WI: JFK post-presidency

Tony Blair.
I think if a living Kennedy turns out like anyone, its Tony Blair. "He had so much promise, why..."

Where's all this HHH succeeding JFK stuff coming from? If - big if - LBJ was still on the ticket, I don't see any possible way he wouldn't run hard for the big seat. It was his life's ambition. And as the sitting veep with extremely deep pocketed friends, he'd have a damn good shot at taking it. He was certainly more of a political realist than HHH. I maintain, though, that Johnson would have been taken off in 1964 due to his lack of control in Texas and his burgeoning personal scandals. Was Humphrey ever mentioned privately by anyone in the administration as a possible replacement? I know Terry Sanford was.

Also man the 60s was a banner age for great three initial Presidential contenders.

I agree with you that Johnson would have been removed in 1964, but even if he hadn't, he recognized that his political career had basically been neutered by the Kennedys. Only Oswald changed that.

Terry Sanford is the most likely replacement, but the thinking from the other thread goes, "well, JFK will probably be as unpopular as OTL JFK in 1968, so Humphrey will get the nomination as the 'savior' of the party." I don't see Sanford having much of a base to run on, since a scenario where Kennedy lives means that Goldwater probably swept the South. So Humphrey'll probably get it.
 
I have serious reservations on the idea of Kennedy replacing Johnson. There were murmurs about it, but it doesn't appear to be more than that, and I do believe Evelyn Lincoln blew an offhand comment out of proportion into a solid plan. Terry Sanford, or at least people who knew him, said that they heard Kennedy might put Sanford on the ticket in 1964, but they said they didn't really think it would happen and didn't take it too seriously*. George Smathers also said that he asked Kennedy if he was going to drop Lyndon over the Bobby Baker issue, and Kennedy replied that dropping Lyndon would look bad because it'd look like he was trying to get away from a scandal when there was no scandal (which comments both on the LBJ in 1964 issue and Kennedy's view on the Bobby Baker scandal as anything damaging)[1].


*http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76234_Page4.html
Caro then describes the treatment of Lincoln by “Kennedy partisans” before and after her book was released as “a case study in reversal,” noting how she was first honored and then dismissed when she dared question the Kennedy line about the 1964 ticket. Without documentation beyond Lincoln’s book, it’s difficult to ascertain Kennedy’s intention.
Terry Sanford, Jr., reached last week by telephone at his Durham, N.C., real-estate development office, said of JFK’s plans for his father: “I have heard that over and over again since I was a kid.”
But the younger Sanford said he had no conclusive proof.
Tom Lambeth, a Sanford gubernatorial aide, also recalled last week that he heard the chatter. He even said he can think back to the day he picked up another Sanford aide, Skipper Bowles (the father of Erskine) at the airport after Bowles had been to the White House.
“Bowes said something about the idea that Terry might be the VP,” Lambeth recalls.
But Lambeth, now 77, said neither Sanford nor Sanford’s staff thought it would come to fruition.
“I do not remember it being something we saw as a serious possibility,” he says.
Lambeth also notes that he had lunch with Lincoln a few times when he moved to Washington in the 70s to work on Capitol Hill and that she was effusive about his old boss.
“Evelyn Lincoln was very fond of Terry Sanford and she was not very fond of LBJ,” says Lambeth. “I think she may have made a casual remark into something more than it was.”
 
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I have serious reservations on the idea of Kennedy replacing Johnson. There were murmurs about it, but it doesn't appear to be more than that, and I do believe Evelyn Lincoln blew an offhand comment out of proportion into a solid plan. Terry Sanford, or at least people who knew him, said that they heard Kennedy might put Sanford on the ticket in 1964, but they said they didn't really think it would happen and didn't take it too seriously*. George Smathers also said that he asked Kennedy if he was going to drop Lyndon over the Bobby Baker issue, and Kennedy replied that dropping Lyndon would look bad because it'd look like he was trying to get away from a scandal when there was no scandal (which comments both on the LBJ in 1964 issue and Kennedy's view on the Bobby Baker scandal as anything damaging)[1].


*http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76234_Page4.html

Agreed. At the end of the day, Kennedy will consider dropping Johnson in favor of Sanford, but won't pull the trigger. Bobby will strongly advocate such a course, but Jack was smart enough to know that it would create an unnecessary distraction and only widen the gulf between the President and Southern Democrats. So Sanford may get a visit to the Oval Office and potentially a visit from the President to North Carolina (just to make Johnson sweat) but there won't be any sort of swap.
 
