As we know, in The West Wing presidential elections happen during years when in our world midterms are held, such as 1998, 2002, 2006, and so on. So I've been thinking; how could this have happened? It must have been changed recently, otherwise all of American history would be altered, and we know that Nixon was the last real-life President mentioned in The West Wing. So here's one theory, with a timeline to give an idea of how it might have affected American, and world, history. The timeline shall be done month by month.
February 10, 1967: The 25th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was adopted. Unlike in our timeline, the amendment contained a provision which called for a presidential election to be held if a sitting President was replaced by a Vice President who had been appointed and not elected. The provision stated that if the next November was more than two months away, it would take place on that November; if it was less than two months away, the election would take place on the next Tuesday in two months which was not a federal holiday.
August 9, 1974: Richard Nixon became the only President in history to resign the presidency, amid the Watergate scandal. Under the 25th Amendment, Vice President Gerald Ford would ascend to the presidency, becoming the 38th President of the United States. However, because he had not been directly elected, the 25th Amendment stated that a presidential election would have to be held that year. The national parties had already laid some groundwork over the previous few months, foreseeing the possibility of an early election. For America, the resignation of President Nixon marked, if not the end of an unhappy decade then perhaps the beginning of the end as his helicopter departed the White House.
August 10, 1974: Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots formally demanded a new political setup for Cyprus giving Turkish Cypriots roughly one-third of the island.
August 11, 1974: The former press secretary of Hubert Humphrey when he was Vice President, Norman Sherman, pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting illegal corporate donations from milk producers. In Geneva, the foreign ministers of Greece, Turkey, and Britain met for another round of peace talks over the issue of Cyprus.
August 12, 1974: President Ford delivered a warmly received speech to a Joint Session of Congress, promising compromise and conciliation, and claimed that he would start from scratch in meeting inflation, which he called “domestic public enemy number one.” In an expression of this he also made his first presidential veto, on a bill to increase salaries for deputy U.S. marshals because he stated that it would contribute to the inflationary strain.
All eight members of a Soviet women’s mountain climbing team died in a blizzard on Lenin Peak, in the Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan.
August 13, 1974: The Cyprus peace talks in Geneva collapsed after intensive international efforts failed to bring Turkey and Greece together on a compromise.
August 14, 1974: Turkey invaded Cyprus for the second time. Fierce Turkish airstrikes hit Nicosia and other major cities along the island’s southern and eastern coast, sending thousands of refugees fleeing in panic. One bomb killed 29 people when it fell on a mental hospital in Nicosia while the roughly 40,000 Turkish troops on the island began advancing from their enclave between Nicosia and the northern coastal town of Kyrenia and on the cities of Lefka, Larnaca, and Famagusta, the main seaport on Cyprus’ east coast. The explosion of fighting threatened to ignite a full scale war between Greece and Turkey - America's close allies in the Mediterranean - and endangered the southern flank of NATO. The United Nations appealed for an immediate ceasefire but it went unheeded as the Security Council met in an urgent session. Greece, referring to the attack as a "second Pearl Harbor," dramatically withdrew its troops from the military arm of NATO. The Turkish government claimed that its sole aim in renewing its attack on Cyprus was to protect its Turkish-minority citizens. Approximately a third of the island’s territory was occupied by the Turks by the day’s end, and at 18:15 that night a ceasefire took effect in the capital.
The President of South Korea, Park Chung-hee, survived an assassination attempt when a gunman fired on him while the President was giving an Independence Day address in the National Theatre to a crowd of roughly a thousand. President Chung-hee ducked behind the speaker’s desk and was not hit. However, his 47-year old wife was hit in the head and later died after a six hour operation at the Seoul National University Hospital. A 16 year old member of a 200-voice girls’ choir which was to sing for the celebration, was also killed by police bullets. The gunman was wounded and removed by police. The President then chose to finish his speech, before the girls’ choir sang for a few minutes. The President then left for the hospital to a standing ovation. The gunman was identified as Mun Se Kwang, a 22-year old Korean living in Osaka, Japan who was a member of an anti-Park youth group. It was the first known direct attempt on the President’s life since he had come to power in a bloodless coup in 1961.
Former U.S. President Richard Nixon was subpoenaed to appear as a witness at the Watergate cover-up trial. It came as special Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski was reported to be studying the possibility of taking legal action against the former President.
