Issue Date: April 30, 2006

Past & Present
How history affects our lives today

Just a matter of inches

Life today might be very different if not for these four fateful close calls.

By Jonathan Alter

We all know that the difference between victory and defeat in sports is often a matter of inches: a baseball that bounces off the back wall instead of sailing into the stands, or a golf ball that just misses the hole. The same is true of history. Imagine how things might have been different today had these four inches, literally, gone the other way:

1. FATE ON FIFTH AVENUE
On Dec. 12, 1931, Winston Churchill, then a private citizen, came to the United States on a speaking tour to recoup some of his severe financial losses in the stock market's collapse. As he climbed out of a taxi on New York's Fifth Avenue, he apparently looked the wrong way and was struck by a passing car traveling 30 mph. "I do not understand why I was not broken like an eggshell or squashed like a gooseberry," Churchill said after being released from the hospital. Had the car struck him at a slightly different angle, he would have been.

Were Churchill killed then, he never would have become Great Britain's prime minister in 1940, and the policy of appeasement could have continued. The course of World War II might have gone differently. No alliance. No D-Day. No victory over Nazism.

2. THE WATERGATE WATCHMAN
On the night of June 17, 1972, Frank Wills was working as a security guard at the Watergate office building in Washington, D.C. As he made his rounds, he noticed a piece of inch-long duct tape on a door lock. He removed it, but he was surprised later when he saw it had been put back in place. Wills called the police, and five men were arrested for burglarizing the Democratic National Committee headquarters. After two "Washington Post" reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, began working on the story, the Watergate coverup unraveled. In 1974, Richard Nixon became the first president in American history to resign.

Had Nixon not been disgraced, support for the Vietnam War may not have evaporated as quickly, Jimmy Carter would not have been elected in 1976 in a backlash vote against Nixon, and Ronald Reagan would not have won in 1980 in a backlash against Carter.

3. FDR'S CLOSE SHAVE
On Feb. 15, 1933, weeks before his inauguration, President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt motored to a rally in Miami's Bayfront Park. The country was at the bottom of the Great Depression. Banks were closing all over the country.

Waiting for the motorcade was Giuseppe Zangara, a 32-year-old Italian immigrant and anarchist who took five shots at FDR with a cheap pistol from a mere 25 feet away, only to miss his target by inches. One possible explanation: A Miami homemaker, Lillian Cross, jostled Zangara. Five other bystanders were shot, including Anton Cermak, the mayor of Chicago, who later died of his wounds.

Had FDR been killed, the new U.S. president would have been Vice-President-elect John Nance Garner, "the Texas Coolidge." Garner, who was a poor speaker, likely would have failed to restore public confidence. He didn't believe much in the New Deal. If he were not replaced by a dictator (which was a real possibility at the time), Garner, an isolationist, probably would have turned a blind eye to the rise of Hitler, and the United States might have stayed out of World War II.

4. HINCKLEY'S BULLET
On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan, who had been in office only 69 days, attended a labor event at the Washington Hilton. Waiting outside was John Hinckley Jr., a troubled 25-year-old who had developed an obsession with actress Jodie Foster.

As Reagan left the hotel, Hinckley fired a Rohm R6-14 revolver six times, permanently disabling the president's press secretary, James Brady, and wounding a policeman and Secret Service agent. A bullet that ricocheted off the presidential limousine lodged in Reagan's lung, less than an inch from his heart. The president joked, "Honey, I forgot to duck," to his wife, Nancy, but doctors later said he nearly died.

The heroic status that came from surviving the assassination attempt helped move the "Reagan Revolution" budget and tax proposals through Congress by the end of the year, just as surviving the Zangara assassination attempt in 1933 propelled Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal.

Jonathan Alter is a senior editor and columnist at "Newsweek." His book, "The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope," is new in stores.