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If I could rewrite the past

The Sydney Morning Herald, 13-14 November 2004

On the thirtieth anniversary of President Kennedy’s death, in 1993, Daily Express correspondent Peter Hitchens wrote a fictitious obituary, imagining that Kennedy had survived the assassin’s bullet in 1963. In Hitchens’ alternate history, Kennedy went on to become one of America’s most unpopular Presidents, before finally dying at age 75, mourned by almost nobody. His disastrous Presidency, the article speculated, prevents Democrats from occupying the White House for at least another 25 years. Nixon somehow avoids the Watergate scandal, and the first President Bush is somehow re-elected. Even Dan Quayle is propelled to the Presidency, aided by (of all things) victory in a debate against Bill Clinton. When attacked for his youth and inexperience, he retorts, “Governor, I’m not John Kennedy.”

Speculative or not, Hitchens’ story was nonsense. Not only was Quayle portrayed out of character, but so was Kennedy, whose would-be failure was based mainly on hawkishness and an anti-civil rights agenda – not exactly his usual policies. But then, alternate history allows us to speculate however we like. Even if Hitchens was not already known for his strongly conservative ideals, this article left no doubt.

Alternate history, long popular with fiction writers, has gradually been used more by historians and journalists. “How can we ‘explain what happened and why’ if we only look at what happened and never consider the alternatives?” wrote the late British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper. Jack Dann even suggested that his recent alternate-history novel, The Rebel, served a similar purpose to non-fiction.

The Rebel (subtitled “An Imagined Life of James Dean”) portrays a history in which Dean survives his 1955 car crash. "I just changed that one thing," says Dann, who (like any biographer) copiously researched his book, making it “as factual as I could… By exploring Dean as he matures, I'm able to cast light on the Dean that we know.”

Dann is not the only one who takes alternate history so seriously. Like Dann himself, the genre has moved from entertaining science fiction stories to the literary mainstream. Now alternate timelines are created by academics – though the concept still has its detractors. Why speculate on make-believe events, they say, when it’s difficult enough to figure out the truth in official history?

Like “real” history, alternate history stories (trendily known as “counterfaxuals”) can be distorted by the politics of the author. Witness all the commentators, arguing fervently about the Bush Presidency by drawing on alternative scenarios. What if Al Gore had been sworn in as President in 2001? Would we have a safer and more clear-thinking America after 9-11, or one which suffered terrorist attacks on a weekly basis? Or, to suggest another theory, would we have avoided the 9-11 terrorist attacks altogether? Debaters on all sides seem convinced of the “true” events – even if they didn’t happen.

Kennedy surviving the assassination attempt is a popular event of alternate history, inspiring novels, stage plays and short story collections. Partly through his early death, he has become a symbolic figure for the American left, a sign of political heroism.

As he did not live to see his full potential, his “hero” status is based on flimsy evidence. So perhaps it was inevitable that some political conservatives would portray him as a villain. With a world of conjecture at their fingertips, creative writers can assume the worst.

Yale University historian Diane Kunz, in a chapter of Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals, suggested that JFK would have been revealed as a mediocre President, if not worse. “The former Communist world has lost its idols,” wrote Kunz. “It is now time for Americans to relinquish one of theirs.”

Of course, not every historian agrees. In an essay in What Ifs? Of American History, Robert Dallek, a Kennedy biographer and admirer, said that Kennedy’s strategy to limit Vietnam involvement was planned shrewdly enough to succeed, and that he would be popular enough at the end of his second term to be succeeded by his brother, the Attorney-General Robert Kennedy. Result: no Watergate, more optimism, and less voter cynicism.

In many alternate histories, however, the verdict on JFK has been scathing – especially considering that he is judged for things he never did. Writers have envisioned him accidentally starting World War III, provoking violent acti-war marches, or resigning after phone tapping allegations. Like the convicted criminals of Minority Report, he has been condemned for what he allegedly would have done, had he not been stopped.

Novelist Philip Roth has recently attacked another all-American hero. His bestseller, The Plot Against America, gives us an alternate world in which Charles Lindbergh, trans-Atlantic pilot, white supremacist and proud anti-Semite, becomes the Republican Presidential candidate in 1940, easily defeating the incumbent Roosevelt. President Lindbergh declares martial law, throws his opponents in prison, and allies with Nazi Germany in World War II.

To some American critics, The Plot Against America walks a similar line to Robert Harris’ Fatherland, in which Hitler successfully invades Russia and, through the magic of propaganda, is historically revered as a great leader. Alternate history, of course, but a bit like real history. This was Stalin’s Russia, with the names changed. Could Roth’s fascist, 1940s America under President Lindbergh be a reflection of, say, neo-conservative, contemporary America under President Bush?

Roth is no fan of Bush. Recently, he called him “a man unfit to run a hardware store let alone a nation like this one.” However, he claims that his alternate America is a historical novel, not a comment on modern politics. This hasn’t stopped critics from seeing parallels. “Roth shows us President Lindbergh in his aviator’s gear and speaking in a plain style – and you would have to be pretty dim-witted not to recall our current president, striding around the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in his own flying attire, delivering his ‘Mission Accomplished’ speech,” wrote Paul Berman in his review for The New York Times.

Roth’s true political motives, however, are probably even more blatant. In a perverse way, both The Plot Against America and Hitchens’ character assassination of JFK are works of wishful thinking. True, Hitchens’ alternate JFK leads America into a dark age, but at least he can no longer be a figure of inspiration for the Democrats. In fact, the story ends with 25 years of Republican rule – a deliriously happy ending, by Hitchens’ standards.

The Plot Against America does not have such a cheerful denouement, but by the end of the book,Lindbergh is remembered as a national villain. In Roth’s opinion, he gets the reputation he deserves.

Liberal idealism has been part of alternate history since the early days of the genre, when Charles Renouvier’s Uchronie (1876) suggested a reality in which Christianity was not established in the West, due to a small change of events after the reign of Marcus Aurelius. While the word of Christ spreads throughout the East, Europe enjoys an extra millennium of classical culture. When Christianity finally goes West, it is absorbed harmlessly into the multi-religious society. Did Renouvier actually believe this would havehappened? Perhaps he wanted to, as it suited his own, anti-clerical beliefs.

OK, so Rebel and The Plot Against America, despite their exhaustive research, are, first and foremost, works of creative fiction. The same can be said for most alternate worlds. Take Kingsley Amis’s The Alteration (1976), in which the Spanish Armada is successful and the Reformation never took place, leading (in Amis’s mind) to a Utopia. Or A. Bertram Chandler’s Kelly Country (1984), in which Ned Kelly does not die at Glenrowan, but becomes the first President of the Republic of Australia. A ludicrous scenario, but for republicans (and even monarchists with a sense of humour), it was a wonderful concept. This is not the way it would have happened, but perhaps it’s the way it should have happened, if only to make a good story. Fantasy writers do it with flair.

But when scholars and historians imagine alternate histories, it often reminds us of the Prime Minister’s famous attack, after winning the 1996 election, on those who “attempt to rewrite history in the service of a partisan political cause.”

He was aiming a cheap shot at “lefties”, of course, but he unwittingly described the bulk of “serious” alternate history. A history in which Europe somehow evades a thousand years of Christianity, or (even more ridiculous) Quayle defeats Clinton in a Presidential debate? Like so much political writing, it’s very hard to believe.