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1872 United States presidential election
The 1872 United States presidential election was the 22nd quadrennial presidential election of the United States, held on November 5, 1872. The election saw John T. Hoffman of New York elected with an electoral college landslide and a majority of the popular vote, thanks to the collapse of the then-ruling Republican Party into feuding factions led by Benjamin Wade of Ohio and Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, respectively.
The Republican Party had earned supermajorities in both houses of Congress as well as the Presidency under Salmon Chase in 1868 and subsequently pursued one of the most ambitious agendas in American political history, passing two constitutional amendments to outlaw slavery, reinstate a national bank, and expand the Navy. However, the shift back to a firmer currency occurred at the precise time as corruption scandals overwhelmed the Chase administration and an attempted corner of the American gold markets by New York financiers helped trigger the Panic of 1870, helping lead to a wipeout for the Republicans in the subsequent midterms and the party soon thereafter saw the exit of "hard money" supporters of the gold standard and a laissez-faire, pro-business alignment that also campaigned against corruption, led by former President Abraham Lincoln; this faction took the name "Liberal Republicans" and would form the nucleus of the Liberal Party.
The Democrats, meanwhile, nominated Hoffman, who was the youngest man to ever receive the Presidential nomination and had been regarded as a relatively successful and reformist Governor of New York, untainted by factional or ideological disputes that had plagued Democrats in the 1860s around the question of the War of Secession. From a definitively postwar generation and taking advantage of the new medium of photography, Hoffman cast himself as the "Candidate of Youth and Vigor" and rigorously campaigned in person across much of the industrial heartland of the United States and seeing to it that pictures of him doing so were widely disseminated, a sharp break with precedent that demanded candidates conduct "front-porch" campaigns and appealed him to the masses. Hoffman carried 18 states, including everything west of New England save for Wade's home state of Ohio, but won only a narrow majority of the popular vote; nonetheless, he entered his Presidency with healthy Democratic majorities in Congress, and within less than a decade the Republican Party of outgoing President Chase would cease to exist (Chase himself would die less than ten weeks after leaving office).
(credit to @GDIS Pathe for making this)
The Republican Party had earned supermajorities in both houses of Congress as well as the Presidency under Salmon Chase in 1868 and subsequently pursued one of the most ambitious agendas in American political history, passing two constitutional amendments to outlaw slavery, reinstate a national bank, and expand the Navy. However, the shift back to a firmer currency occurred at the precise time as corruption scandals overwhelmed the Chase administration and an attempted corner of the American gold markets by New York financiers helped trigger the Panic of 1870, helping lead to a wipeout for the Republicans in the subsequent midterms and the party soon thereafter saw the exit of "hard money" supporters of the gold standard and a laissez-faire, pro-business alignment that also campaigned against corruption, led by former President Abraham Lincoln; this faction took the name "Liberal Republicans" and would form the nucleus of the Liberal Party.
The Democrats, meanwhile, nominated Hoffman, who was the youngest man to ever receive the Presidential nomination and had been regarded as a relatively successful and reformist Governor of New York, untainted by factional or ideological disputes that had plagued Democrats in the 1860s around the question of the War of Secession. From a definitively postwar generation and taking advantage of the new medium of photography, Hoffman cast himself as the "Candidate of Youth and Vigor" and rigorously campaigned in person across much of the industrial heartland of the United States and seeing to it that pictures of him doing so were widely disseminated, a sharp break with precedent that demanded candidates conduct "front-porch" campaigns and appealed him to the masses. Hoffman carried 18 states, including everything west of New England save for Wade's home state of Ohio, but won only a narrow majority of the popular vote; nonetheless, he entered his Presidency with healthy Democratic majorities in Congress, and within less than a decade the Republican Party of outgoing President Chase would cease to exist (Chase himself would die less than ten weeks after leaving office).
(credit to @GDIS Pathe for making this)
Hoffman's hair and mustache are S-tier. My man looks like he's got Princess Leia buns.
IIRC he got a total raw deal right? Was tarred with a broad brush when Tammany got caught doing Tammany stuff even though he himself was clean?
IIRC he got a total raw deal right? Was tarred with a broad brush when Tammany got caught doing Tammany stuff even though he himself was clean?
