NationStates Jolt Archive

I was reading this (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6309127.stm), and I began to wonder, "what if Bobby hadn't been assinated and went on to be President?"

And I'm coming ablank. Any thoughts?

first thing that comes to my mind is that nixon would have whined about losing and would have left public life completely with a "you wont have nixon to kick around anymore and this time i really mean it"

first thing that comes to my mind is that nixon would have whined about losing and would have left public life completely with a "you wont have nixon to kick around anymore and this time i really mean it"

And then Gerry Frod wouldn't have become President and lost to Jimmy Carter. Let's see, RFK serves from 69 to 77 and then who? Hard to say. Maybe carter but that seems unlikely. Who would RFK have had as his VP?

US presidency does seem to be a family thing...
George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, maybe Hilary Clinton, possibly Jeb Bush...

And then Gerry Frod wouldn't have become President and lost to Jimmy Carter. Let's see, RFK serves from 69 to 77 and then who? Hard to say. Maybe carter but that seems unlikely. Who would RFK have had as his VP?

carter only got elected because of nixon.

rfk would probably not have lasted until '77 thats too many years of democratic presidency in a row. gerald ford wouldnt have run.... geez who would have run as a republican in '72?

rfk would have needed a more conservative running mate... someone from the south... how about george wallace? lololol.

carter only got elected because of nixon.

rfk would probably not have lasted until '77 thats too many years of democratic presidency in a row. gerald ford wouldnt have run.... geez who would have run as a republican in '72?

rfk would have needed a more conservative running mate... someone from the south... how about george wallace? lololol.

I can't see Bobby being defeated after only one term. And Wallace? No way, the Kennedys couldn't stand Wallace. Damn, it so long ago, I can't remember who the main players in the Democratic Party were.

The Republican in 72? If Nixon's defeat was close, maybe him. Maybe Rockefeller (the GOP actually had liberals back then).

I can't see Bobby being defeated after only one term. And Wallace? No way, the Kennedys couldn't stand Wallace. Damn, it so long ago, I can't remember who the main players in the Democratic Party were.

The Republican in 72? If Nixon's defeat was close, maybe him. Maybe Rockefeller (the GOP actually had liberals back then).

politics makes strange bedfellows.

16 years of democratic presidents is just too much. besides, bobby would have had to deal with vietnam and no matter what he did, and i assume he would have gotten us out before the '72 elections, many people would be upset about it.

but the republicans would have had to have had a good candidate. spiro agnew is probably out given his ethics problems. rockerfeller, maybe. im thinking some republican governor but none spring to mind.

Well, let's see. Vietnam probably would have been pretty much the same story - a disaster blamed largely on Johnson, and RFK would have been charged with cleaning that mess up. He would have done a reasonable job, but he would have been elected in 1968 (and re-elected in 1972) simply because he's who he is. Perhaps a more conservative fellow would have been elected VP, but it's inconsequential.

The Republicans would have won in 1976. I'll venture than Ronald Reagan is elected, with George Bush as his VP. However, unlike how we know the Reagan regime, his Presidency is plagued with problems. Toward the end of his first term in office, the Iranians begin to rise up against the Shah; he sends in troops to try to quell the uprising, but it proves to be challenging. People immediately fear that Iran is another Vietnam; this coupled with the stagflation of the late 1970s means one thing - Reagan's a one-term President remembered poorly. He retires in 1981 and occasionally does some PSAs but is largely absent from public life. A big factor in this - John Hinckley Jr. doesn't attempt to assassinate Reagan as of yet.

So who gets elected? Two possibilities - Jerry Brown or Ted Kennedy. There was no real possibility of Kennedy running in 1972 against RFK, and he refused in our timeline in 1976, so I'll say that the American people don't put him through, and Jerry Brown gets the nod as well as the state of California. He gets elected, he gets shot by John Hinckley Jr., he survives, he's popular and gets re-elected in 1984. He doesn't create a culture where raising taxes is a sin, but he's not exactly keen on raising taxes himself, even issuing a small tax cut.

In 1988, the Republicans come back with Senator Robert Dole, who runs against Walter Mondale. Mondale's no Dukakis and doesn't roll around in a tank, and he doesn't argue fervently against the death penalty. He ends up elected, and he ends up getting a second term when America doesn't want to elect Pat Robertson in 1992. His Vice President, Lloyd Bentsen, gets the nomination in 1996, but by now, people are thinking that the Democrats are getting a little smug, and they elect Lamar Alexander, running with Jack Kemp, as President in 1996. George W. Bush is out of the national spotlight at this point as Governor of Texas; his brother Jeb still gets elected Governor of Florida in 1998.

Fast-forward to September 10, 2001. Alexander is still President, having defeated Al Gore in 2000. John Ashcroft is out of politics, Donald Rumsfeld is out of the Cabinet, and the notion of invading Iraq to topple Saddam's regime is deemed "insane" by the President, even after the events of September 11. With Alexander in charge, the plane bound for the Pentagon is shot out of the sky, but both planes bound for the WTC hit their targets. A massive investigation into Flight 77 is launched, and toward the end of his second term, Alexander is cleared of all wrongdoing and hailed as a fantastic wartime President. The Taliban is out of Afghanistan, and the country appears to be run bu a pseudo-militaristic regime that is strictly secular. The opium trade is snuffed out, so the Afghan people are plunged into abject poverty, but the beginnings of infrastructure are starting to pop up. Some meet popular resistance, and in the three years between 9/11 and Alexander's departure from office, about 600 Americans die in Afghanistan.

