As we all know, on June 5, 1968, then-Senator and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was nearly assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan, a pro-Palestinian activist, as he walked through the Ambassador Hotel's kitchen following his victory in the South Dakota and California primaries. On his way to address supporters and the press, Kennedy made the ill-advised decision to ignore the security concerns of his private detail, and pass through this narrow walkway in the kitchen. As a result, he was temporarily separated from them, at which point Sirhan opened fire. In the chaos, he managed to fire off two shots, one of them wounding Kennedy severely and the other killing Democratic party activist Elizabeth Evans. He was then quickly subdued by bodyguard William Barry. While Kennedy was not killed that day, his injuries caused him to drop out of the 1968 primary and endorse Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey then went on to lose the general election to Republican Richard Nixon, who was in turn defeated by Senator Kennedy in 1972. While Kennedy was of course personally popular, the central reason for his victory is widely agreed to be the last minute revelation by journalists that associates of the Nixon reelection campaign had burgled both the DNC headquarters in the Watergate office complex, and his opponent's own offices in New York. This, coupled with rumors about Vice President Spiro Agnew's own corruption (charges that were later confirmed by a rigorous investigation by Kennedy's Attorney General), not to mention his increasingly erratic behavior and repeated mishandling of the Vietnam War sunk Tricky Dick once and for all, leading RFK to a landslide in the electoral college, taking 486 EVs to Nixon's 52. Kennedy, and his running mate Oklahoma Senator Fred Harris, were inaugurated in January, 1973, and served until 1981.
But what if RFK had died that day in 1968? What if Sirhan had managed to rattle off just a few more shots, or perhaps just one much luckier shot, and killed the second Kennedy son in less than 5 years? Would Nixon still have been exposed as a crook, and lost reelection to a different opponent? Some suggest that Nixon's bitterness towards the Kennedy family fueled a paranoia deep within him, that caused him to act irrationally and wildly, leading to the incidents that brought him down (while also offering a possible explanation for his inexplicably poor action in regards to Vietnam). Is this really true, or would he have been as unscrupulous no matter who he was facing? And, without Kennedy in the race, who might that be?
Of course, it's also worth discussing President Robert Kennedy's far reaching and ambitious agenda, and what would become of the US without him, but I've rambled enough. Who cares to take it from here?