What If John Kennedy Had Lived?

What if John F. Kennedy had lived? That is one of the most haunting alternate history scenarios that are discussed and endlessly argued about. The answer largely depends on where one is on the ideological spectrum.

Kennedy survival alternate history literature is somewhat sparse. "A Time to Remember" by Stanley Shapiro suggests that JFK would have ushered in a liberal utopia, a somewhat unrealistic scenario to be sure considering Kennedy's actual opinions on the issues, as Jeet Heer points out in the Globe and Mail. Stephen King, whose "11/22/63" has recently been published has a somewhat darker, albeit just as unrealistic timeline in which Oswald misses in Dallas.

The most entertaining Kennedy survival story was a movie called "Timequest" in which Kennedy extends the Apollo program to build a lunar base. The incomparable Bruce Campbell of "Burn Notice" and "Evil Dead" fame plays an Oliver Stone-style film director who is making a movie about the mysterious survival of JFK in Dallas. The Dallas scenes depict Bobby Kennedy personally leading a Secret Service assault team to kill the real assassins behind the grassy knoll.

Famous alternate history writer Harry Turtledove and Bryce Zabel have posted the first three chapter of an unpublished novel that depicts the impeachment of President Kennedy post Dallas.

That still begs the question, what if Kennedy had lived? The answer to that question likely has less to do with what President Kennedy would have done in a full term or two terms in office than in imagining a world not sullied by the trauma of his death. Kennedy would have faced the same problems of civil rights and Vietnam that Lyndon Johnson faced. Though he may have made different decisions, it is likely that in the long run things would have turned out largely the same. African-Americans would have been granted long overdue civil rights, though perhaps at a later date than in the history that was. Vietnam would have still be a disaster, though perhaps less of one if Kennedy had avoided LBJ's mistakes.

The world would have been different because a Kennedy who lived would have been just a man, an ordinary president with his virtues and faults just like any other man. He would not be a fallen demigod, worshiped by some, reviled by others, his death still an obsession almost 50 years later. How this would have altered the world is something that is hard to imagine.