… would Barack Obama be President today, 20 years after that event?

The last idea in the last post that the eruption of Tambora was the indirect cause of Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein gets to one of those fun games of alternate history. Maybe I'm just a sucker for them, especially after my readings on randomness.

But here's a thought experiment:

1. Barack Obama was able to run for President because he was a Senator and not still in the Illinois State government.
2. He was able to win his Senate seat in part because Republican candidate Jack Ryan withdrew from the race.
3. Ryan withdrew from the race because his divorce papers revealed that he had asked his wife, Jeri Ryan, to perform sex acts in public with him at sex clubs.
4. Jeri Ryan met Jack Ryan as a celebrity blackjack dealer in 1990.
5. She was a celebrity because she was crowned Miss Illinois the year before.

So, make one little change, like someone else winning Miss Illinois in 1989, and how much of the future changes?

Does Jack Ryan marry someone else, perhaps someone else who agrees to his requests? Without a divorce, and the record of the reasons, does Jack Ryan win his Senate race against Obama, leaving Obama in the Illinois Statehouse while another Democrat tries to grab "the mantle of change."

Of course, no one can really know. And I think when it comes to Jack Ryan … if he had found a partner willing to do what he wanted to do, it's very likely he would have had a scandal coming down the pike anyway. Perhaps Obama could have beaten Ryan without the scandal. Or perhaps Jack and Jeri were fated to meet, and fated to divorce, whether he met her at a charity event or not.

I'm fascinated by those small little twists of insigificant history …

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.