DWBI: What If Kennedy Had Chosen Johnson for VP?

Their names are just faint memories now, but if we look back at the election of 1960, it seems that Nixon won because he won so much of the South against Senator Jim (John?) Kennedy. Kennedy was a Catholic from Massachusetts, which did not help of course. Even so, he came pretty close to winning Texas and South Carolina. Stuart Symington was not a bad choice for VP but would Lyndon Johnson of TEXAS helped Kennedy win more of the South? After all, Rockefeller helped Nixon win PA and MI.

And if that happened, and Kennedy won, what kind of President would he have been? Would we have been spared the war in Indochina, which resulted in a bloody stalemate between North and South Vietnam that exists to this day ... just like Korea????
 
I just can't see Johnson giving up his near-total control of the Senate to become the Vice President; that would mean trading a position as one of the three most powerful men in Washington for being a virtual non-entity in the political world.
 
On the one hand, Kennedy was a gifted diplomat and might have been able to stabilise Vietnam without a war. After all, the de facto partition already existed, and Khruschev was a man you could reason with - see the agreement about keeping missiles ourt of each other's immediate sphere of influence that he hammered out with Nixon. Kennedy could have done something similar, I'm sure. But Kennedy was already quite erratic and emotional - look at his later Senate career, all the scandals, and the vicious feud with his brother when Bob won the election. If the Vietnam conflict pushes the right buttons with him, he might be moved to escalate, too.

More to the point - Kennedy and JOHNSON? After the campaign they had just fought against each other, I can't see that being a winning formula. Johnson was famously foul-mouthed and aggressive, held grudges, and advanced populist ideas. If Kennedy went to war, he might have seen that as a deliberate attem,pt to siphon money away from his social programmes. But even if not, the two are a recipe for disaster. Johnson will be seething with resentment.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
I just can't see Johnson giving up his near-total control of the Senate to become the Vice President; that would mean trading a position as one of the three most powerful men in Washington for being a virtual non-entity in the political world.

Hmm. . . Johnson did delight in the complete control he had over the Senate and he obviously loved power (though, to be fair, he did push through a lot of excellent legislation). On the other hand, his heart burned for the Presidency. If the VP slot had been offered to him, he might have calculated that his odds of getting into the White House would be better than if he remained in the Senate.

If he had rejected Kennedy's offer and Kennedy still went on to lose, many Democrats would blame Johnson. His chances of running again in 1964 might be reduced a a result.
 
Hmm. . . Johnson did delight in the complete control he had over the Senate and he obviously loved power (though, to be fair, he did push through a lot of excellent legislation). On the other hand, his heart burned for the Presidency. If the VP slot had been offered to him, he might have calculated that his odds of getting into the White House would be better than if he remained in the Senate.

If he had rejected Kennedy's offer and Kennedy still went on to lose, many Democrats would blame Johnson. His chances of running again in 1964 might be reduced a a result.

That's why he lost the nomination to Henry Jackson, who went on to lose to Nixon in 1964. What was especially notable about THAT election was the showing of George Wallace, who swept the Deep South and carried Florida as well.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Well, if Kennedy did pick Johnson, he would have done better in the South and would certainly have won Texas (Johnson's network among his power base was legendary). So, there's a good chance he would have beaten Nixon.

How would a Kennedy administration have acted differently than Nixon's. Would Castro have been knocked out of power? I can see Kennedy taking a stronger and more positive interest in civil rights than Nixon. The possibilities are endless.
 
If Kennedy had chosen LBJ and he had accepted, it would probably because LBJ sensed that if JFK had lost to Nixon he would be the presumptive frontrunner to the Democratic nomiantion in 64 and get the nomination - he nearly did but lost narrowly to Sen. Scoop Jackson. And if JFK did win in 60, he probably figured that he would have a good chance of being the Democratic candidate in 68. Well as it turned out his power and influence as Senate Majority Leader started to wane around 1961, and in January 1965 he stepped down from that leadership position. He declined to run for reelection in 1966 so his close friend Governor John Conally ran for the senate seat and won in November of that year. LBJ then retired to his ranch in Texas and declined to run for the presidency in 1968. In around that time his health started to decline and subsequently suffered a stroke and two heart attacks. He died of heart failure exactly 35 years ago this very day on October 11, 1973 at the age of 65.
 
Well, it is almost certain that a Southern-controlled Democratic Party would have accepted a ticket, only as long as the candidate was from the South and preferably at the top of the ticket. Just remember that ever since FDR, Truman, et al. The Democrats have had to have a Southerner on the ticket. Just consider that it wasn't until 1989, when the Gore Administration passed the Civil Rights Act, was the issue of segregation taken seriously. Most Americans remember the floor flight caused in 1992, when David Duke of Louisiana led the "Dixiecrats" to oppose the platform....
 
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