Part one here. There’s at least one more part, maybe two. Possibly three.
The 2080 election was a foregone conclusion, under the circumstances: President Lewis didn’t even bother to formally suppress the Columbian Party, given that its organization had been thoroughly disrupted above the county level. The Dynamic Party swept through Congress, managing to capture eighty percent of the House of Representatives, and sixty-five percent of the Senate. Most US states at the time did not have gubernatorial elections in Presidential year (this would later be ‘reformed’), which limited Dynamic gains in the upper chamber. Still, Lewis now had a strong majority in Congress with which to establish his policies.
The Lewis administration concentrated on consolidation of political power in the executive, coupled with an aggressively assimilationist foreign policy in the Caribbean and former Canadian territories. It also showed a surprising lack of persecution of its critics. It became clear that citizens could still call the President anything that they liked, and even demonstrate against him and his policies, as long as they were peaceful about it. But anybody who lost his temper, and took even a swing at their political opponents? Immediate arrest, quick conviction, and a one-way ticket to the colony worlds.
Given the widespread carnage and wholesale political oppression going on abroad, Lewis’s early willingness to keep the peace and permit quiet enjoyment at home appealed to many Americans. Many of the ones who it didn’t appeal to got the hint anyway, and voluntarily applied to emigrate to Jefferson. The dissidents who remained quickly proved to be ideal, from Lewis’s point of view: loud, unreasonable, ineffective, and best of all, embarrassing.
Even with the removal of his major domestic opponents, President Lewis might have found keeping power difficult after 2089, assuming he won the 2084 election. The Constitutional amendment was clear, and the 2082 state and gubernatorial elections were unexpectedly bad for the Dynamists. The party’s Congressional majorities suffered, too, hovering around the sixty percent mark in both Houses. Lewis might have even lost in 2084… if foreign affairs had not worked out in his favor.
In 2083 West Europe provoked a crisis with the governments of Colombia, Venezuela, and Surinam over supposed aggressive moves towards French Guiana. Despite the best efforts of a by-now moribund United Nations, West Europe declared war on the three nations — and immediately followed it with kinetic energy weapon attacks from orbit. KEW strikes were by now an unfortunate feature of the Eurasian and African theaters of the Consolidation Wars, but this was the first time it had happened in the Americas. A full-scale invasion of northern South America followed, and it became clear that West Europe was interested in suitable launch sites first, oil supplies second, and the welfare of the inhabitants not at all.
Mexico and Central America could read the writing on the wall: they had no orbital capacity, and hence no KEW weapons of their own as a deterrent. The United States had both, and a vested interest in keeping the Panama Canal out of West European hands. It was time for them to make whatever deal they could with the Lewis administration.
The deal that they got was surprisingly good. Mexico would enter the USA as thirty eight separate states, Guatemala as three, Honduras as two, and the remainder as one each (even Belize). Official business would be done in both English and Spanish. The United States would invest heavily in building up Central American infrastructure. And, of course, existing local power structures would be respected during the integration period. Indeed, they would be relied upon.
Getting the annexation through Congress took quite a lot of effort. Even some Dynamicists blanched at the idea of bringing in two hundred million more citizens in one swoop, and the opposition parties (by now there were six) all had their own reasons to be at best skeptical. In the end, though, the Lewis administration rammed through the annexation bill via arm-twisting, appeals to naked greed (Central America still had lots of useful resources, plus so much land), and practicality (better the USA owning Mexico than West Europe). Even simple altruism came into play. The decision by Western Europe to respond to the Caracas Insurrection by putting the rebel city under siege, then publicly leveling it via repeated and seemingly random KEW strikes for three full days straight (there was an official timer) had a profound effect on the debate in Congress. In the end, the vote passed — and the United States of America almost doubled in population overnight.
And that was when Lewis’s quid pro quo came into play.
