1984: Reagan vs JFK

[Alben Barkley]

Without actually dying and being martyred, I find it hard to imagine JFK’s legend/mystique is quite as powerful as it was. Especially after he’s been back in the public spotlight as a senator for six years. Hell, given all the health problems he already had, it would be somewhat surprising if he even made it this far in good enough shape to run again.

But just rolling with it, this is more or less what I think would be JFK’s best case scenario:

Reagan would simply be too tough to beat that year. And a guy who was president 20 years earlier simply wouldn’t be as special as the mythical figure JFK became after his death.

I do think, however, that if JFK was wounded in the assassination attempt but stayed in office, he would have won a massive landslide in 1964. Perhaps even bigger than LBJ’s.

[Alben Barkley]

1. Kennedy wouldn't gain the same mythical status if he survived

2. If he is able to recover, he would run in 1968, 1972, or 1976. No one is going to try to return to the presidency after 20 years. The best bet is returning in 1968 to defeat Nixon.

3. If he is injured, he'll probably leave it to Bobby or Ted to run

4. JFK was too smart to run in 1984 in a suicide run

5. The country was a lot harsher to disabled people. FDR had to hide his wheel chair. JFK hid his many illinesses. JFK might have been resecpeytd but the countyr would have been too wary to vote for someone shot in the head even if they had a full injury

This is kind of overblown. Pictures of FDR in his wheelchair were actually published in the extremely prominent Life magazine while he was president. It's true that he tried to avoid presenting himself in a wheelchair to the public as much as possible, but it was at least an open secret that he was crippled, and the reality is that probably most of the nation knew that he had a debilitating ailment of some kind. They nonetheless elected him to four terms.

And my thinking here was that Oswald would have missed the fatal headshot, and only hit JFK the first time which he subsequently recovered from. There is literally no physical way possible to survive half of your head being blown off, so it's even more fantastical to assume JFK somehow survived the headshot.