The Fifties

From Fantasy President Wiki

The Fifties
Years	1949-1960
Voters	22
Stakeholder groups	23
Scenarios	10

The Fifties is the earliest period the game covers. It runs from 1949 to 1960, with a cast of twenty-four voters, its own stakeholder groups and its own state-by-state map. It is one of three eras with a single, fixed cast: however far a presidency runs past 1960, it never rolls into The Sixties, and its events stay drawn from the 1950s pool for the whole game. The setup screen's category card describes the period as the Cold War, Korea, McCarthyism and the postwar boom.

Contents

1 Presidents on offer
2 How the period plays
3 Toggles
4 The cast
5 Stakeholders
6 Scenarios

Presidents on offer

Three presidencies in this era are historical. Harry S. Truman in 1949 is the 1948 upset winner, with the Fair Deal, a Dixiecrat split within his own party and the Korean War still ahead of him. Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953 arrives in office as the war hero of D-Day, with a landslide election behind him; he inherits the Korean War and faces Senator Joseph McCarthy. Eisenhower in 1957 is the second term, with the Sputnik launch, the Little Rock crisis, the fallout from the Suez Crisis and a Democratic Congress ahead. The alternative candidacies are Thomas E. Dewey in 1949, Adlai Stevenson in both 1953 and 1957, Strom Thurmond in 1949 representing the Dixiecrat revolt, Henry Wallace in 1949 representing the Progressive left, Robert Taft in 1953 representing the Old Right, and Estes Kefauver in 1957 as a crime-busting populist. Every 1950s scenario is premium. With Deployments and War switched on, all three 1953 starts inherit the Korean War, and the 1949 and 1957 starts inherit no conflict.

How the period plays

The voters in this era do not sit on the Democrat-to-Republican scale used in later eras. Their political leanings are specific to the period: labour left, progressive, civil rights, swing, Cold War hawk, business conservative, small-government conservative and segregationist. The state-by-state map for this era is based on the 1960s map, in which the Solid South votes Democratic. Elections are scored state by state; there is no congressional district map for this period. The reduced influence of Black voters in the Deep South is always in effect in this era, and unlike in The Sixties there is no slider that can lift it: two of the cast, South Side Marcus and Delta Pearl, count for only a fraction of their normal weight in ten Southern states. Diplomacy is conducted with the Soviet Union, Communist China, the NATO allies, the United Kingdom, Latin America and the Middle East. A unit of campaign war chest is worth $0.45 million in this era, compared with $10 million in the modern era. Campaign-season media appearances are on See It Now with Murrow, The Ed Sullivan Show, Meet the Press, Fulton Lewis Jr. on Mutual, Face the Nation and an Eleanor Roosevelt broadcast. Events for this era never reference anything after 1959.

Toggles

Red Scare is offered in this era and in no other. Covert Operations runs its Cold War theatre here, which the setup screen labels "1950s and 60s": suppressing communism across the free world, fomenting revolt behind the Iron Curtain, infiltrating the USSR, and securing the homeland. Dirty Tricks, Expanded Congress, Weekly Pacing, Presidential Debates, Difficulty and Whacko Mode are all available in this era. Tweeter does not exist before 2006, so it is not offered here. The Fourth Estate is not offered in any era yet. Presidential debates in this era are judged by the 1950s cast, like the rest of the game.

The cast

Stakeholders

Main article: Stakeholders

Scenarios

Main article: Scenarios

Categories:

Eras