Mark Malcomson
American Elections, Part 2: 1960 Kennedy and Nixon

Mark Malcomson | American Elections, Part 2: 1960 - Kennedy and Nixon

- Welcome, everybody. For those of you with me last week, welcome back. For those of you who are joining, this is the second in the series of notable post-war elections. Last week, we looked at 1948 and the fight between Harry Truman and Thomas Dewey. And we lurch forward 12 years to probably the one that is my favourite kind of election of all times in terms of just the story, the legend, all of the parts to it are just brilliant. They’re quite epic in terms of a clash. And of course, it’s one that people talk about a lot. It’s still got a place in memory. I’m sure there’s a few out there who probably just about remember it, but it’s an interesting one on many levels as hopefully I’ll get to explain over the course of this evening. But as I said last week, as we look at each of the elections, every election is really a product of the previous elections and who did what to whom and how did that last one go? And reactions and interactions between previous elections start to colour the ones going forward. And 1960 really is a very good example of that in many, many ways. So if you look back, last week we discussed Harry Truman’s spectacularly unexpected win from behind in the 1948 election. Arguably in terms of surprise results, shock results, there’s probably 1948, which is the Truman-Dewey one where Harry Truman was the incumbent but hadn’t been elected. He’d taken FDR’s place after FDR had died. And then you have 2016, which is the hugely unexpected win for Donald Trump the first time around. So if you look at those two elections, they’re kind of completely out the norm.

They’re, you know, there are close elections, so it’s maybe, you know, a surprise that one person got it over the other, but when there’s a foregone conclusion there’s one going to win by a substantial margin, and then something goes quite awry in terms of the result, against the expected result, 1948 is probably that. And 1948 sets the scene for another four years of Harry Truman, Harry Truman’s first full term. And he gets to 1952. And whilst he’s allowed to stand again, he could have stood for reelection, he decides not to. And it’s worth, there’s a little point around what had happened back in 1946, after 1946, when the Republicans won both the House and the Senate, they passed the 22nd Amendment. The 22nd Amendment codified the idea that you could only have two terms as a president. That was until Franklin Roosevelt the norm, but after Franklin Roosevelt went and had won four elections, and it was driven mostly by the Republicans with some sympathy for some traditionalist Democrats, the Republicans were scared that they might ever win the presidency again. That there’d been, you know, 16 years or four elections, and then five elections with Harry Truman winning that they would be locked out the White House forever. So they passed the rule that it was going to be two terms, but they had two caveats to it. One of which is if a president took over, a vice president, took over the presidency from his president, then if it was in the first part of the presidency, as in the first two years, he was allowed to take, it was classed as a term, so he could only run for election one more time. And if he took over in the second half of the presidency, in the last two years, that didn’t count as a term and he was allowed to run for reelection on two separate occasions after that. So there was that caveat.

But also there was a very important one, there was a kind of grandfather clause put in, which said, when this amendment, the 22nd Amendment goes into place, the person who is president at that time is excluded from this law. So they allowed Harry Truman the latitude to run again. Now in 1952, he decides not to, he’s pretty certain he’s going to lose, and he decides quite early on about 15 months or so before, he doesn’t announce it till late. And, unlike the rest of the world that we’ve got to know, it didn’t leak. His inner team knew about it, but he doesn’t, it doesn’t actually come out until he decides when he wants to make the announcement. ‘52 then becomes an election where there’s no incumbent president, which is the first time in decades. And Truman is still president, a bit like Joe Biden at the moment or Lyndon Johnson in 1968, but has ceded the field. The Democrats and the Republicans fight desperately for Dwight Eisenhower to be their candidate, both make sort of pleas to him to become their nominee. And Eisenhower says that he is a Republican, leaves the Democrats scrambling a little bit, and they settle for Adlai Stevenson. My argument always has been that it’s seen as after 20 years when Eisenhower wins by a landslide, it’s the Republicans taking back control. My argument is that it’s not really.

