4/14/65 What If It Had Been Lincoln Instead Of Kennedy?

Time travel to save a president.  It's the theme of 11/22/63.  What if Kennedy's assassination could be pre-empted?  What affect would it have on the world to come? 

This reminds me of a Twilight Zone episode titled "Back There"
(aired 1/13/61).  Get Serling's opening lines: "Witness a theoretical argument, Washington, D.C., the present.  Four intelligent men talking about an improbable thing like going back in time.  A friendly debate revolving around a simple question: Could a human being change what happened before?  Interesting and theoretical, because who has ever heard of a man going back in time -- before tonight, that is.  Because this is. . . the Twlight Zone."

In Rod Serling's script, Lincoln cannot be saved. . . but time is altered!  The one policeman who believes Peter Corrigan, a man who traveled back in time to warn the world Lincoln would be shot, becomes a wealthy man.  His heir was an attendant at the beginning of the story, but when Corrigan returns to the future, the attendant is now a wealthy man because his great grandfather had been the only policeman who believed Corrigan.

Serling: "Mr. peter Corrigan, lately returned from a place called back there, a journey into time with highly questionable results, proving on one hand that the threads of history are woven tightly and the skin of events cannot be undone, but on the other hand there are small fragments of tapestry that can't be altered. . ."

I like the episode a lot! It makes me anxious to see how King will carry this out.  Not in a  30 minute snippet, but in a long novel. 

Links between Lincoln and Kennedy are numerous.  I once got a penny with Kennedy's profile drawn over Lincoln's, and attached to it a list of similarities.  This is an example of that list (from wikipedia),

• Both presidents were elected to the presidency in '60.
• Both presidents were elected to the United States House of Representatives in '46.
• Both were runners-up for the party's nomination for vice-president in '56.
• Both their respective Vice Presidents/successors were Southern Democrats named Johnson born in '08.
• Both presidents were concerned with the problems of American blacks and made their views strongly known in '63. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, which became law in 1863. In 1963, Kennedy presented his reports to Congress on Civil Rights, and the same year was the famous March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  
• Both presidents were shot in the head.
• Both presidents were shot from behind.  
• Both presidents were shot in presence of their wives.
• Both presidents were shot on a Friday.  
• Both presidents were accompanied by another couple.
• The male companion of the other couple was wounded by the assassin.  
• Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theatre. Kennedy was shot in a Lincoln automobile, made by Ford.  
• Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy who told him not to go to the theatre. Kennedy had a secretary named Evelyn Lincoln (who was born 100 years after Lincoln, and whose husband Harold's nickname was Abe) who warned him not to go to Dallas.  
• Both Oswald and Booth were killed before they could be put on trial.
• Lincoln and Kennedy each have 7 letters.  
• Lincoln and Kennedy both have five syllables in their full name (which counts Kennedy's middle initial).
• John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald each have 15 letters and 3 words.  
• There are 6 letters in each Johnson's first name.
• Booth ran from a theatre to a warehouse, Oswald ran from a warehouse to a theatre.

Don't get too excited about that list, though -- a lot of it has been debunked.  I do wonder what the world would have been like if Abraham Lincoln had lived.

Twilight Zone's Haunted Car. . .
The episode that aired after "Back There" is titled "The Whole Truth" and was about a used car dealer who suddenly is cursed by the inability to tell a lie.  Remind you of liar liar?  But wait. . . this episode is actually about a haunted car!  I kid you not.  The old man actually says, "This car is haunted."

King has the ability to take themes we are familiar with and max them up.