RFK Sr.: The Road Not Taken

A few months ago I wrote about the possible impact of then-independent presidential candidate and anti-vax conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on the 2024 election. I felt that his gravity could possibly skew the vote one way or the other. Little did I know that he was angling to get into the orbit of Donald Trump. Now he’s set to be nominated to lead the Department of Health and Human Services once Trump takes office in January.

But I began thinking about his father, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who was killed in 1968 at Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel by Sirhan B. Sirhan, a Palestinian who was angry with him over his support of Israel. I wondered what would have taken place in an America governed by a second Kennedy Administration.

Come with me on a five-decade journey…let’s do a thought experiment. It’s long, but I promise it will be interesting.

Alternative Reality and Altered States

In our current timeline, Kennedy’s death just after his win in the California Democratic primary means the party winds up scrambling to find a new candidate, which was former Minnesota Sen. Hubert Humphrey. But Humphrey was defeated by former vice president Richard Nixon, whose stance on Vietnam and general conservative, anti-hippie, anti-commie/pinko attitude won over American voters. Things went on from there. No need to rehash something you can Google.

But in this reimagined timeline, let’s pretend Sirhan was caught by Rosey Grier and Rafer Johnson, before he pulled the trigger. Narrowly skirting the violence that had claimed the life of his brother in 1963, and Martin Luther King just two months earlier, he goes on to win the Democratic nomination and the presidency, easily carrying the majority of popular and electoral votes.

1969: A Man on the Moon and Men Out of Vietnam

In this timeline, NASA successfully lands a man on the moon in June 1969, something they had been working on since the administration of JFK, but made a reality thanks to the space race. But this was in the midst of the Vietnam War, a costly, increasingly unpopular conflict spurred by postwar politicians obsessed with snuffing out communism anywhere in the world. The 1968 Tet offensive bought the war to American TV audiences and for the first time, people saw how horrific the war was.

In this timeline, RFK is president instead of Nixon, who chose not to withdraw troops and prolonged American involvement until 1973. Kennedy, after conferring with his cabinet, decides on a gradual withdrawal from the war, which he successfully pledges to complete by 1970. However, Saigon falls in 1971 instead of 1975 and the Chinese set up military bases there, where they later station nuclear missiles. The Cold War continues but Vietnam becomes just a bad memory for Americans and they are glad Kennedy chose to rid them of the problem. The decision is so popular, he is re-elected for a second term in 1972.

1973: Oil Embargoes and Urban Fallout

In this timeline, OPEC, in response to American support of Israel after the Arab-Israeli war, still decides on an oil embargo, creating economic despair for America as gas prices skyrocket, in turn causing inflation and energy shortages. By 1975, unemployment reaches almost nine percent, the same as in our timeline. But because Vietnam is now under communist control, and needs goods and services that it cannot manufacture, the country buys needed automobiles from Japan, which finds the country, as well as mainland China a ripe market for cars.

As a result, much fewer automobiles are sold in the United States and American automakers respond to a demand for vehicles to replace its aging stock. Workers double production and the economy sees a boost, avoiding a recession. Kennedy is given credit for encouraging higher production in America rather than shipping jobs overseas. But prices are still high and the better unemployment numbers don’t extend to everyone.

Joblessness persists in urban America as a result of the social unrest of the 60s. Conservative politicians blame the poor themselves rather than their own policies for an increased crime rate, and dilapidation of cities. In 1975, New York appeals to the federal government for a bailout, and Kennedy gives it to them. In reality, the opposite happened when Gerald Ford chose to deny the city any help, spurring the New York Daily News headline, “Ford to City: Drop Dead.”

Kennedy’s charity to New York infuriates Republicans, who campaign feverishly against him and the Democrats. But because they know they cannot win with a hardline conservative like California Gov. Ronald Reagan, they go with centrist Michigan Gov. George Romney, who wins the 1976 election, defeating Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter.

1976: America, the Motor City

Romney, who correctly spoke out against the Vietnam War in this timeline and ours, was a popular choice nationally because of his progressive attitude. This allows him the power in Congress to remove the focus on building up the United States’ military industrial complex, and places it on the industry he’s most familiar with: cars, since he had been president of the American Motors Corp. Thus companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman and others do not grow to the sizes we’re familiar with.

