DBWI: Kennedy assassinated?

As you all know, President John F. Kennedy (1917-1984, in office: 1961-69) was almost assassinated on November 22, 1963. Governor John Connally and Jacqueline Kennedy were both killed, while the president was severely injured. After the assassination attempt, it took 3 months for the president to recover, but he was able to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed. Riding on a wave of sympathies, the Kennedy-Johnson ticket managed to beat Barry Goldwater by a 57-40 landslide. What if President Kennedy was killed instead, say if the bullet hit his head? How would a Johnson presidency be like? Johnson would certainly beat Goldwater in 1964, but in what ways would it be different from OTL?
 
JFK's reputation would probably be much better than it is today. He would have died before all of the scandals regarding his personal life came out and the US would have avoided the unediffying prospect of Congress questioning a sitting President about matters of a very intimate nature during impeachement hearings.
I also suspect that the DNC might not have had to wait until the '90s to get another candidate into the White House.
 
JFK's reputation would probably be much better than it is today. He would have died before all of the scandals regarding his personal life came out and the US would have avoided the unediffying prospect of Congress questioning a sitting President about matters of a very intimate nature during impeachement hearings.
I also suspect that the DNC might not have had to wait until the '90s to get another candidate into the White House.
In 1964, he campaigned vigorously for many Congress candidates in key races. In 1968, he did not even attend the Democratic National Convention - he was only allowed to give a recorded speech. Perhaps you are right, his earlier death may have saved his reputation a lot, perhaps turning him into a martyr:p
 
Martyr? Maybe, but I think that even by 1963 a lot of voters had realised that he was not exactly a stellar POTUS. '64 was a close run thing again (did the dead vote in Chicago again?), plus it helped a great deal that the GOP candidate was pretty rubbish. Might have been a different story if there had been someone else.
 
Martyr? Maybe, but I think that even by 1963 a lot of voters had realised that he was not exactly a stellar POTUS. '64 was a close run thing again (did the dead vote in Chicago again?), plus it helped a great deal that the GOP candidate was pretty rubbish. Might have been a different story if there had been someone else.

I was frankly surprised that Kennedy won in '64, and I worked for him as a Young Democrat! It was only with the collusion of a fawning D.C. press corps and Jackie's decision not to leave him while he was in office that kept the lid on his personal indiscretions. By the time the revelations about his teenaged mistress, Mimi, and Marilyn Monroe came out, much less the rumors about Mafia links and his alleged first marriage to a Palm Beach socialite, he had us so deeply entrenched in Vietnam that there was no easy way to get out.

And I still think J. Edgar Hoover was behind it all, even if Bradlee always refused to disclose who "Deep Cover" really was. You know whoever it was had to have massive amounts of evidence to turn Bradlee from Kennedy's biggest fan into his media nemesis.
 
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...Jackie's decision not to leave him while he was in office that kept the lid on his personal indiscretions..

You mean Sara, right? That second marriage (or third if you count the Palm Beach socialite) had some effects on his reputation, too. I'm sure that re-marriage, after Jackie was killed, was meant to keep his reputation as a family man. But, I always suspected that it backfired on him -- the fact that it was obviously arranged with another prominent Democratic family -- and that she was twenty years younger than him.
 
Martyr?

Like McKinley, or Garfield? American's don't make martyrs of politicians. It took Lincoln being the victim of a conspiracy to be a martyr. Given Oswald's actions during the trial, which won't change no matter what, it's a tragedy, that's it. In 10 years Kennedy will be a footnote.

* And who in their right mind would make Lee Oswald, wife beating nutcase, part of a conspiracy?
 
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