Alternative History: Nixon wins in 1960

Alternative history is so interesting. Unfortunately, most of the names involved, can’t write for crap, or they’ll never explore certain little things just because they aren’t big enough.

Something that a group of us were discussing at work today is what if Richard Nixon had been elected in 1960 rather than Kennedy. Our thinking was that there would not have been any Cuban Missile Crisis. Nixon would have still tried to kill Castro, but since Khrushchev and Nixon were familiar with each other, Nixon may not have antagonized him with missiles in Turkey and Khrushchev may not have chosen to play chicken with a hard liner like Nixon. Nixon and Khrushchev may have tried to get a dialogue going much as Nixon did with Brezhnev and Mao in the 70’s. I doubt Nixon would have gotten as far as he did in the 70’s because of the mood of the country and he probably would not have opened up with China.

Civil rights would not have progressed as far. Nixon would not have pushed the south as hard as Johnson did. This may have resulted in race riots earlier in the decade as the National Guard and army may not have been mobilized to aid blacks in the south as quickly.

Regarding Vietnam, an incident would have been cooked up similar to the Gulf of Tonkin prior to 1965 that would have allowed Nixon to escalate the war beyond its state in 1960. But, unlike Johnson, I believe Nixon would have gone ahead with his full attack strategies that he had in the early 70’s. As such, there would probably have been a full assault on the north by the early sixties and the US might have been occupying Hanoi by the mid-sixties. There would still be a massive guerrilla movement against the US occupation that might have driven us out eventually. I’m not sure.

My guess is that Nixon would have been successfully reelected in 1964 but the combination of civil rights problems and flare up fighting in Vietnam would have started to erode his support in the second term. With his older brother incapacitated by his maladies and the treatments (which were almost as bad) John Kennedy would have been replaced with Bobby in Democratic politics. I think Bobby Kennedy would then have come into office as president in 1968. As to how his term would have been, I really don’t know.

I do think that in the new timeline we never would have heard of Gerald Ford or Jimmy Carter outside of Michigan and Georgia respectively. Reagan would have come in the Nixon tradition, around 1972 or 1976. After Reagan we have the jostling between Bob Dole and George Bush on the Republican side and various Democratic governors and senators.

Difficult to say if the country would be any better or worse from this deviation, but it does make for interesting speculation.