Without Dallas: John F. Kennedy and the Vietnam War

What if the most famous murder in history had not taken place on November 22, 1963? With a life and a presidency ended prematurely by an assassin's bullets, there has been an understandable impulse on the part of historians to consider what would have happened to Kennedy had he lived beyond Dal...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American diplomacy 2020-11, p.1-15
Main Author: White, Mark
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alternative histories
Appointments & personnel changes
Assassinations & assassination attempts
Cold War
Diplomatic & consular services
Evaluation
Foreign policy
Johnson, Lyndon Baines (1908-1973)
Kennedy, John F
Leadership
President of the United States
Presidents
Race relations
Vietnam War
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Summary:What if the most famous murder in history had not taken place on November 22, 1963? With a life and a presidency ended prematurely by an assassin's bullets, there has been an understandable impulse on the part of historians to consider what would have happened to Kennedy had he lived beyond Dallas. Equally understandable, historians have commented on this issue so as to bolster their interpretation of Kennedy's presidency. Kennedy's 'Camelot' supporters, including Arthur Schlesinger and Theodore Sorensen, have suggested that he would have achieved great things. Schlesinger wrote: "He had so little time: it was as if Jackson died before the nullification controversy and the Bank war, as if Lincoln had died six months after Gettysburg or Franklin Roosevelt at the end of 1935 or Truman before the Marshall Plan." Robert Dallek, the most influential Kennedy scholar in recent years, has also considered what would have happened in a second term for JFK, concluding that he would have played a commendable role in reducing Cold War tensions. Kennedy's detractors take a different view. "The dark side of the president's personal and official activities," claimed historian Thomas Reeves, "might have ruined Kennedy's second term and brought the nation another kind of grief and mourning than that which tragically did ensue." Of all the issues that would have determined Kennedy's legacy and reputation had he not been killed, the most important is Vietnam. Lyndon Baines Johnson, twenty months after becoming president, took the United States into a full-scale land war in Vietnam that became a disaster. Would Kennedy have made the same decision?
ISSN:1094-8120
1094-8120