In 2004, John Edwards assumes the Presidency without the spectre of Iraq, as we have. Iran's still hostile but weaker from the effects of the defeat at the hands of Iraq in the 1980s; Iraq dominates the region and has had to be removed from Kuwait twice, not just once. However, they are seen as containable.

snip
You know I just noticed your "location" and I demand that you return my car you ruffian;)

Mondale's no Dukakis and doesn't roll around in a tank, and he doesn't argue fervently against the death penalty. He ends up elected, and he ends up getting a second term when America doesn't want to elect Pat Robertson in 1992.

Wait, wait, wait. Pat Robertson? The jackass who's on The 700 Club?

You know, I've thought about that a lot lately. He seems like an intelligent and decent man, and probably would have made a great president.

Some good videos about him:
Complete recording of his impromptu speech after MLK's assassination (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gigsZH5HlJA)
The Final Campaign (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvFx1H50a7Y)

Eerily prescient quote: "Our country is in danger not just from foreign enemies but above all from our own misguided policies. This war must be ended, and in my judgment it can be ended, and it does not involve giving up, but it does involve not continuing to follow the bankrupt policy that we're following at the present time."

Wait, wait, wait. Pat Robertson? The jackass who's on The 700 Club?

Yes, that Pat Robertson. The same Pat Robertson who ran for the Republican nomination in 1988 and might have actually had a shot at winning. And with Dukakis screwing around for the Democrats, we might have been looking at President Robertson from 1988-1992...and even worse, he might have been re-elected in 1992, considering he could easily play the moral high ground over an adulterous weasel like Clinton.

I wonder if he's more hawkish than the first Bush...and if Iraq as we know it now would have happened in 1991 instead of 2003. We would be looking at an extremely hostile Middle East; that's for sure...and if it lasted long enough, I might have been drafted (though it would have to last a decade and have amped up to Vietnam levels. The first Bush wasn't cracy enough to do that. Was Robertson? I don't know.)

It's easier to be certain about what wouldn't have happened than about what would have happened. RFK's assassination is probably what allowed Nixon to win. Nixon's crimes are what allowed Carter to win. Carter's inability to handle the Iranian hostage crisis is what allowed Reagan to win. Reagan's legacy led to the presidency of George H. W. Bush, and without Daddy there would be no George W. Bush in the White House right now. Clinton? Who knows? Maybe he'd still have run for president and won, maybe not. But the entire sequence of U.S. presidencies would have been different.

And no, I don't think Pat Robertson would have ever won the Presidency under any imaginable circumstances. I still have some minute amount of faith in the American people.

US presidency does seem to be a family thing...
George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, maybe Hilary Clinton, possibly Jeb Bush...

I think by now the Bush name is sufficiently tarnished that we've seen the last of them for a generation or so. I think if Jeb Bush ran the only votes he'd get outside of Texas would be drunken Frat guys who thought they were betting against Coors.

It's easier to be certain about what wouldn't have happened than about what would have happened. RFK's assassination is probably what allowed Nixon to win. Nixon's crimes are what allowed Carter to win. Carter's inability to handle the Iranian hostage crisis is what allowed Reagan to win. Reagan's legacy led to the presidency of George H. W. Bush, and without Daddy there would be no George W. Bush in the White House right now. Clinton? Who knows? Maybe he'd still have run for president and won, maybe not. But the entire sequence of U.S. presidencies would have been different.

And no, I don't think Pat Robertson would have ever won the Presidency under any imaginable circumstances. I still have some minute amount of faith in the American people.

Clinton would probably have still come along. He rose pretty independently. But Clinton would not have been able to beat Bush if Perot hadn't run as a spoiler, and Perot probably wouldn't have run if not in protest of Reagan's Voodoo Economics (Bush's name for it, not mine.)

I think by now the Bush name is sufficiently tarnished that we've seen the last of them for a generation or so. I think if Jeb Bush ran the only votes he'd get outside of Texas would be drunken Frat guys who thought they were betting against Coors.

One can only hope. However, remember that there are still people who think GWB is doing a great job - a bit under 30% of the voting population, according to recent polls. And most everybody agrees that Jeb is smarter than George - he's the one who was supposed to be President, but the timing got screwed up and the neocons wound up with George Junior instead. And a lot would depend on who would be running against him - suppose, say, Hillary Clinton, who a lot of people would vote against even if Satan himself was running against her. (A Jeb-Hillary race is not a campaign I'd ever want to see, btw; I'd be looking for any third party I could get.)

Hopefully, though, we'll be spared ever finding out if I'm right about this. The Democratic race this time around looks to be between Hillary (who has the money), Obama (who has the charisma) and Edwards (who has the message). The Republican race is far more interesting. McCain seems determined to run on a pro-war platform, which isn't going to win him any friends; the religious right is stuck with Romney, who is both a Mormon and from Massachusetts, both serious strikes against him; Giuliani has too much of a history and not enough of a conservative base; and the neocons are actually talking about Newt Gingrich, the only guy they have who cannot be linked to the current administration. It looks wide open from here...

I was reading this (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6309127.stm), and I began to wonder, "what if Bobby hadn't been assinated and went on to be President?"

And I'm coming ablank. Any thoughts?

I think a much more interesting question to ponder is "what if Bobby had been assassinated and went on to be President anyway?"

I think a much more interesting question to ponder is "what if Bobby had been assassinated and went on to be President anyway?"

But a Zombie President would leave awful stains on the Oval Office...

But a Zombie President would leave awful stains on the Oval Office...

We had Reagan with no problems.