Saturday 3 August 2013

What If Ronald Reagan Had Been Assassinated in 1981?


My views on this topic can be found in my e-book ‘Other Lives: 'What If?' Essays about Famous People in History’.  It is available for purchase on Amazon:



11 comments:

Frank Volkert said...

Hello, I´m a new fan of your books.
Still I´ve a small nitpick. Surly Bush would use the 25. Admendment to appoint a new VP in 1981, like Ford used it to appoint Rockefeller, like Nixon used it to appoint Ford after Agnews resignation.

Rooksmoor said...

Yes, he might have done, it was a possibility. I think I was more shaped by what happened after Kennedy. I suppose Bush could have put in a cipher. Some readers say that I do not write counter-factual books because I do not come down to a firm decision on what is the most feasible outcome. However, I am aware it is speculation, and as you have shown there are a range of possible outcomes. For many readers the decisions is the prime thing for them; for me, instead, it is mainly about the debate. Thank you for commenting.

Frank Volkert said...

I actually enjoy your style of speculation, especialy in your "other trenches"- books. Still I would say, Bush appointing a new VP in 1981 is more then a possibility, it can be treated as a matter of fact. For this the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution was created. Johnson hadn´t the option to appoint a new VP, Bush would have this option and there is no rational reason why he wouldn´t use it.

Rooksmoor said...

Fair point. Who do you think Bush's favoured candidate would have been?

Elsewhere I have believed it would be John Kemp. This is what I show in my short story, 'Burning Bush' which is found in Detour: What If? Stories of Americans, set in 1987 with Bush having taken over following Reagan's assassination. Kemp (Bush's Housing Secretary and from New York) is shown as his VP and gets sworn in as President when Bush is impeached for his involvement with the Iran-Contra affair. I settled on Kemp because many others close to Bush, notably Weinberger, Casey, McFarlane and Abrams, were wrapped up in Iran-Contra. Kemp seemed like a 'safe pair of hands' for Bush in 1984 and provided the President/Vice-President geographical spread that was the approach for candidates before the Clinton era.

Frank Volkert said...

Actually I also thought about Kemp. I don´t know much about Kemp, but I heard, that Bob Dole choosed him as VP-candidate, because Kemps reputation as a true Reagan-conservative. This would him make the ideal choice for Bush. Still, there comes the element on uncertainy in our speculation. On the paper Kemp was the best choice for Bush. But 1988 Bush selected Quayle, although on the paper better candidates existed. I read Bush tried several times to become VP for Nixon and Ford. So it is my personal theory that Bush selected Quayle, because he recognized something of himself in Quayle. A man with the right social background, in the need of some support for his way on the top. So its possible Bushs choice for 81/84, would be still someone like Quayle.

I hope yos forgive my bad english.

Rooksmoor said...

Yes, I can only imagine given how incompetent Quayle proved to be, that there was some pressure within the Republican Party for him to be adopted. In 1984 he had only been in the Senate 4 years (and in the House of Representatives just for 4 years before that) and he was only 37, young for a VP candidate, which is why I think I ruled him out for 1984.

Frank Volkert said...

I would rule Quayle out too, but it could be someone like him, some young republican sennator nobody really expectet.

Rooksmoor said...

I think Bush have had more options in 1984 than he did in 1988. It was difficult to follow on from Reagan especially with the ending of the Cold War tensions. If Reagan was dead in March 1981, only a short term into his term of office, then Bush would not be in his shadow and certainly far, far less than Johnson was in Kennedy's. I think 1981-84, Bush would have brought on his own people; names that did not have such a profile in our history. He would have benefited from being only 60 in 1984. In theory he could have served to 1992, being elected, only twice, but I think her would not have stood again in 1988. His VP might have been better placed than Bush himself in 1988, to become President.

The irony for the Republicans is that, though they think highly of Reagan, they may have had a President in office for more years if he had been assassinated. I think the rest of the world would have been relieved at the death of Reagan in 1981. Certainly up until 1983 he was very much an aggressive cold warrior and had these quirky religious ideas about the 'elect' being saved in a nuclear war. That stuff terrified us here in Europe; most of my teachers believed that nuclear war was imminent in the early 1980s. I know he was unpopular in West Germany too as it was felt they would be on the frontline of what he would have started. Bush may have been just as dangerous, but was less explicit about it in public.

Frank Volkert said...

No, Bush wouldn´t have could run again in 1988.
No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.
We should also keep in mind, that 1988 was the only time after 1952, that the governing party in Washington won a third term. So I´m not sure if after Bush the republican candidate will win.
Yes, Reagan was rather unpopular in WEst Germany. Personal I think he played an important rolr for the end of the Cold War, but it was a high risk, that we all could have ended 1983 as radioactive ash.

Rooksmoor said...

Johnson turned down standing in 1968, but he could have done. Yes, Presidents are limited since 1947. However, I am going with the Johnson example, with him becoming President in 1963, then winning in 1964 and permitted to stand in 1968. He chose not to because of the pressure of the Vietnam War.

I think you mean four terms, because the Republicans won three times in a row with Reagan in 1980 and 1984 and then Bush in 1988.

I think Reagan was clueless. He was buffeted around by events rather than making them. He called the USSR 'the empire of evil' and then became Gorbachev's friend. I think if there had been a different leader in the USSR, unwilling to effectively give up everything (though I accept he never foresaw the end of the USSR though he may have expected the CPSU to face competition), I think Reagan would have been seen more as warmonger than peacemaker.

Yes, in the UK we saw more risk from Reagan doing something stupid than from any Soviet aggression. Reagan was portrayed in Britain as literally being 'brainless'. Until Bush Jr. and now Trump, we found it difficult to believe that a man as stupid as Reagan could have been elected President. It seemed feasible that he was just the puppet of other forces in the USA.

I travelled in West Germany in the 1980s. I primarily mixed with students and Greens, who I know were anti-nuclear in general. However, I attended a speech given by Chancellor Helmut Kohl at the Fulda Gap and then was sat at the next table to him in a restaurant (pretty low level of security in those days!) and he seemed apprehensive about the situation. Though his doctoral thesis is pedestrian (saying that he was one of the best qualified European leaders of the time) and he spoke in Palatinate tones, I certainly think he was sharper than Reagan by far.

Frank Volkert said...

What I mean is, that the Republicans winning 1980, 1984 and 1988 is rather a exeption post1952. So I think its likely, that, if we have Bush instead of Reagan 1981-89, that a democratic candidate will win in 1988. Still this could in the long-term better for the GOP, because whoever get elected in 1988 will have to deal with a recession in 91/92.

Its difficult to say, what was really up with Reagan. I think some pollitians are more guided by instinct, then by intellect. The problem is, that there seems to be some kind of cult of the anti-intellectual in US-politic and Bush II and Trump are the result of it.

I´ve to say I was always a huge supporter of Helmut Kohl and I think he is one of our great leaders. His problem was, that his speech patterns, his dialect and his bodysize gave him a plumb and unclouth image in television. Speaking directly to a crowd, he was actually a good orator. Still, the time as he was the butt of every joke by his political opponents, deeply hurt him and in his last years he developed some Nixon-like character-traits, never forgiving a offense,always feeling surrounded by his enemies. I think it would be a interessting WI Kohl become already a chanccelor in 1976, when he still had the image of political Wunderkind and young reformer.