Challenge: most idyllic 1960s possible

I said "keep racial strife to a minimum". Eliminating it altogether is ASB, as I said in the OP.

I should have expanded my comment to state that if you look at the urban rioting of the period, a main cause was a history of perceived police abuses that had gone on for years. I'm not sure how you wipe that away, particularly in places like LA and Detroit, which had some of the larger disturbances and where the police issues were long-standing and deep.

However, on the other hand, some of these large disturbances were triggered by seemingly random and routine events. Watts started with a traffic stop. Take that stop away and the entire event may never have occurred. Of course, there's nothing to stop another random event from triggering another disturbance in its place.

In any case, it's a fascinating subject as it had a huge influence on the course of American politics for decades after. The lack of rioting would have led to a profound difference in the course of events and taken away a lot of the wind behind the sails of politicians like Wallace, Reagan and Nixon who benefitted from the fear of a breakdown in order.
 
I'll take the Republic of South Africa for the idyllic 1960s, and beyond.

Verwoerd is not assassinated in 1966, and in 1967 grants the first of the "bantustans" independence. South Africa's human rights situation steadily improves as its economy does, leading to unemployment across all races in the single digits by 1970 and continuing major investment. South West Africa is formally integrated into South Africa, but with that comes major South African investment in its economy. The massive baby boom of the 1970s and 1980s isn't as pronounced, and economic growth continues to outstrip the population growth. By 1975, Verwoerd is under fire from groups seeking the dismantling of the formal system of apartheid. Mandela is released in 1977, Steven Biko recovers form his injuries and while the new government is not willing for complete majority rule, it goes for a lower house elected by majority rule and an upper house elected by the different races. This leads to a new constitution enshrining those laws in the early 1980s, thus leading to apartheid being peacefully dismantled in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Majority rule takes another decade or more to achieve, but is a reality by the mid to late 1990s.
 
Well, in Canada it would be having Winters beat Trudeau in '68 for the Liberal leadership, having Daniel Johnson Sr. live in Quebec to beat the crap out of Bourassa's left-leaning Liberals in 1970, and Paul Hellyer dying in a car crash, thus preventing Armed Forces unification. So I want American ideas. :)

I got no arguments on Trudeau or Hellyer, but I'm not sure Johnson would be any better in the long run for Quebec, as he would still have to deal with Levesque and his forces, which will probably still result in the eventual destruction of the Union Nationale.
 
As far as dodging the racial strife, one possible way I think its possible to reduce the racial problems of 1960s America would be to have the newer white immigrants and the veterans of WWII, who in many cases fought alongside Americans of all races and it in not a few cases made racism irrelevant.

Keeping MLK from being killed would be helpful, but that didn't stop guys like Malcolm X. Best way I can think of to help the splits in the Civil Rights Movement would be to have Johnson's government come down hard on the extremists on all sides in the 1960s, including a KKK crackdown.
 
Protesters Taken Seriously.

Take the things people were protesting about seriously and actualy solve the problems. Start with drawing troops from Viet Nam before the Port Huron Statement. Then resising the war at all turns never happens. Take racial equality seriously in stead of repressing it through trickery. Pass the Cival Rights Act of 1964 quickly. Inforece it at all levals.
 
Spiting ideas:

What we need in '64 is something to shake LBJ's faith in his cabinet big time, enough to have him embark on a major shake-up-ideally before the election, but probably after, in he British style (post-election Cabinet shakeups are a British tradition, right?). Maybe throw in a bit of influence on Johnson, and have him make a new Cabinet of pragmatists who can see that involvement in Vietnam will end in tears (I don't know how plausible this is). LBJ manages to convince the American people not to get involved, and the Grea Society goes on unmolested. Hawkishness is diverted to covert operations in the third world. In 1968, LBJ smashes the Reagan-Someone ticket, forcing the far right to temporarily concede defeat.
 
LBJ will not shake up the Cabinet before January 1965- he did not want to upset the Kennedy legacy. This was something he genuinely believed in & with few exceptions the JFK Cabinet remained throughout Johnson's tenure. The only one who will be leaving no matter what is RFK- for obvious personal and political reasons. He's aiming for 1972 through the Senate. McNamara will stay on because as LBJ correctly judged until 1967, McNamara was more a company man than anything else.
 
Have someone (Kruschev maybe?) gradually start the Soviet Union on the road to democracy and eventual deconstruction if it's needed.
 
LBJ will not shake up the Cabinet before January 1965- he did not want to upset the Kennedy legacy. This was something he genuinely believed in & with few exceptions the JFK Cabinet remained throughout Johnson's tenure. The only one who will be leaving no matter what is RFK- for obvious personal and political reasons. He's aiming for 1972 through the Senate. McNamara will stay on because as LBJ correctly judged until 1967, McNamara was more a company man than anything else.

