Norton is very tired children, so this is all you get for now...or you can wait for someone else to come around and make with all the smart talk.
Kennedy started escalating Vietnam so all this talk of pulling out is utter BS best case is that he keeps it small and uses the Marines as the counter insurgency force that they were built to be.
Nein. Kennedy didn't start escalating Vietnam; he
did escalate Vietnam, but not in the way I think you're assuming. Vietnam was a different thing in Ike and Jack's time. It was a civil war on the other side of the world, a nation maybe 70% of the American public didn't pay attention to, where we had advisers and were sending aid and supplies. We weren't in an active combat role. Kennedy was wary of making the United States assume an Americanized war in Vietnam, and consistently refused to go in that direction when he was indeed pressured throughout his administration.
To play the PC game, most Presidents would have avoided Vietnam as a war, at least from what I know. LBJ didn't because he was ignorant of foreign policy issues and thought that if he sent in the Marines, he could shock the Communists into surrender (he did have serious doubts, but it was most definitely part of his thought process that the US military could possibly win this thing). Vietnam is not difficult to avoid as an America war. When polls were first conducted on American opinions of Vietnam in 1964, only 30-some percent of Americans paid any attention to it, and of that most expected Korean war style ceasefire or the fall of Saigon. Kennedy's idea was never to abandon South Vietnam, so don't think that; it was to begin to withdraw advisers (for fear of the war becoming something America would be a combat participant in), while maintaining aid and supply of South Vietnam.
I'm certain Kennedy would have run again,and won a little bigger than he did in 1960.The Republican ticket would likely have been Scranton-Goldwater,but like '96 and '08 the nomination would have been to honor respected Republicans and the party would just have been going through the motions. Nixon? Box-office poison.He lost two campaigns in a row.LBJ? Off the ticket if JFK can get the public to sit still for the Veep being the President's brother.He probably can,given the sympathy/survivor factor
He wouldn't win by a little bigger than 1960; he'd win by a lot bigger. 1964 would be a blow out. JFK was astoundingly popular, and the GOP had no chance of coming close. I really wish the idea of "JFK lives, so the GOP could win or would get a lot of votes" would go away because it seems to be a thing and it's not true. JFK will clobber the Republicans in 1964. Its not going to be 1960.
The Republican ticket would likely be Goldwater for president just as it was in the OTL. As was brought up in my 1964 alternate VP thread recently, Scranton as his VP would be unlikely due to Scranton condemning Goldwater.
LBJ is likely not dropped; that was never brought up seriously. Kennedy would never, ever try to get Bobby to be his VP for 1964.
Very likely the FBI catches Oswald before the Dallas PD and Jack Ruby can eliminate him,and Oswald gets waterboarded into telling everything he knows.His Russian-Cuban connections are thoroughly exposed,and other agents are caught who expose the Moscow/Havana connections within the Civil Rights Movement,which while not thoroughly discredited,loses most of its support,and its offspring,the nascent peacenik movement,gets no further than similar movements did in WW2. Alabama Governor George Wallace has a field day saying "I told you so".
I'm not sure I understand you. The capture of LHO went down in a day. He ran away, people saw him shoot Tippet, some guys chased him if memory serves, and he tried to hide in a theatre. The police were called, came in, and arrested him. No one knew what the Hell was going on that day. The FBI can't teleport agents there to arrest Oswald before the normal authroities do.
Your conspiracy synopsis frankly leaves me with a reaction of "What the? I don't even..." because it is very much incorrect. Oswald wasn't tied to Cuba or the USSR. He was a prick who wanted to be something because he was a nothing with an unloving and emotionally abusive mother. Sad upbringing, but the fact is he grew up to be a prick and a small, smug little man. He became a Communist because it made him something special. He went to the Soviets because he wanted to be part of the worker's paradise that existed in his mind from that thing that made him feel different. He went there, the Soviets suspected he was CIA but found out he wasn't, and then tried to see if they could make him an agent for the USSR, but found out he was a dud. Eventually, he got bored and moved back to America. That was the whole of his Soviet ties. He was a flunky who didn't matter and worked normal jobs, and it ate away at this little jerk who wanted to be a special lil' flower. So he wanted to make his mark, and shot Kennedy, the guy leading the nation persecuting Cuba. He was a nothing. He was just a pissed off nobody who wanted to be a somebody. He became a Communist to be something special and something people would look twice at. He went to the USSR with romantic notions of his revolutionary self only to be bored by the reality of Communism. He returned to supreme disappointment in America that no reporters were there to talk to him because no one cared about him. He created his Fair Play For Cuba Committee because he took that same self romanticism that made him go to Russia, and used it to support ending embargo on Cuba, the Communist satellite in the western hemisphere. He attempted to kill General Walker because he fancied himself a left wing hero taking down a fascist. He killed Kennedy on one level because JFK was blockading Cuba and was the leader of the United States, but the real reason was by killing Kennedy, this normal guy could be a somebody and get fame and get everyone to look at him and during the trial he could make a soap box for his ideology. He was a drip, and the good thing is Ruby, another average guy and not connected to the mob or whatever else the Conspiracy people think, killed him before he could even enjoy his fame. The bad thing is that by Oswald not showing what a smug little man he was to the public and not going through the trial, it opened the door for almost 50 years of silliness.
Viet Nam? I dunno.Diem was done away with just before Dallas and JFK is firmly in control of whoever he picks to lead South Viet Nam.JFK faced down Castro and Nikita Kruschev just a year before,and is likely to be REALLY PO'd at an apparent Soviet/Cuban sponsored attempt on his life.He'll be in no mood for any of Ho Chi Minh's BS.Ho wisely decides not to borrow trouble and stays out of the way while the corruption and the local fellow travelers get rounded up by the South Vietnamese security forces,aided by a heavily reinforced US military presence.Viet Nam's situation gradually settles into a Korean-style standoff.
Q for all on a related topic.Does JFK's survival butterfly Beatlemania?
I covered Vietnam above as much as I feel like covering it now, so I'll just point to that. No, he wouldn't be, because there wasn't one. JFK would be smart enough to know Khruschev and Castro weren't behind this. Kennedy was in talks with Castro about rapprochement for God sake; ending the embargo and getting Cuba out of the Soviet hemisphere and neutralized. Castro has no reason to be involved. And I doubt this affects the North Vietnamese. It's not like JFK turns into the dad who gets home after overtime and mom has to tell the kids not to act up or daddy will beat the Hell out of them. And even if that were the case, the North wouldn't care. They were hardened nationalists prepared to go up against anything, from Marines to Atomic bombs. It's simply incorrect to think that the North would be intimidated by aggression, because that was America's thought when it made Vietnam its war and it did not work out well.
I can try to give more detail on Vietnam at a later date, or someone else may beat me to it.
On pop culture, including Beatlemania, it all goes down. You're getting Hippies and all that. It was already in full force and going to break through. Await Kennedy growing sideburns in '68.