August 15, 1974: Victorious Turkish forces moved to consolidate the northern third of Cyprus for a proposed autonomous Turkish state, and the Turkish and Cyprus governments both declared a ceasefire at dusk. "It's all over," said a British military source.
At a press conference, the Republican National Committee chairman George Bush announced that it had reached a deal with the Democratic National Committee to schedule their primaries for the general election on the same day. The deadline of August 31 was set for those seeking the nomination to declare their candidacy, while all primaries and caucuses were scheduled for September 17th in the extraordinarily shortened procedure.
100,000 British holidaymakers found themselves stranded abroad after the sudden collapse of Court Line and its subsidiaries Clarkson’s and Horizon Holidays.
August 16, 1974: A ceasefire took hold in Cyprus, with Turkey beginning the process for forming a new Turkish-minority autonomous state in the north of the island. Anti-American demonstrations swept through Greece, claiming the United States had supported the Turkish invasion. Meanwhile the Greek government rejected the suggestion that talks with Turkey over the future of Cyprus would reopen. In Cyprus, sources estimated that 150,000 Greek Cypriots had fled their homes in the wake of advancing Turkish forces.
August 17, 1974: President Ford announced that he had selected George Bush, Republican Party Chairman, as his next Vice President. The announcement elicited little significant response from either major party, as Ford was already seen as a complete lame duck due to his lack of candidacy for the presidential election. Nelson Rockefeller had been considered, but his name had been in doubt ever since allegations surfaced that the former New York Governor had hired thugs to disrupt the 1972 Democratic National Convention and tilt the nomination towards Senator George McGovern of South Dakota.
Meanwhile at a speech in Topeka, Senator Bob Dole of Kansas became the first person to announce their candidacy for the Republican nomination for president. A native of Kansas, Dole had fought in Italy during the war before entering politics and had chosen to run partly because private polling indicated that he would lose his Senate seat in the election and so chose to jump for the presidency instead. A moderate widely thought of as able to bridge the gap between the wings of the party, Dole had an early advantage and was widely seen as the favourite to win the nomination especially from the party establishment. He had supported the major civil rights bill in the 1960s while voting against certain Great Society measures including Medicare, while he remained a hawk on the Vietnam War and on crime. This latter point ultimately proved a major handicap, as in his announcement speech he committed himself to “the continued defence of South Vietnam,” which sent the message that he intended to maintain the war, even though his actual point was to increase economic aid to the country.
That same day at Capitol Hill, Representative Morris “Mo” Udall of Arizona announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination. A Mormon ho had abandoned its church over its policy of not allowing black priests, he stood six foot five, meaning if elected he would be the tallest ever U.S. President (something he remarked on during his humorous announcement speech) while his glass eye also provided a source of interest in his physical appearance. A former professional basketball player with the Denver Nuggets, Udall was an obscure liberal which seemed odd considering most of his constituents, who kept re-electing him, were conservative in nature. A strong support of environmentalism and something of a debt hawk while pushing for lobbying reform – he held a key role in fashioning the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 which helped reveal the Watergate scandal. A formidable tactician, Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward would the following day write an article asserting that this little-known representative “is going to be the next President of the United States.”
The office of U.S. Representative Al Ullman (D-OR) denied an allegation that Ullman had carried out discriminatory hiring practices in his Washington, D.C. headquarters which involved “whites only” requests.
A bomb exploded in an industrial area Los Angeles, destroying a warehouse and damaging several others, with a cloud of fire mushrooming twenty stories into the air and visible for 20 miles. No deaths were reported, though four were hurt, despite the scale of the destruction. Looting was reported in the area following the blast amid speculation that it may have been the work of the so-called Alphabet Bomber who had bombed Los Angeles International Airport earlier that month.
August 18, 1974: The U.S. Ambassador to Cyprus, Rodger Davies, was shot dead as Greek Cypriot rioters besieged the U.S. Embassy in Nicosia. Around 600 demonstrators smashed through the iron gates as rounds were fired from nearby rooftops into Davies’ office, with one hitting him in the neck. The gunfire had begun after U.S. Marines begin firing tear gas to disperse the rioters, which had set the Ambassador’s limousine alight, while Cypriot police had also tried to prevent an invasion of the embassy. The Cypriot President, Glafcos Clerides, denounced the “terrible crime.”