Eisenhower won because he was Eisenhower, not because he was a Republican. And had he stood for the Democrats, I am 99.9% certain he would’ve won for the Democrats. Eisenhower won because he was Eisenhower. I mean, if Eisenhower, the only thing that would’ve been interesting had Eisenhower run as a third party candidate without the infrastructure of the parties, could he have won? And I even think at that point he probably could have won. Eisenhower is one of the unique figures in American history that stood above party to a large degree. He gets the Republican nomination and is elected as a Republican, but works very closely with the Democrats on a number of issues and is pretty much a centrist in quite a lot of ways for the politics of the time. Works very closely with Lyndon Johnson as house majority leader in the mid to late fifties, and has basically an Eisenhower constituency which he works with. So, you could argue that whilst it was a Republican presidency for those eight years, realise in my view it’s actually an Eisenhower presidency. 1956, one of the very few occasions in history, we almost had it again this year, where the two candidates from last time have a rematch. Obviously up until July we were going to have a rematch of Trump versus Biden with different incumbents, but that was not to be. And in 1956, Eisenhower runs again as the incumbent and Adlai Stevenson runs again as the challenger, and again loses spectacularly. The result is remarkably similar. A couple of states change hands and that’s kind of it. It’s a landslide for Eisenhower on both occasions.

So that sets up 1960’s election. And 1960’s interesting because you then don’t have an incumbent. Of course, the 22nd Amendment has been passed. So the Republicans fear that they will be in trouble with the presidency because it’ll be a Republican stronghold. And actually, had Eisenhower chosen to run again, he would’ve almost certainly been reelected and probably by a landslide. I think he probably wouldn’t have done, he was quite an old man, he’d had huge two major heart attacks in the middle of the 1950s and I think he wanted a quiet life. I think he’d done service from a military point of view, but also from a presidential point of view. He’d done his job and it was time to retire. But had he gone for it, I think he’d have almost certainly won. So you have a playing field that’s clean on both sides. And that’s the starting point. That’s why I kind of do reflect you there. And there is also a time for change. Eisenhower at that point, and that’s how much things have changed, Eisenhower is the oldest candidate, the oldest president in American history when he’s president. And there is a certain thing we’re used to pictures of Eisenhower, and the American public were very used to pictures of Eisenhower as the grandfather. He was surrounded by his older children and their children. And so you have this picture of the grandfather and that’s actually a bit of a scene setting given the two candidates that the Democrats and the Republicans end up with.

For those of you who remember back in the spring, I did a lecture on unlikely bedfellows in terms of Eisenhower’s choice of running mate with Richard Nixon. So, Richard Nixon becomes the nominee on the the Republican side and John Kennedy, as we know, becomes the nominee on the Democrat side. We all think of John Kennedy as being young when he was president, and he was. He was the youngest president elected in American history. That’s a fact. Now, the little interesting bit is he’s not the youngest president in American history. The youngest president in American history is Theodore Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt, because Teddy Roosevelt became president not through election, but through the assassination of President McKinley. So he became president about a year younger than John Kennedy because he was the young vice president. So that’s one of those wonderful little Trivial Pursuit sort of questions. But also because Richard Nixon is then around for a long, long time, he kind of becomes president kind of eight years later, he’s then around for another six years, and then he lives a very long life. We are used to Richard Nixon being old, but in fact he was also one of the youngest candidates in American history for president. While Kennedy was 43, Nixon was only 47. They were both the first candidates to be born in the 20th century in terms of presidential candidates. So no matter who would’ve won, they would’ve both been the youngest, you know, young candidate. The generations would’ve changed. We would’ve gone from the grandfather president to the father president. And I think it’s important to think about the juxtaposition between, it was something that was very interesting in terms of something Bill Clinton said during the Democrat Convention is that he’ll always be younger than Donald Trump.

