Had Kennedy not been assassinated

[SoCalDem]

My son posed this interesting conundrum at dinner this week..

He wondered aloud where we would be now if Kennedy had served two terms. America was used to two-termers back then, so i think he would have been re-elected.. He may not have even chosen Johnson again as his running mate..

So much that happened, may never have happened, but i fear a lot of it would have.

Kennedy probably would have never allowed Viet Nam to spiral out of control and may have limited our involvement there, and finally ended it early.

I think the whole civil rights era would have happened much the same way, except that it probably would have taken longer. Johnson adopted the idea as his signature issue, where Kennedy might have not been as forceful.

I don't see Kennedy as a "Great Society" kind of guy, so I'm not sure that medicare would have passed, but I do think Kennedy would have put in place a system for health care that would have included everyone.

I don't think that Bobby would have stayed on for both terms as AG, and would have "semi-retired" back to being the family man he always seemed to be..he might have remained an adviser.

He probably would not have even thought about running for president himself. I always thought he ran to "avenge" his brother's murder.

Civil Rights issues would have still been front & center, and might have even been worse than they were.

I think we would have still gotten Nixon in '68.

Everything after Nixon, probably would have remained the same :(

[The Traveler]

1. Bobby was the more soulful thinker

Had he not been killed, there would have been a different and far stronger America.

[SoCalDem]

2. But I don;t think he would have run if JFK had served out his two terms

I think Bobby was running in '68 BECAUSE his brother had been murdered..

Bobby did not have the fire in the belly..

[PDenton]

3. If Kennedy had lived

He would have gotten into Vietnam and his family name would have been ruined. Ted Kennedy wouldn't be elected to Congress, nor would any other Kennedy. They'd probably be remembe like the "Bush Crime Family", rather than "Camelot". It is easy to say wonder-boy Kennedy would have fixed everything in Vietnam. Really easy, but really naive.

[SoCalDem]

5. I still have the idea that as a "recent" war-participant, he

might have seen the warning signs, and figured out that it was not "our fight".. Naive? maybe..but i think JFK had the smarts to see the handwriting on the wall.. I think Johnson was too much of a "legislator", who probably listened to too many "experts".. I don't think Kennedy was as easy to bamboozle..

[regnaD kciN]

7. I know it's way too easy...

...to assume that, had JFK lived, he would have handled everything perfectly and all would have gone right with our country since then, but I don't think he would have allowed himself to get as trapped in Vietnam as LBJ did, mainly because the latter had a massive inferiority complex from having to follow after the sainted young martyr Kennedy, and felt he had to "establish himself" by being particularly tough against the Commies. Every time things got worse, he viewed it as an offense against his honor and legacy, and reacted by take a harder line. LBJ was like a compulsive gambler who reacts to every loss by doubling his bet, while JFK would have known when to walk away from the tables without looking like a loser.

As to the other matters...no way would there have been any thought of replacing Johnson as VP, or Bobby as Attorney General. I'm sure the latter would have run for President in '68 and may well have won -- what really killed the Democrats that year (beginning a slide they still haven't pulled themselves out of) was that enough progressives and young voters were completely disillusioned with them over Vietnam. If we had quietly have gotten out of there, or at least cut off our own direct combat role, by around 1966, it is doubtful the G.O.P. could have recovered from the Goldwater debacle sufficiently to have mounted a serious challenge in '68. After that, we enter the realm of alternative universes, for who can really tell what would have been the situation when, say, RFK would have run for re-election in 1972? With Vietnam a distant memory by then, many of the concerns and factors that drove the American mind in real life back then would simply not have existed -- which doesn't mean that others just as serious would have arisen of which we simply can't conceive nowadays. (Perhaps the Soviets and Chinese "making up" and once again providing a united Communist front for our nightmares, meaning no Nixonian trip to Bejing and no tranformation of China into what it has now become? Maybe Israel negotiating a peace agreement with its neighbors, giving Gaza back to Egypt and the West Bank back to Jordan, so that there would have been no grounds for the first oil boycott and subsequent rise of OPEC, and therefore none of the oil-based geopolitical concerns of the last twenty-five years? Then again, maybe a full race war would have broken out across the U.S., with all the consequences that would entail. There's simply no way to know.)

