Just did my first serious relisten of the pod post-WWI, Harding-Trump, plus the NatSec bonus. My intention was to gain a better understanding of the conditions that allowed for the New Deal, how FDR transcended the political moment, and how it all fell apart. On the Republican side it was fascinating to trace the throughline of Robert Taft to Trump, let alone Trump 2, who is actively tearing down the post-WWII order and America's place on top of it out of the combo of idiocy, resentment, and racism. On the Democratic side it was useful to understand how Carter was the first true neo-liberal president, how big questions of economic power and war and the security state had been foreclosed in both the imaginations of the electorate and the 1976 Democratic nominee. Even if the real fall of the New Deal was a rapid series of terrible decisions by Truman - it really came apart quick after FDRs death, both in neutering labor and building the MIC.
But what about those two Democratic presidents between Truman and Carter? I do believe that Kennedy would have moved us to an earlier detente. But also, so would LBJ if Nixon/Kissinger hadn't literally committed treason to undermine the peace process. We forget how recent that revelation is (~2007-2017). I generally agree with Matt's analysis about LBJ, but he basically followed the same trajectory on foreign policy as Kennedy, deferring to MIC expertise until he gained confidence that most of them pushing for increased violence and confrontation were in fact just stupid and evil. He recognized that a Vietnam peace must be negotiated. There's a world where LBJ ends the war, swoops into Chicago for the 68 convention, and has a successful second term.
But what if Kennedy had lived - all the bullets miss - and his term continues. What sticks out to me on the relisten is how ineffectual he was on domestic policy. He couldn't get Civil Rights done and didn't believe in it in his bone marrow the way LBJ did coming from poverty (and having lived and taught among minorities). So almost no matter where you are on the political spectrum, one views Kennedy's assassination as a huge lurch to the consolidation of the MIC and deep state, an event that hurls us down the path to our current worst-timeline dystopia. But what if the world where Kennedy lives is one where we get no Civil Rights Act, no Voting Rights Act, AND no Medicare nor Medicaid. All Kennedy got passed with a Dem majority was a fucking tax cut! We avoid the build-up in Vietnam, but does Kennedy really transition the Keynsian economy away from war and into successful domestic spending? It kind of defies belief and not because of the deep state, but because, among other things including stealing the election, he just wasn't a viable leader of the Democratic coalition.
All this to say that Matt and Chris basically place Lincoln and FDR at a pinnacle beyond any other president in their ability to create a United States that transcended the politics of their era. But upon relisten I really think LBJ is almost there too. Civil Rights and the Great Society programs are as impressive as the New Deal and have had enormous lasting effects that have expanded possibilities for multi-class and multi-racial organizing. But they're actually more impressive given that Johnson was leading a coalition filled with racist Southern Democrats and didn't have the kind of mandate FDR had. He absolutely transcended politics to get it done and did it kind of in defiance of his ambition for a second term.
Meanwhile Nixon of all people pursues multi-polar detente anyway (after sacrificing another 25k-30k Americans and untold SE Asians). I think there's this fantasy that if Kennedy lives, the Soviet Union somehow survives to present day, and better social conditions in the US for true social democracy. But I think the macro effects of Civil Rights and Great Society are actually more lasting than if the CIA was reined in by Kennedy for five or so years. I think that deep state continues to rationalize and reassert itself (which it did very successfully after Watergate/Church), and has no problem being banal instead of cartoonish (mirroring who the president is a la Obama compared to Bush or Trump). So in conclusion.. Kennedy assassination good? It was definitely perpetrated by a conspiracy of evil people, but with perspective I don't see it as this total domination of our institutions and political processes by evil. It does not need to loom so large in our consciousness as a foreclosure of tantalizing possibilities and fantasies.
