My readers tomorrow is November 22, 2011. On this day 48 years ago, John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
I was 15 years of age when it happened and living in Houston. I wish that I had know what was going to happen. I wish I had got on the bus and went 400 or so miles north. I wish I had warned the Secret Service and they had listened to me.
What would have happened afterwards? In my opinion, we would have never had the calamity of Vietnam as we did with Lyndon Johnson and then Richard Nixon. The Civil Rights Act and Medicare would not have passed as long as Kennedy was alive.
I suspect that Kennedy would have been reelected in 1964 as he faced Barry Goldwater and the ultra right wing of the Republican Party.
By 1966 John Kennedy;s bad health would have "got the best of him." He would have been forced to step down due to ill health. Lyndon Johnson would have become president and pushed through civil rights and medicare legislation. Vietnam would have never become the bloodbath that claimed the lives of some 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000+ Americans.
As always my wife Elena raised a profound point that most of us miss. If Kennedy had survived, what would have happened with all of the people who were not killed in Vietnam? What difference good and bad would have come about from just one life saved?
Kennedy is often criticized for a lot of style and little substance. Let us not forget that he saved the world from a disastrous nuclear war in October of 1962. His intelligence,decency and humanity saved between 20 million and 100 million lives.
Here is a great article on Kennedy from New York magazine:
http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/jfk-2011-11/
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