OK, I can't resist recycling this one (an old soc.history.what-if post of mine):
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George Herbert Walker Bush thought back on the long campaign that led him to where he was now--the Republican national convention in Detroit where he was now the party's presidential nominee. He felt certain he could defeat Carter
in November, what with the poor state of the economy and the Iranian hostage fiasco and Russian troops in Afghanistan. How fortunate that Reagan, a bit too overconfident of his one-on-one debating ability, had agreed to a two-man
debate in New Hampshire. Had Reagan insisted on letting Bob Dole and Howard Baker and the other candidates in, either Bush would have had to agree (and let the anti-Reagan vote be split) or else insist on keeping the others out,
which would make him look bad--an "Establishment" candidate out to muzzle all naysayers.
But there was no point in dwelling on the past. His victory against Reagan, both in New Hampshire and subsequently, had been narrow--but he *had* won. Now there was one more big decision left--who would his running mate be? It
had to be a conservative, to satisfy the Reaganites. But not someone like Reagan himself, or even Jack Kemp. They had their own power bases, and they could defy him--even openly--if they felt his administration wasn't conservative enough. No, he needed someone who was young, who was very much of the Right, but whose loyalty he felt he could count on. A good debater who could really cut into Mondale in the vice-presidential debates. Suddenly, a name occurred to him: Congressman Robert Bauman of Maryland! A New Right conservative, and a Catholic, too. He would be just perfect for wooing the "family values" people...
Fast forward through election and John Hinckley's assassination of President Bush in 1981. We proceed to a day in the summer of 1981 when President Bauman, faced with an ugly threat of blackmail by someone with surveillance-
camera footage of an encounter Bauman had thought was secret, makes a television address to a stunned nation. "My fellow Americans: I have something to say which may shock you. Indeed, in a sense it is a shock to me, because I now realize that I have been living in denial for many years..."
