Yesterday, as I was riding around doing some personal chores, I heard on the radio about the exhumation of Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald was the guy who assassinated President Kennedy in 1963. I won't say that he was the alleged assassin, because the only possibility that makes any sense at all is that he did it himself.
The point of this post really wasn't to discuss Oswald, nor the assassination per se. Instead, it is about how it changed history. If Kennedy had lived, what kind of country would this have become? Interesting thought, because his successor, LBJ, wasn't too good of a president.
This is a roundabout way of saying that Oswald changed the course of history when he killed Kennedy. It is also true of McKinley's assassination, and especially of Lincoln's.
The assassination of a president doesn't produce good outcomes, if history is any guide.
LBJ gave US Vietnam. He also gave us Medicare and the beginnings of the influx of illegal immigration. He was the author of the Great Society that was great, then started being Not So Great.
The McKinley assassination gave us Teddy Roosevelt. But Teddy ran as a Progressive and managed to get Woodrow Wilson elected. Wilson gave us the Federal Reserve. Ugh.
Lincoln's assassination no doubt led to the Jim Crow Era. Most likely, if Lincoln had lived, there would have been a better outcome than that.
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