ELECTION # 44, 1960. The NASTY-METER rises to 9.

QUOTE from Tom Wicker: "Nobody knows to this day who the American people really elected in 1960."

The oldsters were out (Eisenhower and Truman) and the youngsters were in (Kennedy and Nixon) in the campaign of 1960. Eisenhower had left office leaving quite a few problems for the next president. Russia had beaten us into outer space, Russia was making threatening noises, Ike had used federal troops to force school integration in Little Rock but did nothing to address the roots of the civil rights, and American military advisors were being sent to country called South Vietnam. The most explosive decade in the twentieth century was about to begin with an election that many feel remains, to this day, too close to call.

The CANDIDATES in 1960.

DEMOCRAT: JOHN F. KENNEDY.

Kennedy was 43, a war hero, son of millionaires, a former congressman and senator, had movie-star good looks, and had a beautiful wife. But he had one big problem - he was Catholic. The last Catholic to run was Al Smith in 1928 and he had been nearly burned at the stake. (see election #36 and you'll see what I mean.)
Kennedy chose Lyndon Johnson of Texas as his VP running mate. Kennedy and Johnson hated each other but Kennedy needed Johnson to carry the South. Why did Johnson accept? These are his words as told to a woman at the convention: "One out of every four presidents has died in office. I'm a gamblin' man, darlin', and this is the only chance I got."

REPUBLICAN: RICHARD NIXON.

Nixon was 47, also a former congressman and senator, VP under Eisenhower, and had had a meteoric rise to the top in the Republican Party just like Kennedy had in the Democratic Party. They both had done it in fourten years - from 1946 to 1960. Nixon had gained quite a reputation as being tough on communism with his work in Congress and with his famous "Kitchen Debate" with Khrushchev in Moscow. Nixon's running mate was UN ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge.

Eisenhower wasn't impressed with Nixon. He had distrusted his VP ever since his famous Checkers Speech in 1952. When Ike was asked if Nixon had participated in any major decisions in his administration, Eisenhower replied, "If you give me a week, I might think of one."

The CAMPAIGN in 1960.

Nixon tried to change his reputation of being devious and underhanded, he created the New Nixon persona of being mellow, mild, and reasonable. But Harry Truman didn't fall for it when he remarked, "If you vote for Nixon, you might go to hell."

Kennedy had his own problems. He appealed to large urban audiences but not to farmers. They were not impressed with his "rich-boy" charm. After talking to a less than enthusiatic group of farmers at the South Dakota state fair he said to an aide, "Well, that's over. Fuck the farmers."

His Catholicism was also a big problem but he was able to defuse it when he went to Houston to address a prominent group of Protestant ministers. He was able to convincingly deny that he had an allegiance to the pope. To Nixon's credit he did not make Kennedy's Catholic faith an issue.

The Democrats actually ran a more negative campaign than the Republicans. One Democratic ad had a glowering picture of Nixon with a caption, "Would You Buy a Used Car from this Man?" Nixon went after Kennedy by hammering away at his lack of experience in foreign affairs and his lack of a really viable agenda for America.

Nixon's biggest mistake was in the first televised debate on September 26. In fairness to Nixon he was fighting off the effect of a debilitating knee infection that occurred after he had banged it on a car door earlier in the campaign. He had just been released from the hospital. Nixon looked strained and tired and exhausted plus he was running a temperature over 100 degrees. Instead
of wearing regular makeup for TV, he insisted on smearing on something called Lazy Shave, a kind of talcum powder that casts his face in a ghostly pallor. The hot TV lights made him sweat and his make-up seemed to be streaking over his five o'clock shadow. On the other hand, Kennedy came across as cool, poised, and confident. Nixon looked so bad that his mother called him and asked if he was ill. The funny thing is that those who listened on the radio thought Nixon won, while those who watched on TV thought Kennedy won. (TV would be the biggest factor in future campaigns and not one of the candidates since 1964 has ever made the same mistake Nixon did.) There were three more debates but it is the first one most people remembered and it was huge factor on election day.

The WINNER was JOHN F. KENNEDY.

Kennedy got 34,226,731 popular and 303 electoral.

Nixon got 34,108,157 popular 219 electoral.

The difference was only 119,450 votes, or less than one-tenth of one percent. It was the closest election since the Benjamin Harrison - Grover Cleveland race in 1888, (By contrast, in 2000, Al Gore would win the popular vote by more than a half-million votes over Geroge Bush, although he lost in the Electoral College.)

The Republican Party claimed voter fraud and wanted some investigating to be done. Earl Mazo, an investigative reporter for the New York Herald Tribune started an investigation on his own. He uncovered some flagrant fraud in Texas and Illinois. Some of his discoveries are below:
- dead people voting
-stolen paper ballots
-phony registering
-ten thousand votes for the Kennedy-Johnson ticket were simply nonexistent
- polling stations reporting thousands more votes than they had registered voters
-cash payments for votes
-pre-primed ballot machines, which would automatically record three votes for every one cast.
-duplicate voting

After publishing four of his articles (He planned on doing twelve of them) Nixon called him in his VP office and asked him to quit doing anymore. Nixon said, "For the sake of national unity, I want you to stop." He did.
Nixon saved the country from a horrible fight over having a recount and the diviseness it would have caused. I still think Nixon felt he got screwed but, in my opinion, he did the right thing for the sake of his country. He would get his revenge in 1968.