The U.S. House and Senate voted to approve President Ford’s request for wage-price monitoring authority, with congressional leaders saying the action was a sign of good faith to the new President, despite widespread belief that it would have little effect.
The final meeting of the Democratic Charter Commission took place, where a mass walkout of white liberals, women, and blacks took place in a vivid demonstration of the deep splits which still existed within the Democratic Party. The disenchanted reform wing of the party left threatening to withhold support to certain candidates in November.
President Ford announced former Indiana Representative Richard Roudebush to be the next Administrator of Veterans Affairs.
August 19, 1974: 39 of South Korean President Chung Hee Park’s top government and political associates resigned in the wake of the previous week's assassination attempt on Park, including the Premier, the 14 members of the Cabinet, the top five officials of the ruling Democratic Republican Party, the national police director, and South Korea’s ambassador to Japan. The gesture was a symbolic one customary in Korea after embarrassing incidents, intended to show that the men assumed responsibility for the failure of the security forces to prevent the attempt on Park's life. The President accepted only two resignations; Home Minister Hong Sung-chul and the chief presidential bodyguard, Park Chong-kyoo, one of his most trusted aides.
Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for President of the United States. A well-respected member of Congress on both sides of the aisle, Baker had a widespread reputation for civility and brokering compromises, famous for asking aloud during the Watergate investigations, "what did the President know and when did he know it?" Referring to his skill in Congress, one Republican anonymously told a journalist, “he’d be a better veep than peep,” a quote which has stuck to him.
August 20, 1974: The U.S. government reported that the cost of living had increased by eight-tenths of a percent in July despite an easing in the increase of food prices. This amounted to an annual rate of inflation of 9.6%, ahead of the previous year’s 8.8%. Prices had seen the biggest 12-month jump since the year ending September 1947.
Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Washington announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. A Cold War liberal and anti-Communist Democrat, Jackson supported higher military spending and a hard line against the Soviet Union, while also supporting social welfare programs, civil rights, and labor unions. His political beliefs were characterized by support of civil rights, human rights, and safeguarding the environment, but with an equally strong commitment to oppose totalitarianism in general, and communism in particular. The political philosophies and positions of Jackson have been cited as an influence on a number of key figures associated with neo-conservatism.
August 21, 1974: President Ford announced that he would not attempt to gain the Republican nomination for the presidential election that year, later telling a journalist that the party “wanted me to run whether I liked it or not.” In his speech from the Oval Office addressing the nation on the decision, he stated that “I believe the best way I can serve this country is to focus my energies entirely on solving our problems today, rather than presenting myself with unnecessary distractions.” His official biographer cites the fact that Ford thought the election impossible to win amid the political and economic conditions, and his wish not to end up a historical embarrassment, as the real motivations.
President Ford chose a good day to announce that he would not run, as this was also the day when it became official that the United States was in a recession, with the announcement that the total economic output of the U.S. from April through June had dropped by 0.8%. Being the second quarter in a row to register a drop in activity, this meant the U.S. was now in an economic recession.
The so-called Alphabet Bomber was arrested by police in Los Angeles, but refused to speak.
August 22, 1974: Testifying before the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, F.G. Adams of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Finance and Commerce foresaw a no-growth U.S. economy regardless of whether Congress took President Ford's advice and cut federal spending by $10 billion. He predicted that it might reduce inflation by 0.5% but would increase the rate of unemployment, which was currently at 5.3%. The day saw much in the way of gloomy economic news, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average continued its downward slide to fall below 700 points for the first time in more than four years while Kuwait and Venezuela both announced cuts in oil production because of the effect of oversupply in pushing prices down.
The sprawling Bien Hoa Air Base in South Vietnam was struck by a communist missile attack, killing 12 people and dealing heavy damage to the base. North Vietnamese forces continued their gradual move towards Saigon, with Bien Hoa being only 14 miles north of the South Vietnamese capital.
August 23, 1974: Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for the presidency at a speech in his hometown of Dallas, Oregon. Hatfield was a prominent evangelical liberal Republican who had been the first prominent member of his party to oppose the Vietnam War, having in 1970 co-sponsored the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment, which called for a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam while also being pro-life on the issues of abortion and the death penalty. He was also a strong supporter of civil rights, referring to it in his campaign launch as “not a Republican versus Democrat issue, not a conservative versus liberal issue, but a humanity versus inhumanity issue.” A veteran of the Second World War, Hatfield had personally witnessed the carnage of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and as a lieutenant had been one of the first Americans to see the remains of Hiroshima firsthand. The very same day, some in the liberal-leaning media as well as his Republican rivals seemed to be digging up a 1940 incident in which a 17-year old Hatfield had struck and killed a pedestrian while driving his mother’s car.
