Fox, I think you're forgetting the role that leadership can play. A strong tail can wag the dog of the drifting electorate.

To play the alternate history game, start with the election of 1960.

On our timeline, JFK won. He was a charismatic figure, who tended to take the high road and successfully inspired people with ringing phrases like "We choose to go to the Moon, and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard!". JFK could say things like that, which might have seemed pompous and absurd in a lesser figure.

On the alternate timeline, Nixon won. We know from our own experience of his later term that he was a wooden, shifty-eyed, paranoid figure. Nixon preferred the low road, and exerted influence by playing on the darker side of human nature. If he'd tried to start a space program like Kennedy's, he'd have been ridiculed...just as Bush has been, in much the same way. He'd have been accused of ignoring The Soviet Threat, and perhaps of trying to distract attention from some analog to Kennedy's Bay of Pigs failure. There would have been no Apollo Program if Nixon had been President.

No, I'm not saying that Kerry could be another Kennedy. Gimme a break. That basset hound figurine carved in wood? Kerry's is a visage that would be more inspiring carved on Mount Rushmore than it is in the flesh. I'll be voting for him, of course, but I have no illusions about his charisma. I'm not offering a ray of hope for at least four years, but I am saying that some future President might be able to inspire the American people to once more look up to the stars.

The dream isn't hopeless, just postponed.