No Bios of Broward and Cummings?

[fact275]

I've bought a lot of T:2000 materials on PDF recently as it brought back memories of my teenage years. Something then dawned on me...

Why did no one at GDW every provide bios and pictures of "President" Broward and General Cummings? Howling Wilderness would have been the place for them and yet we got city generator maps and too much talk about droughts.

It never stopped us of course back in the 80s. We always saw Cummings as a version of General Powell and none of us played Civgov so Broward wasn't important.

But now all these years later it seems like a bad oversight, especially when ever petty Polish dictator was profiled.

[Targan]

Welcome to the forums, fact275. If you want to write and post bios of major NPCs in the T2K universe, I'm sure we'll read and critique 'em!

[James Langham]

Welcome to the forums, fact275. If you want to write and post bios of major NPCs in the T2K universe, I'm sure we'll read and critique 'em!

There are some details of Cummings in Caribbean Cruise - I have expanded a little in my history of the war in a sidebar (see my history thread).

[kota1342000]

Didn't Chico write a paper on the re-uniting of Milgov and Civgov that gave a few more details too?

[Rainbow Six]

The DC Group definitely put something together, but I think someone else - it might have been DeaconR - did something as well a few years ago. IIC he had a write up of the City of Omaha as well as one or two of Civgov's major players. There may well be some material in the archive.

I'd never made the connection between General Cummings / General Powell before, but it does make sense.

[Rainbow Six]

There may well be some material in the archive.


Found it...as I thought this material was originally compiled by a guy called DeaconR who some of us will recall from the old boards, where he used to be fairly active and came up with a lot of good stufff. Full credit for this material belongs to him - I'm simply reposting it here verbatim (it's obviously not canonical).

The full thread is here

http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=2096&highlight=Broward

John Broward
Styled President of the United States, and acknowledged as such by perhaps 25-30 million people in the USA, the story of his election is recorded elsewhere.

What kind of man is he?

Broward was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas in 1948 to Henry and Maureen Broward. Henry was a country lawyer who was rather involved with the local Democratic Party. John grew up in a world that was occasionally rural but also sophisticated, hearing political and legal discussions and at the same time learning to hunt and fish at an early age. He had a knack for both being one of the boys and yet speaking in a remarkable mature and adult fashion.

He went to Trent University in 1966, and having been raised in a county where regardless of politics traditional values were common was both disturbed and fascinated by things like the Hippy movement. Nevertheless he joined the NROTC while his letters home reveal a certain ambivalence his actual decisions seem to have been made with a clear conscience.

Broward served in Vietnam as a Marine helicopter pilot and was in action several times, earning a Navy Cross for a very risky evacuation that saved the lives of a squad that was suffering a heavy rocket and mortar attack.

He served the remainder of his tour in the USA, and there he met his future bride, Adah Chilton. A dark haired very beautiful woman, she was the daughter of a minister and was reconsidering the path of her life after barely escaping prison during a protest. She had come to decide that while she felt that the Vietnam War was immoral that nevertheless morality must begin at home and had begun working with inner city poor. Broward was drawn to both her and her concerns.

Later this was a cause for both of them when he ran for the state legislature on his return to Arkansas, following their marriage. As a decorated Marine veteran he was a potential popular candidate, but in the 1970s the cause of inner city poverty and racial discrimmination was still a difficult one, and it was due to his charisma and the political shrewdness of an old college friend, Chuck Holmes, which enabled him to win his seat.

Broward at first was part of a small radical cabal in the state legislature, but gradually gained prowess and a strong voice. He took a hiatus from politics to become involved with a corporate research foundation. However he returned to politics in the late 80s to become elected to the House of Representatives.

During his stint in the House he served on the Housing & Welfare Committee, the Education Committee, the Energy Committee and the Armed Services Committee.

At the start of the war he happened to have been at home with his wife visiting his constituency. The events of the war shocked him. What shocked him even more though was that in spite of his efforts towards his state in leadership and organization that it fell to two forces opposing him: the New Americans and Governor Felix Morris, a pro-Milgov leader. It pains him every time he thinks about it; indeed the most telling scornful remark delivered to him by General Cummings was the unavoidable fact of that.

