What if Ronald Reagan had died in 1981?

x-post: what other ppl said. No way Bush would have lasted.

(xpost)

2002: patriot act. maybe that was 2003.

Or as much as William Henry Harrison.

"WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON DIED FOR SOMEBODY'S SINS BUT NOT MIIIIIINE"

huh. doesn't really roll off the tongue.

i got nothin

http://www.wavelengthtoronto.com/graphics/aug-2004/jesus-mary-chain.jpg

http://www.ultra-pop.org/images/band/kajagoogoo.jpg

http://www.ultra-pop.org/images/band/alarm.jpg

http://www.nostalgia-warehouse.co.uk/images/CULTURE%20CLUB%20WAKING%20UP.jpg

http://this.is/u2/diskar/02/cd.jpg

Neither did Reagan.

And the Dead Kennedys wouldn't have penned Kinky sex makes the world go round, either.

In the same way that Thatcher's England apparently impacted upon the Jesus and Mary Chain (who aren't English). God, I'm like a stuck record correcting the Canadians Americans about this today.

I know have a conscious sense of what a quarter-century 30 years feels like.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, March 29, 2006 11:25 PM Bookmark

Hitchens tried a similar experiment.

It was extraordinary that, in Mikhail Gorbachev, Reagan was dealing with a man who knew that the Soviet Union could not sustain the arms race and a man who was out of patience with the satraps of East Germany. To Gorbachev goes an enormous share of the credit. But if I run the thought experiment and ask myself whether Walter Mondale would have made a better interlocutor in 1987, I cannot make myself believe it. This does not involve un-saying any of the things about Reagan that his admirers would prefer us to forget. But it does acknowledge the distinction between a historic presidency and an average one. Reagan's friend Margaret Thatcher once said that the real test of her success was the way that she had changed the politics of the Labour Party. By that standard, the legacy of Reagan in permanently altering the political landscape is with us still.

I was in the first grade. It was the first time of maybe two or three other times where instead of working on classwork, our teacher turned off the lights and wheeled a television set into the classroom. For two hours, we watched shaky camera angles of men falling onto the sidewalk and limos driving off. In my mind, I couldn't really put together what was going on here. It sure didn't look like what you'd picture at a presidential assassination.

One of my classmates said something like "I'm glad he's dead!" and our teacher yelled at him. I talked to my grandmother that night and we talked about how happy those Iranians must be now.

I remember watching the "Woman" video by John Lennon a few months before with my mom and knowing that something had happened. By the time the Pope got shot a few months later and then Anwar Sadat, it just seemed that people got shot all the time. Kind of weird now to think how the Tucson shootings was tragic in so many ways, but also stands out because public figures just don't seem to get shot at as much anymore.

an equally (if not more) interesting thought experiment would be if Gorbachev hadn't come into power in 1985.

Had that never happened, Sarah Palin would never had to worry about the Eye of Putin.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CjaXmBiUoAAUzBO.jpg

-- bob marley

rub a dub style

biased media

They let Hinckley out today.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/john-hinckley-freed-mental-hospital-35-years-after-reagan-assassination-n646076

this already spurred hilarious 'joeks' from people that someone should tell John that Jodie Foster is in love with Trump. hurr hurr hurr

"I don't think that anybody who tries to nullify a national election with a bullet should ever been walking free, no matter what their mental state," former federal prosecutor Joseph DiGenova said.

what a...weird way to phrase it? I realize murdering a politician is handled differently from that of a civilian, all the way down to the name they give it, but the prosecutor seems more bothered that he "violated the will of voters" rather than attempting to commit murder.

Getting shot at is just a hazard of the job...

wanna see if Hinckley is open to a musical collaboration

Maybe we'll finally get that "Greatest American Hero" reboot now

Does the release have something, maybe a lot, to do with the fact that Reagan survived? I don't know the law here.

it's arbitrary, like all other criminal justice matters

I think the prosecutor is making a perfectly reasonable point if you assume incarceration in cases such as Hinckley's is supposed to function as a strong deterrent. Like espionage or treason.

xxp I don't know much about it either, but wasn't he found not guilty by reason of insanity? and it led to an outcry and a raising of the bar for what qualified on that score?