More or less. He didn’t do much of anything in office and when the Tweed stuff came out (iOTL a big deal but mostly in New York State since it didn’t touch anyone in DC) he was guilty by association to the reformers and too clean for the bosses. Plus, he was President in a time period when between Monroe and Blaine only Jackson won a second term - a one term go was more common than not.
Programming Update: I am going to do some Airport/aviation stuff as was requested but I’m struggling to settle on a solution for what the US airline industry would look like in a world A) sans Dulles/Atlanta/DFW/Houston-Bush as transfer hubs and B) where high-speed rail eats a lot of regional flights. I’d like to do a Big Three/Four and a Little Three/Four of legacy carriers and then LCCs it’s just a question of who and where. Thoughts are welcome as always
I feel like you have a lot more cross country flights and a lot less short hops. More flights from NYC to Chicago or Denver, less from NYC to Baltimore
Hubs - Chicago O'Hare (I'll use OTL names for convenience), NYC JFK, DIA, LAX, maybe Seattle-Tacoma to round it out.
That’s kind of what I’m thinking. Major hubs at OHare, Philly, “JFK”, Newark, Denver, LAX, SFO and SeaTac, then smaller hubs at PHX, PDX, Minny, Detroit, Cleveland and Boston.
You’re probably also see more international flights, too, and that’s where how Us passport control works starts coming into play. If North America has some kind of soft-Schengen that opens a lot of possibilities/routes
Curiously, both of Chicago's airports are named after occurences in the Pacific Theatre of WW2.
(Chiacgo O'Hare named after Edward O'Hare, America's first fighter ace of WW2, and Midway International, of course named after the Battle of Midway).
Would be a fun motif do something simialr with Chicago's airports ITTL with the GAW.
As for answering general aviation questions, I agree with the commenters above. I'd wager the system would be much more similar to what we see in Europe, with more airlines that do international flights while trains handle shorter distances. Just for funsies, I'd love to see a Ryanair-esque airline in America if possible, though it may be less likely with less regional flights.
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Agreed. This would bode well for Pan Am, in particular, which is likely to at least be New York’s dominant airline
I don't hate "Franklin D. Roosevelt International Airport" for one of them.
Sounds better than “Admiral Joe Murdock International Airport” at least!
I like your thinking... I had something else in mind there but maybe the Haglund Terminal or something?
Haglund Terminal sounds good, as long as people keep clam while there.
Review - "Scandal: The Rise and Fall of Chris Huhne"
On the third season of BBC's "Scandal" series, it's a more recent media circus' time to shine - and some lessons from the fresh, lingering decade-old wounds of the Huhne Affair
- BBC.uk, April 28, 2023
On Sunday evening, the third series of the BBC program Scandal debuts its first of five episodes, to be played over the next five weeks, and unlike previous seasons drawing on events from decades ago, this new series focuses on something a great deal of us still remember very vividly, and how could we not? The remarkable fall of Prime Minister Chris Huhne was only just in the spring of 2012, and his conviction for perversion of the law in a scandal around getting his ex-wife Vicky Pryce to claim driving penalty points on his behalf occurred ten years ago last month.
The Huhne Affair - "Huhnebris," as the Daily Mail infamously coined it - has remained a source of major arguments both within the Liberal Party and across British society in the decade since it happened. To Huhne's legions of remaining defenders, dark conspiracies involving opposition figures and enemies within the NLF and Cabinet - beginning with Nick Clegg - were at the core of his defenestration, reactionary and opportunistic elements alike seeking to defeat the progressive Prime Minister in his campaign to reclaim the Liberal Party and the whole of Britain for a noble and just cause. Behind the defeat of their golden boy is a cavalcade of shadowy elements ranging from a vengeful ex-wife in Pryce, jealous Orange Bookers, right-wing press barons, oil investors and coal unions, or a zealous Crown Prosecution desiring its time in the sun. Those who cheered Huhne's resignation in February 2012 retort that Huhne very clearly broke the law and that for once, a senior political figure - the Prime Minister, no less - was properly held accountable for something that any ordinary Briton would face severe penalties including prison for attempting. That it dovetailed with their perception of Huhne as an arrogant and condescending figure, or of "Same Old Liberal Sleaze," was just icing on the cake.