I see a vague chance of Johnson running in 1968 - it's not impossible, but it's relatively implausible unless he and Kennedy suddenly put their differences aside for a common good - which is just short of a miracle. Now if Johnson did that, and consolidated power in the way recent VP's have, he has a chance, especially since not being president already buys him a few years.

But that would require extra butterflies and I tend to avoid putting much thought into those. Based on OTL, I see Johnson being an expected frontrunner but ultimately choosing not to pursue, realizing his political weakness by 1968, and endorsing Humphrey.
 
I assume ITTL Johnson runs in 1968, I don't know if Bobby does. I see Humphrey winning the nomination and election.

He'd be 60, the same age Truman was when he assumed office, making him among the oldest to serve as president if elected (for reference, the old man Ike assumed office at 62). Johnson had also had a near fatal heart attack in the late 50s. I think there will be concerns related to health and age.

And Kennedy won't support him. Jackie Kennedy once quoted her husband as saying "My God, can you imagine if Lyndon became president?" or something to that effect. Humphrey is a better likelihood. If there is anyone else Kennedy could choose as a successor, feel free to mention them.

Bobby could run, but I don't see how he manages it. The idea comes off to me as very greedy: assuming the chance to be president just because you're the president's brother. I think Bobby would have, or at least it'd be politically better if he achieved elected office and ran at a later date. In this alternate 1968, Robert Kennedy has never held an elected office in his life. His highest achievement will have been becoming Attorney General and Secretary of Defense. I don't see the modern American voter thinking that's up to snuff.
 
George Smathers also said that he asked Kennedy if he was going to drop Lyndon over the Bobby Baker issue, and Kennedy replied that dropping Lyndon would look bad because it'd look like he was trying to get away from a scandal when there was no scandal

Agreed. At the end of the day, Kennedy will consider dropping Johnson in favor of Sanford, but won't pull the trigger. Bobby will strongly advocate such a course, but Jack was smart enough to know that it would create an unnecessary distraction and only widen the gulf between the President and Southern Democrats. So Sanford may get a visit to the Oval Office and potentially a visit from the President to North Carolina (just to make Johnson sweat) but there won't be any sort of swap.

I repeat what I've said before: if the news media can connect some of those petty, small Baker kickback stories, the ones where the money fed into the Johnsons' less-than-ethical ad-selling practices at their Texas TV stations, then there will be explicitly political Baker controversy in 1964. There's at least one such story that did begin to emerge in OTL (on the day Kennedy died, IIRC) with the senate privileges committee hearings, but that went nowhere. Thank you U.S. senate, you old boys club, you.

And the reason this stuff couldn't be teased out by reporters, going over the head of the DC insiders, is because rally round the flag after Dallas, that's why. Presumably this dynamic is absent if Dallas doesn't happen.

So if they feel they have to 1964, there's still plenty of time for the living Presdient Kennedy to direct shame at LBJ, to get him off the ticket. And boy, was shame a great motivator for him when he was in the dumps, emotionally. It doesn't matter if there was no decision reached about his fate IOTL 1963.

He'd go willingly if that Baltimore insurance salesman of his is the source of every second TV comedian's joke in the lead-up to convention season.

Seriously, I don't get the concern from Kennenthusiasts about 'OMG, St Lyndon has to stay on the ticket, he just has to!' In pragmatic terms, he's worth very much less as a VP electoral asset than he was in 1960. And if he goes off the reservaton about Civil Rights, complaining that any failure to pass that bill in the '64 legislative session is a disgrace for the adminstration, he's worth nothing in the South and border states, nothing. He becomes a drag, in fact.

Now, conversely, JFK almost certainly deliberately withheld from his brother the truth about having had a longheld, serious conviction to pick LBJ as running mate at the 1960 convention.

That's not just Caro's conclusion I'm relying on; Schlesinger's 1965 account of Bobby running back and forth between those hotel suites, vainly trying to get Johnson to reject the offer, it only makes sense if Jack was quietly dedicated to that ticket, regardless of his campaign manager's repulsion towards the majority leader; poor Arthur actually writes something along the lines of "I can only surmise JFK had delegated this power to get rid of LBJ off the ticket to his brother," but then Schlesinger doesn't follow up with any details about the nominee being even slightly concerned about his brother failing to exercise this 'power'.

What I'm getting at is this: adding Evelyn Lincoln's comments on top of the events from LA, I see a pattern of Jack Kennedy reserving the right to tell Bobby bupkis, squat, nada about whatever it was he had planned for the bottom of the ticket. In both election cycles.
 
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