Broward has tried to be a vigorous President, a strong and focused leader of the nation. However it seems as though disaster upon disaster besets his presidency, and in his heart he at times wonders how long it can last.

Like many elected leaders before him he found himself forced to appoint certain people to high office that he later came to regret. He has gotten rid of most of them by now, and in any case some of the state interests they represented are either no more or no longer a concern.

Personality:
Broward's good points are his energy, willingness to commit to action, his charisma and his sense of humor. He genuinely is a patriot.
His bad points include a tendency to run himself into the ground, an occasional bad temper, and a tendency towards mendacity. For instance he will say something like "Oh, you're from Iowa? So am I!" and actually mean it at the time. This is not necessarily harmful but could be embarassing. Broward has also come to be a bit peevish about his home state, and references to it may cause him to become cold and remote.

Another flaw, not necessarily his, is his wife. Adah has always had a somewhat melancholy personality that she hides behind charitable activities and personal kindness. Lately she has fallen in with a New Age group called Unilove, which believes in raising positive energies that will ideally change the hearts and minds of people thought of. Unilove suggests that the union of humanity will come through love. It believes in reincarnation, positive thinking (which it calls macro thinking), meditation, veganism and occasional nudism. (while this is actually fairly chaste in intention some practitioners believe that Unilove also should lead to a 'sinless' state whereby sexual contact becomes innocent) The practioner list would surprise some people: there is a sense of desperation at the capital, and in fact it is in some ways a rather elitist faith. Adah had had a fondness for poetry and interpretive dance before and has been involved in designing some plays which are called 'readings' and are part of the form of worship done by the Unilove Fellowship. It is generally harmless but potentially degenerative and embarassing for the President.


Chuck Holmes (Chief of Staff to the President)

Holmes was born a year earlier than Broward in the same part of Arkansas. Holmes' family were business people and he grew up around talk of commerce. He knew Broward to say hello to but they were not really friends until after they both did their service. Holmes did his in the Navy and ended up on a Mekong Delta boat. He was wounded in action during his service though it was not crippling. Upon his return to the USA and private life he met Broward at a political meeting. They hit it off and Broward saw in Holmes an instinct for setting up meetings, organizing events and delegating to others since at the time he was one of a group of people helping put together a local party headquarters. When he ran for the state legislature Holmes was asked to help out, and they have worked closely together ever since.

Holmes is a born survivor, a cunning opportunist who respects the idea of his country but has one true loyalty outside of that he feels for himself: his friend, the President, John Broward. In a sense, to imagine him is to think of the character of Mr. Pelt from "Hunt for Red October" who is a self described "Cheat and a liar...and when I'm not kissin' babies, I'm stealin' their lollipops...but I do know a good thing when I see one."

He has preserved and gained power in Omaha largely through his control (to a large extent though a handful of others could contest this) of who sees the President. Most of those who could offer appointments report to him: the Deputy Chief of Staff, the President's private secretary, the President's personal aide, the Appointments Secretary. Holmes is ruthless about this: anyone who bucks the system pays for it, ideally by being sent far far away. His main aim in life is to maintain the dignity and power of the office of the President, and this does not include wasting the President's time. On the other hand, Holmes is no fool; if something is convincingly important to the preservation of what remains of the nation/presidency then he will act upon it with swift resolution.

[fact275]

It always seemed pretty obvious to my teenaged group of friends and I that General Cummings was a thinly veiled version of Colin Powell. Powell was National Security Advisor in 1987. By that time he was arguably the most prominent African American general in the United States. Of course, T:2000 came out in 1984 (I think) but when I read through Gateway to the Spanish Main (which came out in 1987) and saw an inference (direct or indirect, I forget) that Cummings was Black, I figured that at the very least, Powell inspired this version of Cummings.

Though considering Powell's real life career as SecState, you have to wonder if he would have been so resolute against CivGov :).