And it was the sight of a time travelling Delorean speeding down the runway which caused Chamberlain's plane to crash and thus this timeline was born and the time loop completed. 😋
Munich Shuffle: 1938-1942
- Thread starter Garrison
- Start date
British Leyland - living down to their OTL reputation, except it will be cheap.
Postscript The Kennedys and the White House 1940 - 1972
Garrison
Donor
Postscript The Kennedys and the White House 1940 - 1972
Joseph Kennedy Snr saw his time as US Ambassador to Britain come to an ignominious end in September of 1940, his gloomy sentiments about the likelihood of Britain’s survival having annoyed politicians both in London and Washington to the point where there was no choice but to replace him. Regardless of this setback Kennedy Snr was still valued by the White House because of his perceived ability to help secure the Catholic vote for Roosevelt during the campaign for his third term. Biographies of Kennedy Snr revealed that he had entertained hopes of running himself in 1940 and was frustrated by Roosevelt’s decision. He was determined to seek the Democratic nomination in 1944 when Roosevelt chose not to run, but his campaign fared so poorly that he was forced to drop out even before Vice-President Wallace. This rejection, which he believed was due to his Irish Catholic background rather than a series of political gaffes made in interviews with the press, angered Kennedy and he did not deploy his influence to support Truman during the election campaign. This did nothing to endear Kennedy Snr with the party hierarchy and he was forced to accept that if there was to be a Kennedy in the White House it would have to be one of his sons and so his ambitions now centred around his eldest son, Joseph Kennedy Jnr.Kennedy Jnr had joined the USN a few months before Pearl Harbor, interrupting his study of law at Harvard university to do so, and became a naval aviator. He spent much of the war piloting a PB4Y-1, the naval variant of the B-24 Liberator bomber, on anti-submarine patrols. By the spring of 1944 he had completed the requisite number of missions to be eligible for a return to the USA, but he chose to volunteer for further combat duties and was assigned to Operation Aphrodite, a program to convert bomber B-24 bomber into a type of flying bomb. It was probably for the best that the surrender of Germany saw the operational element of Operation Aphrodite suspended while work was carried out to try and make the modified bombers suitable for deployment in the Pacific, work that still hadn’t been completed by VJ Day. This was deeply frustrating for Kennedy Jnr, with the only good news being his promotion to Lieutenant in September of 1944. Even before he was officially demobilized in August of 1945 his father was already working to thrust Kennedy Junior into the political limelight and in 1946 he ran for the recently vacated seat in the staunchly Democratic 11th congressional district of Massachusetts, with the previous incumbent having decided to run for Mayor of Boston at the urging of Kennedy Snr.
Some biographers have suggested that Joseph Kennedy Jnr’s brother John, usually known as Jack, might have been a better fit for political life. He possessed considerable charisma and an affable manner that would have been an asset in dealing with voters and members of Congress alike, characteristics that even his admirers had to admit Joseph Kennedy Junior was lacking in. Set against this was the fact that Jack Kennedy had an unfortunate habit of deploying his charm in pursuit of the opposite sex, something which even the more circumspect media of the 1950s might well have picked up on. In the end Jack Kennedy made the newspapers in an altogether more tragic way when he died in a car accident in 1957, probably intoxicated and certainly in the company of a woman ten years his junior who was not his wife. The accident deeply affected Joseph Kennedy Junior but did nothing to slow his rise through the political ranks and he had already become a Senator from Massachusetts in 1953. With the support of his father’s fortune and his perceived ability to swing Catholic voters to the ticket he was selected as Lyndon B. Johnson’s running mate for the 1960 Election. With Johnson’s victory Kennedy Jnr thus became Vice-President, which for a time seemed as close as he was likely to get to occupying the Oval Office. He ardently supported the American intervention in Cuba in 1961 and also took a keen interest in the US space program, being credited with pushing for support of the manned program in particular, accelerating the progress of the Freedom series of space stations and the lunar missions that grew from them. What he was less enthusiastic about was Johnson’s support of Civil Rights legislation.
