I just finished The Last President by Michael Kurland. It was amazing. If you can find a copy you should check it out. It’s an alternate history based on Watergate and the Nixon administration. What if the Watergate story was squashed and the president effectively became a dictator? It doesn’t seem like this would be all that difficult especially if whoever wished to seize power were backed by business and the people with power and influence. Some careful historians see evidence of multiple coup d’etats throughout American history. The plan to remove FDR and replace him with General Smedley Butler and the assassination of JFk are two large examples.
Even though The Last President was written before it reminded me of Ferris F. Fremont in the Valis books by Philip K. Dick. Fremont was also based on the paranoid Nixon. Fremont always accused people of being part of a conspiratorial group he called Aramchek. Also, the idea of an alternate history reminded me of the other Dick novel, The Man in the High Castle, which deals with the idea of what if the Second World War had been won by the Japanese and the Nazis.
Someone was kind enough to put up a few good passages from the book.
Check out the proto-Valis Radio Free Albemuth (also by Dick) if you haven’t already, I like it better than Valis sometimes.