Red Scare

The Red Scare is a premium mode for the 1950s presidencies. It puts Senator Joseph McCarthy and the climate of fear he creates on the dashboard as three meters, generates his confrontations with the administration, sometimes replaces the month's main story with a loyalty case, and gives the President several ways to push back against him. The setup screen labels the mode "1950s only".

The toggle only appears when the chosen scenario belongs to the 1950s. It starts off and resets to off at the start of every new game. A free account is shown an upgrade prompt instead of the switch. The mode is not offered on the Career Mode builder, since careers begin after the era it belongs to.

The three meters

The dashboard shows a dossier with three gauges:

• McCarthy's Influence, running from a backbencher to a kingmaker.
• Suspicion of the Administration, running from watching others to watching the President.
• Public Fear, running from calm to panic.

A status line reads the gauges back in plain words. The dossier's stamp changes as the situation worsens, and changes again once the Senator has been discredited. How high these meters start, and how quickly they move, depends on which year the game begins in: by the later years of the decade the Senator has already been through his fall from influence in real history, and the mode has correspondingly less left to do.

How the meters move

Each month, the President's policies and public statements are read for how they touch on communism and loyalty. Cracking down on suspected subversion and running loyalty programmes tend to raise fear and the Senator's influence while easing his suspicion of the President. Defending civil liberties, or attacking the Senator directly, tends to do the opposite. Anything that reads as soft on communism sharply raises both his suspicion and his standing. These effects are gentler on an easier difficulty setting.

Once the Senator's influence collapses far enough, he is marked as discredited. From that point the mode switches off for the rest of the game: no more confrontations, no more loyalty cases.

Confrontations

From time to time, usually with a longer gap between confrontations while his influence is low, the Senator picks a target and forces the President's hand. The higher his suspicion of the administration, the more likely he is to go after someone close to the President rather than an outside figure; targets range from a private citizen to a member of Congress, an official, a member of the cabinet, or the President personally.

The President is offered a response suited to who is being targeted: standing by the person under attack, or giving them up to satisfy the Senator, with the option to stay out of it entirely in every case.

• Giving the target up raises the Senator's influence and public fear, and eases his suspicion of the President. A cabinet member handed over loses their post.
• Standing firm lowers his influence and fear slightly, but raises his suspicion.
• Staying out of it lets all three meters drift slowly against the President over time.

Standing firm against an attack on the President personally does more to damage the Senator than standing firm for someone else.

Red Scare cases

Separately from the Senator's own confrontations, the mode can replace the month's main event with a Red Scare case: a blacklisted writer, a teacher facing a loyalty oath, a scientist stripped of a security clearance, and similar stories drawn from the period. These become more common, and harsher, the higher public fear has climbed. They are answered like any other event, with the President's response judged for its effect on the Red Scare meters as well as on the usual reactions.

Fighting back

The dossier offers the President direct action against the Senator, each with its own cooldown before it can be used again:

• Appeal for calm — eases fear and his influence, at some cost to standing within the President's own party.
• Turn the press on him — the most powerful option, and the riskiest: it can badly damage his influence, but raises his suspicion of the President and carries a real cost to approval and government stability.
• Vouch for your people — eases suspicion and fear, and helps government stability, at a small cost to approval and the President's own party.
• Tighten loyalty checks — takes an even harder line against subversion than the Senator himself, which eases his suspicion and helps at home, but raises fear and his influence and damages standing abroad.

Only one of these may be used in any given month.

Interaction with Covert Operations

When Covert Operations is also switched on in a 1950s game, the two systems feed each other. The Senator's influence helps sustain the domestic side of the covert campaign, and, in turn, leaks, exposures and setbacks in the covert war add to public fear and to the Senator's suspicion of the administration.