If Kennedy Lived: The First and Second Terms of President John F. Kennedy: An Alternate History

by Jeff Greenfield

Overview

What if Kennedy were not killed that fateful day? What would the 1964 campaign have looked like? Would changes have been made to the ticket? How would Kennedy, in his second term, have approached Vietnam, civil rights, the Cold War? With Hoover as an enemy, would his indiscreet private life finally have become public? Would his health issues have become so severe as to literally cripple his presidency? And what small turns of fate in the days and years before Dallas might have kept him from ever reaching the White House in the first place?

The answers Greenfield provides and the scenarios he develops are startlingly realistic, rich in detail, shocking in their projections, but always deeply, remarkably plausible. If Kennedy Lived is a tour de force of American history from one of the country’s most brilliant and illuminating political commentators.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780698138445
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/22/2013
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	569,871
File size:	745 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jeff Greenfield is a five-time Emmy Award-winning analyst and has been a correspondent and commentator for CBS, ABC, CNN, and PBS; a columnist for Time magazine; and a writer for Harper's and The New York Times Magazine. He also worked in politics as a Senate aide, a speechwriter for such men as Senator Robert F. Kennedy and New York mayor John Lindsay, and a political strategist. He is the author or co-author of thirteen books, including the national bestseller Then Everything Changed, an insider's account of the contested 2000 presidential election.

Table of Contents

Preface: The Lives and Deaths of John F. Kennedy xi

Chapter 1 Dallas, Texas, November 22, 1963 7:30 A.M. Central Standard Time 1

Chapter 2 Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas, 12:30 P.M. Central Standard Time 25

Chapter 3 The Second Casualty 45

Chapter 4 The Fight for a Second Term 55

Chapter 5 The Other Campaign: Resolving the Vietnam Dilemma 115

Chapter 6 A Different Country-But How Different? 141

Chapter 7 The Threat 163

Chapter 8 The Last Chapter 187

Afterword The Sources of Speculation 229

Acknowledgments 247

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Praise for If Kennedy Lived

“It can be an enlightening exercise to challenge the belief that what happened had to happen.  Usually it didn’t.  In his diverting If Kennedy Lived, Greenfield, the veteran political commentator, asks how things might have played out had John F. Kennedy survived in Dallas.”—The New York Times Book Review

“On the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination, this is the book to read. An intelligent, often haunting book about what America and the world would have looked like if John Kennedy had lived . . . It's a clever, moving book.”—Fareed Zakaria

“Greenfield grounds his fictional history in research and interviews with some of the era’s experts and, as in his previous excursion into alternative history, offers an ending that the reader will not see coming . . . Kennedy-era followers will enjoy this book.”—Library Journal

“Greenfield does good service in demythologizing JFK to suggest that, had he indeed lived, his second term might have been marked by scandal and controversy, a Camelot undone by the president’s own proclivities as much as by the events of the time. . . . Well researched and thought through—an interesting, plausible exercise in pop history.”—Kirkus Reviews

Editorial Reviews

…[counterfactual history] can be an enlightening exercise to challenge the belief that what happened had to happen. Usually, it didn't. In his diverting If Kennedy Lived, Greenfield, the veteran political commentator, asks how things might have played out had John F. Kennedy survived in Dallas.

The New York Times Book Review - Jacob Heilbrunn

08/18/2014
The premise of Greenfield's alternate history, a follow-up to 2011's Then Everything Changed, is certainly a fascinating one, fleshing out plausible scenarios of what might have happened had J.F.K. survived his trip to Dallas. Illustrating how often minor things can change the course of history, rain causes the bubble top on the presidential limo to stay on, thereby preventing Oswald's shots from proving fatal. The imagined fate of L.B.J., Kennedy's 1964 reelection campaign, and U.S. involvement in Vietnam are all believable, though Greenfield can't resist some throwaway lines that undermine the suspension of disbelief (e.g., " ‘Makes sense,' Al Gore Jr. said. ‘It'd be damned hard for a national candidate to lose his home state'"). Perhaps more fitting than plausible is what Jackie decides to do, in the light of her husband's philandering, after the couple leave the White House in 1969. In Greenfield's scenario, the overall arc of JFK's political career post 11/22/63 is logical and supports the point of such speculations—to better understand what did happen by looking at the alternatives. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for If Kennedy Lived

