History Literature / McGoverning

* NamesTheSame: {{Invoked}} with Phil Hart, [=McGovern=]'s vice-presidential candidate and eventual VP, and Gary Hart, [=McGovern=]'s chief of staff. They weren't related in real life. Amusingly, they also have practically opposite personalities; Phil is widely respected, admired, and liked, and has a rather gentle, peaceful personality, while Gary seems to piss off and antagonise almost everyone he comes into contact with.

* FailedFutureForecast: The magazine cover that opens the timeline? It's real. In this case, however, it's invoked; although everyone was expecting [=McGovern=] to lose, the press didn't want to face another real-life example of this trope as they had with the TropeNamer, and so produced some dummy copies of the cover in question just on the off-chance that they were needed. The author happened to come across one and was inspired by it.

If you’ve heard of [=McGovern=], it's likely because of his loss to UsefulNotes/RichardNixon in the 1972 presidential campaign. The loss was [[LandslideElection one of the most staggering landslides]] in US electoral history, in which the only state he managed to win was Massachusetts[[note]]Though he did also win the District of Columbia[[/note]]. This means that, such as it is remembered, [=McGovern=]'s legacy is heavily debated. To his supporters, he was a [[DoomedMoralVictor noble but doomed idealist]] whose sincere and principled stances were thwarted by a flawed campaign, [[WeAreStrugglingTogether antipathy from his own party]], and the cynical machinations of [[CorruptPolitician Nixon’s corrupt political machine]] as it actively sabotaged him at every opportunity. To his detractors, however, he was a [[TheFool dangerously naive and weak ideologue]] whose pandering and submission to America's enemies would have seriously weakened and even destroyed the United States. His crushing defeat is remembered as the point where the Democratic Party first clamped down on its activist wing so as to prevent a repeat of that disaster, the beginning of a long move to the political center that culminated in the Presidency of UsefulNotes/BillClinton in TheNineties. In any case, in our world, whether you love him or loathe him, it’s pretty widely agreed that [=McGovern=]'s loss was, for one reason or another, [[ForegoneConclusion practically inevitable]].

* YoungFutureFamousPeople: UsefulNotes/BillClinton shows up on the [=McGovern=] campaign and later as Undersecretary of Agriculture for Rural Development. Additionally, a number of other people who later became famous (including Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Maine Senator George Mitchell, and Governor of Massachusetts William Weld) are briefly mentioned.

* ActuallyPrettyFunny: What [=McGovern=] thinks of the outgoing Nixon staff filling an office with toilet paper to convey the message that the incoming [=McGovern=] team is full of shit.

* DeweyDefeatsTruman: The magazine cover that opens the timeline? It's real. In this case, however, it's invoked; although everyone was expecting [=McGovern=] to lose, the press didn't want to face another real-life example of this trope as they had with the TropeNamer, and so produced some dummy copies of the cover in question just on the off-chance that they were needed. The author happened to come across one and was inspired by it.

** [[spoiler: Lula da Silva and Caetano Veloso are fatally shot during a protest against military rule in Brazil.]]

* ItSeemedLikeAGoodIdeaAtTheTime: The [=McGovern=] administration makes a deal with Israel to provide Pershing II medium-range missiles in exchange for their participation in Middle East peace talks. [[spoiler:Israel secretly shares the technology with South Africa for use in their nuclear program]].

* SadisticChoice: Does the Army Corps of Engineers open the Morganza Spillway and deliberately flood Southern Louisiana, or does it not do so, allow the Old River Control Structure to be overwhelmed, and flood New Orleans and points downstream? [=McGovern=] chooses [[spoiler: to open the spillway]].