Instead, General Motors, Ford, Chrysler and AMC become global megacorporations much larger than they are now, and are so wealthy they actually regulate law in the cities where they have factories and outlets. Detroit itself recovers much more quickly from the devastating 1967 riot.

During the late 70s, the feminist movement grows and gains traction with outspoken leaders like Gloria Steinem and Angela Davis. This culminates in nationwide support of the Equal Rights Amendment. In our timeline, Romney is not president in 1979 but had become more active with the Mormon Church and supported it in opposing the proposed law in a claim that it backed “sexual perversion.” In this timeline, he does the same, but as president. This angers progressives, particularly women, and spurs massive political opposition, leaving Romney a practical Washington outsider at a time he would otherwise have been very popular.

He loses the support of Congressional Democrats and spends the remainder of his term struggling to get any more policy proposals to the finish line. In 1980, he announces that he will not seek a second term in office. This changes federal support of the auto industry and Republicans, noticing buildup of the Soviet military complex, urge the same.

They nominate former CIA director George H. W. Bush because of his deep knowledge of foreign policy as United Nations ambassador. He defeats Carter in his second attempt at the presidency and is inaugurated in 1981.

The 1980s: A Buildup of Cannons and Crack

Bush, being handed an economy that had been healthy through the 1970s thanks to Kennedy and Romney, is able to use his political capitol to move billions of dollars earmarked for auto industry growth to building America’s massive war arsenal. The Cold War now gets colder as the Soviets begin to sell arms in the Middle East. Nations like Iraq and Kuwait are suspected of plotting to attack Israel.

But because of the incredible amount of money spent on building up the military complex so quickly, American taxpayers wind up coming out of their pockets to support it, which causes a severe recession that lasts several years. However, not wanting to jump ship with a candidate they do not know well, California Gov. Jerry Brown, the nation re-elects Bush in 1984.

In both timelines, cocaine is trafficked from Central America to Southern California to covertly raise funds for Nicaraguan “contra” rebels, supported by the U.S. Here though, it happens later because economic conditions do not collapse until the first few years of the Bush administration. But when they do, it is severe. Cities must cut programs left and right. Entire school systems all but shut down and Black and Latino dropout rates skyrocket. Unemployment among the two groups is nearly 20 percent each. This leaves the perfect conditions for a seismic event.

Thanks to the flood of cocaine into urban America, the drug is used by dealers in Los Angeles and other cities to create crack cocaine, which explodes on the streets, as it does in our reality. When Boston Celtics draftee Len Bias dies of cocaine intoxication in 1986, Congress passes draconian laws that imprison hundreds of thousands of Blacks and Latinos for possession of even a small amount of any drug, including marijuana. This “war on drugs” as Bush calls it, sets up a prison industrial complex of facilities to house inmates.

1989: Trouble’s Afoot

In 1988, with the economy still anemic, America wants to step away from 12 years of Republican leadership and elect Brown, who in his second attempt at running for president, promises a better outcome. But is faced with an explosion in crime as a result of the crack epidemic and an increasing arms race, due to Bush’s policies.

Meanwhile, Israel and Iraq are facing off. Palestine is hit with a consistent barrage of Israeli missiles over the course of two years from 1989 to 1991, leading to an arms buildup in Iraq. American intelligence fears they possess nuclear weapons. Brown attempts to negotiate a peace deal between Israel and Palestine, but fails at what would have been a political hallmark for him.

In 1989, five New York youths, four Black and one Latino are accused of attacking and sexually assaulting a young woman jogging through Central Park one night. They are arrested and charged, despite no evidence of their guilt. Because high urban crime and the crack epidemic have citizens fearful, real estate magnate Donald Trump places a full-page ad in The New York Times calling for the teens’ execution. This garners support for his political aspirations and he announces his candidacy as an independent for Mayor of New York and wins.

Brown is faced with heavy Republican opposition to his policies. The party also accuses him of not addressing the nation’s “moral decay” as LGBTQ advocates become more vocal in demanding marriage equality rights, as well as keeping up their fury over the 1973 Roe vs. Wade abortion decision, which took place under Kennedy. The most vocal among them is conservative Nebraska Gov. Kay Orr, who ironically was also against the 1979 Equal Rights Amendment and was instrumental in its defeat in Congress.

