The Andrew Johnson Analogy

The Andrew Johnson Analogy

1. What if ten years earlier, Johnson’s father had hired and trained Booth as a spy/hit man?
2. What if Johnson’s father had been implicated in an assassination attempt on President Franklin Pierce, when he was vice president?
3. What if Booth’s and Johnson’s fathers were business partners at the time of the assassination?
4. What if Johnson sent his secret service men to meet with John Wilkes Booth on Sunday 1865-02-05, 72 days prior to 1865-04-14 when Lincoln was assassinated. Even though was an outstanding warrant for Booth’s arrest, they did not arrest him.
5. What if Johnson arranged meetings for all the cabinet during the week prior to the assassination with the man who gave Booth his gun collection, ammunition and get-away horse?
6. What if Johnson ordered the chief of police to stop a criminal investigation of Booth and his family just prior to the assassination?
7. What if Johnson provided a carriage for the Booth extended family to leave the area a few days before the assassination?
8. What if Johnson did nothing to stop the assassination, even though he saw Booth drawing his pistol?
9. What if Johnson ordered Lincoln’s bodyguard to throw down his weapon, allowing Booth to continue with the assassination unimpeded?
10. What if Johnson kept watching the Ford Theatre play, laughing and smiling, both during and immediately after the assassination?
11. What if Johnson appointed a business associate of Booth’s to head the assassination investigation?
12. What if after six months of fruitless searching for Booth, Johnson gave up the chase?

    The most important thing is for us to find John Wilkes Booth. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him.
    ~ Andrew Johnson (1808-12-29 1875-07-31 age:66) 1884-04-17

    I don’t know where he is. I have no idea and I really don’t care. It’s not that important. It’s not our priority.
    ~ Andrew Johnson (1808-12-29 1875-07-31 age:66) 1885-10-16

13. What if a little after a year, Johnson suddenly changed his mind and instead suddenly accused a black man, Soddy Hussem, of murdering Lincoln and lynched him without providing a scrap of evidence, then declared the case closed.

Do you think historians would have painted as rosy a picture of President Andrew Johnson as his contemporaries did?

You might ask, why am I babbling about hypothetical evidence against a perfectly reputable, long-dead, president. I did this to try to sneak past your mental defenses against thinking any ill of the Bush family. Most people are so convinced president Bush is a man of honour that they dismiss every piece of evidence to the contrary as irrelevant. They don’t dispute it. They just dismiss it as an unimportant tatter of a crazy conspiracy theory. I decided to mildly disguise the evidence against George W. Bush, to sneak it past your natural denial. If that sort of evidence would be enough to convict Andrew Johnson in the eyes of history, then surely it should be enough to trigger an investigation into the activities of the living George W. Bush.

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