Booth destroyed South's best hope

On April 14 150 years ago, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln, who was watching a play in Ford's Theater. It was the first presidential assassination in U.S. history, but it wouldn't be the last.

Booth, a Southern sympathizer, apparently believed that killing Lincoln would aid the Confederacy, whose largest armies had surrendered in the previous two weeks. Lincoln had toured the nearly demolished Confederate capital just 90 miles away in Richmond. The South was in ruins; its armies were defeated; hundreds of thousands of its soldiers were killed; its agricultural economy was ruined, its barns, fields and plantation houses were smoldering.

In killing Lincoln, Booth did exactly the opposite of his intentions. Instead of helping the Confederacy, he hurt it. Weeks earlier, at his second inauguration, Lincoln spoke of how he hoped to bring the seceding states and the loyal states back together after four years of horrific warfare. He promised a post-war policy "With malice toward none, with charity for all," He would work "to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

Lincoln's death changed the post-war policy. The vengeance that Lincoln had opposed was imposed as retribution for his death. Although the paroling of Confederate soldiers and their generals and political leaders was generous and perhaps unprecedented in the history of warfare, little was done to resurrect the South's devastated economy. Its agricultural base was destroyed. The fertile Shenandoah Valley was left in ashes. Its railroads were ruined. Its Confederate money was worthless. And an occupying army of Union soldiers stoked resentment among grieving widows and orphans and frustrated veterans. For nearly 100 years after Reconstruction, Southerners kept former slaves and their descendents subjugated and politically powerless.

Had Lincoln shaped Reconstruction, he might have formed policies that would be more palatable to the former Confederates. He might have helped former slaves and former slave owners to see their mutual interest in redeveloping the South. Had he lived, northern politicians would be less interested in seeing the South suffer for its sins.

But John Wilkes Booth, with one gunshot, hurt the South he loved far more than he hurt the North he opposed.

If Sirhan Sirhan had been stopped, what the world might have been

I dragged myself out of bed the morning of June 5, 1968, and turned on the television — something I wouldn't normally do — but I wanted to find out what happened in the California presidential primary. I was home from my first year of college and had not yet started a summer job. The newscast left me confused. Instead of reciting the primary results, the reporters were all gathered around a hospital, talking of wounds and prognosis and hopes. It took me a while to realize that they were talking about a shooting that had happened hours earlier in a back hallway at the Ambassador Hotel. Sen. Robert Kennedy lay gravely wounded with a bullet to the head. He would survive less than a day.

Forty-five years later, I wonder at how different the world might have been if someone had stopped Sirhan Sirhan in that hallway, taken away his pistol and stopped the nightmare. Could Kennedy have rested the Democratic nomination away from Vice President Hubert Humphrey? Late getting into the race, Kennedy had won a string of primaries and had instigated a wave of enthusiasm and hope — hope that the Kennedy legacy, cut short five years earlier in Dallas, might be revived.

But the odds were long. Party pols still controlled the nomination process, and they weren't lining up behind Bobby. The president, Lyndon Johnson, hated Bobby, and the feeling was mutual. Would the Chicago Democratic Convention have been as chaotic if Kennedy had been there to give an outlet to the many rank-and-file who felt left out and ignored? Could the Democrats have coalesced around Bobby and denied Richard Nixon his slim victory?

And if Bobby had become president, what might have transpired in Vietnam, in civil rights and in every other issue of the day? Would Bobby have launched a new investigation of the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination, an investigative panel not appointed by LBJ, whom Bobby, according to some reports, thought had a hand in the murder?

These are questions that cry out for an alternative history — a fictionalized account of what might have been, of what could have been, of what many people dreamed would happen.

A political shooting in America

The attempted assassination of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords Saturday at a local constituency event looks appallingly like something out of a Third World republic. Although the United States has had a history of heated political rhetoric at least since the time of Presidents Adams and Jefferson, violence and murder have generally not been part of the political process. This nation's few assassinations and attempted assassinations of top leaders have usually been the work of mentally deranged or delusional figures, such as Squeaky Fromme or John Hinckley.

The shooting of Giffords and 17 others at a supermarket comes at a time when angry political rhetoric is at its worst and is abetted by the Internet and social media. Partisans think nothing of placing bull's eyes or cross hairs over portraits of political rivals and speak of "knocking off" opponents. The president of the United States has the advantage of Secret Service protection, but rank-and-file members of Congress generally have no security details. Their work and their future electoral success require them to meet and listen to constituents on a near-daily basis. This kind of contact with voters is essential to the workings of democracy, so a shooting like Saturday's in Arizona is especially threatening to our political system.

Even if it is shown that the gunman was mentally ill or deranged and acting alone, this incident should provide the impetus for a toning down of political rhetoric and a lesson in the need for respect and courtesy, even on the campaign trail or in overheated talk radio and television. Giffords, widely known as a Democratic moderate, was the epitome of the kind of politician who was not ideological and was willing to compromise for the common good.

The American system has forged a successful democracy despite great ethnic divisions and political diversity. History has shown that American elections often bring sweeping changes without violence. Arizona is not Islamabad; we must not allow an individual or group of individuals to blur that distinction.

Forty-five years ago still reverberates

Saturday marked the 45th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. That number of years — 45 — still astounds me. The most significant world event in the first half of my lifetime is being relegated to near-ancient history. Most Americans alive today do not remember the assassination — a fact emphasized to me by an offhand comment I made while teaching a college journalism class some 20 years ago. I was talking about the importance of big news events. "You remember where you were and what you were doing when you heard about the Kennedy assassination ... ," I began, and was greeted with blank stares. Finally one student explained, "We were born in, like, 1965." Suddenly, I felt old.

Today's mantra is that you remember where you were and what you were doing Sept. 11, 2001.

That day in Dallas just doesn't seem so long ago. On the 10th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, I was working in Washington, D.C. While living in the area, I visited the Kennedy grave at Arlington. On the 20th anniversary, I pulled out my old color slide I had taken of the Kennedy grave with the Capitol in the distant background and published it (a rare front-page color photo) in the newspaper. The 30th and 40th anniversaries were less memorable.

On this 45th anniversary of the destruction of the dream Kennedy embodied, we have elected a man who is too young to remember the Kennedy assassination. Many comparisons have been made between Kennedy and Barack Obama. Both men have inspired youthful followers. But despite all the youthful exuberance Obama embodies, he is four years older than Kennedy was when elected. He is older than Kennedy was when JFK was assassinated.

My generation was set adrift by an assassin's bullet, never again to trust wholeheartedly in an elected official, never again to believe that individuals can change the world, never again to think of politics as a noble calling. The aura of martyrdom has inflated the Kennedy mystique and has obscured his failings, the same phenomenon that turned Lincoln into the embodiment of all things positive about America. But an objective analysis of Kennedy's presidency has to admit that much was lost that long-ago day in Dallas. He had inspired the Peace Corps, endured weekly press conferences to speak directly to the public (and spar with the press), used self-deprecating humor to disarm critics, initiated civil rights legislation, pushed for Medicare, set America on the path to the moon and armed the baby boom generation with principles and causes.

As Nov. 22, 1963, fades into the distant past, its impact on America's future will never diminish.