Claiming that she stands behind the strengthening of American families, she announces her candidacy against Brown and narrowly defeats him in the 1992 election. She becomes the first woman president of the United States. She promises to finish the work Bush started and lead the nation into the 21st century.

That same year, a Los Angeles girl named Latasha Harlins graduates high school at age 16 and a man in the same city named Rodney King starts a lawn care business.

The 1990s: Wars Here and Afar

In 1993, a Black Brooklyn college student named Yusef Hawkins was shot to death by a white police officer in the East New York community, creating extreme racial tension across the city. A year later, that officer was acquitted. Trump, now in his second term, rather than expressing empathy for the community, addresses the city warning that protests of any type would be swiftly put down and demonstrators would be prosecuted. Defiant, people take to the streets, inciting seven days of rioting, which cost $40 billion in damage.

The New York Riot, as it comes to be known, leads Orr to double down on her policy toward crime in America and pushes a bipartisan crime bill through Congress to authorize billions for law enforcement targeted at urban America. This further increases the prison industrial complex. However, Trump is blamed by the left and right for causing the unrest and he decides to abandon any further political aspirations.

Orr also attempts to overturn Roe v. Wade, one of her principle platforms and one that would significantly change the face of American healthcare. But a case for the overturning fails because liberal Supreme Court justices appointed by Romney and Brown are still on the bench and vote it down.

On the foreign front, tension between Israel and Iraq continues to heat up until the fear that Iraq will attack Jerusalem with a nuclear weapon reaches a fever pitch. In 1997, the newly re-inaugurated Orr authorizes the U.S. military to attack Baghdad. As it turns out, Iraqi president Saddam Hussein never had nuclear weapons but wanted people to think he did. But he did build up a significant enough arsenal to defend Iraq from both U.S. and Israeli forces. This war lasts several years past the end of Orr’s second term. It costs $10 trillion and kills 1 million, including 3,000 U.S. service members.

The 2000s: This Thing Called The Internet

The turn of the century brings an America that has grown weary of both urban angst and foreign wars. Sen. Bill Clinton, an Arkansas politician who had previously served as governor, throws his hat in for the 2000 election and wins on the promise of ending the war in Iraq. His political mentor, Robert F. Kennedy, advises him on policy to withdraw from Iraq, which he does by 2003. Kennedy dies that year at age 78.

By this time, a cultural shift has taken place in America. The nation is looking inward and has a willingness to analyze its mistakes. The war in Iraq, now called “Orr’s War” is in the national consciousness and pressure builds on Clinton to end it. Instead of focusing on defeating Hussein, Clinton slowly begins to withdraw troops and instead begins to support Hussein’s enemies in Iran and Kuwait. The two nation’s invade Iraq and help to depose him. But a new regime rises in its place, called ISIS.

In 2004, the last troops are withdrawn from Iraq and Clinton enjoys extended popularity with a growing economy and low unemployment, much the same as he did in the 1990s during our timeline. But here his tenure is marked with the explosion of the Internet, which revolutionizes global communication. Commerce and trade become centered on it and the entertainment industry quadruples its output because of its ability to deliver content. Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, and other tech companies become the largest in the world, making billions in the process.

Clinton is called the “Internet President” because he becomes the first to deliver an address streamed exclusively from the White House website. One of the things he announces is that the Soviet Union has collapsed under the weight of its own military industrial complex and splits into several states, the largest of which is Russia. This signifies the end of the Cold War. Nations under the communist bloc become free to form their own destinies. East and West Germany reunify in 2005 after 60 years of separation.

By 2008, the Internet has so quickly improved that social media applications like Google+, hi5 and Twitter have taken off, giving a new generation their own platforms to build their own worlds. Another, Facebook, despite the money invested in it is seen as too pretentious by young social media users and fails.

A 2010s Economic Fallout and a New Complexion

Promising to create an America that has the best technological future, a high-speed rail system, and to make the nation energy efficient while protecting fossil fuel burning jobs, and to repair the emotional damage still lingering from Orr’s War, Sen. Mitt Romney, the son of former president George Romney, wins the 2008 election. His first term is pretty prosperous with low unemployment, low inflation and suspiciously low interest rates offered by banks. But that comes back to bite him in the second term.

