I do tend to believe that RFK, had he even won the nomination (which wasn't certain by any means), could have stopped Nixon. Whether the entire era would have been different is hard to say, though. I imagine that everything from 1980 forward might have been exactly the same, considering what a charismatic figure Reagan was.

I do tend to believe that RFK, had he even won the nomination (which wasn't certain by any means), could have stopped Nixon. Whether the entire era would have been different is hard to say, though. I imagine that everything from 1980 forward might have been exactly the same, considering what a charismatic figure Reagan was.

I do tend to believe that RFK, had he even won the nomination (which wasn't certain by any means), could have stopped Nixon. Whether the entire era would have been different is hard to say, though. I imagine that everything from 1980 forward might have been exactly the same, considering what a charismatic figure Reagan was.

Essentially, we're itching about Marty McFly's alternate universe here, but I have to think the Kennedys would have been undone anyway, not with a bullet, but with their secrets.

In short, I don't believe that the U.S. would have taken this disastrous turn to the right if the Kennedys had lived.

Just wondering: do you still feel that had JFK, and subsequently RFK, not been assassinated, America would be different. I'm not being confrontational, and you'll see where I'm driving in a moment, it's just that a lot of the '60s kids had this idea and I'd like to hear how you felt things might have changed for the better.

For myself, any scenario that would have seen less of a crisis on American grounds could have been an improvement. The country went into a group Post Traumatic Stress situation and, much worse, murder as a political tool seemed so much easier to implement once the president was taken out. Before then, presidents of the modern age seemed to be invincible. Sure, there were assassinations, but that all seemed past-tense, high school book reports on Abraham Lincoln and such. JFK's murder was so public, and was carried off so easily, a militia of psychotics were galvanized by the example. Had JFK not been shot in the head, and had he taken the bullets (single bullet theory, my ass) in the shoulders, the tactic would not have seemed effective. The chain would have been broken, Oswald wouldn't have been shot by Ruby in retaliation, RFK wouldn't have ascended to the national spotlight & target and maybe, just maybe, it wouldn't have seemed feasible to blow away Martin Luther King on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.

Maybe.

But that doesn't change the Nixon problem. Showing how desperately Pres. Nixon was trying to keep his power during Watergate, I have to believe that side would have come out earlier had JFK lived. As puritanical as the US might be now, the political world was even worse back then. The Kennedys would have been run out of town on a rail, none of Camelot's promises to come true. Nixon would have been sent packing too because he would have violated rule 1 of Fight Club – in this case, you do not expose that which everyone in the club was doing. Dick the Snitch would have been sunk, but I have to believe his twisted ambition would never have made him cognizant enough to not follow through.

The point – while I certainly would have loved to have been born into a world where the blood of our leaders wasn't shed so callously and freely, I don't think the future for the Kennedys would have been any rosier.

Damn, this was a long comment!