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One of the best science-fiction stories I never read is
The Silly Season.
As a sci-fi fan explained it,
aliens wanted to conquer the earth surreptitiously. But
their approaching saucers were always noticed by humans,
who got alarmed. Fearing premature discovery, the aliens
retreated.
Then the aliens noticed that there was little real news in late July and August. Congress was in recess, most movers and shakers were on vacation, and thus the legitimate news generally resembles the perennial content of supermarket tabloids: starlet scandals, three-headed calves, reincarnated Babylonians and, of course, flying-saucer landings.
In the news trade, this is called the silly
season
; nobody takes such accounts seriously. The
aliens landed and were duly noticed. But nobody cared,
since there were scores of other UFO sightings, Judge
Crater appearances and Hollywood divorces. In short order,
the earth was conquered.
However, the Silly Season of 1989 has so far been consumed with 20-year remembrances: Apollo 11, Woodstock, Manson, Stonewall, Miracle Mets and Chappaquiddick.
Let's speculate about what might have happened if Teddy Kennedy had managed to cross Poucha Pond with Mary Jo Kopechne intact.
Kennedy ran for president in 1972. It was a tough campaign. His assassinated brother Bobby was the only politician who could ever persuade poor whites and poor blacks that they had common interests, and inspire them to action. Teddy never aroused such zeal.
He also had trouble explaining how he would continue Jack's legacy while pulling out of Vietnam, since it was JFK who first put significant numbers of American soldiers into that troubled country.
Teddy's major problems, though, were with a campaign
that was dogged by misfortunes. It later developed that
these were dirty tricks
ordered by incumbent
President Nixon, who muttered that he would tear up the
Constitution if it was necessary to keep another
expletive-deleted Kennedy from stealing another election
from him.
Kennedy's term was marked by inflation and shortages. His unflinching support of Israel in 1973 caused Arab nations to embargo oil shipments to the U.S. Gasoline prices quadrupled, and a rationing system led to a thriving black market. His advisers inflicted ever more government controls and regulations.
Dismayed Americans turned to Ronald Reagan, who easily won the Republican nomination in 1976. Reagan served two full terms. His first seven years were fairly serene, but 1984 was marked by scandals and fears of deepening American involvement in Central American civil wars.
Proposing new ideas
for the nation's defense --
an enhanced navy at the expense of air and land power --
and for the economy -- a trade policy that encouraged high
technology rather than heavy industry -- Colorado Sen. Gary
Hart narrowly won the Democratic nomination and handily
beat the Republican nominee, Vice-President Richard
Schweiker.
In 1987, Hart shocked the nation by divorcing his wife
in order to marry Donna Rice, a nubile Florida
pharmaceutical sales agent. While we were on a yacht one
night, Gary promised me that, after the election, he would
make me First Lady,
Rice explained. Analysts noted that
this was the first time in history that a man had ever kept
such a promise.
After the White House wedding, Hart lost by a landslide in 1988 to the boring but squeaky-clean Republican candidate, a former Texas congressman named George Bush. So tedious was the Bush term that, during the Silly Season of 1989, columnists were reduced to speculating about what might have happened if, back in 1969, Teddy Kennedy had been abducted by a UFO.
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