Cheap money for home loans, engineered by unregulated banks looking for quick profits, leads to the Federal Reserve printing more money in 2012, which in turn causes balloon inflation and swiftly increasing unemployment. Once flush with cash, auto manufacturers, whose sales have plummeted appeal to Romney for a bailout in 2014. Instead of making a decision, he puts the responsibility on Congress, which balks at his indecisiveness.

This leaves a bad taste in the mouths of Americans who are now hurting, and they turn to someone who is much more affable and approachable to people and is as much a Washington outsider as he is an insider: Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, he is elected in 2016 and is the first African American to serve as president.

A Big Bailout and Something for the Sniffles

Obama’s term brings out the question that America has been wrenching over through its entire existence: race. Loyalists to Orr are openly incensed that a Black man occupies the Oval Office and has his wife and teenage daughters living in the White House. The tension leads to congressional Republicans voting against virtually anything Democrats propose. But that cannot last as economic problems extending from the prior administrations need answering.

In 2019 Obama crafts a bill to bail out the auto industry with $80 billion in loan, which easily passes in Congress, essentially preserving 1.5 million jobs, just as it did in our timeline, but several years later. The attention focused on the bailout takes attention from his engineering of his signature achievement, the Affordable Care Act, known colloquially as "ObamaRx."

The legislation is a tug of war, and Republicans don’t want it to pass because it’s Obama’s project and would place him in a historic position among presidents. As in our timeline, it goes to the Supreme Court, but here the justices vote 9-0 in its support. ObamaRx becomes the law of the land and provides healthcare for millions that could previously not get it. The success of the program is enough to win reelection for the president in 2020.

That same year, a strange virus began to spread through China, purportedly out of rural animal markets. Multiple people are infected with something called SARS-CoV-2 and its impact catches the attention of the Obama administration. However, safeguards put up by health officials to prevent it from coming to the U.S. work as intended. Scientists are dispatched to China to study the disease and after about a year, infections are significantly reduced and spread no further than that country.

By 2022 and ISIS breakoff called Al-Qaeda, strengthened in the Middle East, has turned its own sights on Israel and is revealed to be planning an attack. The Obama administration traces the origins of the plans to a man named Osama bin Laden, which begins a manhunt through the region for him. He is not caught, and is believed to be dead, but the manhunt stokes opposition in several countries against what is considered American heavy handedness.

Still sore from the war of several years ago, Americans themselves express little appetite for a new war, and officials are discouraged from inciting more military action. Al-Qaeda, however, sees this as an opportunity and hatch a plan to attack the United States directly. In 2023 a bomb is planted in a van parked in a garage beneath the World Trade Center, killing six people.

A man claiming to be Bin Laden claims responsibility, triggering a global search for him, but he is never caught. The U.S., shocked that such a thing could happen is acutely aware of the possibility of a major terror attack. National security becomes a major congressional concern, and Obama urges the creation of a new government organization, a Homeland Protection Department. But Congress drags its feet, feeling that the existing infrastructure is enough to prevent a terror attack.

2024 and Beyond. A Reality We Couldn’t Avoid

In 2024, Obama backs his vice president, Tim Kaine for the Democratic nomination. But the nation is more interested in having a complete outsider, a Republican who they feel can run the nation in a more businesslike fashion, with less bureaucracy and more of an entrepreneurial spirit.

They elect Amazon founder Jeff Bezos president, much to the chagrin of liberals who warn that a man with no prior experience in public office poses a serious risk. Promising a new era free of war and eliminating unemployment and poverty through free market measures, Bezos takes office on Jan. 20, 2025. On Jan. 21, two airplanes are hijacked in Boston, another Newark, N.J., and a fourth in Washington D.C. The nation’s defenses scramble to intercept them. But they arrive too late. Two of them directly hit the World Trade Center, killing 4,000 people. Another hits the Pentagon, killing another 200 and the last is taken over by passengers and crashes into a field in Pennsylvania, killing 92.

Preparing to address the nation on the unprecedented tragedy in his first act as president, Bezos passes by a photo of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in the White House and remembers him as president when he was a little boy. He imagines to himself what the America would be like if he had never become president.

Then he sits at his desk as the lights and the teleprompter come on.

Madison Gray is a New York City-based writer and editor whose work has appeared in multiple publications globally. Reach out to him at madison@starkravingmadison.com.