TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/election/60elect/60elect.010

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t>              //              ï<                                          ╚November 16, 1960

THE ELECTION

A New Leader



     Through the long night and into the next day the U.S.
watched the ebb and flow of the political tides until, with an
almost imperceptible surge, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected
the 35th President of the United States.

     It was, as Richard Nixon had prophetically promised last
summer, the closest election in modern times. In popular vote
as of the morning after, the two candidates were only a
percentage point apart -- and more than half the 600,000 votes
that separated them were rolled up by Kennedy in one state. New
York. Nixon was actually leading in more than half the states,
though Kennedy's close margins in the big states provided the
electoral vote power to put him over.

     The closeness of the election proved that the pollsters
were justified in their pre-election jitters, and the two
candidates were right in their decision to campaign down to the
ultimate moment of election eve.

     No Lament. It was so close that pundits, politicians and
the voters themselves would be debating for a long time just
what the returns proved, and what might have gone differently.

     There was no lament on Nixon's part, even in the numbness
of fatigue, other than the sadness written on Pat Nixon's face
as Nixon all but conceded defeat. Once it had been thought that
if Nixon lost, he would be thrust aside in favor of a
Rockefeller or a Goldwater. Instead, he emerged still a potent
figure in the Republican Party. There would be many who would
say that the TV debates did Nixon the most harm, giving the
unknown Kennedy a chance to show himself. There would be
Republican postmortems over where an ounce of extra energy might
have tipped the balance. Republicans might well wonder whether
defeat came because Dwight Eisenhower had failed to dramatize
the real gains of his Administration, or whether one or two more
presidential speeches might have made the difference. The
Kennedy forces would re-examine their overconfidence in places
such as Ohio and Wisconsin and Alaska.

     No Precedent. But the closeness of the popular vote could
not mask the real measure of Jack Kennedy's victory. He was the
first Roman Catholic ever to be elected President, and he
achieved this without leaving any important scars. He had
propelled himself by sheer drive into the Democratic coalition
of Northern big cities and Southern conservatives, outdoing even
Franklin Roosevelt in rallying the support of Catholic, Jewish
and Negro voters. He had broken all precedent by persuading a
nation to make a massive change in its vote when his
predecessor's term had, in net, brought both peace and
prosperity.

     Kennedy had done it all not with any specific program, or
even any very specific catalogue of faults. He had done it by
dinning home the simple message of unease, of things left
undone in a world where a slip could be disastrous. But most of
all he had done it by the force of his own youthful and
confident personality, which seemed to promise freshness and
vigor. The U.S. had quite literally taken Jack Kennedy at face
value.

     He had, in fact, been given a blank check drawn on a sound
and thriving nation. He would go into the White House with a
Democratic House and Senate, and with a Vice President whose
talents lay in handling Congress. The nation that Jack Kennedy
had persuaded to endorse him would expect much, would demand
much, and, conceiveably, would receive much.


An Old Combination

     Happy days, as Franklin Roosevelt's theme song went, were
here again. And they got here again in a way tht F.D.R. could
well have appreciated: a Democratic candidate, partly by force
of personality, partly by piecing back together the power blocs
that hd been shattered by Republican Dwight Eisenhower, was the
U.S.'s President-elect.

     Democrat Jack Kennedy won by 1) rolling up huge
pluralities in the big cities of the states that counted most,
and 2) by holding on to most of the restive but still Democratic
South.

     Big-City Trend. One by one, the U.S.'s major cities gave
Kennedy votes enough to assure victory in key states. Time after
time, Richard Nixon inched back in non-metropolitan areas -- but
rarely by enough. By pre-election estimates, Philadelphia had
to go to Kennedy by at least 200,000 for him to win in
Pennsylvania; the city went by 326,000. Although Nixon won 52
of Pennsylvania's 67 counties, the state went down the drain for
the Republicans. Kennedy carried New York City with 63% of the
vote, far more than enough to take New York State's 45 electoral
votes. Nixon ran well in outstate Michigan -- but Kennedy
grabbed a big lead in Detroit and held on. It was Los Angeles
-- always considered Nixon's stronghold -- that gave Kennedy
California.