The release has nothing to do with the fact that nobody died, it has everything to do with him never having been convicted in the first place

like, RTFA ppl

It's really not a big deal, lots of worse people get released all the time

Administrative stuff, shuffling papers, copying papers, that lullabyllic drone of old laser printers, shhoooooooosh

happy 40th!

i was in fourth grade; think we got sent home from school early. of more importance to me that day is that i happened to get a really cool programmable clock radio with a number pad

My mom picked me up after school to take me to my piano lesson. When I got in the car, she'd been listening to the news on the radio and she said, "Reagan was shot!" I immediately blurted out, "GOOD!" I was eight. My mom gave me a look that said, "Technically, I should scold you for saying that, but...well, it's Reagan, so I'll let it slide."

it's tragic that he survived

"I don't think that anybody who tries to nullify a national election with a bullet should ever been walking free, no matter what their mental state," former federal prosecutor Joseph DiGenova said

this guy's changed his tune in the last few months...

I wonder what would have happened to Jodie Foster. It would have been funny if she'd married him.

Alternative history is always wrong, but my memory in general is that the senior George Bush, who would have taken over, was only slightly less retrograde than Reagan and would most likely have kept most of Reagan's cabinet and continued most of his policies.

The real missing piece with Reagan out of the way would have been Ron's uncanny ability to put an affable, genial face on reactionary politics. He sold the country down the river, but like any good salesman, he always had a smile, a quip and an 'aw shucks' attitude to make it feel like he was your best friend and would never steer you wrong.

Party realignment would've been delayed a few more years. Without Reagan, no Reagan Democrats or New Right, which would not have been the case, by contrast, if he'd been killed in April 1985.

Bush would've lost in 1984.

england would still have thatcher, tho. so:

But only till 1984 when the IRA successfully blew her up in Brighton.

Party realignment would've been delayed a few more years. Without Reagan, no Reagan Democrats or New Right, which would not have been the case, by contrast, if he'd been killed in April 1985.

But there were Reagan Democrats prior to 1981 - they helped get him elected. You're suggesting Bush would have lost them somehow?

Also I'm not sure why everyone is convinced Mondale would have beaten Bush in '84.

We think Mondale would've been the nominee? The frontrunner, surely, but not confirmed.

Reagan gave those former Dems a name. I hold the movement would've been stillborn -- he'd have been the LaFollette of the right.

It's true Gary Hart came close to winning the nomination in '84 (I'd forgotten how close), but I'm not sure how an early Bush presidency would've kept the Dem primaries from playing out the same way.

An no guarantee Hart would've beaten Bush either.

F/X aired The Americans episode about the Reagan assassination attempt a few times the past week. At one point, you hear what is obviously an actual news report that James Brady has died. My memories of the event are dim--don't recall that being misreported.

It was, according to a couple of the bios. Deaver cried when he heard the (wrong) news.

The way things are framed in the episode, it's pretty humorous in retrospect. The Russian-spy wife (because of a recording they obtain) is panicked that Alexander Haig has the nuclear football and is staging a coup; her Russian-spy husband says stay calm and wait it out, else we'll set off WWIII.

NEW: A federal judge has approved the unconditional release of John Hinckley Jr., who wounded then-President Ronald Reagan and three others in a failed assassination attempt in 1981. https://t.co/BiTlFCCJNH

— NPR Politics (@nprpolitics) September 27, 2021

also, Regan would have been as mythologized and as fondly remembered as JFK
― kyle (akmonday), Wednesday, April 27, 2005 5:02 PM (sixteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Seems to me this ended up happening anyway. He'll be on money before I'm dead, probably.

(Assuming akmonday was talking about the president and not Donald Regan that is)

Bush would have faced a hard primary challenge in '84 without two terms under Reagan to ease the right wing's hostility (and then it wasn't very successful - Buchanan in '92, etc.). I don't know who had the profile to run against him - Jesse Helms?

Jack Kemp maybe