And that I find really fries my brain. The idea that Bill Clinton, who seems to have been president a lifetime ago, is actually younger than Donald Trump by about a year or so. So, we’ve got to get perspective in terms of both of the candidates were young. Now, there is a big difference, because even in 1960, Richard Nixon looked older than his age, prematurely balding, heavy shadow, sort of sunken eyes. You know, he didn’t look like John Kennedy. Now, in fact, actually he was a lot healthier than John Kennedy. John Kennedy had all sorts of health problems that could have actually curtailed his life had he not been assassinated. But John Kennedy looked young and vital. And actually we’ll talk about imagery in a minute when we come to the debates. But you have these two young candidates, but how did they get there? Because to get to that height of being your party’s nominee at young age is something that’s interesting. And they basically run parallel lives really from about 1946. They both get elected to the House of Representatives as veterans from the Second World War in 1946. John Kennedy in Massachusetts and Richard Nixon, I’m doing that because that’s on that side of the country, and Richard Nixon in California. They both joined the House of Representatives. They’re freshmen in the same year. Remember, it’s 1946. Richard Nixon goes to the House of Representatives as part of the majority party, because that’s when the Republicans take over, and Kennedy goes into the minority.

There’s a whole separate lecture and discussion around what it’s like to be in the majority versus the minority in the House of Representatives. But basically it’s kind of good to be in the majority because you have lots and lots of power. The speaker of the house is from the majority, the chairs of all the committees are in the majority, the plum assignments are for the majority, et cetera. So it’s really good. So Richard Nixon joins at a time when it’s really good to be a Republican. John Kennedy joins when it’s time to be, it’s really rubbish to be a Democrat. After basically 16 years, since 1930, the House of Representatives has changed, the Democrats are in opposition and they’ve lost a lot of seats, and John Kennedy has a safe democrat seat in Massachusetts, but he kind of comes with very little to do. They are freshmen together. And the one thing that I think is very interesting, their lives intertwine a lot. We think of them because we’re now kind of stuck almost in this idea that they’re rivals, and they are rivals, but they’re also friendly rivals. And there during the late forties and the fifties, they’re lives intertwine a lot. So they’re both in the House. They both actually have quite, they’re earmarked by their party as being the future or future potentials. So as they kind of start to travel around together, and actually they travel around the country and debate each other about the rights and wrongs of various policies. So much so that they actually are bunk mates on trains. They share compartments. They kind of just, they’re friendly rivals. It’s underplayed.

And I’m not the world’s greatest fan of Richard Nixon for lots of reasons, but there was something about him with Kennedy, whilst they were, you know, of the different party, there were rivals, they ultimately very great rivals going for the presidency. He always was very courteous around Kennedy. Kennedy is exceptionally ill. In fact is given the last rights in the middle of the 1950s. He’s in Florida, he’s had a back operation, it’s gone very badly, and he’s got infection. And it’s one of the occasions John Kennedy was given the last rites. And Richard Nixon travels down to see him and goes in to see his friend and then leaves after seeing him in tears. Not in front of John Kennedy, but afterwards, 'cause he thinks his friend is going to die. There’s also really lovely letter, it’s worth looking for it, which is what Richard Nixon writes to Jackie Kennedy the day after the assassination about how much America has lost and how he’s lost a friend and she’s obviously lost her husband. So there is this bit that we shouldn’t get too hung up in. Do I think that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are going to be writing to each other from their respective retirement homes in God knows when? I don’t think so. But actually these are two contemporaries that actually have probably more in common. They really love the game of politics. They’ve got different views, but they’ve got things that kind of go together. So, they’re competitors, they come in at the same point, and they’re in the House. But thing about the House is it’s problematic in a way if you’re quite junior. It’s all about seniority and you’re part of the newbies, even if you’re in the governing party like Nixon is.

They do stuff, but they’re looking for where to go next. And Nixon gets the edge. In fact, Nixon kind of gets ahead quite a lot over the course of the next decade. So in 1950 he runs for the Senate in California and wins. It’s a very contentious race. It’s very controversial. He earns a lifelong enmity from liberal Democrats. He was seen to be running a dirty campaign. This is where he gets the nickname Tricky Dicky. And, you know, he’s seen as somebody from the Republican party side as a real scrappy fighter who will do his best and do well. And at the same time earns real hatred from the centre and the left for unscrupulous approach to campaigning. But, he gets into the Senate and over the course of the next two years becomes quite a well-known senator for being, again, very junior. Oh thanks, Rita. You’ve just put the condolence letter to Jackie Kennedy up in the chat. So, he uses the anti-Communist committee to ensure that he makes a name and he prosecutes a guy called Alger Hiss. Now, that’s a whole massive story in its own right, but it’s an enormous risk for Nixon. But it comes off. And it’s found that Alger Hiss, despite initial appearances, has a really problematic past with relationship to the Soviet Union. Nixon makes his name as a red baiter, somebody who will fight for the cause of America, et cetera, et cetera. And you get to 1952. 1952 is a pivotal year for both of them. This is of course the year that Eisenhower wins the presidency.