     In states where the metropolitan trend was either slowed
or reversed, the results proved how much Kennedy depended on
the city vote. New Jersey had been figured as a landslide for
Kennedy -- largely on the basis of a pre-election estimate of
at least a 100,000 Kennedy plurality in Jersey City. But the
Hudson County machine fell down on the job -- and Kennedy had
the scare of his life. Again, Ohio was figured as a Kennedy
cinch -- but Cleveland fell short of its expected Democratic
plurality, and the state went to Nixon.

     What happened in the cities to give Kennedy his vast
advantage? In many ways it was a reversion to voting habits
temporarily obliterated by the personal popularity of Dwight
Eisenhower. As in Roosevelt's day, ethnic, racial and religious
minorities once again voted heavily Democratic. It was also in
the cities that Kennedy's personality caught on most
decisively. There were strong indications that Eisenhower, had
he started campaigning three weeks before Election Day, might
have stemmed the tide: his Cleveland appearance was almost
certainly a major factor in saving Ohio for Nixon.

     Southern Help. Just as Kennedy won where he had to win in
the big industrial states, so he won where he had to win in the
South and Southwest. As expected, he lost Florida, Virginia and
Oklahoma; in races figured beforehand as tossups, he also lost
Kentucky and Tennessee. But, despite the win of an indepedent
electors' ticket in Mississippi, he handily carried Texas and
South Carolina, which had been predicted for Nixon. During the
campaign, many observers had thought -- and said -- that
Republican Henry Cabot Lodge was a positive asset to his ticket
while Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson was a drag on his. Nixon
repeatedly stressed Lodge's presence; Kennedy often acted as
though he had never heard of Johnson. Yet in the final votes
there were few signs that Lodge had helped the Republicans in
any specific way -- and there was plenty of evidence tht Johnson
had helped the Democrats overcome otherwise compelling
difficulties in the South.

     The farm states of the Midwest and beyond reverted to
republican type -- almost as though Ezra Taft Benson had never
existed. In Kansas and Iowa, Nixon not only won but carried
along Republican state candidates to victories over favored
Democrats. In the Far West Nixon also did nicely -- except in
crucial California.

     How Much Religion? In Election Year 1960, the great
imponderable was the issue of religion. For months to come, the
pundits and statisticians will still be analyzing the effects
of that issue. But in its general outlines, the answer was
clear. Democrat Kennedy's Catholicism was certainly a factor in
his favor in the big cities, where Catholics are most heavily
concentrated, though the Catholic vote was not so monolithic as
the Kennedys had hoped; e.g., in Wisconsin's traditionally
Republican but heavily Catholic Fox River Valley, the tendency
was more toward party than faith. At the same time, an
anti-Catholic vote may well have been decisive against Kennedy
in such states as Kentucky, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Oregon. But
in many Protestant areas -- both North and South -- Kennedy's
Catholicism seems not to have worked against him. Kennedy, as
New York Timesman James Reston aptly put it, "appealed to the
loyalty of the Catholics and the conscience of the Protestants."

     Pointing to the future, the victory of Jack Kennedy taught
some campaign lessons that should not be forgotten. After the
national conventions, he was generally considered to be
traling. But in his campaign he began aggressively, continued
aggressively and finished aggressively. It was this that gave
him the edge in the four television debates against Nixon.
Republican Nixon had planned his campaign too carefully with the
aim of building up toward a last minute surge. In the final week
of the campaign Nixon almost certainly closed the gap between
himself and Kennedy -- but it was too late with too little.

_______________________________________________________________
November 16, 1960
Man of the New Frontier


     [To dramatize his "New Frontier" theme, Campaigner John
Kennedy often drew on a favorite anecdote about Benjamin
Franklin. As his fellow delegates to the Constitutional Convention
rose one by one to sign the newborn document, Franklin observed
that for many days he had been unable to decide whether the rosy
sun on the painting behind the president's chair was rising or
setting. "But now at length," said Franklin, "I have the happiness
to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun."]


     On election morning this week, the rising orange sun flashed
on the Boston steeples and rooftops and glanced through the mist
on the old streets as John Fitzgerald Kennedy and his expecting
wife drove to the stately West End (Congregational) Church in the
Sixth Ward to vote.

