What if JFK and LBJ's fates were reversed.

The_Russian

The_Russian

I don't know if this has been done before, but I'm wondering. What if LBJ won the democratic nomination, chose JFK as his VP, beat Nixon, and died in 1963 at Dallas. What might have changed. Would the Vietnam war still happen or be as bad as OTL. Who would be president in 1969, etc.
 

desmirelle

Would it still be the Cuban Missile Crisis? Or the Cuban War? Or the permanent presence of Soviet firepower off the coast of the USA?
 

Grand Admiral Thrawn

Donor
Would LBJ be in Dallas in 1963? Thought JFK was there campaigning for the election in 1964- LBJ shouldn't need to be. Course, Oswald could shoot him in D.C. (or more likely that general). And didn't Khrushchev think JFK was weak from the Vienna meeting? Doubt LBJ would convey that feeling, which affects the CMC a lot.
 

UCB79

We might have gone full-bore into Vietnam
earlier ITTL than we did IOTL, as LBJ was far
more "can do" than JFK(he was also haunted
by the fear the Republicans would blame him
for "losing" Vietnam the way they pinned the
same label on Truman re China). OTOH, I
could see him backing the civil Rights move-
ment far more firmly than JFK.
 

Zheng He

UCB79 said:
We might have gone full-bore into Vietnam
earlier ITTL than we did IOTL, as LBJ was far
more "can do" than JFK(he was also haunted
by the fear the Republicans would blame him
for "losing" Vietnam the way they pinned the
same label on Truman re China). OTOH, I
could see him backing the civil Rights move-
ment far more firmly than JFK.
Click to expand...

On the other hand, LBJ will not have the same group of cabinet picks (likely no Mr. Ford Motor Company as SECDEF) so how we approach Vietnam and a whole host of other problems will be different.
 

Don Corleone

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Zheng He said:
On the other hand, LBJ will not have the same group of cabinet picks (likely no Mr. Ford Motor Company as SECDEF) so how we approach Vietnam and a whole host of other problems will be different.
Click to expand...

Now that is the line of inquiry, speculate on Johnson cabinet picks.
 

UCB79

raharris1973 said:
Now that is the line of inquiry, speculate on Johnson cabinet picks.
Click to expand...

A very good idea! OK- Clark Clifford, the
famed Washington attorney, prominent
former advisor to Truman, & good LBJ friend
as Attorney General. William Fullbright
Secretary of State. As a sop to liberal Demo-
crats, LBJ would have done what JFK did
IOTL- make Adlai Stevenson Ambassador to
the UN(& then just like JFK, ignore him).
 
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Maoistic

Banned
This is just going to devolve into another flame war about how Oliver Stone was right about JFK being an anti-war president that would have stopped the invasion of Vietnam, isn't it?
 

Maoistic

Banned
And to be clear, Oliver Stone is a conspiracy theorist kook who doesn't know what he is talking about. Kennedy was just as warmongering as Truman, Eisenhower, LBJ and Nixon, and he in fact escalated the Vietnam War.
 

UCB79

Maoistic said:
This is just going to devolve into another flame war about how Oliver Stone was right about JFK being an anti-war president that would have stopped the invasion of Vietnam, isn't it?
Click to expand...

I sure hope not! (Stone is a good director but it is just impossible to say that JFK IOTL would have kept us out of Vietnam- @ the time of his death he himself apparently was unsure what he would do over
there next)
 

Maoistic

Banned
desmirelle said:
Would it still be the Cuban Missile Crisis? Or the Cuban War? Or the permanent presence of Soviet firepower off the coast of the USA?
Click to expand...
The fact that the US immediately kicked the Soviets out of Cuba shows that the USSR had no capacity to have a permanent military presence anywhere near the American Atlantic. It would have been exactly the same if any other president was there instead of Kennedy.
 

Maoistic

Banned
UCB79 said:
I sure hope not! (Stone is a good director but it is just impossible to say that JFK IOTL would have kept us out of Vietnam- @ the time of his death he himself apparently was unsure what he would do over
there next)
Click to expand...
Oliver Stone is not a good filmmaker by any stretch of the word. He is just another Hollywood liberal. Even his "JFK" is full of traditional Hollywood liberal jingoistic cliches about the US.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Maoistic said:
This is just going to devolve into another flame war about how Oliver Stone was right about JFK being an anti-war president that would have stopped the invasion of Vietnam, isn't it?
Click to expand...
There is only one person derailing the thread at the moment.

Be a REALLY good idea if they stopped.
 

UCB79

Maoistic said:
The fact that the US immediately kicked the Soviets out of Cuba shows that the USSR had no capacity to have a permanent military presence anywhere near the American Atlantic. It would have been exactly the same if any other president was there instead of Kennedy.
Click to expand...

I could see Johnson handling Castro differ-
ently. JFK IOTL virtually had a personal
vendetta against Fidel, @ least in part be-
cause of the Bay of Pigs which he was stupid
enough to have gotten into. LBJ had no such
animus(assuming of course HE didn't mount
a failed Cuban invasion!)
 
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