William Yandell Elliott's Proposed "Commonwealths" (1935)
William Yandell Elliott was a prominent historian and intellectual during the mid-20th century. He was originally part of the "Fugitives," the forerunner to the Southern Agrarians, before going on to teach at what would become the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He advised several presidents, including Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and would later teach other leaders like Pierre Trudeau, McGeorge Bundy, and most notably Henry Kissinger. He wrote extensively on geopolitical topics, with perhaps his most notorious being
The Need for Constitutional Reform: A Plan for National Security (1935). In it, he outlined his plan for an extensive overhaul of the Constitution that would, among other things:
- Extend the term of the House of Representatives from 2 to 4 years.
- Reduce the power of the Senate to largely being an advisory body with little in the way of actual legislative initiative.
- Allow for the President to dissolve Congress at least once for an election should there be a gridlock.
- Have the President be succeeded immediately by an "Executive Vice President" except if the former resigns in order to maintain a continuity of policy.
- Have permanent heads of civil service departments along the British model in order to abolish patronage.
- Reduce the Supreme Court of its ability to strike down legislation without 2/3rds of the judges doing so.
But the part that everyone took note of was Elliott's proposal to create "commonwealths" out of existing states that would supposedly reflect cultural and economic realities. (No,
Fallout did not invent the term "commonwealth" in reference to "super states"). While he said that the Federal Reserve districts might serve as a model for the borders of these commonwealths, he does offer a few ideas as to what they might look like:
- A New England commonwealth
- New York as its own Commonwealth
- New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and possibly West Virginia
- Two unspecified Midwest commonwealths
- South Atlantic Seaboard commonwealth
- Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, and Georgia (I added Florida here to maintain continuity)
- Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas
- Western Prairie commonwealth
- Rocky Mountains commonwealth
- Pacific Coast commonwealth
A lot of these seem arbitrary (WV and New Jersey in the same commonwealth?), but it is interesting nonetheless. The states themselves would be reduced to something akin to English counties that are more traditional rather than actual government entities.
Below is a map that follows his outline. If someone could do a WorldA patch, I would appreciate it: