OK, we have threads about what would’ve happened if the CSA had remained intact, and how long it would take to restart civilization. So here’s another topic to debate about what “could’ve been.”
If Hinkley had killed Reagan what would the country (and world) be like today? Where would America be? Would Bush have won in 92? If Bush hadn’t won in 92 would Lil’ Bush be president today? There’s a lot of things that intertwine with this. Anyway, that’s my question.
Bush wouldn’t have run in 92. He would have either already served his 2 terms (80 and 84), or he’d have lost in a crushing defeat in 84 to a LEGITIMATE democratic candidate. 88 probably would have gone to either whoever Bush’s running mate was in 84, or to the victorious democrat. 92…who knows. Probably Clinton still.
I’ll let a real historian come up with a how we’d have been economically, etc. argument. I wouldn’t even want to hazard a guess.
Flymaster, I was going to jump on you for the 1980 term but I had forgotten how early in the Reagan’s term the assassination attempt was. As Bush would have served more than two years it does count.
I suppose the really interesting question is whether reaganomics would ever have been tried as Bush was never that keen on it. How far along were they by March 30, 1981?
Since he had only been in office 2 months, I’d assume not particularly far. I’m not sure, though.
Bush may have been sworn in on April 1st, a historic irony.
He would not have followed Reaganomics, and the horrible condition Jimmy Carter left this country in (extremely high intrest rates, inflation, unemployment, disco, etc.) would have continued. Bush would not survive the election of 1984. Whoever the Democrat Prez. of '84 would be (Mondale? Hart? Earl?) would push for extreme socialist programs not seen since FDR’s New Deal. But, like the New Deal, these programs wouldn’t work, so, like FDR, the Prez. would be forced to back door us into a war. Probably with the Soviets. Without Reagan the USSR would not fall, and would remain the bullies of the world. Economic strife and constant war would be continuous until circa 1995, when I, P.K. Bites turned 35, thus meeting the Constitutional age requirement to become President, and save the nation.
It was either me or Reagan, folks. 
I still don’t think Jodi would have married him.
Don’t drink and post 
(And yes, I know you were joking, but hey, we have to come up with a better future for our country than you as President :p.)
As we all know, the Fed, not the Pres, has the most impact on the economy. The reason interest rates went down during Reagan’s term was Paul Volcker. This isn’t to bash Reagan, but simply to give credit where it is due.
No one actually followed Reagonomics, as the premise rested on a combination of large tax cuts, large increases in military spending, and massive cuts in all other areas of government spending. As #3 didn’t happen, no one knows whether Reaganomics would have worked. As for what actually happened, it did help in the short term, but left ridiculously large deficits. Who knows how good the 90’s boom would have been without the overhang of debt. Again, not necessarily Reagan’s fault.
Of course Bush would have won in 1984 - he would have been taking up the mantle of the fallen hero. The only VP to succeed an assisinated Pres was Andrew Johnson, and I submit that the Reconstruction was a unique circumstance.
I think the most interesting question would be the impact on the Cold War - how important was Reagan (and Star Wars) in causing the collapse of the Eastern Bloc?
Sua
Not near as important as the put-Reagan-on-Rushmore crowd thinks he was. The U.S.S.R. and the rest of the Warsaw Pact countries were in basically the same economic shape in the 1980s that they had been a decade earlier. Sure, they increased their defenses to try and match Reagan, but so freakin’ what? In a Soviet economy, it made not a lick of economic difference whether the central planners ordered factories to make junk that nobody could use because it broke the first time they touched it or nuclear weapons that did nothing more useful than rusting away in the Ukraine. The whole idea that we forced the Soviets to spend themselves into oblivion is preposterous, since they only spent imaginary money in the first place.
The thing that forced communist collapse? IMHO, it was the steady influx of western media into the communist states. I lived in Germany during Reagan’s second term, and the joke then was that if you somehow found yourself on the wrong side of the border, the easiest way to find your way back was to go in the direction that the East German TV antennas were pointed. It may have been possible for the communists to suppress the flow of information in earlier years, but it was damned near impossible to stop it by the late 80s.
When I visited Russia in 1988, every teenager I spoke to had seen bootleg videos of Rambo II, where Stallone kicks Soviet butt in Afghanistan. They all had cassettes of AC/DC and (god help them) Depeche Mode. They knew what was fashionable that year in New York and Berlin. And they wanted all of it, and more. Nothing is more dangerous to an oppressive government than a taste of freedom from afar.
Want a good example of how little Reagan contributed to the collapse of communism in Europe? Look at Yugoslavia. It enjoyed a unique position among communist countries in E. Europe during the 1980s, since Tito had long ago broken with the Soviet Union. It most definitely did not depend on Russia for massive amounts of aid and military assistance, and it did not attempt to fortify itself against SDI and $800 hammers. Yet it was still affected by the same influx of western media as the rest of Eastern Europe (only more so, since Yugoslavia welcomed tourists from the West).
And what happened to Yugloslavia? Well it ain’t exactly a bastion of rational thought and freedom, but it definitely isn’t a Cold War-era communist dictatorship. People got a taste of the good life available elsewhere, decided they wanted it for themselves, and went about getting it despite anything the central government might have said about the matter. Of course, this being the Balkans, that quickly degenerated into shooting your neighbors and taking their stuff, but you still couldn’t ask for a much better example of the collapse of a Soviet-style government.
So score it Free Flow of Information 1, Reagan 0.