August 24, 1974: Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed became the 5th President of India, the second Muslim to occupy the position, having been chosen by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
President Ford signed a bill establishing a new wage-price monitoring agency and promised more action to beat inflation. The new Council of Wage and Price Stability, which replaced the Nixon Administration's Cost of Living Council, was intended to expose excessive wage and price increases by management and labor. The council had no powers to impose controls.
August 25, 1974: A small plane flying from El Paso, Texas to Mexico City collided with an unidentified flying object over the Mexican state of Chihuahua. The U.S. Air Force had been tracking the same UFO heading over the Gulf of Mexico towards Corpus Christi, Texas. Traveling faster than 2,000 mph, the authorities assumed it was a meteor until the object suddenly changed course. The object slowed and descended with a new heading towards Coyame, a desert town about 40 miles south of the U.S. border with a population of about 2,500, and eventually the object disappeared from radar screens. The incident has gained fame as “Mexico’s Roswell.”
August 26, 1974: Charles Lindbergh, famous for his record-setting transatlantic flight in 1927, died in New York of cancer.
Communist forces made new gains in their offensive along South Vietnam's northern coast, forcing a government battalion into retreat near Quang Ngai and hitting an outpost guarding a bridge only six miles from Da Nang.
Soyuz 15, the second mission to the Soviet Union's Salyut 3 space station, took off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan but failed to dock with the space station. It powered down and would return to Earth two days later.
August 29, 1974: The Windsor Free Festival, a drug-happy and ultra-leftist gathering which had been held annually in Windsor Great Park in England since 1972 by London commune dwellers, was invaded by hundreds of officers from Thames Valley Police. The level of force used led seven major newspapers to demand an inquiry and Roy Jenkins, the Home Secretary, called for a report from the Thames Valley Chief Constable.
August 30, 1974: An express train bound for Germany from Belgrade derailed in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, killing more than 150 passengers.
August 31, 1974: New Zealand’s Prime Minister Norman Kirk died of heart complications, aged 51. He was replaced by Bill Rowling.
Comments Please (come on, look how clever and witty the title of this thread is)
HOW THE WEST WING WAS WON
February 10, 1967: The 25th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was adopted. Unlike in our timeline, the amendment contained a provision which called for a presidential election to be held if a sitting President was replaced by a Vice President who had been appointed and not elected. The provision stated that if the next November was more than two months away, it would take place on that November; if it was less than two months away, the election would take place on the next Tuesday in two months which was not a federal holiday.
August 9, 1974: Richard Nixon became the only President in history to resign the presidency, amid the Watergate scandal. Under the 25th Amendment, Vice President Gerald Ford would ascend to the presidency, becoming the 38th President of the United States. However, because he had not been directly elected, the 25th Amendment stated that a presidential election would have to be held that year. The national parties had already laid some groundwork over the previous few months, foreseeing the possibility of an early election. For America, the resignation of President Nixon marked, if not the end of an unhappy decade then perhaps the beginning of the end as his helicopter departed the White House.
August 10, 1974: Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots formally demanded a new political setup for Cyprus giving Turkish Cypriots roughly one-third of the island.
August 11, 1974: The former press secretary of Hubert Humphrey when he was Vice President, Norman Sherman, pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting illegal corporate donations from milk producers. In Geneva, the foreign ministers of Greece, Turkey, and Britain met for another round of peace talks over the issue of Cyprus.
August 12, 1974: President Ford delivered a warmly received speech to a Joint Session of Congress, promising compromise and conciliation, and claimed that he would start from scratch in meeting inflation, which he called “domestic public enemy number one.” In an expression of this he also made his first presidential veto, on a bill to increase salaries for deputy U.S. marshals because he stated that it would contribute to the inflationary strain.
All eight members of a Soviet women’s mountain climbing team died in a blizzard on Lenin Peak, in the Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan.
August 13, 1974: The Cyprus peace talks in Geneva collapsed after intensive international efforts failed to bring Turkey and Greece together on a compromise.