Well, we'll need some way to get Johnson to actively go against involvement in Vietnam.
 
Unfortunately, one of the first documents LBJ signed upon returning from Dallas was revoking NSAM 273 (signed by JFK) which authorized the withdrawal of 1000 US advisors from RVN. Both parties were enthusiastic for war- all but 2 senators voted in favor of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. After 1966 it was the hawkish Republicans and Southern Democrats, LBJ's domestic opponents, who maintained the war effort in Congress. Vietnam does not have to be a withdrawal, just continue JFK's Vietnamization strategy of OTL which would have the bonus of tying into the Kennedy legacy.
 
^ Perhaps Johnson assuages the hawks in his cabinet and Congress by vowing to get ahead of the Soviets in military technology and expanding the services' capabilities, rather than going to war. Thus, the programs that started later on get kicked off a few years earlier, like the teen fighters and amphibious assault ships, and he could go on supporting such ideas as the B-70 bomber and maybe make the 41 for Freedom the 48 or 50 for Freedom. These would cost the same (maybe less) and not claim 58,000 American lives as the Vietnam War did.
 
Well, my judgement may be clouded by hindsight, but I think it would be possible to see in '64, with enough foresight, that Vietnam would be a nightmare-no full-on assaults against the North were possible, the government was a supercorrupt puppet (i.e ideal communist breeding grounds), and generally the Americans would be forced to fight an endless defensive war. Could we have Johnson pick up some new wise advisor, or maybe change the persuasions of an existing one? After all:

"I don't believe they're ever going to quit. And I don't see...that we have any...plan for a victory-militarily or diplomatically."

-President Lyndon B. Johnson to Robert McNamara, June 1965
 
1. Great Society continues, and creates a Third New Deal that brings back the CCC and the WPA, among others, but this time they are made permanent pillars of the government.

2. Johnson decides to begin winding down Vietnam slowly, to appease both the hawks as well as the doves and the growing counter-war movement.

3. MLK decides not to travel to Memphis, but instead returns to Birmingham for another rally.

4. US government institutes industrial protections as part of the Great Society, prohibiting outsourcing of industry or production, as well as nationalizing several major industrial producers and turning them into efficient public corporations.

5. Do the public corporation thing with other major industry leaders, such as agriculture, health, telecomm, transport, energy, etc.

6. Depose the Shah, and return Mossadegh to the Iranian presidency.

7. De Gaulle decides to keep France in NATO, but the other EuroNATO nations re-affirm that they are not US military puppets.

8. George Wallace never runs for any public office ever again.

9. "Summer of Love" movement fails, with most of the attendants and idealist supporters instead turning to political debate and action rather than drugs.

10. Mao falls off of his balcony the day before the Great Cultural Revolution would have been proclaimed.

11. Diem takes a calm pill, and successfully manages to keep his country afloat amid the chaos of the NVietnamese invasion, as well as democratize. The Tet Offensive fails with tens of thousands of NVietnamese deaths, plus the SVietnamese lines reach all the way up to the Red River just south of Hanoi.

12. Colonel Pinochet gets hit by a lorry in downtown Santiago.
 

Skokie

Banned
ASB with a 1964 POD.

Having FDR survive is an intriguing scenario. As would be an Eleanor Roosevelt presidency. Just throwing it out there. ;)
 
Any kind of female presidency before the Second Wave of Feminism is pure ASB. And the 2nd Wave was largely carried along in a wave by the Peace and Civil Rights Movements, as well as the introduction of the Pill in 1960. Not saying I agree with it, but it is what it is.
 
9. "Summer of Love" movement fails, with most of the attendants and idealist supporters instead turning to political debate and action rather than drugs.
I'm don't think you need to avoid it and I'm not sure that the Hippies are avoidable; by '59, the New Left was set in motion. Just keep it Flower Power and peace and love and don't have it get all protest-y and militant and that's idealic.

11. Diem takes a calm pill, and successfully manages to keep his country afloat amid the chaos of the NVietnamese invasion, as well as democratize. The Tet Offensive fails with tens of thousands of NVietnamese deaths, plus the SVietnamese lines reach all the way up to the Red River just south of Hanoi.

Diem's dead by 1964.
 
4. US government institutes industrial protections as part of the Great Society, prohibiting outsourcing of industry or production, as well as nationalizing several major industrial producers and turning them into efficient public corporations.

5. Do the public corporation thing with other major industry leaders, such as agriculture, health, telecomm, transport, energy, etc.

Now I am not a pure market-liberal, but I fear that this would simply not work in the USA, let alone be possible politically. I am also afraid that this might even have negative effects on competitivity and profitability of the US economy.

I would actually say that the issues you voice belong to a more idyllic 1970s or 1980s.
 
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