[Info-vax] Carly's back!

[Jay Braun]

Journalist Jeff Greenfield wrote a fascinating "alternative history" book a few years ago, "Then Everything Changed",  in which small events lead to different presidential election results. The earlier ones involve the Kennedy's not being assassinated.  But later, he describes a scenario in which Gerald Ford recovers from his gaffe about the people of Eastern Europe not being under Soviet domination (he immediately says that of course he's referring to their indomitable spirit, not the obvious fact that the Soviet Union controls them politically and militarily).

Well, things don't get much better in Ford's second term, and the winner in 1980 is Gary Hart, whose "new ideas" are put to the test.  (I think in the book he succeeds.)  Greenfield doesn't say whether Hart actually sails on Monkey Business during that campaign.

Interesting side note:  In the book, Hart becomes the "40th" president of the United States instead of Reagan, but I wrote to Greenfield pointing out that if Ford had won re-election, then the president elected in 1980 would have been the 39th.  He graciously thanked me for my correction.