The country is starkly divided and distrustful of Washington after the conclusion of the Vietnam War, the fallout from the Watergate scandal and the pardoning of former President Nixon by President Ford. The Democratic Party is poised to take back the White House for the first time in eight years with a crowded field of candidates, while the Republicans are experiencing an insurgency of conservation due to the emergence of Ronald Reagan. Will President Ford win over the country’s trust and successfully win his first national election, or will another candidate earn the right to guide the nation through this uncertain time?
Republicans:
- Gerald Ford
- Ronald Reagan
- Elliot Richardson
- Offs:Nelson Rockefeller
- Spiro Agnew
- Richard Nixon[if you like running third therm after watergate]
- George Romney,Hiram Fong,Ed Brooke
Democrats:
- Jimmy Carter
- Jerry Brown
- Mo Udall
- George Wallace
- Henry Jackson
- Frank Church
- Birch Bayh
- Milton Shapp
- Robert Byrd
- Walter Fauntroy
- Sargent Shriver
- Ellen McCormarck
- Lloyd Bensen
- Fred Harris
- Ted Kennedy[off]
- George McGovern[off]
Indepedent:
- Eugene McCarthy
Looks good but I do have a criticism, and it is pretty much the case with all 1976 scenarios. That is that Carter starts out too far ahead. In fact, he shouldn’t be ahead at all. The early favourites were candidates like Henry Jackson. Carter was an unknown and it was his showing in Iowa that made him the man to beat.
This is probably going to be a great campaign when it’s finished. It’s pretty good already if you take the time to edit all the things that are still set for 1972 before you play it, so that’s promising.
It is, as pointed out already, kind of weird that Carter is a clear, dominant front-runner at the very start, in an open campaign where he was a famous dark horse, but that’s mostly fixable by dividing his primary numbers by half in the editor before you start; he’s still probably a little stronger than he was in 1975, but it adds verisimilitude without requiring hours of painstaking research.
It’s also a major problem that there are no debates in a campaign that some analyses think at least partly hinged on a debate gaffe, so again, it’s worth moving the date of the debate (set as 1972 by default) to the actual date before you start playing.
As stated before though, it shows promise and it doesn’t take much time at all to make it run a little better, so I genuinely do think this will be a great campaign when all the bugs are worked out!