JFK and HHH: What if?

A friendly yet decidedly undomesticated member of the species Equus Asinus wandered into these parts yesterday evening, far from his home at the foothills of the distant Rocky Mountains. This beast declared (see Comments under "Farm Bill") his curiosity about things that never happened, but might have, and quite nearly did. Such as: what if Hubert Humphrey had been elected President? What if Al Gore had successfully stolen the elections of 2000? These are the types of questions that all of us armchair historians dwell on from time to time, and they are welcome here at ASM.

It so happens that Humphrey sought the Presidency on a more-or-less continual basis from 1957 to 1976. How a Humphrey Administration would have evolved depends, of course, on when it would have begun.

Had it been he-- and not John Kennedy-- who took the oath of office in 1961, I think he would have proceeded in greatly different directions than those taken by JFK. For one thing, I am convinced Humphrey (or Nixon, or Rockefeller, or just about anyone else) would have either pulled the plug on the ill-fated Bay of Pigs fiasco, and left Castro in peace, or else would have done whatever was required to take Castro out of the game, once and for all. Instead, America suffered one of its most humiliating climb-downs in April 1961-- the memory of which will, I think, endure as long as people remember anything at all about John F. Kennedy beyond the fact of his assassination.

A second critical difference between our fictional Humphrey Administration and the historical Kennedy Administration is that Humphrey would have invested the full power and prestige of the office towards securing the civil liberties of America's black citizens from the moment of his taking office. Although some liberals like to remember JFK as a martyr for civil rights, the fact is, his approach to that issue was calculated with Talmudic precision, and with both eyes firmly on the prize of the Electoral College, circa 1964. With his appointment of (some) segregationist federal judges, one might even say that he pursued a-- are you sitting down?-- "Southern Strategy" in the context of national politics. But of course, such statements are subversive of the Kennedy Legend, and so must be suppressed.

I commend Kennedy for giving an eloquent speech on the subject in June of 1963. The country was in the midst of tragic turbulence, and I would not have wanted to be in his shoes. But the fact remains, it was Kennedy himself who asked to wear them, and in fact shoved aside several other men (Humphrey included) for the chance. We know from Humphrey's memoirs, The Education of a Public Man, that the shoving left the Minnesotan with a lingering resentment. Can't say that I blame him.