If Kennedy Lived: The First and Second Terms of President John F. Kennedy: AnAlternate History Read Online Free PDF

not worry about it.” He’d said almost exactly the same thing to Kenny O’Donnell as he pointed out the window to the stage where the labor rally would take place.
    “Look at that platform. With all those buildings around it, the Secret Service couldn’t stop someone who really wanted to get you.”
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    He went downstairs and walked across the street through a light drizzle to a labor rally where 5,000 supporters had gathered in the early morning damp. When some in the crowd began yelling for Jackie, he offered a mock apology.
    “Mrs. Kennedy is organizing herself. It takes her a little longer, but of course she looks better than we do when she does it.”
    He was grateful for her willingness to make this trip, especially just a few months after the death of their infant son, Patrick Bouvier. He was grateful to her for other reasons as well: had his compulsive, sometimes reckless behavior driven her from the marriage, his political career would have stalled if not ended. Maybe it was because her own mother had ended her marriage because of the philandering of her father; maybe Jackie had looked at her father, and Jack’s father, and decided that it was just the way men are. What was clear was that, without her forbearance, he would never have become president.
    Then, after a breakfast speech to the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce, they had driven to the Fort Worth Airport for the ten-minute flight to Dallas. He climbed up the stairs to Air Force One,angling slightly to ease the pain of his back. There’d be no time to rest on the short flight to Dallas, but there would be time for a quick, blunt chat with Governor Connally. As soon as the plane took off, he summoned the Governor into his cabin, and after a three-minute conversation the Governor agreed to put Senator Yarborough at the head table for the Austin fund-raiser and invite him to the post-dinner reception at the governor’s mansion. Sure, it would just paper over their blood feud, but at least the headlines on Saturday wouldn’t trumpet that feud.
    OF COURSE HE WAS GOING TO DALLAS
    There was uneasiness about visiting the city from some of his staff and political allies. It was ground zero for the far right in Texas; the John Birch Society, whose founder Robert Welch had gained fame (or infamy) by branding President Eisenhower “a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy,” had a highly visible presence, and a celebrity supporter in the form of retired major general Edwin Walker. (A few months ago, some unknown assailant had taken a shot at Walker through the window of his home with a high-powered rifle; the shooter, whoever he was, had escaped, and the trail had long grown cold.) On a visit to Dallas on October 23, UN ambassador Adlai Stevenson had been jostled and spat on by a crowd of demonstrators.
    But Dallas was the second-biggest city in the state, home to some of the most powerful corporate and business interests anywhere in the region. If he had any hopes of winning Texas in ’64, he needed the support, not just from the liberals and the labor folks in the state, but from Governor John Connally’s conservative wing as well.
    So, yes, he was going to Dallas, but that didn’t mean the visit would be free of the bitter intraparty split. Hell, even the location for the President’s luncheon speech was a source of endless contention.
    For Connally and his allies, the only place for the luncheon was the Dallas Trade Mart, a five-year-old, $12.6 million, 980,000-square-foot architectural gem located on North Stemmons Freeway just north of the city’s downtown center, in the Dallas Market Center. It was a magnet for Dallas’ establishment—at least for those not convinced that John Kennedy was a dangerous leftist eager to sell America out to the Russians.
    Kennedy’s own team preferred another site: the Women’s Building, located on the site of the state fairgrounds, southwest of the downtown center. Because it