(no subject)

So I'm back from Roseburg, and ready to plan and execute my NW Oregon trip. I *also* and separately have an idea for a ficton to pursue: What if Bobby Kennedy had gotten to serve two full terms as President?

Think about it: We got Nixon, instead. And then Gerald Ford.

After Eight Years of President Bobby ('68-'72), where would we be in 2012?

I spent the morning asking this question of Unitarians, and getting responses of "Ohhh..." Which are perhaps *emotionally* informative, but don't tell me much.

Assume somebody nearby with a broom hit Sirhan Sirhan across the wrists as he pulled his revolver on June 8, 1968. Bobby lives, wins the election, and goes on to be President. First thing that comes to my mind is "No President Nixon," and also "No President Ford," and as Ford appointed Bush Sr. to be head of the CIA, there'd have been no President Bush either. But those are all negatives, things that *wouldn't* have happened. What *would* have happened?

Bobby was real big on civil rights and justice issues, and had already come out against the Viet Nam war. The war was really big on everybody's minds at the time; I'd be willing to bet that President Bobby would have had us out of there by 1970 rather than the 1972 that actually happened, and much more gracefully than actually occurred. Maybe even apologizing to the Vietnamese for being there in the first place.

But that's all Big Policy Stuff. How would *life* would have been different? How would being an American have been a different experience? And what would have been the effects of *that* on how the world became to be now?