|
Presidents are not all-powerful. I have no doubt that things would have been different and better, but the question is how different.
We might have had universal, single-payer health care. And we may have had different welfare policies from the time. In terms of foreign policy, we'd have withdrawn from Vietnam much sooner. Without Vietnam spending, perhaps monetary policies in the '70s would have been more sane and we'd have been spared some of the problems with stagflation. On environmental policies, we probably wouldn't have gotten anything markedly different from what Nixon pushed. A more liberal Supreme Court in the '70s would have perhaps kept Brown v. Board of Education from being made toothless, with perhaps more equal education funding and more heavily desegregated schools today.
But that being said, we would likely still have gone through the '73 oil shock and the '70s would probably still have been economically stagnant. There would likely still have been significant racial tensions, and conflicts over busing. My guess is that the property tax revolts of the late '70s would still have occurred. And RFK himself may have tacked somewhat rightward on issues like spending and welfare. Remember too that RFK would not have had the kind of influence in Congress that LBJ did in '64-'66, and he would have likely had smaller majorities and an emboldened conservative minority in Congress.
Moreover, it's unlikely that Democrats would have held the White House through all those years. RFK may have won in '68 and may have won a second term, but in 1976, the trends would probably have favored a Republican victory, and a Reagan presidency may still have occurred. There is a pendulum effect in politics, and a reaction against the liberalism of the '60s and early '70s would likely still have resulted.
So we likely still would have entered a period of Republican dominance, and America would probably not be a social-democratic paradise. But at best, we'd have universal health care (no sure thing, though), and we'd perhaps be a somewhat less unequal society, with thousands of extra people alive today who otherwise died in Vietnam. But we'd still have problems, we'd still probably have gone through a large anti-tax phase, and the Republicans would probably still have dominated the 1980s. At best, the reaction against the '60s and '70s would have been more like the '50s reaction against the New Deal - consolidating what had been done rather than dismantling what came before.
|