[H2O Man]

8. Way wrong.

Your "opinion" is easily shown to be based on error. Ted Kennedy was elected in 1962.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

9. Ted Kennedy Was Already A Senator When John Kennedy Was Assassinated

He was elected in 1962...

[EFerrari]

4. Actually, iirc, it was the Kennedys who were moved to call MLK.

They were on it.

[zeemike]

6. That is a heady speculation

But I think that everything would have been much different.
On Vietnam it would have never happened. It is my understanding that JFK issued and executive order the week before he was killed that would have withdrawn our advisers from Viet Nam. And I have heard that it was the main reason he was killed. The military industrial complex wanted that war and when they got it it made them millions.
Civil rights would have proceeded the same or even faster because of Bobby's intense liking for justice and I do think he would have stayed on for the whole term.
But the truth may be that JFK was doomed anyway. I can remember the intense hatred for the Kennedy's in the south because of civil rights. I knew someone that went to the University of Florida and was in an assembly when it was announced that JFK was shot and the whole student body stood up and cheered. And I can remember hearing comments like " they finally killed that niger loving son of a bitch"
For me his assassination was a eye opening event that changed the way i saw things and I think it was that way for a lot of people.

[B Calm]

10. Bingo!

[Possumpoint]

11. Three Weeks Before

he was killed he signed an executive order abolishing the Federal Reserve System in this country. I personally believe that cost him his life. Too many rich people faced complete alteration of their lifestyles.

I'm not sure if he intended to return to either a silver or gold based economy. We would not be faced with the financial problems we now face with the continuation of the fiat money system. The Fed and government continue to solve financial problems by borrowing more and printing more money.

Whole financial industries have sprung up to absorb and utilize the excess liquidity this system creates. The current mortgage crises shows that for every $1 of true value there is $20 to $30 of leverage instruments generated. In theory, if that first dollar fails it causes the rest to collapse.

I don't have sufficient bandwidth to prophecise how this country would have turned out if he had two terms. I do however, feel that financial greed would not have sprung to such a high level as we see presently.

[valerief]

15. Wow. What a different world it would be if the Fed were eliminated.

JFK also wanted to abolish the CIA, too, didn't he?

[Chipper Chat]

12. Presidential food for thought (sans assasination):

election years:
1964 - Kennedy second term
1968 - Barry Goldwater (defeats Lyndon Johnson)
1972 - Barry Goldwater (defeats Ted Kennedy)
1976 - Eugene McCarthy (defeats Nelson Rockefeller)
1980 - Eugene McCarthy (defeats Ronald reagan)
1984 - Barbara Jordan (defeats George H W Bush)
1988 - Diane Feinstein (defeats George H W Bush)
1992 - Diane Feinstein (defeats Jesse Helms)
1996 - Bob Dole (defeats Jesse Jackson)
2000 - Bob Dole (defeats Barney Frank)
2004 - Dennis Kucinich (defeats Newt Gingrich)
2008 - Dennis Kucinich re-elected (defeats Bill Frist)

[SoCalDem]

13. hehehehe I was with you until '68

:)

Actually, i think Reagan might have won in 68..

[Chipper Chat]

14. In my parallel universe:

Reagan did command alot of delegates in 1968, but a rumor started going around about him and a very young republican operative named Ralph Reed. That ruined his chances and threw the convention to Goldwater who promised a return to morality and a more stable republican party. Then the country bought it.

[MetaTrope]

16. At the time, Kennedy was turning on and tuning in

http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005/07/10/did-jfk-drop-acid/

Somehow I don't think Bush's antipsychotics are having the same effect.

[DavidDvorkin]

17. Johnson had told friends he wouldn't be v.p. again

He was planning to leave politics at the end of JFK's first term.

So the central question probably is, who would have been the v.p. during the second term? Because, without Viet Nam, Nixon would not have won in 1968.

I can see Humphrey as v.p. and as the '68 candidate, not crippled by the war, winning the election. How much better that would have been for all of us!

[SoCalDem]

18. The problem with Hubert was that he was not a telegenic guy

and especially after JFK, he would have had a hard time becoming president. I still see a pouty Nixon as the next president.. This country had usually gone back and forth between parties, and aftre 8 years of a dem admin, I still see Tricky Dick. :grr: