Well the subsequent failures of the Buchanan administration led to the rise of the Al Gore Administration, in light of the failure of the "Diamond Zone" to contain Russian insurgents established in Moscow in 1991. There was the failure to capture General Gennady Zyuganov in 1994, despite his bombing of U.S. and Allied forces based in Leningrad, Stalingrad, and Vilnius. By 1996, American troops were being dragged into ethnic cleansing campaigns in Belarus and Ukraine.
In a world without the assassination of Gorbachev, it is certainly likely that American prestige would have been preserved abroad, the draft wouldn't have been reinstated in 1998, American jons wouldn't have been "out-sourced" to the Baltic States as part of "international security" and the price of gas would have remained at $1.75/barrel.
As such, who do you think will be taking for the Democratic Party nomination? Tipper Gore or Henry Cisneros?
OOC: That is extremely ASB. The USA would NEVER be invited to police the Soviet Union without Gorbachev, to say nothing of fighting some kind of war against a nation with a massive nuclear arsenal. The United States would not and could not get involved in a ground war against the Soviets because it would result in mutually assured destruction, a scenario in which any history buff is well versed. Just because Gorbachev doesn't come to power doesn't mean that the USA will suddenly mobilize and occupy parts of the country--even Pat Buchanan isn't so stupid as to start a nuclear war.
IC: Yes, I'm familiar with Tom Clancy's Red Beast trilogy, but I'm afraid that you've mistaken the book for your history book.
I'll grant it would give you lower oil prices and increase the USA's image around the world--Yanev's move to join OPEC led to a trade war against the Soviets that dealt them and OPEC a massive blow. It would also mean that the Eastern Europe would have been free for a generation, not tied up as puppet states to a slowly failing state. Gorbachev might succeed with his reforms and reinvigorate the Soviet Union, or the reforms might at least end the Cold War and begin to pay a peace dividend.
Instead, we got Yanev and another generation of uprisings and refugees from Eastern Europe. There would be less suffering in the Eastern Bloc--No invasion of East Germany in 1994 (which used chemical weapons), no invasion of Romania in 2001, or Hungary in 2005. Economists suggest that the Soviet Union's GDP/Capita has fallen to below $10,000--well lower than Mexico or South Korea. Could Gorbachev have increased that number? Finally, the world would be a saner, less violent place: A world where the Soviets and the United States had less than 50,000 Nuclear Weapons pointed at each other. That number is needed, apparently, because the third generation of Anti-Nuclear defenses has shown real fruit, KOing at least 98% of ICBM strikes. We'd live in better times, without the massive SDI spending spree that seems to have become dominant.
The only good thing about Yanev is his sanity--he wants to keep his state alive and his empire intact. As long we have a gentleman's agreement not to fight each other, I suspect that the Soviet Union will be broke by 2030--only the massive increase in oil prices can explain how the Soviets have survived for so long.