How would you, the US, and the world be different today had Nixon been declared the winner over Kennedy in 1960?

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Conventional political wisdom says the Chicago Democrats fixed the 1960 election.

Kennedy went on to be assassinated and become the most memorable president of the modern age, abeit posthumously.

Nixon, on the other hand, became the only president to resign and be pardoned amid allegations of criminal wrongdoing.

How would you, the US, and the world be different today had Nixon been declared the winner over Kennedy in 1960?

-- S. A. Qweschun (president@whitehouse.guv), November 09, 2000

Answers

I think we would have gotten out of Nam earlier..for starters. I mean, Nixon tried to bomb the crap out of them, but he realized the futileness of that quickly enough. Inflation would have began sooner, but would have ended sooner. The cold war would have ended sooner, but would he still have bullied his enemies by labeling them "commies" all the while?

Kennedy would still be alive today ..that's another I can think of.

-- kritter (kritter@adelphia.net), November 09, 2000.


Wouldn't be any different.

It would be a lot different though if Kennedy had not been killed and had been allowed to make positive changes as president.

-- (much@more.peace), November 10, 2000.


kritter agreed with that. I also think that we wouldn't have run our military into the ground during the cubian missile crisis. Nixon would have handled it much differently. I think we were challenged because we had a young prez who was thought to be weak. Nixon would have had a firmer hand in it. The arms race would not have gone as far as it did.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), November 10, 2000.

Marilyn Monroe, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Jack Ruby might still be alive and Sirhan Sirhan would be the lead singer for the Milli Vanilli reunion tour.

-- I (h@ve.spoken), November 10, 2000.

I was pooping my diapers at that time...

-- dinosaur (dinosaur@williams-net.com), November 10, 2000.


How the hell should we know? "What would things be like if they'd been different?" is one of those nonsense questions you need a few drinks before answering. At least we can't blame Nixon for setting the precedent of "un-conceding" a close election.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), November 10, 2000.

Only very minor differences. One minor difference is we would have had none of the civil rights legislation that was passed under Lyndon. Of course there are others, but these are just little things. :<)

Best wishes,,,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), November 10, 2000.


Z:

You can't know that. Ideas tend to ripen when their time comes, regardless of who's in power. The timing might change a little, but not much. Even the most poll-deaf politicians have their ears glued to the ground to a degree that would astonish you. Their pasts wouldn't have happened without this special 6th sense, and their futures depend on it.

Hey, you're a scientist. Look back at scientific history, and you find that nearly *every* major discovery or development was concurrent in time (though widely separated geographically) between two or more discoverers. Politics works much the same. When an idea is ready to be born, it gets born.

I don't mean to sound mystical. I'm just looking at what's happened in both political and scientific worlds.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), November 10, 2000.


Flint:

Yep, you are right, I can't know that, but as you said, this is like a party game. My experience was, that Lyndon got this passed at that time because of the national feeling that this is what Kennedy wanted. If Nixon had been President, it wouldn't have been done. So it may have been delayed a decade or more. What would that have meant? Who knows? Once again it is a party game. I know that the very good, very black employ that I depend on to run my operation would probably not be here. But someone like her would probably be here in the next generation, by your analysis.

When you come to a fork in the road and you choose one path to follow, you never know what would have happened if you had followed the other path. You dance with the one you brung.

Best wishes,,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), November 10, 2000.


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