Regardless of their differences over certain policy areas the two men worked well together, and Johnson easily won re-election in 1964. Kennedy Jnr was already planning on his own run for the Presidency in 1968, though it still seemed something of a long shot even with LBJ’s endorsement, but circumstances would thrust him into the Presidency far sooner than Kennedy Junior might have hoped. In May of 1965 Johnson was visiting Memphis, planning on meeting with a number of Civil Rights leaders including Martin Luther King Jnr when he was shot and killed while driving in a motorcade into the heart of the city by a white supremacist, James Earl Ray. Kennedy Jnr now found himself inheriting Johnson’s Civil Rights agenda and with the very vocal support of Martin Luther King and opponents trying to distance themselves from the conspiracy theories that swirled around the assassination of Johnson a comprehensive Civil Rights Act passed in 1966. Kennedy Jnr naturally ran in 1968 and did win the White House in his own right, albeit with a narrow margin of victory and some controversy over vote manipulation in Massachusetts, with critics pointing forcefully to the influence of his brother Edward ‘Ted’ Kennedy who had followed Kennedy Jnr into the role of Senator from that state. Kennedy Jnr would have been able to run again in 1972 and was certainly expected to do so, but the heart attack he suffered in February of 1970 put paid to such ideas, though he would see out his term he made it clear he would not seek the party’s nomination for 1972. Some believe that this heart attack, along with strong lobbying from his brother Ted, persuaded Kennedy Jnr to push through the healthcare reforms that are considered to be the most positive lasting legacy of his time in office, with the most negative being his refusal to countenance any dilution of US involvement in fighting the endless insurgency in Cuba or to restrain the increasingly ruthless tactics employed by US proxies on the island. There is some irony in the fact that after leaving office in 1973 owing to his fragile health Joseph Kennedy Jnr would live until 1986, dying on the 23rd of May and being buried with all the honours appropriate to a former president and a war hero. Some have marked Joseph Kennedy Junior’s departure from the White House as the beginning of the end of the era that came to be know as ‘the longest decade’.
Garrison
Donor
Well he never ran for election as President in 1964 so he technically could run in 1972 in the same way as LBJ could have in 1968.
The inherited term has to be less than half for an ascended VP to run for a second full term.
Fairly positive legacy for Joe Junior there! Was Bobby his consigliere in the way he was for Jack iOTL, then?
Garrison
Donor
Not to the same degree, hence he won't emerge as a national political figure as he did OTL, and of course no Vietnam war to shape late 1960s politics.
But they seem to have a Cuban one instead & with the relative closeness of the island to the US compared to Vietnam there's a chance for some of the conflict to spill onto American shores.
Garrison
Donor
Cuba has a very different flavour to Vietnam, but it will become an issue in the 1970s.
The amendment was basically designed to ensure no one had more terms than Roosevelt ITTL.
I would assume then that Cuba is going to be more like the Banana Wars of the early 20th century with professionals like the USMC doing the fighting and any dying rather than draftees?
Garrison
Donor
In essence this. Plus less of an all out guerilla war and more akin to the situation in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
Postscript US Presidents 1945 – 1981
Garrison
Donor
Postscript US Presidents 1945 – 1981
Thomas Dewey (R) 1945-1953Estes Kefauver (D) 1953-1957 [1]
Harold Stassen (R) 1957-1961
Lyndon Johnson (D) 1961–1965 (assassinated)
Joseph Kennedy Junior (D) 1965-1973 [2]
Walter Mondale (D) 1973-1977 [3]
Nelson Rockefeller (R) 1977-1985 [4]
[1] Kefauver and Stassen are both men who tried to get their party nomination IOTL but fell short. Here they succeed but Stassen is condemned to be seen as an also ran as a president, Kefauver will be remembered, but not for anything that will endear him to future generations. As far as successful Generals running for the Presidency, well ill-judged campaigns by Douglas MacArthur and George Patton definitely put both parties off that idea.
[2] Not going to go into any detail here about what happens with Joe Kennedy Junior and LBJ as there is an entire other postscript will cover all of that.
[3] Suffice to say that Kennedy was popular enough for another Democrat to follow him and the party wanted a safe pair of hands, so Mondale gets the nod.
[4] The USA is looking for a change from the Democratic Party in the White House, but they aren’t about to embrace radicals like Ronald Reagan.
[5] And the man who is most obviously missing from this list? Richard Nixon made it to the senate but without HUAC and no Alger Hiss drama he never rose to prominence and ultimately there was a scandal over him having the office of his psychiatrist burgled in 1968 that ended his career.
It's interesting to note that the Republican shift to the Right never happens in this timeline.
Garrison
Donor
My idea is that the USA is more middle of the road than OTL. Without HUAC and Vietnam the 1950s effectively last for 20 years, which will be discussed in more detail in the overview of US history after the war.
That helps prevent the GOP from being a problem for the USA's diplomatic relations.