Used to be you’d have a lame-duck Congress and President - new ones got elected in November, but didn’t take office until March, four months later. The old President and Congress didn’t have much political legitimacy to do anything major. Twentieth Amendment cut the waiting time down to two months.
Still not as efficient as Britain, which does the hand-over the day after the election, and other parliamentary systems like Canada, which usually does the hand-over two to three weeks after the election.
I agree most Americans probably knew it. But the average non-American is not going to be as familiar with the details of the American constitutional law except when it becomes an actual, as opposed to theoretical, issue.
On a side-issue, if there had been no Watergate scandal and Nixon had completed his second term, who would have been his successor? Ford would have been a replacement Vice President rather than the incumbent so he wouldn’t be the obvious heir apparent. Reagan challenged Ford unsuccessfully for the nomination and presumedly that would be unchanged. With a more open field and without the post-Watergate fallout more Republicans might have run: maybe Anderson, Baker, Bush, Dole, Kemp, or Rockefeller. I’ve read that Nixon favored John Connally, although in 1976 he had only been a Republican for three years. (I’ll assume Harold Stassen’s chances would be unchanged.)
I’ll assume the Democratic race would have been unchanged. I see no reason why Carter would not have been the nominee. (Although Carter did gain some advantage in being seen as a Washington “outsider” after Watergate.) So my prediction would have been Reagan beating Carter in 1976.
Ford was the veep in the book, though. He got that post through a sequence of events that had nothing to do with Watergate, but with Spiro Agnew’s own scandals.
I know that. What I was saying is that a Vice President, especially an appointed one, doesn’t have the same stature as a President. So Ford would have had a harder time winning the nomination. And as I pointed out, even as President, Ford was challenged by one other serious contender. If he was just VP, other Republicans probably would have figured they had as good a chance as Ford had to get nominated.
Watchmen was set in an alternate universe with a slightly diffent history. (For example, Heinz advertised 58 varieties instead of 57 in our realioty.) Any difference from reality can be explained away by saying " this took place in a different reality."
I think you missed my point. My question was not whether the Watchmen universe if different from our own - because the answer to that question is pretty obvious. My question was whether Moore was aware that one of the differences was that our universe prohibits a President from serving a third term - and that question has been answered.
I just pulled out my own copy of the book and looked at that panel under a magnifying glass (yes, I am a Watchmen geek). It’s on p. 10 of chapter one, in the bottom row. You were right in the first place - it clearly is the number “58,” proving conclusively that WatchmenWorld is one better than our own.
And did anyone notice this in the President’s speech on national security on Thursday?
“…We’re currently launching a review of current policies by all those agencies responsible for the classification of documents to determine where reforms are possible, and to assure that the other branches of government will be in a position to review executive branch decisions on these matters. Because in our system of checks and balances, someone must always watch over the watchers – especially when it comes to sensitive administration – information…”