It’s very much a Republican year. Eisenhower has great coattails and the Republicans take back the House and the Senate during that year. And there is an opportunity for Nixon to go on the ticket. Eisenhower is old. Eisenhower is mistrusted by some of the right wing of the Republican party, and therefore Eisenhower wants to have a balance. Interesting, Thomas Dewey, who is now the elder statesman, actually an elder statesman who’s younger than Eisenhower, but he’s the elder statesman in the party, is a big advocate for Nixon. Nixon gets put on the ticket as a balance. Eisenhower is from Kansas or the Midwest, Nixon’s from California. So that’s where a new batch of electoral college votes are coming from. It’s becoming more and more powerful in terms of the Republican Party and Eisenhower, and it’s seen as a good, balanced ticket. There’s a big wobble. Nixon almost gets thrown off the ticket because of perceptions of corruption. He saves his candidacy, but it moves forward and he stays on the ticket and gets on his coattail, on Eisenhower’s coattails, into the White House. And he’s now literally, that famous phrase, a heartbeat away from the presidency. At the same time, '52 is a really pivotal year for John Kennedy. John Kennedy spent six years handsome, dilettante, man about town in Washington and in Boston, but making very little impression in the House of Representatives. And '52 is a year where both there’s a Senate election and a gubernatorial election in Massachusetts. And what happens is that Kennedy’s father, and there’s a lot about Joe Kennedy pulling the strings, Kennedy’s father is desperate for him to go for the governorship. It’s going to be a much easier race. It’s a vacancy race and it’s liable to favour a Democrat candidate.

On the other hand, the Senate seat has an incumbent Republican who is very well respected, has been very involved in getting Eisenhower into the party, a guy called Henry Cabot Lodge, and it’s assumed that Cabot Lodge will stand a good chance of getting reelected. Remember this is the days when, you know, we now very much think as the Republican Party has no real strength in Massachusetts, or if it does it’s quirky candidates like William Weld. But at that point, the Republican Party was very powerful in Massachusetts. And so Kennedy is being pushed towards the governorship, but really is not interested in governorships. Governors run stuff, which is great, but they run domestic stuff. Kennedy’s real interest, and has always has been, is international affairs, defence, foreign policy, et cetera, and governor of Massachusetts, you don’t do that. Whereas as a senator you at least get to kind of play on that field as the Senate has real importance with in terms of foreign affairs. So against his father’s, you know, almost instructions, he decides to run for the Senate. He initially runs an atrociously bad campaign. There’s a lot of old boys who are his grandfather’s friends who think that they can just tell him how the campaign’s going to run, and eventually to calm things down, A, between the fractious relationship between the dad and son, but also to put some order in, Bobby Kennedy is drafted in to ensure that the campaign runs well.

And the campaign does run well and Bobby Kennedy takes a lot of credit for it, as does the rest of the family. The rest of the family rally round, the Kennedy ladies, the sisters, the sister-in-laws, the mother hold afternoon teas, which are the ticket, and everybody desperately wants to go to them. It’s a Kennedy campaign campaign, 'cause the Kennedys are everywhere around it. And against the odds, John Kennedy wins by 51.55% to 48.5% against Henry Cabot Lodge. Putting that into perspective is that the only Democrat to win a Republican seat in 1952 was John Kennedy. Every other seat that was available, the Democrats lost a bunch of seats, the Republicans gained, there literally was one seat that went against the national swing and that was John Kennedy. So it gives you an inkling of the formidable nature of the campaign of Kennedy’s. So, John Kennedy gets into the Senate just as the Senate goes Republican. He’s kind of a little bit cursed of where it is, but pretty soon the Democrats take back over and he starts to have influence. In the meantime, he’s made it to the Senate two years behind Nixon, but Nixon’s now made it to the vice presidency. And you get to 1956. And 1956 is interesting because it’s a very uninteresting election in many ways, but it’s very, very important for these two men. Richard Nixon is close to being thrown off the ticket, or eased off the ticket by Eisenhower. They’ve got this father-son kind of relationship, but not a good father-son relationship. There’s resentments, there’s misunderstandings, it just never quite clicks.

