DBWI: What If JFK had died in Dallas?

Well, folks, 49 years ago today, John F. Kennedy faced the possibility of not living out his term when he was shot at in Dallas. He survived, though John Connally and trooper J.D. Tippit later died of their injuries.

Earlier that morning, a last-minute change was made to the parade's route thru the city: instead of going thru Dealey Plaza, they went thru Main Street instead. (which, ironically might have been the first route suggested anyway).

I know that authors like Harry Turtledove, S.M. Stirling, and even a couple of this site's members have covered this in detail, but what if JFK had indeed gone down Elm Street, and been sniped, too? What would the implications have been?

Would there have been a disaster in Vietnam in '71, leading to Nixon's resignation(that, and the Watergate incident in August 1970)? Could President Reagan still have been assassinated in Modesto, CA, in '81? Would Bill Clinton still have run for office? Could the disasters of the Cheney years be butterflied?

And would the Soviet Union have broken up in November, 1990?

Here's OTL's(OOC: Not our OTL, of course, but this TL's reality) presidents, btw:

John F. Kennedy (Democratic-MA) 1961-1964
Richard M. Nixon (Republican-CA) 1964-1971
George W. Romney (Republican-MI) 1971-1972
Hubert H. Humphrey (Democratic-MN) 1972-1973
James Earl Carter (Democratic-GA) 1973-1976
Ronald W. Reagan (Republican-CA) 1976-1981
Robert Dole (Republican-KS) 1981-1984
Howard Baker (Republican-TN) 1984-1986
Thomas J. 'Tip' O'Neill (Republican-MA) 1986-88
Walter Mondale (Democratic-MN) 1988-1992
Bill Clinton (Democratic-AR) 1992-2000
Dick Cheney (Republican-WY) 2000-2008
Barack H. Obama (Democratic-HI) 2008-2016

OOC: I know this is kind of an old subject but I thought it might be fun to touch on. :)
 
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OOC: I know ;)

OOC: LOL, okay. Seriously, though, I thought it'd be interesting to try to slot in guys like Romney and Humphrey in there.
Also, if you want to inquire about what happened to each Prez, btw, I'll see what I can come up with. ;)
 
One thing that I wonder about is whether Johnson (Kennedy's VP) would have been able to push through any civil rights legislation? Since he was a southerner, he might have had more "political capital" to put behind it, so to speak.


OOC: I am skeptical that Obama would be president with a POD two years after he was born.
 

d32123

Banned
OOC: LOL, okay. Seriously, though, I thought it'd be interesting to try to slot in guys like Romney and Humphrey in there.
Also, if you want to inquire about what happened to each Prez, btw, I'll see what I can come up with. ;)

OOC: Well in addition to the list being highly implausible, you had the terms starting on even years when they should be starting on odd years.
 
Please, don't do this, not now.

OOC: Well in addition to the list being highly implausible, you had the terms starting on even years when they should be starting on odd years.

Implausible?

Also, that's one of the ways I like to do things, is start counting the terms in November of every election year. I've done this on the "Alternate Presidents and PMs thread" and nobody's complained there.

IC: I think so. Johnson was a guy willing to get things done. He was just seen as a tad too soft on Communism, though, and Nixon capitalized on that, leading to his narrow victory(Curtis LeMay's run with the State's Rights Party didn't help LBJ, either!).

OOC: @LC- Yeah, I know it's a tad farfetched, but it's not really implausible, so to speak.
 
Implausible?
OOC:

Kennedy wins in 1964 by an overwhelming, overwhelming blowout landslide. No offense, but I am sick to death to the idea that seems somewhat popular that Kennedy could have even come close to losing, let alone lose (*mentally slaps Stephen King in the face*). It would be absolutely no contest just as it was not one for LBJ. It would also not be Nixon again. Richard Nixon had already lost '60 and gone into the political wilderness. Nixon running in 1964 was a pipe dream of Republicans of the era which never would have actually occurred. George Romney as VP, there is nothing especially wrong with. However, keep in mind that in the OTL, Romney and Nixon had a toxic relationship in 1968 as he refused to release his delegates to Nixon, which could signify they would not have worked well together for whatever reasons they may not have liked one another. Humphrey, fine. Carter, no. Carter was an OTL stroke of oddity; a man who was not an established chosen son like Nixon, Humphrey, Kennedy, Cuomo, or any of those sort of people past and present, who was a black horse outsider who only won the presidency due to a specific set of circumstances as a specific time which was know as "Watergate", as well as after electoral reform which took nomination powers away from party bosses. Similar reasoning goes for the rest of the presidents listed thereafter, along with the distinct feeling that it's just a replay of the OTL, along with "Space Filling Presidents" (Cheney, Baker, Dole), which does not feel like it's crafting a proper ATL. The presidency is a very tricky thing like a lot of history, and it's based on trends and history, and being at the right place at the right time.

No offense intended.
 

Cook

Banned
One thing that I wonder about is whether Johnson (Kennedy's VP) would have been able to push through any civil rights legislation? Since he was a southerner, he might have had more "political capital" to put behind it, so to speak.
That’s just flat out ridiculous; Johnson was a Texan Good Ol’ Boy. Aside from having absolutely no motivation to do so, he’d have been burning up all of not only his own political capital in the south, but his party’s too.


