Scenario II: Wallace Takes Reagan's Shoes
No... please no...
Oh, I'm just getting warmed up!
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POD: Wallace switches to the Republican Party in 1964, the same day as Strom Thurmond. Thurmond narrowly holds the South (who favored Wallace or Governor Ronald Reagan) for Nixon at the 1968 convention, and he wins the first ballot by a narrow margin, and the general election by a healthy one.
Wallace failed to defeat incumbent, unelected President Reagan in 1976, but did manage to easily best him in the 1980 primaries. John Anderson emerged as the primary opposition in the Republican primaries, and would drop out to pursue an independent candidacy in the fall.
George Wallace / Donald Rumsfeld 49.23% 459
Jimmy Carter / Walter Mondale 40.72% 79
John Anderson / Patrick Lucey 8.40% 0
In his first term Wallace survived an assassination attempt, took a hard line against labor unions, launched the modern War on Drugs, and ordered an invasion of Grenada. In the 1984 election, President Wallace easily managed to paint the Democratic ticket of Senator Gary Hart and Governor Tom Bradley as a second McGovern and soft on crime, respectively, and won the largest landslide in American history. Upon victory, Wallace proclaimed that it was "Morning in America, now and tomorrow."
George Wallace / Donald Rumsfeld 61.81% 535
Gary Hart / Tom Bradley 37.52% 3
Wallace's second term was primarily marked by foreign matters, such as the ending of the Cold War, the 1986 bombing of Libya, and the revelation of the Iran-Contra affair. Publicly describing the Soviet Union as an "evil empire," he supported anti-communist movements worldwide and spent his first term forgoing the strategy of détente by ordering a massive military buildup in an arms race with the USSR. Reagan negotiated with Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, culminating in the INF Treaty and the decrease of both countries' nuclear arsenals.
Wallace left office in 1989. Ten years later, the former president disclosed that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease earlier in the year. He died in 2012 at the age of 93. A conservative icon, he ranks highly in public opinion polls of U.S. Presidents and is credited for generating an ideological renaissance on the American political right.
