Did Teddy need to be v.p. first?
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Aaron Fox
Well-known member
No, the most likely scenario being McKinely screwing up so majorly that the US would be gripped in a communist revolution. You must also understand that the VP was basically impudent politically. For the most part, unless the Pres got killed (and being Pres is one of the deadliest jobs in the US), the usual thing is that he simply sits there.
Buba
A total creep
Isn't this a bit far fetched?
Wouldn't any revolting communists be shot by the National Guard, recruited from God Fearing farmers?
Lovely autocorrect/typo. Especially as it fits the elder Roosevelt.
Aaron Fox
Well-known member
You forgot how just bad the situation in the US was during the Gilded Age. Let's just say that it was the situation where you'll get your own military to turn on you as well (Congress had been badly abusing the US military for over a century by the time of TR, practically every time that the USN tried to get a new budget that wasn't starving them of money, Congress basically told the USN they're fucked and cut the navy budget, and the less said about the army, the better). If the population started rebelling, then the military will turn on the government because the government treated them like complete and utter shit.
Think of the Gilded Age as less just a bad period and more like a steampunk version of cyberpunk and you'll get a better understanding of the general situation.
It actually fits in this situation, for that was the status of the VP's power politically. VP slowly became where you put people you didn't want to do anything politically as the US became a century old. TR was causing a lot of trouble for the party bosses in the GOP at the time, and they wanted him out of the way without killing him (because they understood that adding political violence is the last thing they need)...
Buba
A total creep
You still haven't noticed that impudent is not the word you are thinking off?
Aaron Fox
Well-known member
Impudent, i.e. useless, powerless, etc.? At least the last I've checked...
Aaron Fox
Well-known member
Ah, autocorrupt strikes again...
Autocorrect.
Unlikely. The GOP party bosses probably wouldn't allow this. Someone like TR's VP Charles Fairbanks strikes me as a much more reasonable successor to McKinley in 1905 in this TL.
Reminds me a bit of the US right now, frankly!
It's unlikely that without him becoming President through McKinley's assassination that he would ever have been nominated to be President himself. The entire reason he was made VP to begin with was specifically to kill his political career. He'd been a reformer in NY and was gaining some popularity there, so the party bosses kicked him upstairs to be VP where he couldn't really do anything. They basically had him trapped, too, because if he'd refused the ticket, this would have likewise ended his political career. After he assumed the Presidency, he then got so popular that the party bosses then were likewise trapped, because it was highly unusual to not give the incumbent the party nomination, unless he was very unpopular. So unless McKinley had been assassinated, he would not have ever gotten the nomination, and he basically would have been forced to retire from politics afterwards because you don't really get to go back to being part of the state legislature after being VP.