The truth, Scandal posits, probably lies somewhere in between, and Martin Freeman gives some of his career-best work in humanizing the famously aloof Huhne while Emma Thompson opposite as Vicky Pryce is quite good, too, though her having a decade on Freeman - and Freeman looking young for his 51 years - distracts in their scenes together. Drawing on two very different books as source material - The Plot Against the Prime Minister, an accounting of the political ramifications of the affair in Huhne's favor by Guardian journalist Mark Roberts, and Regina v Huhne: The View From Within, a book written by former Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Keir Starmer that defends his case on its legal merits - the series suggests that Huhne certainly committed the offense that he did and the case against him was sound, but also acknowledges that compared to some of the more severe scandals around corruption (or worse) that have plagued Westminster in the last decades, Huhne's offenses were relatively tame. That raises an interesting question that has been debated ad nauseaum in British political circles since: is it right for a clearly guilty man to get off with, as the Americans are fond of saying, a slap on the wrist, due to the sins of others being worse? Or is it more just for accountability to finally be served, even against a fairly un-egregious offense?
In terms of that debate, Scandal offers little new material. It indulges Huhnian grievances against Clegg and the other Orange Bookers, suggesting that Cabinet officials abandoning Huhne late in 2011 was political payback for his defeat of Clegg in the 2007 leadership election and, perhaps, his role in preventing "The Orange Book" from being adopted as the formal party policy/pre-manifesto in the "Battle of Hastings" at the 2003 Liberal Party Conference, and editors of Fleet Street rags are portrayed with the contempt one can imagine Huhne himself had for the tabloids. In the end though, Freeman's performance of a well-meaning but stiff man persuaded of his own importance to the party arrives back at the frequent conclusion that has been drawn by many more neutral observers - pressuring Pryce to take his penalty points to avoid having his license suspended in 2003 was a silly thing to do, and having a suspended license for speeding would have hardly killed his political career as it was on the upswing.
Where Scandal does get more interesting, however, is in its take on Pryce, always the lesser-considered party in the arrangement. Contemporary concerns about women in politics are reflected through a look at the Greek-born economist wife of a potential future Prime Minister and a more feminist lens on the affair suggests not an abusive Huhne, as some women suggested in editorials, but rather a difficult marriage with a fair deal of pressure to take the points for the power couple's advancement. "It isn't just me who benefits when we sacrifice," Huhne pleads with Pryce in the episode covering the fateful decision to have her claim his penalty points for herself and lie that she had been driving when captured on speed cameras. "This is for both of us." Thompson finds something interesting in Pryce, a portrayal of an accomplished woman in her own right shunted into a supporting role, attacked by conservatives for her Greek nationality and as a convenient punching bag and by people she thought were allies now attacking her because they blame her for her husband's failings. Pryce has remained largely silent over the last decade, choosing to reflect on her brief prison sentence with a book on penal reform ideas and returning to academia quietly, and one wonders what she thinks of Thompson's nuanced, layered take of her as a conflicted, cautious woman who in the end pays the price of her partner's mistakes that she reluctantly participated in.
Whatever one thinks of the Huhne Affair and its still-felt aftermath in British politics over the last ten years, there are some new ideas explored here and the production value, acting and writing is sharp as the previous entries into the Scandal anthology. That said, don't watch it hoping to make up your mind - Huhnebris was a complicated matter that Scandal struggles to find a firm opinion on, and odds are you drew your conclusions on it long ago.
- BBC.uk, April 28, 2023
On Sunday evening, the third series of the BBC program Scandal debuts its first of five episodes, to be played over the next five weeks, and unlike previous seasons drawing on events from decades ago, this new series focuses on something a great deal of us still remember very vividly, and how could we not? The remarkable fall of Prime Minister Chris Huhne was only just in the spring of 2012, and his conviction for perversion of the law in a scandal around getting his ex-wife Vicky Pryce to claim driving penalty points on his behalf occurred ten years ago last month.