August 14, 1974: Turkey invaded Cyprus for the second time. Fierce Turkish airstrikes hit Nicosia and other major cities along the island’s southern and eastern coast, sending thousands of refugees fleeing in panic. One bomb killed 29 people when it fell on a mental hospital in Nicosia while the roughly 40,000 Turkish troops on the island began advancing from their enclave between Nicosia and the northern coastal town of Kyrenia and on the cities of Lefka, Larnaca, and Famagusta, the main seaport on Cyprus’ east coast. The explosion of fighting threatened to ignite a full scale war between Greece and Turkey - America's close allies in the Mediterranean - and endangered the southern flank of NATO. The United Nations appealed for an immediate ceasefire but it went unheeded as the Security Council met in an urgent session. Greece, referring to the attack as a "second Pearl Harbor," dramatically withdrew its troops from the military arm of NATO. The Turkish government claimed that its sole aim in renewing its attack on Cyprus was to protect its Turkish-minority citizens. Approximately a third of the island’s territory was occupied by the Turks by the day’s end, and at 18:15 that night a ceasefire took effect in the capital.
The President of South Korea, Park Chung-hee, survived an assassination attempt when a gunman fired on him while the President was giving an Independence Day address in the National Theatre to a crowd of roughly a thousand. President Chung-hee ducked behind the speaker’s desk and was not hit. However, his 47-year old wife was hit in the head and later died after a six hour operation at the Seoul National University Hospital. A 16 year old member of a 200-voice girls’ choir which was to sing for the celebration, was also killed by police bullets. The gunman was wounded and removed by police. The President then chose to finish his speech, before the girls’ choir sang for a few minutes. The President then left for the hospital to a standing ovation. The gunman was identified as Mun Se Kwang, a 22-year old Korean living in Osaka, Japan who was a member of an anti-Park youth group. It was the first known direct attempt on the President’s life since he had come to power in a bloodless coup in 1961.
Former U.S. President Richard Nixon was subpoenaed to appear as a witness at the Watergate cover-up trial. It came as special Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski was reported to be studying the possibility of taking legal action against the former President.
August 15, 1974: Victorious Turkish forces moved to consolidate the northern third of Cyprus for a proposed autonomous Turkish state, and the Turkish and Cyprus governments both declared a ceasefire at dusk. "It's all over," said a British military source.
At a press conference, the Republican National Committee chairman George Bush announced that it had reached a deal with the Democratic National Committee to schedule their primaries for the general election on the same day. The deadline of August 31 was set for those seeking the nomination to declare their candidacy, while all primaries and caucuses were scheduled for September 17th in the extraordinarily shortened procedure.
100,000 British holidaymakers found themselves stranded abroad after the sudden collapse of Court Line and its subsidiaries Clarkson’s and Horizon Holidays.
August 16, 1974: A ceasefire took hold in Cyprus, with Turkey beginning the process for forming a new Turkish-minority autonomous state in the north of the island. Anti-American demonstrations swept through Greece, claiming the United States had supported the Turkish invasion. Meanwhile the Greek government rejected the suggestion that talks with Turkey over the future of Cyprus would reopen. In Cyprus, sources estimated that 150,000 Greek Cypriots had fled their homes in the wake of advancing Turkish forces.
August 17, 1974: President Ford announced that he had selected George Bush, Republican Party Chairman, as his next Vice President. The announcement elicited little significant response from either major party, as Ford was already seen as a complete lame duck due to his lack of candidacy for the presidential election. Nelson Rockefeller had been considered, but his name had been in doubt ever since allegations surfaced that the former New York Governor had hired thugs to disrupt the 1972 Democratic National Convention and tilt the nomination towards Senator George McGovern of South Dakota.
Meanwhile at a speech in Topeka, Senator Bob Dole of Kansas became the first person to announce their candidacy for the Republican nomination for president. A native of Kansas, Dole had fought in Italy during the war before entering politics and had chosen to run partly because private polling indicated that he would lose his Senate seat in the election and so chose to jump for the presidency instead. A moderate widely thought of as able to bridge the gap between the wings of the party, Dole had an early advantage and was widely seen as the favourite to win the nomination especially from the party establishment. He had supported the major civil rights bill in the 1960s while voting against certain Great Society measures including Medicare, while he remained a hawk on the Vietnam War and on crime. This latter point ultimately proved a major handicap, as in his announcement speech he committed himself to “the continued defence of South Vietnam,” which sent the message that he intended to maintain the war, even though his actual point was to increase economic aid to the country.
