How it played out

With all the public attention being paid to the start of the new presidential administration, I thought I'd mention how the presidency went in the alternate timeline used in "Another Girl, Another Planet".

The story is set in 1985, and the president is John Anderson. Remember him? He was the moderate Republican who ran for president in 1980 as an independent. He got 6.6 percent of the vote.

In the timeline used in "Another Girl, Another Planet", George Wallace's American Party campaign in 1968 leads to a permanent split between the liberal and conservative wings of the Democrat Party, with the liberals remaining Democrats and the conservatives joining the American Party.(Ronald Reagan, for example, is a member of the American Party, not the Republican Party).

As a result, the Republican Party stays centrist in the moderate middle; it doesn't need to try to draw in southern conservatives to win elections. Richard Nixon is replaced after Watergate by Sen. Mark Hatfield, and Anderson replaces Hatfield.

Also, James Earle Carter remains in the Navy and is, in fact, widely seen as the probable successor of the elderly Admiral Robert Heinlein as the head of the space program.