Miscellaneous, Non-Frivolous ASB Ideas

'No Law of Diminishing Marginal Productivity' in economics.

As yet another cross-time presidential election of mine that I’m thinking of making into a TL, ‘1944 FDR Vs. 2004 G.W. Bush’—in which the western half of the 2004 United States gets sent back to 1944. Once the usual shock and awe of this ISOT dissipates and assuming that a mutually agreed-upon election cycle takes place, the ensuing months should prove a tough match-up to call. It's the Silent-Generation New Dealer versus the Boomer neoconservative from sixty years into the future.

At first glance, the notion that FDR would stomp Dubya into the ground on Election Day makes sense, mainly because of his historical clout and lasting legacy. For one thing, he did lead America through the Great Depression and to victory in World War Two IOTL, leaving the US a global superpower with progressive legislation—whether welfare programs like Social Security, or minimum-wage and child-labor laws to protect workers—that remains in place to this day. Roosevelt also seems to be the most inherently charismatic of the two statesmen, with his trademark fireside chats and veneer as a strong, oratorically gifted wartime leader, despite his questionable health. However, I also think he has a number of things going against him that Bush would milk for just about every last drop.

Being someone straight from 1944, FDR would probably be too socially conservative to jive with most 2004 voters. Whereas Dubya is at least accustomed to the permissive society (even though he probably disapproves in private), someone like Roosevelt would probably balk at post-Sexual Revolution norms and conventions. He might also need to be a whole lot more quiet about civil rights concerns due to the attitudes of downtimer America, which works in Bush's favor since he can be a whole lot more vocal about it towards uptimer audiences than Roosevelt probably can to either half of the country. Add in FDR's mass internment of Japanese-Americans that Dubya hasn't even come close to replicating, and I'd be rather unsurprised at normally Democratic-leaning minorities largely supporting him this time around. I can definitely see uptimer senior citizens being more divided, though; on the one hand, many of them would have good memories of the era and lasting reverence for FDR as the man who got America through the Great Depression and (most of) World War Two, but on the other, they might also perceive him as too left-wing once they get wind of his economically progressive general platform. Moreover, so long as Roosevelt is just a few years shy of becoming a senior himself, uptimer revelations of his suffering health and otherwise-impending death in office from OTL might siphon off downtimer support as well, however much the man vows to get examined by the best doctors and take their advice all but religiously.

On foreign policy, they'd be mutually hellbent on ending World War Two and ensuring that America retains its superpower status into the coming decades and beyond, so there's no issue there. Even so, Bush might attack him for supposedly being too "generous" or "kid gloves-prone" with the USSR IOTL in terms of how Eastern Europe was ultimately carved up, and would voice a hardline opposition towards communism well in advance. How FDR might defend himself and convince the public that he hates those "dirty Reds" and what they stand for every bit as much as his Republican opponent from the next century, I don't know.

There's also '1944 FDR Vs. 1984 Ronald Reagan', which would also entail a number of Eighties states getting ISOTed back along with Gipper. Reagan's reputation as "The Great Communicator" and great GOP herald ought to be quite a foil for the progressive, New-Dealer Roosevelt come the actual 1944 election cycle. But more on that somewhere else, perhaps.

'2020 Media To 1980'.

Will 1984 Reagan meet his younger 1954 counterpart.

Well there can only be one Reagan, a younger Reagan and his older counterpart would be to much, like many other people who might have to face tier younger counterparts.

Well to bad the Korean War just ended a year ago, otherwise 1984 America could have show what power it has.