That same day at Capitol Hill, Representative Morris “Mo” Udall of Arizona announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination. A Mormon ho had abandoned its church over its policy of not allowing black priests, he stood six foot five, meaning if elected he would be the tallest ever U.S. President (something he remarked on during his humorous announcement speech) while his glass eye also provided a source of interest in his physical appearance. A former professional basketball player with the Denver Nuggets, Udall was an obscure liberal which seemed odd considering most of his constituents, who kept re-electing him, were conservative in nature. A strong support of environmentalism and something of a debt hawk while pushing for lobbying reform – he held a key role in fashioning the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 which helped reveal the Watergate scandal. A formidable tactician, Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward would the following day write an article asserting that this little-known representative “is going to be the next President of the United States.”
The office of U.S. Representative Al Ullman (D-OR) denied an allegation that Ullman had carried out discriminatory hiring practices in his Washington, D.C. headquarters which involved “whites only” requests.
A bomb exploded in an industrial area Los Angeles, destroying a warehouse and damaging several others, with a cloud of fire mushrooming twenty stories into the air and visible for 20 miles. No deaths were reported, though four were hurt, despite the scale of the destruction. Looting was reported in the area following the blast amid speculation that it may have been the work of the so-called Alphabet Bomber who had bombed Los Angeles International Airport earlier that month.
August 18, 1974: The U.S. Ambassador to Cyprus, Rodger Davies, was shot dead as Greek Cypriot rioters besieged the U.S. Embassy in Nicosia. Around 600 demonstrators smashed through the iron gates as rounds were fired from nearby rooftops into Davies’ office, with one hitting him in the neck. The gunfire had begun after U.S. Marines begin firing tear gas to disperse the rioters, which had set the Ambassador’s limousine alight, while Cypriot police had also tried to prevent an invasion of the embassy. The Cypriot President, Glafcos Clerides, denounced the “terrible crime.”
The U.S. House and Senate voted to approve President Ford’s request for wage-price monitoring authority, with congressional leaders saying the action was a sign of good faith to the new President, despite widespread belief that it would have little effect.
The final meeting of the Democratic Charter Commission took place, where a mass walkout of white liberals, women, and blacks took place in a vivid demonstration of the deep splits which still existed within the Democratic Party. The disenchanted reform wing of the party left threatening to withhold support to certain candidates in November.
President Ford announced former Indiana Representative Richard Roudebush to be the next Administrator of Veterans Affairs.
August 19, 1974: 39 of South Korean President Chung Hee Park’s top government and political associates resigned in the wake of the previous week's assassination attempt on Park, including the Premier, the 14 members of the Cabinet, the top five officials of the ruling Democratic Republican Party, the national police director, and South Korea’s ambassador to Japan. The gesture was a symbolic one customary in Korea after embarrassing incidents, intended to show that the men assumed responsibility for the failure of the security forces to prevent the attempt on Park's life. The President accepted only two resignations; Home Minister Hong Sung-chul and the chief presidential bodyguard, Park Chong-kyoo, one of his most trusted aides.
Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for President of the United States. A well-respected member of Congress on both sides of the aisle, Baker had a widespread reputation for civility and brokering compromises, famous for asking aloud during the Watergate investigations, "what did the President know and when did he know it?" Referring to his skill in Congress, one Republican anonymously told a journalist, “he’d be a better veep than peep,” a quote which has stuck to him.
August 20, 1974: The U.S. government reported that the cost of living had increased by eight-tenths of a percent in July despite an easing in the increase of food prices. This amounted to an annual rate of inflation of 9.6%, ahead of the previous year’s 8.8%. Prices had seen the biggest 12-month jump since the year ending September 1947.
Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Washington announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. A Cold War liberal and anti-Communist Democrat, Jackson supported higher military spending and a hard line against the Soviet Union, while also supporting social welfare programs, civil rights, and labor unions. His political beliefs were characterized by support of civil rights, human rights, and safeguarding the environment, but with an equally strong commitment to oppose totalitarianism in general, and communism in particular. The political philosophies and positions of Jackson have been cited as an influence on a number of key figures associated with neo-conservatism.
