The Best Man? LBJ in 1960

I'm watching The Best Man - a more attractive Adlai Stevenson (played by Henry Fonda) is facing of against an even more evil John F Kennedy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_Man_(play)

In the course of events each man gets some dirt on the other and attempts to use it to force the other to withdraw from the race.
This set me thinking: what if LBJ had got hold of some proof of JFK's catastrophic bad health? Could he have used it to force him to withdraw, and then make a heavy play at the convention and secured the nomination?
How would LBJ have worked out if he was elected in 1960?

Thoughts?
I'm going to read my Dallek Biogs for more ideas....
 
I'm watching The Best Man - a more attractive Adlai Stevenson (played by Henry Fonda) is facing of against an even more evil John F Kennedy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_Man_(play)

In the course of events each man gets some dirt on the other and attempts to use it to force the other to withdraw from the race.
This set me thinking: what if LBJ had got hold of some proof of JFK's catastrophic bad health? Could he have used it to force him to withdraw, and then make a heavy play at the convention and secured the nomination?
How would LBJ have worked out if he was elected in 1960?

Thoughts?
I'm going to read my Dallek Biogs for more ideas....

He tried IOTL, even uttering the word "Addison's." It didn't work because the media played defense for Kennedy (neither the first nor the last time that happened), not done properly, and the JFK camp's slamming it as gutter politics. Addison's was not well known to the general public, and JFK didn't look unhealthy in public- far from it. An untrained eye couldn't tell that he had zero spinal flex and therefore could not put on his own socks or barely roll over in bed, for example.
 
Also: JFK's bad health was not "catastrophic." Addison's is best compared to diabetes. It shortens your lifespan and imposes certain lifestyle restrictions, but entirely manageable via regular treatment (which included daily self-administered rectal injections) and exercise.
 
Well Addison's wasn't Kennedy's only health problem - according to the Robert Dallek biography he was also suffering from colitis and chronic prostatitis, and compression fractures of the spine - which needed heavy pain meds. At one point during campaigning in Connecticut his medicine bag was lost - what if it became public knowledge he needed so many pills to keep going? An alternative POD - Kennedy develops some major complication with his existing health problems in spring of 64 and has to drop out? I don't really care how it gets done, but stop JFK! LBJ for Pres in 1960 - what happens?
 
Well Addison's wasn't Kennedy's only health problem - according to the Robert Dallek biography he was also suffering from colitis and chronic prostatitis, and compression fractures of the spine - which needed heavy pain meds. At one point during campaigning in Connecticut his medicine bag was lost - what if it became public knowledge he needed so many pills to keep going? An alternative POD - Kennedy develops some major complication with his existing health problems in spring of 64 and has to drop out? I don't really care how it gets done, but stop JFK! LBJ for Pres in 1960 - what happens?

Media will not play ball, because these were the final years where they played defense lawyer rather than prosecutor vis-a-vis politicians. LBJ's health was just as bad- he came within a hair's breadth of dying in '55 and had chronic cardiological problems. His health was in much more danger of suddenly snapping than JFK's TBH.

If LBJ in '60: you get the GS a few years early, no CMC, Vietnam is anyone's guess- perhaps he picks Abrams over Westy in '65 as nearly happened IOTL. Earlier push for civil rights.
 
Well Addison's wasn't Kennedy's only health problem - according to the Robert Dallek biography he was also suffering from colitis and chronic prostatitis, and compression fractures of the spine - which needed heavy pain meds. At one point during campaigning in Connecticut his medicine bag was lost - what if it became public knowledge he needed so many pills to keep going?

Yeah, and Kennedy's medical treatment included heavy doses of god-only-knows-what prescribed by a very unethical doctor who was later stripped of his licence IIRC.

At some point the media would intervene if things take a turn for the worse. If JFK is bedridden for more than a few days, if he's taken on a stretcher to hospital because Dr Feelgood has overdosed the senator--then Kennedy risks becoming a spectacle ala Governor Long of Louisiana. Okay, probably not that extreme, but I don't see how JFK's run isn't totally screwed if his health collapses before the convention. It's not like there aren't Republican newspapers and magazines in 1960 that wouldn't happily pull back the veil should Kennedy appear really, really sick to the press corp.

If his health collapses after the convention? That's a pretty crazy scenario.
 
Yeah, and Kennedy's medical treatment included heavy doses of god-only-knows-what prescribed by a very unethical doctor who was later stripped of his licence IIRC.

At some point the media would intervene if things take a turn for the worse. If JFK is bedridden for more than a few days, if he's taken on a stretcher to hospital because Dr Feelgood has overdosed the senator--then Kennedy risks becoming a spectacle ala Governor Long of Louisiana. Okay, probably not that extreme, but I don't see how JFK's run isn't totally screwed if his health collapses before the convention. It's not like there aren't Republican newspapers and magazines in 1960 that wouldn't happily pull back the veil should Kennedy appear really, really sick to the press corp.

If his health collapses after the convention? That's a pretty crazy scenario.

Among Dr. Feelgood's prescriptions was marijuana- confirmed by an FBI lab test ordered by RFK. "I don't care if it's horse piss, it works."

After the convention: LBJ replaces him, picking Symington as the new VP by a quick DNC vote. JFK's political career is over if his health publicly collapses like that. The old man throws Bobby into the arena whether he likes it or not- that was always the plan if JFK lost.
 
After the convention: LBJ replaces him, picking Symington as the new VP by a quick DNC vote.

Maybe, though if JFK's health is really, really shaky LBJ would try extra hard to expose it before or during the convention. The reason Johnson wasn't able to do this in OTL was because Kennedy's health was so thoroughly well managed. Though I'm not a physician, so who knows if some otherwise minor illness (an infection, or the flu, for example) couldn't just come out of nowhere to utterly wreck him.

We're not supposed to speculate about conspiracies, but I have a feeling the Kennedys and the party would develop some cover story that involves Jack being struck down by an illness that either doesn't involve any pre-existing conditions; or perhaps they say it's actually a sudden, totally unexpected recurrence of wartime tropical illness. Something like a stroke, or maybe malaria related heart attack.

In which case we never discover the truth until (if) someone like Seymour Hersh reports about it many years later (I think it's Hersh who was the first credible writer to expose Kennedy's addictions).

Richard Nixon better not go ahead and suffer his own historical minor illness during the campaign, not unless he wants an already anxious nation to deliver a strong electoral mandate to LBJ. Which would be ironic, as Nixon was physically the fittest POTUS since Truman.
 
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