     It was, symbolically, Jack Kennedy's rising sun, heralding
the greatest triumph of all for the Kennedy Clan, which first saw
the light of political dawn two generations ago in that very city.
It was there, in the turn-of-the-century days of boisterous
hurrahs and beer-barrel politics, that his two shanty Irish
grandfathers ruled: Saloonkeeper Pat Kennedy, the leader of East
Boston's First Ward, and a state representative and state senator
to boot; John Francis ("Honey Fitz") Fitzgerald, twice the mayor
of Boston and a U.S. Congressman, the only man in town who could
sing Sweet Adeline sober and get away with it. (It was a proud
Honey Fitz who at 83 climbed upon a table and danced a merry jig
and sang Sweet Adeline when his grandson Jack won his first term
in Congress in 1946.)

     Jangles & Bristles. It was a long leap from the days of bliss
and blarney to the days of Ike, Nixon and Lodge, and before the
moment of victory Jack Kennedy allowed himself to doubt that he
might make it. In the final swing of the campaign, the Kennedy
troupe was showing the frazzled edges of fatigue, even
unaccustomed confusion. The motorcades in Connecticut and New York
were dogged with inefficiency and out-of-kilter schedules; so
furious was Kennedy at one point that he stomped about in his
Manhattan hotel room, called in his weary aides and chewed them
out. "This," he stormed at one man, "is the most blankety-blank
day of the entire campaign." His raw-rubbed nerves jangled all
the more with his determination to win, for in his fatigue he had
worked up a bitter personal dislike for Richard Nixon. "When I
first began this campaign," said he grimly, "I just wanted to
beat Nixon. Now I want to save the country from him."

     Slowly, as the Election Day sun rose off the horizon, Jack
Kennedy's old cool confidence reasserted itself. Returning to his
home at Hyannisport, he posed for photographers with Jacqueline
and little Caroline, then changed into slacks and a sports shirt
and relaxed. Once, he and his brother Bobby went outside and
tossed a soccer ball around for a few minutes, though even this
momentary fling lacked the old Kennedy flavor of sibling
aggressiveness. The rest of the time Bobby kept close to his own
home (a stone's throw away from Jack's), where he had set up a
command post bristling with long-distance phone lines and news
tickers.

     Stocking Feet & Black Cigar. On election night the GHQ
swarmed with Kennedys and staffers. All the brothers and sisters
-- Bobby, Ted, Jean, Eunice and Pat -- and their husbands and
wives scurried about with news bulletins (Old Joe Kennedy and his
wife watched the returns on TV in the "Big House," near by);
Brother-in-Law Peter Lawford manned the five wire-association
tickers in his stocking feet. Press Aide Pierre Salinger, Chief
Adviser Ted Sorensen, Scheduling Coordinator Kenny O'Donnell, Top
Organizer Larry O'Brien and Pollster Lou Harris (working
feverishly with past election records and a slipstick) analyzed
reports from far-flung observers -- 90 appointed assistants in
key precincts all over the nation -- who phoned in their findings
direct. Bobby kept in touch with Democratic National Committee
Chairman Henry ("Scoop") Jackson in Washington over a direct
telephone line. He had another private line to Jack's house, but
frequently Jack went over to the command post himself to look at
the returns. When the news of the big Connecticut victory came
over the wires, Jack uttered his favorite exclamation,
"Fantastic!" jumped for joy and (though he rarely smokes) lit a
big black cigar, while his gleeful sister Eunice warbled, When
Irish Eyes Are Smiling.

     As the night wore on, crowds gathered outside the Hyannis
National Guard Armory, where carpenters had set up a makeshift
platform from which Kennedy would make his nationwide victory
speech. Pranksters hoisted a stuffed elephant on a telephone pole;
newsmen milled about, waiting. Agents of the U.S. Secret Service,
assigned to guard the winning candidate, notified the local police
that they would move in when certain victory was assured.