August 21, 1974: President Ford announced that he would not attempt to gain the Republican nomination for the presidential election that year, later telling a journalist that the party “wanted me to run whether I liked it or not.” In his speech from the Oval Office addressing the nation on the decision, he stated that “I believe the best way I can serve this country is to focus my energies entirely on solving our problems today, rather than presenting myself with unnecessary distractions.” His official biographer cites the fact that Ford thought the election impossible to win amid the political and economic conditions, and his wish not to end up a historical embarrassment, as the real motivations.
President Ford chose a good day to announce that he would not run, as this was also the day when it became official that the United States was in a recession, with the announcement that the total economic output of the U.S. from April through June had dropped by 0.8%. Being the second quarter in a row to register a drop in activity, this meant the U.S. was now in an economic recession.
The so-called Alphabet Bomber was arrested by police in Los Angeles, but refused to speak.
August 22, 1974: Testifying before the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, F.G. Adams of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Finance and Commerce foresaw a no-growth U.S. economy regardless of whether Congress took President Ford's advice and cut federal spending by $10 billion. He predicted that it might reduce inflation by 0.5% but would increase the rate of unemployment, which was currently at 5.3%. The day saw much in the way of gloomy economic news, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average continued its downward slide to fall below 700 points for the first time in more than four years while Kuwait and Venezuela both announced cuts in oil production because of the effect of oversupply in pushing prices down.
The sprawling Bien Hoa Air Base in South Vietnam was struck by a communist missile attack, killing 12 people and dealing heavy damage to the base. North Vietnamese forces continued their gradual move towards Saigon, with Bien Hoa being only 14 miles north of the South Vietnamese capital.
August 23, 1974: Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for the presidency at a speech in his hometown of Dallas, Oregon. Hatfield was a prominent evangelical liberal Republican who had been the first prominent member of his party to oppose the Vietnam War, having in 1970 co-sponsored the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment, which called for a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam while also being pro-life on the issues of abortion and the death penalty. He was also a strong supporter of civil rights, referring to it in his campaign launch as “not a Republican versus Democrat issue, not a conservative versus liberal issue, but a humanity versus inhumanity issue.” A veteran of the Second World War, Hatfield had personally witnessed the carnage of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and as a lieutenant had been one of the first Americans to see the remains of Hiroshima firsthand. The very same day, some in the liberal-leaning media as well as his Republican rivals seemed to be digging up a 1940 incident in which a 17-year old Hatfield had struck and killed a pedestrian while driving his mother’s car.
August 24, 1974: Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed became the 5th President of India, the second Muslim to occupy the position, having been chosen by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
President Ford signed a bill establishing a new wage-price monitoring agency and promised more action to beat inflation. The new Council of Wage and Price Stability, which replaced the Nixon Administration's Cost of Living Council, was intended to expose excessive wage and price increases by management and labor. The council had no powers to impose controls.
August 25, 1974: A small plane flying from El Paso, Texas to Mexico City collided with an unidentified flying object over the Mexican state of Chihuahua. The U.S. Air Force had been tracking the same UFO heading over the Gulf of Mexico towards Corpus Christi, Texas. Traveling faster than 2,000 mph, the authorities assumed it was a meteor until the object suddenly changed course. The object slowed and descended with a new heading towards Coyame, a desert town about 40 miles south of the U.S. border with a population of about 2,500, and eventually the object disappeared from radar screens. The incident has gained fame as “Mexico’s Roswell.”
August 26, 1974: Charles Lindbergh, famous for his record-setting transatlantic flight in 1927, died in New York of cancer.
Communist forces made new gains in their offensive along South Vietnam's northern coast, forcing a government battalion into retreat near Quang Ngai and hitting an outpost guarding a bridge only six miles from Da Nang.
Soyuz 15, the second mission to the Soviet Union's Salyut 3 space station, took off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan but failed to dock with the space station. It powered down and would return to Earth two days later.
August 29, 1974: The Windsor Free Festival, a drug-happy and ultra-leftist gathering which had been held annually in Windsor Great Park in England since 1972 by London commune dwellers, was invaded by hundreds of officers from Thames Valley Police. The level of force used led seven major newspapers to demand an inquiry and Roy Jenkins, the Home Secretary, called for a report from the Thames Valley Chief Constable.
August 30, 1974: An express train bound for Germany from Belgrade derailed in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, killing more than 150 passengers.
August 31, 1974: New Zealand’s Prime Minister Norman Kirk died of heart complications, aged 51. He was replaced by Bill Rowling.
Comments Please (come on, look how clever and witty the title of this thread is)
Last edited:
