But would the president truly have been re-elected in a landslide? What would a second term have looked like? And how might the USA – and the world – have changed if he had lived?
“I think Kennedy […] would’ve beaten his opponent Barry Goldwater comfortably,” says historian Mark White, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. “He averaged 70% approval ratings,” which was “the highest of any president in modern recorded history.”
A likely second term
Heading into the 1964 presidential electoral campaign, Kennedy remained hugely popular. In particular, his handling of international crises had bolstered his image as a steady foreign policy leader – a necessary thing in the burgeoning nuclear age.
Though his legislative progress domestically was widely perceived to be slower, his youthful energy and rhetorical appeal had galvanised much of the electorate, allowing them to be patient with the president’s initiatives.
In contrast, his likely Republican challenger, Barry Goldwater, was a hardline conservative senator from Arizona whose campaign would later mark a sharp rightward shift in Republican politics.
Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act, advocated for the use of tactical nuclear weapons, and promoted a minimal federal government – a platform that alienated many moderate voters (the kinds of voters that Richard Nixon had wooed in his hotly contested 1960 election battle against Kennedy, and would win over again in his successful 1968 campaign).
“[Goldwater] was seen as extreme,” White explains. “Kennedy wouldn’t have had to be particularly aggressive – Goldwater’s positions would have disqualified him in the minds of many voters.”
In reality, after Kennedy’s death, Lyndon B Johnson won the 1964 election in a landslide against Goldwater – taking 61% of the popular vote, and all but six states. But White is confident JFK would have enjoyed similar, if not greater, success.
“I think we can safely assume that John Kennedy would’ve been president till January 1969.”
A different path on Vietnam?
One of the most fervently debated questions surrounding Kennedy’s unfinished presidency is whether he would have escalated the Vietnam War – as Johnson did after 1964.
“I think it’s most likely he would not have [furthered] the war in Vietnam,” White says. “He already had a fantastic reputation as a foreign policy president,” thanks to his successful diplomacy in handling the Cuban Missile Crisis. Unlike Johnson, White suggests, Kennedy “didn’t really need to prove himself.”
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Crucially, White points to Kennedy’s growing caution when dealing with the military’s most aggressive advisers. “He became increasingly sceptical of the generals because he noticed they always gave him very hawkish advice,” he notes. “I think he would’ve been far more able than Johnson was […] to have rejected that advice.”
While Kennedy had increased US involvement in Vietnam during his first term, White believes his instincts were moving toward disengagement – or, at the very least, a more cautious path than the one Johnson ultimately took.
Domestic ambition – with limits
On the domestic front, Kennedy’s second term might have brought real – but more restrained – reform.
“He likely would have passed civil rights legislation, in my view,” White says, citing the bill that Kennedy introduced to end segregation in the South. “But I think he had a less radical conception of domestic reform than Lyndon Johnson.”
Johnson, Kennedy’s Vice President who succeeded the assassinated leader and sought to honour his legacy, launched the Great Society programme – a sweeping set of social reforms that included Medicare, Medicaid, and a historic expansion of federal anti-poverty initiatives. Kennedy, by contrast, was a more incrementalist politician.
The legacy that never was
What’s perhaps most fascinating about Kennedy’s lost second term is how it might have reshaped the longer arc of American politics.
“Would he have preserved the liberal consensus longer than Johnson was able to? That’s a really interesting question,” White reflects.
The 1960s marked a turning point in US political life. The liberal order built under Franklin D Roosevelt – one defined by broad federal powers and expansive social policy – began to fracture under the weight of war, unrest, and growing conservative backlash.
Goldwater’s candidacy, though unsuccessful, laid the groundwork for the resurgence of Richard Nixon, the later rise of Ronald Reagan and the rightward tilt of American politics.
Ultimately, John F Kennedy’s time in office ended neither with a noble bowing out at the culmination of a second term, nor with political defeat, but with bloody violence.
Mark White is a professor of history at Queen Mary, University of London, and the author of Icon, Libertine, Leader (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024). He was speaking to Elinor Evans on the HistoryExtra podcast, listen to the full conversation