Can we have a small degree of realism please? Johnson the civil rights campaigner? Come on!
:rolleyes:
 
Lyndon Johnson would not have instituted civil rights reform. Repeat: Lyndon Johnson would not have instituted civil rights reform. This is second only to "the Confederates win ... and free all slaves five years later!!!" in the annals of tired AH.com tropes about the south that have no basis in reality. LBJ's flare ups of concern with reference to civil rights corresponded to exactly one thing: His desire to be President. If JFK died, LBJ has zero reason to push for civil rights reform. He'd get some neutered northern liberal as VP and call it a day. He'd wring his hands about the situation publicly and probably shepherd some extremely limited civil rights act to passage right before the 1968 election (in 1964 he'd be able to claim he didn't have enough time), but there would be no significant reform. He didn't care about it, and he'd readily sacrifice it to get other measures passed in the Senate.

On the other hand, LBJ would withdraw us from Vietnam. Kennedy approved the recommendations of National Security Action Memorandum 263, but totally butchered them in execution - training Vietnamese troops to replace Americans in combat, only to send more Americans. LBJ signed the NSAM as well, and I think it's pretty safe to assume he'd actually follow the plans as set out.
 

Cook

Banned
He'd wring his hands about the situation publicly and probably shepherd some extremely limited civil rights act to passage right before the 1968 election...
I find the idea of Johnson winning the '64 election far fetched myself.
 
I find the idea of Johnson winning the '64 election far fetched myself.
Well, he's going to have the whole south on lockdown - first southern President since, well, Johnson? (Not counting Wilson, since he ran as a New Jersey guy). They'd be all over that. That right there won't do the trick, but you've got the Democratic machines in Illinois, New York ... I think he could pull it off, narrowly. Plus it would still only be a year after the President died, which I imagine would get a lot of sympathy votes. It all depends on who the Republican guy is, too.

EDIT: I guess, could there be a primary challenge though? Humphrey? Robert Kennedy, even? I think they'd be crushed, Johnson was good at controlling party mechanics, but it might make an impact. Especially a messy primary against RFK.
 
How would a second Kennedy administration handle rapprochement with China following withdrawal from Vietnam?
 
How would a second Kennedy administration handle rapprochement with China following withdrawal from Vietnam?

OOC: That's actually a good question. I don't think Kennedy was too willing to get much more involved, so we might see a withdrawal from that part of the world by 1967 or so.....just in time for the hippies to start taking off. :cool:;)
 
Lyndon Johnson would not have instituted civil rights reform. Repeat: Lyndon Johnson would not have instituted civil rights reform. This is second only to "the Confederates win ... and free all slaves five years later!!!" in the annals of tired AH.com tropes about the south that have no basis in reality. LBJ's flare ups of concern with reference to civil rights corresponded to exactly one thing: His desire to be President. If JFK died, LBJ has zero reason to push for civil rights reform. He'd get some neutered northern liberal as VP and call it a day. He'd wring his hands about the situation publicly and probably shepherd some extremely limited civil rights act to passage right before the 1968 election (in 1964 he'd be able to claim he didn't have enough time), but there would be no significant reform. He didn't care about it, and he'd readily sacrifice it to get other measures passed in the Senate.

On the other hand, LBJ would withdraw us from Vietnam. Kennedy approved the recommendations of National Security Action Memorandum 263, but totally butchered them in execution - training Vietnamese troops to replace Americans in combat, only to send more Americans. LBJ signed the NSAM as well, and I think it's pretty safe to assume he'd actually follow the plans as set out.

Not according to historian Robert Sobel. One of his non-AH works was a bio of VP L.B.J. just before he died in '77, and he told Sobel that he indeed would have instituted Civil Rights reform if Kennedy had died in '63, as well as trying not to get us too involved in Vietnam(we all know how that turned out under Nixon, unfortunately).
 

Cook

Banned
L.B.J. just before he died in '77, and he told Sobel that he indeed would have instituted Civil Rights reform if Kennedy had died in '63, as well as trying not to get us too involved in Vietnam.
Spoken with the benefit of hindsight; retired might-have-beens are always saying what people want to hear; ‘If I’d been in president I’d have done it all different and everything would have been rosy’, that doesn’t mean that they actually thought that way earlier – just that they are telling the interviewer what they think he wants to hear to get some attention.
Well, he's going to have the whole south on lockdown...I think he could pull it off, narrowly.
Let’s just remember why they were in Dallas when Kennedy nearly got killed; because the administration was unpopular there; it wasn’t even certain that Johnson could deliver his own state!

Kennedy scraped into the presidency by the skin of his teeth despite being young, seemingly fit and vigorous, sophisticated and articulate; Johnson was none of those things. Honestly, if Kennedy had been killed in Dallas, LBJ would have limped back to Washington, served out the remainder of Kennedy’s term as a lame duck president unable to pass any new bills and, following a crushing defeat in ’64 would retire into obscurity. He probably wouldn’t even be guaranteed the Democrat candidacy; Kennedy’s brother Bobby would have challenged him for it and won.
 
Johnson was a sleezy guy - even considering the standards of the era - and some horrible scandal would have derailed his administration almost immediately. You have the radio stations in Texas that his wife.... Robin?... "owned" and their marriage itself was supposed to be a farce. I mean, I still consider JFK today as the model family man and to have "LBJ" (stop it! That moniker is never going to take!) replace him is a travesty.

Still, I don't see Johnson wanting to continue with the bother of Vietnam, so maybe there would have been a silver lining in this alternative history...
 
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