DBWI: What if JFK Had Been Killed in Dallas?

As today is the 55th anniversary of the infamous assassination attempt on the 35th President, John Kennedy, I thought it might be interesting to speculate on how history would have been different if he had been killed that day?

How different would the United States or the world at large have turned out if Lyndon Johnson had been elevated to the Presidency in November of 1963?
 
Civil rights probably would have stagnated. Can't see a Southern Democrat, that himself watered down bills in the Eisenhower era, doing anything more than Kennedy did to pass the reforms of 1966. Seeing as most of the Dixiecrats broke off into their own party in Congress after that time OTL, any later and we might still be a segregated society today. Hell, we still have issues with housing and the voting rights portion wasn't anywhere near as strong as Kennedy would have liked.
 
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The unending series of tell-alls by former White House staffers probably never would've happened in the 70s. And his brother Bobby... remember him?... could've done something more than represent insurance companies in New York.
 
It felt like JFK was hanging on for dear life at the end of his second term just to keep Johnson from taking over - the man died from complications from Addison’s on February 8, 1969. I don’t see Johnson as an effective President, and in fact he was suited for the grunt work of working with Congress to pass the agenda but not for the hard work of the Presidency.

Truth be told, Johnson was asked if he wanted to succeed Kennedy in 1968. He gave nothing more than a stern look. It worked out for President Humphrey, though.
 
I think Johnson regretted taking the vice presidency. He lost a lot of power when he left Congress. Old, sick, and out of power he was unable to evade corruption indictments before he died in the early 1970s.

... I don’t see Johnson as an effective President, and in fact he was suited for the grunt work of working with Congress to pass the agenda but not for the hard work of the Presidency. ...

LBJ probably would have exhausted himself trying to be President, and covering his trail of the 1950s. As VP he was not considered worth the effort, but his enemies might have been digging for ammunition had he become president.
 
Hell there wouldn't have been a second or third attempt, saving a lot of tax dollars for security of US presidents. I mean, even today Trump did his state of the union address wearing body armour and helmet. Inside Congress.
 
Hell there wouldn't have been a second or third attempt, saving a lot of tax dollars for security of US presidents. I mean, even today Trump did his state of the union address wearing body armour and helmet. Inside Congress.
That was just an article from the Onion pal.


Regarding LBJ assuming the Presidency, he would’ve been effective. He was the one who pushed through Kennedy’s bills on Civil Rights and Voting Rights. The only thing that would’ve been different under an LBJ Presidency is the components of those bills, chances are they would’ve likely been watered down.
 
We would end up saving Vietnam
Seriously if LBJ had taken over, he would have immediately sent american troops there and saved Asia from the comunist menace
 
It felt like JFK was hanging on for dear life at the end of his second term just to keep Johnson from taking over - the man died from complications from Addison’s on February 8, 1969

My grandmother remembers the tongues wagging when JFK dropped dead less than a month after his presidency. Nobody knew how bad his health was, there was a lot of rumors at the time he'd been poisoned by his wife for his philandering or that Fidel Castro had been behind it

I mean, even today Trump did his state of the union address wearing body armour and helmet. Inside Congress.

Breaking kayfabe, but Trump's president in this timeline? Then again, him being president in OTL felt like ASB :biggrin:
 

manav95

Banned
We would end up saving Vietnam
Seriously if LBJ had taken over, he would have immediately sent american troops there and saved Asia from the comunist menace

Yeah and Cambodia wouldn't have seen the terrible war that unseated their king Norodom Sihanouk and gave power to the Khmer Riuge, who killed many hundreds of thousands of people with Vietnamese sanction.
 
Breaking kayfabe, but Trump's president in this timeline? Then again, him being president in OTL felt like ASB :biggrin:

He was just a young man, though, and not ready for all that being President came with. Forty-two years old, fresh off two terms of Reagan, and he thought making money was all economics and fighting the bad Soviets. Then the USSR started going to shit and the economy turned sour in the early 90s and he thought further cuts were the way to go.

He just didn’t have it. And needless to say, he was not re-elected. And I think the stress of the Presidency is what killed him.
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
Yeah and Cambodia wouldn't have seen the terrible war that unseated their king Norodom Sihanouk and gave power to the Khmer Riuge, who killed many hundreds of thousands of people with Vietnamese sanction.
The Khmer Rouge was backed by America's buddy Hua Guofeng. Vietnam, Laos, and the entire Warsaw Pact cut ties with the Khmer Rouge after the 1978 border clashes.
 
He was just a young man, though, and not ready for all that being President came with. Forty-two years old, fresh off two terms of Reagan, and he thought making money was all economics and fighting the bad Soviets. Then the USSR started going to shit and the economy turned sour in the early 90s and he thought further cuts were the way to go.

But then again, he was just about the only Republican who could've beaten Gary Hart in 1988. Vice-President Rumsfeld was too closely tied with the Iran-Contra scandal, Dole lacked charisma, while Kemp was too liberal on social issues and too conservative on economic issues to win on a national basis. Trump wasn't tied to Reagan, yet he had the charisma and national appeal to win. Without Trump, Hart would've been President in 1989.
 
I think we would've gotten a man on the moon in the early seventies instead of 1968. That's probably for the best as if they gave it enough time, the first men on the moon might not have had their ship break down and become the first men to die on the moon.
 
I think we would've gotten a man on the moon in the early seventies instead of 1968. That's probably for the best as if they gave it enough time, the first men on the moon might not have had their ship break down and become the first men to die on the moon.

Don't you think that if JFK died there would not be anyone sent to the moon? everyone would have forgotten his speech about "we chose to go to the moon" and everything about him, just like McKinley.
 
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