From an article on Political Wire this morning, about Ted Kennedy's memoirs:
"Kennedy tells of a secret meeting in the spring of 1967 between President Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert Kennedy, whose increasingly outspoken criticism of the war in Southeast Asia was becoming a political threat to Mr. Johnson. According to the book, Robert Kennedy proposed that Mr. Johnson gave him authority to personally negotiate a peace treaty in Vietnam. This, implicitly, would have kept Mr. Kennedy out of the 1968 race for the Democratic nomination, a prospect that Mr. Johnson had come to worry greatly about."
Assuming such a meeting happened as described, could LBJ have plausibly accepted the offer? If he had, could Kennedy have had any success with negotiations?
This may have huge impacts on politics -- not only does RFK probably live past 1968 (although whether he has a political future depends on the success of negotiations, a pretty risky gamble), but could the absence of an RFK candidacy and assassination mean that Humphrey has an uneventful convention? (There's still Gene McCarthy, OTOH ... how much better does he do w/o Kennedy?) Would a quiet convention be enough win Humphrey the election in this TL?
"Kennedy tells of a secret meeting in the spring of 1967 between President Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert Kennedy, whose increasingly outspoken criticism of the war in Southeast Asia was becoming a political threat to Mr. Johnson. According to the book, Robert Kennedy proposed that Mr. Johnson gave him authority to personally negotiate a peace treaty in Vietnam. This, implicitly, would have kept Mr. Kennedy out of the 1968 race for the Democratic nomination, a prospect that Mr. Johnson had come to worry greatly about."
Assuming such a meeting happened as described, could LBJ have plausibly accepted the offer? If he had, could Kennedy have had any success with negotiations?
This may have huge impacts on politics -- not only does RFK probably live past 1968 (although whether he has a political future depends on the success of negotiations, a pretty risky gamble), but could the absence of an RFK candidacy and assassination mean that Humphrey has an uneventful convention? (There's still Gene McCarthy, OTOH ... how much better does he do w/o Kennedy?) Would a quiet convention be enough win Humphrey the election in this TL?