The Huhne Affair - "Huhnebris," as the Daily Mail infamously coined it - has remained a source of major arguments both within the Liberal Party and across British society in the decade since it happened. To Huhne's legions of remaining defenders, dark conspiracies involving opposition figures and enemies within the NLF and Cabinet - beginning with Nick Clegg - were at the core of his defenestration, reactionary and opportunistic elements alike seeking to defeat the progressive Prime Minister in his campaign to reclaim the Liberal Party and the whole of Britain for a noble and just cause. Behind the defeat of their golden boy is a cavalcade of shadowy elements ranging from a vengeful ex-wife in Pryce, jealous Orange Bookers, right-wing press barons, oil investors and coal unions, or a zealous Crown Prosecution desiring its time in the sun. Those who cheered Huhne's resignation in February 2012 retort that Huhne very clearly broke the law and that for once, a senior political figure - the Prime Minister, no less - was properly held accountable for something that any ordinary Briton would face severe penalties including prison for attempting. That it dovetailed with their perception of Huhne as an arrogant and condescending figure, or of "Same Old Liberal Sleaze," was just icing on the cake.
The truth, Scandal posits, probably lies somewhere in between, and Martin Freeman gives some of his career-best work in humanizing the famously aloof Huhne while Emma Thompson opposite as Vicky Pryce is quite good, too, though her having a decade on Freeman - and Freeman looking young for his 51 years - distracts in their scenes together. Drawing on two very different books as source material - The Plot Against the Prime Minister, an accounting of the political ramifications of the affair in Huhne's favor by Guardian journalist Mark Roberts, and Regina v Huhne: The View From Within, a book written by former Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Keir Starmer that defends his case on its legal merits - the series suggests that Huhne certainly committed the offense that he did and the case against him was sound, but also acknowledges that compared to some of the more severe scandals around corruption (or worse) that have plagued Westminster in the last decades, Huhne's offenses were relatively tame. That raises an interesting question that has been debated ad nauseaum in British political circles since: is it right for a clearly guilty man to get off with, as the Americans are fond of saying, a slap on the wrist, due to the sins of others being worse? Or is it more just for accountability to finally be served, even against a fairly un-egregious offense?
In terms of that debate, Scandal offers little new material. It indulges Huhnian grievances against Clegg and the other Orange Bookers, suggesting that Cabinet officials abandoning Huhne late in 2011 was political payback for his defeat of Clegg in the 2007 leadership election and, perhaps, his role in preventing "The Orange Book" from being adopted as the formal party policy/pre-manifesto in the "Battle of Hastings" at the 2003 Liberal Party Conference, and editors of Fleet Street rags are portrayed with the contempt one can imagine Huhne himself had for the tabloids. In the end though, Freeman's performance of a well-meaning but stiff man persuaded of his own importance to the party arrives back at the frequent conclusion that has been drawn by many more neutral observers - pressuring Pryce to take his penalty points to avoid having his license suspended in 2003 was a silly thing to do, and having a suspended license for speeding would have hardly killed his political career as it was on the upswing.
Where Scandal does get more interesting, however, is in its take on Pryce, always the lesser-considered party in the arrangement. Contemporary concerns about women in politics are reflected through a look at the Greek-born economist wife of a potential future Prime Minister and a more feminist lens on the affair suggests not an abusive Huhne, as some women suggested in editorials, but rather a difficult marriage with a fair deal of pressure to take the points for the power couple's advancement. "It isn't just me who benefits when we sacrifice," Huhne pleads with Pryce in the episode covering the fateful decision to have her claim his penalty points for herself and lie that she had been driving when captured on speed cameras. "This is for both of us." Thompson finds something interesting in Pryce, a portrayal of an accomplished woman in her own right shunted into a supporting role, attacked by conservatives for her Greek nationality and as a convenient punching bag and by people she thought were allies now attacking her because they blame her for her husband's failings. Pryce has remained largely silent over the last decade, choosing to reflect on her brief prison sentence with a book on penal reform ideas and returning to academia quietly, and one wonders what she thinks of Thompson's nuanced, layered take of her as a conflicted, cautious woman who in the end pays the price of her partner's mistakes that she reluctantly participated in.
Whatever one thinks of the Huhne Affair and its still-felt aftermath in British politics over the last ten years, there are some new ideas explored here and the production value, acting and writing is sharp as the previous entries into the Scandal anthology. That said, don't watch it hoping to make up your mind - Huhnebris was a complicated matter that Scandal struggles to find a firm opinion on, and odds are you drew your conclusions on it long ago.
Thank you!
(For those curious, the Huhne scandal is the exact circumstances of OTL, was just too fun not to have it happen to a PM)