John F. Kennedy assassinated...during his second term?

[Historyman 14]

More of a thought experiment, but what if JFK is never gunned down in Dallas, lives and wins the 1964 United States presidential election, only to be instead kill in say 1967 in a manner that mirrors his OTL death.

So...what next? Would LBJ be President, or would Lyndon B. Johnson been dropped from the Bobby Baker scandal? What would Kennedy had accomplish,and not accomplish in his second term? His legacy now, and now the 1968 Elections?

 

[DougM]

Perhaps some of the helo effect would be diminished as you would have several more years of his actually being president too judge him on and thus perhaps we would get a more realistic view of his job as president. Vs the overblown legend he is usually seen as today.

 

[Lalli]

JFK planned to drop LBJ so him wouldn't become president. Probably most notable change would be with Vietnam.

Perhaps some of the helo effect would be diminished as you would have several more years of his actually being president too judge him on and thus perhaps we would get a more realistic view of his job as president. Vs the overblown legend he is usually seen as today.

Very true. He wouldn't be seen such martyr as in OTL and there might be more criticism over his actions.

 

[Historyman 14]

Perhaps some of the helo effect would be diminished as you would have several more years of his actually being president too judge him on and thus perhaps we would get a more realistic view of his job as president. Vs the overblown legend he is usually seen as today.

JFK planned to drop LBJ so him wouldn't become president. Probably most notable change would be with Vietnam.



Very true. He wouldn't be seen such martyr as in OTL and there might be more criticism over his actions.

A JFK that still killed in office would still create a certain martyrdom and idealist, but yeah it would still be fairly diminished and a lot more baggage to follow him.

I can only wonder who would be the new VP. I know some people said Kennedy would seek another Southern Conservative to try and fill the place left by Johnson. Like say Albert Gore Sr or Stuart Symington.

The same for how Vietnam is turning out in the meantime. (If Kennedy kept it as it was in 63, advisers + limited ground commitment.) Or we still facing a escalation.

 

[DougM]

I suspect that JFK would slowly increase the participation in Vietnam. Maybe not as fast as LBJ but I think it would creep up.

I am also mot convinced he would replace LBJ. Yes I know they were not seeing eye to eye but LBJ was picked for a reason and those reasons still remain. And not a lot of great options to fill those reasons. Plus the old bit about not changing horses in mid stream.

And yea he would get a halo from getting killed but a couple more years is a couple more years of his doing something so we will have more actual examples of his presidency than we have iotl.
And if he doe’s begin the escalation of Vietnam then we can eliminate the way he currently gets off scot free for starting that debacle. And he will at least share the blame for it. Yes LBJ pushed up but JFK DID start it. So he should get some blame but hardly ever does.

In truth JFK was a middle level president. He messed up many things including the Bay of Pigs (either support it or cancel it) that resulted indirectly in the Missile Crisis. And he didn’t handle that very well either. Yes it turned out ok. But his decisions had little effect on it turning out well. He got us into the Vietnam mass (well mostly) He picked a BAD VP in LBJ.
Several of his Staff were just not good at their jobs. Heck it can be argued that we are living with the ripples of his secretary of defense’s stupid policies even today as far as military hardware goes.
And even the Moon landing by 1969 was not as great an accomplishment as it is often credited as being.
1st be setting the date he forced a huge unsustainable expenditure on a plan and hardware that was chosen to meat a deadline vs being the best choice available.
2nd It resulted in other avenues of research and development being slowed or cancelled that may have been better.
3rd he was even reconsidering the moon mission himself before he paced away.
4th it turned Nasa into an agency that was used to huge budgets and massive costs and once that budget was cut to reasonable level NASA whad no institutional history of being able to work with smaller budgets long term. This is at least in part responsible for the mess that was the shuttle and the bigger mess that has been the attempt to replace the shuttle.
5th when Vietnam (which he got us into) got so expensive his “moon shot” project started to have its budget cut in stupid ways that saved little but cost us the last few landings and resulted in decades of mismanagement.

So i think if you give JFK a few more years to “work” His reputation will take a pretty big hit as a lot of the messes and reproductions will more directly be attributed to him

While I think LBJ was the worst president in the last 3/4 of the 20th century I do think he was in an unfortunate situation as he was stuck dealing with a lot messes of JFK making and still had to more or less go along with much of JFKs plans/goals as he could not be seen to be “betraying “ the dead JFK. So he gets the blame for this as well. For example.. ”Saint JFK would never have made the mess of Vietnam that LBJ did” is something you regularly hear despite there being absolutely NO evidence of that and what other examples we have do not paint a good picture of how JFK handled that type of situation and as stated JFK did start it, Also when someone did turn out more or less alright that JFK started (say the Moon landings and the space race) then JFK gets the credit.
So LBJ was screwed. If it worked it was JFKs idea, if it failed it was LBJ screwing it up that caused it to fail.

So frankly a year to two or three more will only make JFKs stock get worse. But whomever is his VP will get all the blame as the Democrats look to distance the party and their boy hero from things that the population ate large is not happy with (cough Vietnam, cough)

But JFK is the “golden child” and will not suffer the full blame for his actions if he is killed. And if his brothers are still active in the party everyone will try doubly hard to keep JFKs legend intact.
And if one of his brothers is killed as well then this pretty much assures Saint JFK.
Heck look at how they spin the PT-109 bit to make him look like a hero. And no one ever comments on or asks questions about how the PT boat under his command was sunk in the first place.

But the longer he is in office the more real examples we have of his leadership and the closer to reality his reputation will be.