“It can be an enlightening exercise to challenge the belief that what happened had to happen.  Usually it didn’t.  In his diverting If Kennedy Lived, Greenfield, the veteran political commentator, asks how things might have played out had John F. Kennedy survived in Dallas.”—The New York Times Book Review

“On the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination, this is the book to read. An intelligent, often haunting book about what America and the world would have looked like if John Kennedy had lived . . . It's a clever, moving book.”—Fareed Zakaria

“Greenfield grounds his fictional history in research and interviews with some of the era’s experts and, as in his previous excursion into alternative history, offers an ending that the reader will not see coming . . . Kennedy-era followers will enjoy this book.”—Library Journal

“Greenfield does good service in demythologizing JFK to suggest that, had he indeed lived, his second term might have been marked by scandal and controversy, a Camelot undone by the president’s own proclivities as much as by the events of the time. . . . Well researched and thought through—an interesting, plausible exercise in pop history.”—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

09/15/2013
Greenfield (Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternative Histories of American Politics; JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan), an Emmy-winning political analyst, speculates how much different the nation and the world would have been if Kennedy had been only wounded by Oswald and gone on to serve two full terms. Here, Kennedy recovers from a serious chest wound and ushers in a relatively peaceful era—compared to the real 1960s—in which the Cold War ends, the United States avoids entrapment in Vietnam, and student protests call for more progressive politics than JFK is already advocating. Yet Greenfield shows that all choices have their price. South Vietnam falls to North Vietnamese forces and Cold War treaties come at the expense of racial progress, as JFK signs a devil's bargain with Southern senators who reluctantly agree to support his diplomatic initiatives in return for limited civil rights legislation. Greenfield grounds his fictional history in research and interviews with some of the era's experts and, as in his previous excursion into alternative history, offers an ending that the reader will not see coming. VERDICT Although character development is not strong, and readers will have to decide if Greenfield's ironic view is plausible, Kennedy-era followers will enjoy this book, an alternate alternate history, if you will, to Stephen King's massive novel 11/22/63.—KH

Library Journal

2013-10-30
What would have happened if Lee Harvey Oswald had been off by a hair on Nov. 22, 1963? For one thing, Greenfield (Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan, 2011, etc.) hazards in this counterfactual history, the 1960s might not have been the '60s--at least not the '60s of the Weather Underground, since some of the things the movement fought against might not have happened. The author supposes that Kennedy survived Oswald's bullets, though not unscathed--no thanks to "carelessness, negligence, and ineptitude on the part of the CIA and the FBI that bordered on the criminal"--and that in his second term, he made efforts to correct a couple of courses that were clearly astray. The first was Vietnam, a quagmire in the making that Kennedy manages, in Greenfield's vision, to extricate himself from. Vietnam falls, doing him some political damage but much less than would be inflicted on Lyndon Johnson. As for LBJ, the author observes that JFK's successor "saw political threats and opportunities through an intensely personal prism," while JFK was more detached and analytical. Greenfield supposes that something like the civil rights reforms that LBJ saw through would have come about but with a different tone. The noncounterfactuals that would have been brought to bear on JFK's second term are of particular interest, particularly the calving off of the South from the Democratic Party. Greenfield also does good service in demythologizing JFK to suggest that, had he indeed lived, his second term might have been marked by scandal and controversy, a Camelot undone by the president's own proclivities as much as by the events of the time. Yet, as Greenfield suggests as well, JFK might also have dismantled the Cold War--even if, nightmare of nightmares, Ronald Reagan might have become president in 1968. Well researched and thought through--an interesting, plausible exercise in pop history that doesn't take itself too seriously.

Kirkus Reviews