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I've been watching the CNN 80s special about the Reagan years, and it mentioned how close the 1981 shooting was to a fatal wound. That would mean the country would suffer another presidential assassination in less than 20 years-- like another "9/11" in America by 2019.
Would an HW Bush presidency from 1981 resemble his term in 1989? What about the economy? Negotiations with the crumbling Soviet Union and other foreign policies? Society in absence of Reagan's influence, and another assassination hanging over the heads of Americans?
George H.W. Bush was more of a so-called "realist" in foreign policy. I suspect that his instincts would have been to continue trying to "contain" the Soviet Union, instead of what Reagan did: decisively driving them into the ground by forcing them to compete in an arms race that he knew they did not have the economic strength to win. Indeed, NONE of the presidents since Reagan (with the possible exception of George W. Bush) had the moral fortitude to stare down the Soviet bear. Thus, had Reagan been killed, I suspect that the Soviet Union would still be with us.
I've been watching the CNN 80s special about the Reagan years, and it mentioned how close the 1981 shooting was to a fatal wound. That would mean the country would suffer another presidential assassination in less than 20 years-- like another "9/11" in America by 2019.
Would an HW Bush presidency from 1981 resemble his term in 1989? What about the economy? Negotiations with the crumbling Soviet Union and other foreign policies? Society in absence of Reagan's influence, and another assassination hanging over the heads of Americans?
I think HW Bush would've made a better President than Reagan - but then he wouldn't have nearly the charisma and public appeal. Although coming on the heels of an assassination, and presenting a unifying figure... he could get just the boost he would need.
Getting along with Gorby... well this would be much tougher to him, he was a former head of CIA so someone the Soviets would probably intensely distrust.
"Another assassination" probably wouldn't have as powerful of an impact on nation as JFK's. We all pretty much know there's more to JFK assassination than Lee Harvey Oswald. That's what makes it so daunting. With Reagan's assassination it would be cut and dry.
If Reagan had died the conspiracy theories about the assassination would dwarf the Oswald ones.
Bur they would only gain traction if Chapman had been killed by Dick Cheney while being transferred to another holding facility. With Dick quietly dying in prison while keeping his lips sealed for years.
Getting along with Gorby... well this would be much tougher to him, he was a former head of CIA so someone the Soviets would probably intensely distrust.
Busman is right.
The Soviets would have rather dealth with Bush than Reagan. My reading of the books was that the Soviet leadership believed the western media that Reagan was a senile old man that was fully capable of moving from a cold war to a hot war with them.
Remember the open mike incident?? Where Reagan announced "world peace, we are bombing the Soviet Union in five minutes".
I don't think that was a accident. It was just playing to the Soviet leaderships fears about Reagan.
I was impressed how Reagan pivoted from destroying the Soviet Union to working with them.
I was disappointed in Bush, thinking that once the Soviets fell, Russia would remain a secondary world power forever. We are paying the price today for Bush1 and Clinton ignoring Russia in the 1990's.
The Soviets would have rather dealth with Bush than Reagan. My reading of the books was that the Soviet leadership believed the western media that Reagan was a senile old man that was fully capable of moving from a cold war to a hot war with them.
Remember the open mike incident?? Where Reagan announced "world peace, we are bombing the Soviet Union in five minutes".
I don't think that was a accident. It was just playing to the Soviet leaderships fears about Reagan.
I was impressed how Reagan pivoted from destroying the Soviet Union to working with them.
I was disappointed in Bush, thinking that once the Soviets fell, Russia would remain a secondary world power forever. We are paying the price today for Bush1 and Clinton ignoring Russia in the 1990's.
Bush had an economic crisis to deal with, and out of office in 1992. By that time, USSR had just broken up and Russia was going through the very start of the very painful transition to market economy. Dealing with new Russia was up to Clinton.
I think the deficit would be smaller. The elder Bush, despite his lack of charisma, had the fortitude to raise taxes when he thought the deficit was growing too large, despite his obvious lack of want.
The USSR was going to collapse at some point, it's just a matter of when. Who knows how many Sandinistas and Osama bin Laden's we'd have armed trying to do it though. The S&L crisis would have probably been more expensive.
Bush '41 would not have been the same charming cultural figure as Reagan was, but he would have probably also been surprisingly productive, even though he definitely wouldn't have pushed for reforms quite as radical as Reagan's were. He would have likely used Reagan's death as ammunition against what was then perceived as a corrupt and inefficient establishment, riding off a lot of the same family values campaigns that took place in the real 1980s and downsizing the federal government, albeit only for the sake of distancing Washington from its Nixon, Ford, and Carter days, during which Americans had lost trust in the government. I think Reaganite policies were an inevitable consequence of a Republican presidency because the far-right wing of the Republican Party had grown so much in numbers during the course of the 1970s, so Bush '41 would have still been forced to integrate some of it into his own administration; it's just that he would have compromised more with Democratic Congresspeople.
As far as foreign policy is concerned, while Bush '41 was certainly not the war hawk that Reagan was, he still would have deeply engaged his administration in the Cold War effort because he would have inherited the Soviet–Afghan War, as well as the burgeoning Communist movements in Latin America. He would have surely been more diplomatic, as he was in real life during the Gulf War, but America's sheriff mentality would have remained the same. Perhaps we never would have had a 9/11, depending on how the President would have negotiated with his allies in the Middle East, but I think the actions of his administration would have eventually resulted in some backlash from Islamic extremists regardless. I think that the Soviet Union would have pretty much collapsed all the same, even without Reagan staring it down, because it was already rapidly disintegrating even well before Gorbachev came into power, and it was really these internal issues that allowed the political uprisings to occur at the turn of the 90s. In the late 50s and early 60s, they were winning the space race, but the economic strife and political instability plaguing the country by the time of Brezhnev's passing made its climate an insurrection just waiting to happen.
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