Jeff Greenfield's "Then Everything Changed" Could Also Be About What Happens When Charles Finally Offs Imus

When Jeff Greenfield, the veteran political journalist now with CBS News, learned that the formidable Michiko Kakutani would be reviewing his new book Then Everything Changed for The New York Times, he was instantly nervous, telling Imus today that “various sphincters tightened.” Come on, Jeff!
 
Luckily for Greenfield, Kakutani enjoyed his tome, which takes three historical events in American political history that “came within just a millimeter of happening,” as he put it, and permits them to actually happen—responsibly, of course.
 
“You don’t just say, ‘Oh, okay, I’ll make it up,’” Greenfield said. “I interviewed people who knew these players, I read oral histories, I read memoirs.”
 
The three stories he tells in Then Everything Changed ask the following questions: What if a suicide bomber had killed John F. Kennedy in December of 1960? What if Robert F. Kennedy, for whom Greenfield worked, had not gone through the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel, where he was assassinated? And what if Gerald Ford hadn’t uttered one particular sentence in the 1976 presidential debates, and paved the road to victory for Jimmy Carter?
 
Unlike previous “what if?” books, Greenfield is putting real people in real life situations, with as much plausibility as possible. For instance, the attempted bombing outside JFK’s Palm Beach, Florida home, which happened (or didn’t, as it were) just weeks before JFK was to be inaugurated President, was thwarted only because Jacqueline Kennedy came to the door to bid her husband goodbye as he left for church.
 
The bomber, Richard Pavlick, did not detonate as planned because, Greenfield noted, “He said, ‘I don’t want to do this in front of his wife.’” Had Jackie not come to the door, Greenfield deduced, “he’s there by himself, and he’s blown up.” Resulting, of course, in Lyndon Johnson becoming President in 1960 instead of 1963, and dealing with a host of controversial issues like the Cuban Missile Crisis.
 
Re-imagining Robert Kennedy’s assassination was therapeutic for Greenfield, who admitted, “I’ve thought about it for 40 years.” Had RFK lived, Greenfield suspects Johnson “would have done everything he could to stop him” from winning the Democratic nomination in 1968.
 
After Kennedy died, Johnson planned on sealing the nomination with a speech in Chicago. The address was cancelled, however, when the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia.
 
“The speech that’s in this book is actually the speech that was drafted for him,” Greenfield said. He also posits in the book that RFK had aides capable of pulling off a Watergate-style incident.
 
The third novella in Then Everything Changed is, in a way, Greenfield’s favorite. “Gerry Ford’s at this debate in ’76, he’s coming back from a huge deficit against Carter,” Greenfield said. “And he announces there’s no Soviet domination in Eastern Europe.”
 
Asked by the moderator if he really meant that, Ford stood firm, saying, “You bet.” A better reply, in Greenfield’s view, would have been, “Of course they militarily dominate, but they don’t dominate the hearts and minds.”
 
Had he applied the latter sentence, Greenfield predicted Ford would been elected President in 1976. “And then what?” Greenfield asked, in the spirit of his book. “You do a lot of research, you talk to people, and you come up with some very different notions, including the fact that Ronald Reagan has a much tougher time running in 1980 against 12 years of Republicans than against an unpopular, Democratic incumbent.”
 
He’s got some scenarios in mind for a possible sequel, but noted the role chance plays not only in our own lives, but in the history of the world. “When people write histories, they write of these great forces, these cycles of history, and that’s true,” Greenfield said. “But then there’s this little matter of fate. And not just the ones in this book.”
 
Other authors, like Robert Harris and Philip K. Dick, have executed similar works in the past, and though Greenfield tried to explain how Then Everything Changed differs, he lost Imus for good when he said the word “dick.”
 
“I’m so glad you did that,” Greenfield told the giggling host of this program. “Because I was thinking, where’s the Imus I’ve known for 22 years?”
 
-Julie Kanfer