Editor says, what if Ronald Reagan had been a victim of the so-called "zero-curse"? Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s).

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Chris Oakley commented on 2010-03-31 01:32:42 ~ OK, you need to lay off the Art Bell... ;)

David Atwell commented on 2010-03-31 01:45:03 ~ 2001 - President George Dubya Bush, elected in 2000, is assassinated by a deadly prezel believed to have been smuggled into the White House by Al-Qaeda operatives...

Eric Oppen commented on 2010-03-31 02:33:07 ~ Would Dubya have even run? I don't know what the two main sides' benches would even look like in the event of a Reagan assassination that was successful.

Allen W. McDonnell commented on 2010-03-31 03:03:52 ~ I think a great deal will depend on who Bush 41 picks as his VP, with over three years in his first term left that person could have a considerable impact on his Administration. My pick if John Lehman, hand picked by George Bush himself to serve as Secretary of the Navy. Both men were naval aviators and carrier pilots and they had a good rapport. More obvious choices would be Robert Dole or Gerald Ford if he were looking for a placeholder to just serve until the 1984 election cycle. Like his son Bush 41 was NOT a fiscal conservative, he had firm convictions that the Reagen trickle down economics would not work and would likely have reversed those tax cutting plans if he had ascended to the office at such an early date. As an aviator he also was not thrilled with the reactivation of the four Iowa class battleships that took place in the early 1980's and would have quashed those plans if he had the chance. On the other hand the plan to reactivate a pair of the older Oriskany class aircraft carriers that had been mothballed int he 1970's probably would have gone forward in their place. His successor in 1989 will face a much different world than he himself faced OTL. The USSR will probably still exist in a less confrontational world of the 1980's but its health is debatable. The choice of Gorbachev to head the Politburo was not a foregone conclusion, he was selected in part because his fellow members felt a younger more vigorous leader was needed to counter Reagan. If Reagan is deceased then Gorbachev probably will not get the chairmanship so soon, an older apparatchik will get it first and many things can happen in between then and Gorbachev future career ascension.

Comment from Joel Bader on Facebook: Perhaps President Gary Hart (after succeeding George H. W. Bush) would have had to deal with Donna Rice-Gate . . . leading to an impeachment and trial and perhaps his removal. (If I'm not mistaken ethics and morals were a little different in 1987 than in the late 1990s.)

Comment from Jon Calico Jack Marshall on Facebook: Completely antithetical to Lee's personality.different in 1987 than in the late 1990s.)

Eric Lipps commented on 2010-03-31 11:52:24 ~ I suspect the USSR would probably not still exist. Contrary to Reagan's hagiographers, the Soviet union was not done in by his policies. It had been dying for decades, a crucial factor being its inability to raise fresh leadership still firmly committed to the ideology of the Revolution. It says something that in the early 1980s most of the major Soviet leaders were still men who had participated in the 1917 Bolshevik takeover; it's as if America in the 1980s were still being run largely by World War I veterans. The musical premiership of the early eighties, with the elderly Brezhnev replaced by the elderly Chernenko before the younger but unhealthy Andropov took over, destabilized the Soviet stae--imagine what might have happened here if Reagan's assassination had been followed shortly thereafter by the death of Bush I and then by that of his successor. And the U.S. was, and is, a more stable society.

Comment from Marko Prpic on Facebook: Jodie certainly was pleasantly surprised and impressed by the act :SSSS

Comment from Richard Sabol on Facebook: Very good topic. I once read that these events are also referred to as "Tecumseh's Curse". Tecumseh was a Shawnee Indian and "prophet" who placed a curse on American presidents for repeated treaty violations: http://americanhistory.about.com/od/uspresidents/a/tecumseh.htm

Comment from John Allen Hough on Facebook: almost was..wasn't he??

Comment from Randy Roughton on Facebook: I shudder to think of how the nuclear arms race with the Soviets would have turned out. We needed him to stand up to the Soviet Union like he did. I miss him.

Comment from Joy Owens on Facebook: It was a prosperous time. If he had died, the US might not have been so lucky in both national and international fronts.

Comment from Joy Owens on Facebook: Maybe he broke the curse!

Comment from Richard Sabol on Facebook: Of course...my intention for the mention of Tecumseh's Curse was simply to add substance to the zero-curse theory.

Comment from Marko Prpic on Facebook: interesting article ......but all this is just a random series of events....nothing more