Counterfactual 1968: What if Ronald Reagan had been killed?

It’s not as far out as it sounds.

You see, back in 1968, Ronald Reagan was the Governor of California. And like governors do, he attended a Governors’ conference that year. At this conference, one of the other governors – Lester Maddox of Georgia – bumped against some guy. Just a random accident.

Except that Maddox had bumped against the guy in exactly the right place to find his hidden revolver. The Secret Service arrested the guy, who stated that he was there to kill Reagen…

But what if Lester Maddox had not fortuitously bumped into that would-be assassin?

The most important thing to consider is the tenor of the times. This all took place between the assassination of Robert Kennedy and the chaos of the Chicago Democratic Convention in what was one of the most angry and divisive years in American history.

And at that time, Reagan was one of the front-runners for the Republican Party’s Presidential candidate. He was, to a large part of the population, one of the most loved and trusted figures in the nation. So imagine, for a moment, that suddenly the Left wasn’t the only side that had a martyr.

The chaos, the anger, the divisiveness of the Sixties would only have been exacerbated. Nixon would still get the Presidential nomination, and most likely win the Presidency with an even greater margin – and a stronger majority in favour of a continued war in Vietnam.

Meanwhile, things would only get worse between the freaks and the straights. The Chicago Riots become a bloodbath, Woodstock is a bloody mess dissolving into still more rioting. Altamont, if it happens at all, is a smaller, underground and possibly illegal gathering, but just as deadly.

Protestors decrying American imperialism even in space delay the launch of Apollo 11 – which means that when Teddy Kennedy screws up at Chappaquidick, there’s nothing to push it off the front pages for a few days longer, and it makes a deeper impression on the national psyche.

Meanwhile, back in California, the man who takes over as Governor – most likely Reagan’s Lieutenant Governor Robert Finch, who would probably have declined his Nixon cabinet appointment therefore. Altamont has already been mentioned, but other events, such as the Bloody Thursday incident at Berkley in 1969 or the Manson Family killings, are worse than in our history. They polarise the nation more.

Politically, Nixon and Reagan never had that much time for each other, but Tricky Dick is no doubt delighted to have a martyr for the Right that he can use for his own ends.

Things take a turn for the repressive in the United States, but the stronger the level of repression, the greater the violence of the reaction – and visa versa, in an increasingly vicious cycle of atrocity and counter-atrocity.

In this environment, there’s no chance for any Democrats who favour ending the war as candidates in 1972. The one Democrat who could unseat Nixon is George Wallace, and even in a world where Arthur Bremer never shot at him, Wallace still has no chance to win that election.

It takes a lot longer for Nixon to fall – he has more political capital, more public sympathy, to spend – over Watergate and Vietnam, but fall he does, although possibly not until serving out his second term. But Nixon has no clear successor other than Ford, and Ford cannot win the Presidency.

Carter takes the White House in 1976. Carter moves swiftly to end the war in Vietnam, but even so, it’s 1977 before it’s all over. The Thieu regime in South Vietnam collapses just as fast once American support is removed, but an America more preoccupied by Vietnam is less involved in Iran – there’s no hostage crisis there, only handwringing in administration circles once the Iran-Iraq war breaks out.

Carter still has to deal with the energy crisis of the Seventies, and an even greater war debt caused by a longer and greater involvement in Vietnam. Inflation, the decay of American cities, these things all sting him in the polls. The slow rebirth of idealism as the truth about Vietnam, Watergate and Nixon seeps out into the increasingly outraged public consciousness isn’t enough to help him hold on to the White House.

So come 1980, George H.W. Bush polls better, John Connally polls better, Bob Dole polls better, and John B. Anderson polls better. As it develops, the front-runners become Connally and Anderson. And in the end, it’s Connally’s ties to the Nixon administration that pull him down. And John Bayard Anderson of Illinois becomes the 40th President of the United States, with George Bush as his Veep to balance the ticket.

This is where the fun really starts.

Anderson is generally more conciliatory than Reagan on matters of foreign policy – something that causes a lot of friction between Anderson and Bush. Both men put their differences aside when Russia invades Afghanistan, and the common ground they forge on foreign policy leads to a slow decline of Cold War tensions. The world moves towards a tri-partite balance when Anderson reopens diplomatic relations with China after nearly 40 years, and the message that sends helps to check Soviet adventurism – the boycott of the Moscow Olympics does not occur here.

In domestic politics, Anderson’s choice reflect a man who was scarred by the petrol shortages of the Seventies, and wants America to be self-sufficient in energy. The investment he makes in technological research and development isnt quite the same as Reagan’s build up in weaponry – but it has the same ultimate effect on the Commies, already over-extended from their Afghanistan war.

Would Anderson have been re-elected? It’s hard to say. It’s likely that the only way for a Democrat to win against Anderson would have been to out-flank him on the right. Mondale could possibly have done so, and Ernest Hollings had the credentials but not the popularity, to do so. It’s certainly unlikely that anyone else in the field of Democratic nominees could have – not Gary Hart, Jesse Jackson or George McGovern. And in all probability, John Glenn wouldn’t even have run. If Ted Kennedy had decided to throw his hat into the ring, he’s probably the only possible candidate who could have taken the election for the Democrats, but it’s highly unlikely that he would have.

So Anderson gets back in for another term, and assuming he manages to avoid John Hinckley… well, at this point my presience fails me.