     At Bobby's house, Jack Kennedy checked in a few more times to
read the reports. His mother came down from the big house to see
him. By midnight, the jubilation of local Democratic staffers had
subsided somewhat as they realized that the race was still
undecided. At a TV set in the early hours of the morning, Kennedy
watched Richard Nixon's address to campaign workers in Los
Angeles, decided to follow the Vice President's lead by going to
bed without delivering any public speech.

     The victory was the answer to the call whose theme Jack
Kennedy had uttered with such pounding force in the two months of
his campaign. It was a call predicated on the proposition that the
heirs to the Eisenhower years lacked the courage and vision to
lead the nation through the troubled '60s. It was a call that
forced Richard Nixon into a defensive posture from which he never
fully recovered -- even with the last-minute intervention of
President Eisenhower.

     Action & Challenge. With characteristic self-certainty that
projected through the TV debates to a nation that scarcely knew
him, Kennedy shook the U.S. hard. To the Republican claim that
U.S. leadership had halted the march of Communism, he answered
with the charge that too little had been achieved for the U.S. to
feel safe, that cold-war initiative had been lost to the Soviets,
and that as a result, U.S. prestige had dropped to low ebb.
Against Republicans' warnings that a Democratic victory would
bring a new wave of inflation and Government control, he preached
a doctrine of strong federal action in the fields of education,
economy, farm policy, housing, unemployment and welfare --
promising price stability as well.

     In terms of the popular vote accorded Kennedy, the U.S.
electorate withheld the resounding mandate that it gave Dwight
Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956. But because he had stirred sufficient
numbers of votes to take him and his New Frontier on trust,
Kennedy's challenge had been accepted.

     The Risk. He had offered remarkably little in the way of
specifics. For a nation grown prosperous and comfortable through
the eight Eisenhower years (despite recession signs in a number of
places), Kennedy's victory presupposed a new willingness to risk
much in the '60s. Kennedy's solution to the multibillion-dollar
farm scandal -- 90% price supports -- seemed no better than any
answer offered before. His welfare programs, despite his
reiterated pledge to retain a sound dollar, carried the threat of
unbalanced budgets and more inflation at the same time that they
strove to satisfy human needs. His pronouncements on the need for
new diplomatic vigor in Western Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin
America were based on the assumption of a U.S. lag and his
ability to recreate the atmosphere of F.D.R.'s Good Neighbor
policy. But the specifics of foreign policy -- on Cuba as on
Quemoy -- had raised many hackles and some doubts.

   Despite this vagueness of program Kennedy won his victory with
the strength of personality and tactic. The U.S. had little known
or cared about the boyish, tousle-haired Massachusetts Senator
until he erupted on his primary campaign last year. With detached
fascination they watched him lift the nomination out of the hands
of seasoned pros, felt the incredible force of his bandwagon
organization as it coursed over the U.S. Over the months he etched
the image of a driving personality, the peculiar quality of his
hasty rhetoric that seemed to magnetize though it lacked warmth.
Unsmiling for the most part, awkward in gesture, undramatic in
tone, he hammered again and again at basically one theme -- that
the U.S. was caught on dead center in a dynamic age, and he would
"get this country moving again."

     That single theme, single-mindedly propelled without change
of pace, without subtlety of approach, had apparently plumbed an
unsuspected concern in the land. Through the pure force of
persuasion, Kennedy had won enough Americans to follow him on his
own terms.

     The Amalgam. It was this capacity for leadership that had
driven Jack Kennedy. First came an amalgam of determination,
perseverance and political savvy bred in him from the time of Pat
Kennedy and Honey Fitz. To this was added the spirit of family
pride and achievement instilled by Joe Kennedy. It was completed,
in Jack Kennedy's case, by the realities of war, and by his
maturing under the heavy pressures of the campaign.

     John Fitzgerald Kennedy would enter office as the youngest
President since Teddy Roosevelt and as the first Roman Catholic in
the nation's history. All good Democrats -- or nearly all -- had
come to the aid of the party. And who knew but that as the new sun
rose on the morning after Election Day in a shabby ward of old
Boston, some ancient, misty-eyed Irish pol thought he heard Honey
Fitz shuffling a ghostly old-country jig and rasping out the
strains of Sweet Adeline.