Barnabas Blankenship

From Wikimerica, the United States encyclopedia

**Barnabas Bibi Blankenship** (March 1, 2151 - October 11, 2299) was an American Politician and Statesmen who served as Emperor and the 90th President of the United States as well as Vice President and Prime Minister. Blankenship was a integral part of the Second American Revolution that ended with the overthrow the American Empire. He was also a founding member of the Commawatch Party and served as its first President.

His Administration saw the United States regain international legitimacy on the global stage as well an end to the Second American Revolutionary War. His administration began with the execution of President Thorton Echevarria and to this day, he is the only person in American history to never have been charged or arrested for assassinating an American President and is the only Vice President in American history to assassinate the President.

He is consistently ranked as one of the greatest Presidents in American history and ranks in the top ten of Presidents despite his short term. He is credited with overseeing the end of the Imperialist Party and their final military defeat ending 60 years of Imperialist rule, beginning the process of reuniting the United States. negotiating American reentry into the international community, repealing the "Imperialist Amendments", replenishing the Treasury, reorganizing the American military, driving out hardline Imperialists from Government and restoring faith in the idea of the "American Experiment".

## Vice Presidency (2213-2215)

Barnabas Blankenship was chosen to be Vice President to Echevarria for his strategic brilliance, loyalty to the Party and personal friendship to Echevarria. Secretly during this time Blankenship had become angry with how the party was handling the war and the increasingly desperate measures they were willing to take for any amount of success. This resentment eventually lead to the formation of the Commawatch Resistance in secret.

## Presidency (2215-2217)

### Assassination of Thorton Echevarria

On March 15, the Commawatch staged a successful kidnapping of American President and Emperor Thorton Echevarria and after keeping him hostage for several house Commawatch leadership decided to put the President to death for his role in the Imperialist Party and crimes against humanity. Echevarria was to be executed via poison gas to make it as painless as possible but Echevarria demanded that Blankenship himself carry out the execution via gunshot wound. The Emperor saw Barnabas as the greatest traitor of his time and decried him as "the second Judas, not for 30 pieces of silver but for the highest office". Blankenship reluctantly granted the final request and carried out the execution himself. This move would later be criticized by several human rights groups for denying Echevarria a public trial of his peers. The execution of the President was carried by Vice President Barnabas Blankenship, a formally close friend of Echevarria and his Former Prime Minister.

### Inauguration

After doctors declared Echevarria dead Blankenship was sworn in as President of the United States by State judge Hiram Milhouse.

### Early days

By the time of his taking office Commawatch had captured Washington D.C. and Blankenship moved into the Whitehouse ruins on March 20th.

#### Early Executive Actions

***See:*** *Executive Order 18644*

On March 16th, Blankenship signed Executive Order 18644 to dissolve the month of "Thortin".

#### A White House left dark

During the evacuation of Washington D.C., President Thorton Echevarria had ordered the White House cleared out of any important relics, artifacts, paintings, china, silverware and important documents fearing that anything left to the Commawatch would be carelessly destroyed. In a turn of irony miscommunication allowed for a fuel tanker to be parked directly next to the White House during the hasty evacuation and through unknown means caught fire leading to an explosion severely damaging the west wing of the White House blowing open a hole into the wall of the oval office.

When Blankenship moved into the still damaged White House he decided to work in the damaged Oval Office despite his personal guards advising against so due to a lack of protection and lack of funds to fix the damaged office.

#### Legitimacy

On March 16th Blankenship issued an executive order formally asserting his legitimacy and control of the Federal Government of the United States and his Constitutional legitimacy as President via the line of succession.

#### Constitutional Authority

With there being no Congress and there being a single Supreme Court Justice Blankenship had a difficult time maintaining his Authority as President. It was decided early on that the for the revolution to have any legitimacy they had to relay on the same tactics the Imperialist's used to remain the legitimate Government and continue to follow the Constitution and reaffirm it's status as law of the land and still enforced. This meant that the constitutional amendments the Imperialists passed also needed to be followed until their repeal.

### Fall of the Imperialist Party

After taking office President Blankenship and General Bullrun Jackson continued to lead revolutionary forces against the Imperialist's slowly driving them up into Pennsylvania.

The rest of the year 2215 saw the collapse of Imperialist Party power, robbed of their legitimacy as the "United States" they had stopped calling themselves that and exclusively the "Imperialist and Unionist Party" by June 2215.

By December 2215 their last stronghold in Pennsylvania had all but collapsed and their forces were overrun. By 2216 their finale forces had surrendered and their territory was completely in the hands of the United States.

### Emperor (2215-2217)

By American Law established by Echevarria the title of Emperor follows the Presidential line of succession and thus when Blankenship became President he also inherited the position of "Emperor of the United States". Blankenship sneered at this idea and refused to style himself as that but by law he could not refuse the title and it existed on all official documents during his term, making his official title; "President Barnabas Blankenship, Emperor of the United States of America".