Double In Dallas

as we all know when Kennedy was killed in Dallas LBJ was only a few cars behind him. what would the world look like if Oswald squeezed off another round or two into LBJ after Kennedy.
 
This is probably one of the only JFK death-related topics that hasn't been discussed on here, at least as far as I know.

If both JFK and LBJ die, John William McCormack would have become president.

I don't know much about McCormack, but he'd be approaching 72 when he succeeds to the presidency, which is older than Reagan was when he was first elected.

Wonder what he'd do about Vietnam? I definitely think Civel Rights still progresses as it did in reality.

In theary, he could serve until January the 20th, 1973. I get the feeling he didn't really care for the presidency and wouldn't have wanted to run for a term of his own, but I could be wrong-after all, Ford didn't want to be president until he found himself in that position.

Assuming McCormack decides not to run, you probably see HHH as the consensous nominee. He was a pretty vital driving force behind Civel Rights, so his name would have national prominance by then...

Is there any chance of RFK clinching the nomination here, in an upset? I suspect not, but I wouldn't rule it out entirely.

I'd imagine the Republican primaries are unchanged regardless of who's running for the democrats, since a dem victory is in the bag.

I wonder whether this would affect John Connally's career at all? Him and LBJ were quite close-could this mean he joins the GOP early?
 
I likewise think McCormack does not run. I think Humphrey wins and serves two terms. We get the Great Society and Civil Rights but no major war in Vietnam.
 

Hyperion

Banned
I didn't know about Conally until reading these two threads.

Make it a triple. Oswald kills JFK, LBJ, and Conally. In a matter of minutes, the President of the United States, the Vice President, and the Governor of Texas dead at the hands of Oswald.

National mourning for weeks if not months afterwards. It would also completely reshape the political landscape of the US for years if not decades to come. Loosing the governor of Texas as well would just throw more monkey wrenches into the mess. What are the proceedures even for replacing a governor in Texas if one is killed or something?
 
I doubt he thought about killing the vice president much.

And, even if he had known that LBJ was going to be in the motorcade that day, he would have had no way of knowing where he was in it. Beside, JFK was his primary target and, after all hell broke loose, there was no way he would be able to get a shot off at Johnson.
 
as we all know when Kennedy was killed in Dallas LBJ was only a few cars behind him. what would the world look like if Oswald squeezed off another round or two into LBJ after Kennedy.

I just thought, assuming Mckormac's death isn't butterflied in either direction, he dies on the 17th anniversary of his presidency starting. Just another one of those presidencial coincidences that arrises from time to time.

Glenn-thanks for the TL, will give it a read!
 

Cook

Banned
what i want to know is, why didnt oswald do this?
Because most assassinations carried out by a single person focus entirely on the primary target because that alone is bloody hard enough. It took at least two, possibly three shots to kill Kennedy, and that was aiming from a high angle down onto a car moving at walking pace that was taking no evasive action until after the fatal shot that blew the top of Kennedy’s head off. Oswald had had time to settle on the target because of the very slow pace of the car, he’d probably been focused on Kennedy for a good five to ten seconds.

To shoot onto LBJ would have require Oswald to finish shooting into the first car, confirm he’d killed Kennedy (add at least a second there, possibly several) and then switch his point of aim to the third car, settle his point of aim and track the motion of the vehicle, and then take a shot. By which time LBJ has at least one Secret Service agent lying on top of him, possibly two and the limo is accelerating very rapidly. Even if he’d intended to do so, he’d have been lucky to get off a shot that hit the car.

Besides which, this was a personal vendetta style assassination, not a conspiracy like the Lincoln (and cabinet members) assassination.
 
Top