| February 23 |  |
Editor says, what if the Chappaquiddick Scandal had never happened? Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the March 2013 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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In 1980, President Kennedy addressed the nation from the Oval Office in response to a statement from the Ayatollah Khomeini that Iran's parliament would decide the fate of the American embassy hostages. An installment of our variation of Eric Lipp's No Chappaquiddick thread where JFK survives Dallas.
Lame Duck trapped in Poucha PondBut the speech is unconvincing, the contrast between the comfortable White House setting and the miltant streets of Tehran too stark, leaving the American people with the over-riding impression that their President was a weak leader being bullied. And the truth was that despite a string of Liberal agenda successes, EMK's Presidency had been over-shadowed by foreign policy failures since he triumphantly defeated single-term incumbent George Romney in 1972. This is in part due to his unwillingness to travel. Because for the past ten years he has suffered acute lower back pain since driving his Oldsmobile into Poucha Pond on Chappaquiddick Island, aggravating an existing condition caused by a plane crash during 1964.
On the other hand, Michael Dukakis, his successor as Senator for Massachusetts, has begun to set his sights on the Presidency. But independent observers considered it unlikely that a candidate from the same state could win the General election, and indeed even less likely that American would vote for a third successive candidate from the North-east. And in fact the candidate receiving the most press is John Connally, the former Texas Governor who accompanied the President's brother in Dallas on that ill-fated day in 1963.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Alternate Historian, 2004-Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: EMK 69Plus Source: Wikipedia Labels: Ted Kennedy, Ayatollah Khomeini, American, Iranian Hostage Crisis, Oval Office. Editor says, thanks to Mike McIlvan, Eric Oppen, Eric Lipps, Scott Palter and Robbie Taylor for their contributory ideas - team effort!
~ The eventual election of John Connally, also served to prevent George H.W. Bush from gaining office later. Only his son George W. Bush got in, and that was for one term -- possibly from this scenario. Too many from place is indeed a problem for voters, initially.
~ After Robert Kennedy's death, Teddy was acting very self-destructively. Even without Chappaquiddick, and with the media generally on his side, sooner or later some awful scandal would have happened. Or he'd have just killed himself by driving drunk once too often.
~ Doesn't matter. Teddy wouldn't have handled the Ayatollahs any better than Carter did, and he would have been followed by a Republican.
~ As I remember, the public was outraged at the Ayatollah, not the President, because everyone knew that the hostages were at the Ayatollah's mercy. That's why they're called "hostages."
~ @Eric Oppen: You may be right...
~ And a Presidejt Ted Kennedy might have avoided the hostage crisis altogether by refusing the Shah's demand to be allowed into the U.S. for medical treatment, and offering instead to let him be treated in Mexico (where he then resided in exile) by American doctors. (The Shah rejected treatment by Mexican doctors because he regarded Mexicans as racially inferior.)
~ President Romney?
~ Connally, when fellow Texan George Bush told him that he had connections in Iran that would prevent the release of the hostages under Kennedy, had the honor to tell Bush he would never become president under such circumstances. Unfortunately for him, this was indeed the case, as the release of the hostages due to diplomatic and economic pressure from the Kennedy administration guaranteed the election his hand-picked successor.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
