, using the same reasoning of a tradition, unfotunately broken under unusual circumstances by FDR, but resumed after 1945. After all, in this ATL, Ike would presumably not have run for a third term in 1960, and would almost certainly have promised in 1956 that he would not be a candidate in 1960 or thereafter--as it was, he was reluctant to run for a second term, because it would involve him remaining president until the unprecedented age of 70! Very likely, Ike would talk about the unwisdom of third terms in peacetime...')
BTW, I don't think there is any plausible way to avoid the 22nd Amenment. The 80th Congress, dominated by Republicans and conservative Democrats, was determined to see that there be no repetition of FDR's third and fourth terms. It easily got more than the necessaty two-thirds in both houses of Congress. The necessary 36 states had ratifed by 1951 and interestingly, even after the necessary number had ratified, five *additional* states ratified in 1951! On;y two states actually rejected the amdnment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution (Of course you may say the POD is to avoid a Republican 80th Congress but that will have coouuntless effects long before Ronald Reagan even enters electoral poltics.)
In fact, Reagan, well aware that people were concerned about his age, would likely promise in 1984 not to seek more than one additional term. He would point out that FDR was the only person to have served more than two terms, and then only under the cirumstances of world war. (And even if he made no such promise, Nancy, aware of his deteriorating mental state by 1988--even if there was no diagnosis of Alzheimer's yet-- would strongly urge him not to seek a third term, using the same reasoning of a tradition, unfotunately broken under unusual circumstances by FDR, but resumed after 1945. After all, in this ATL, Ike would presumably not have run for a third term in 1960, and would almost certainly have promised in 1956 that he would not be a candidate in 1960 or thereafter--as it was, he was reluctant to run for a second term, because it would involve him remaining president until the unprecedented age of 70! Very likely, Ike would talk about the unwisdom of third terms in peacetime...')
BTW, I don't think there is any plausible way to avoid the 22nd Amenment. The 80th Congress, dominated by Republicans and conservative Democrats, was determined to see that there be no repetition of FDR's third and fourth terms. It easily got more than the necessaty two-thirds in both houses of Congress. The necessary 36 states had ratifed by 1951 and interestingly, even after the necessary number had ratified, five *additional* states ratified in 1951! On;y two states actually rejected the amdnment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution (Of course you may say the POD is to avoid a Republican 80th Congress but that will have coouuntless effects long before Ronald Reagan even enters electoral poltics.)
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Well, a POD set in the rejection of the 22nd Amendment, approved by Congress in 1947, will definitely butterfly Reagan's Alzheimer 40 years down the road. But, health aside, I agree that even if he still could win by a margin similar to Bush in 1988 and oversee the collapse of the USSR and the Gulf War resounding victory, further cementing his Cold War victor image in the American psyche, it would be very difficult for him to fully imitate FDR and be re-elected in 1992. Charisma aside, he would be viewed as too old for an America exiting the Cold War and entering a new era. His Gipper roles in the 1940s would mean nothing to the new average American, watching the Simpsons and Arnold Schwarzenegger. As such, Reagan is bound to lose to Clinton or whatever Democrat in 1992 if only for voter fatigue and changing politics, although by a smaller margin than Bush, as Buchanan would not dare challenge the "Republican Roosevelt", taxes raised or not, so Reagan would have the full Republican Party behind him, but still lose.
I don't know if Alzheimer can be butterflied away that easily unless it wasn't caused by life habits or some hit to head.
It wouldn't happen. I think in a world with no 22nd amendment and everything else of OTL staying the same, Reagan would win in 1988, abet by a narrower margin than Bush because Reagan's age would come into question, but I doubt he'd finish the term. A term that had Middle East conflict and an economic downturn would take enough of a toll on him that would either force his resignation or force the 25th amendment, most likely the former as I doubt Nancy would allow him to go through the embarrassment of being driven out by the 25th. Bush, or if Bush declines to be VP for a third term, another VP Reagan would choose to be VP would ascend to the Presidency. Whether Bush (or whoever ascends to the Presidency after a Reagan resignation) wins in 1992 depends on the timing of the resignation imho.