Someone brought up a scenerio over in another topic which got me thinking. Had Hagen been born an italian, would he have made a good Don? Do you think that he would have done things differenty than Michael? If so, what?
While Tom was the "acting Don" while Michael was traveling between Miami, New York and Cuba, he managed to pull off one of the greatest coups of the Trilogy, namely he compromised Geary.
That was vintage Vito Corleone...mixing brutality with "reason" to accomplish something. This is the only time after Vito's death that we actually see the Corleone family GAIN political influence. He would not have made the deal with Roth in Cuba, but instead he would have consolidated the Corleone's position in Las Vegas, and in the years following he would have been in a position to sell all the Vegas holdings to MGM and the other huge corporations which bought it up in the 70's. In short, he would have made the Corleone family "completely legitimate."
In fact, thinking about this shows that Michael really did not want to make the family "completely legitimate." If he did, all he had to do was tell Tom to make it happen, and he would have.