And as a result, you get the situation where Eisenhower talks to him about, “Why don’t you get some executive experience? I will, if you stand down for the vice presidency, I will put you into my cabinet, commerce secretary, one of the other areas, so when it comes to 1960, when I’m no longer the candidate, you will have had proper experience, because you haven’t had that experience yet.” I think some of that is legitimate in terms of Eisenhower believed that that was the way to build Nixon’s character and experience. It was also a way of easing him off the ticket. You remember, this is only 12 years after another vice president got eased off the ticket and was put into the cabinet as commerce secretary and then the president died. And he, Henry Wallace, is now consigned to history and odd lectures by me because Harry Truman becomes president when, had it happened six months earlier, Henry Wallace would’ve become president. So Nixon’s very cognizant Eisenhower has had two massive heart attacks in 1955 and therefore he’s like, “Right, no, I’m staying on.” And clings on. One thing about Nixon, boy is he tenacious. And says to Eisenhower, essentially, “I want to be on it. You’ll have to push me off the ticket.” Eisenhower famously hates confrontation and says, “No, it’s fine, I’m not going to do that. You stay on the ticket.” So he stays on the ticket as vice president, at the same time, Adlai Stevenson is getting a second nomination. Adlai Stevenson is great.

He’s a great orator, except he’s also a pretty spectacular loser four years before. And people want to know what’s going to happen kind of this time to spice it up. So he gets to the Democrat Convention, and at the Democrat Convention he decides to throw a curve ball. So instead of appointing a vice president like he’d done in, or vice presidential candidate like he did in 1952, he actually says, “You decide,” to the convention. “I’m not going to make a nomination. You choose.” Which suddenly added a massive frisson excitement to the convention where people are like, “Wow, okay, we get to do something.” The newspapers get interested, the press, the television gets interested. And it gives us an opportunity to sort of have a little glimpse of the future. And what happens is there is one main candidate that’s likely to get nominated for vice president, senator from Tennessee, Estes Kafer. I always get this, Kefauver. He is seen very, it was assumed that Stevenson was going to nominate him, so he is the front runner. But John Kennedy decides to throw his hat in the ring. Remember, this point he’s not even forty. He runs a campaign, gets Bobby to do the floor campaign, and ultimately fails. He comes a decent second. And people sort of say, “Oh, you know, it was a good try by Kennedy, but has he gone too early? Has he now damaged his brand?” Actually, I think it was a stroke of genius coming second. His coming second got him name recognition. He did a great speech. He then went on to support Stevenson. People were very happy with the way he’d performed.

But then suddenly he’s a person. He’s suddenly not just any old senator, he’s one with a future. It’s also helped by the fact that Stevenson loses badly. Now had JFK been the vice presidential nominee that year, he would’ve been tarnished with being on the losing ticket. Kefauver never really gained his potential, partly because he was tarnished with being the losing running mate. And in fact, Kennedy was an ardent campaigner for Stevenson, went around the country campaigning for him, et cetera, and earned credit and earned chits for 1960. So, he doesn’t become vice presidential candidate. And actually there’s one point he actually says to friends, he always lived in the shadow of his older brother who had died and who everybody had assumed would’ve become president at some point, Joe Jr. And he said, “Joe Jr. would’ve won the nomination and his career would now be over.” So, it was a good thing for him in terms of you can argue that quite effectively. Another four years of Eisenhower, Nixon as vice president gets the opportunity to earn credit around the country. And when it comes to 1960, there’s a potential challenge from Nelson Rockefeller of New York, but the reality is, as the incumbent vice president, Nixon is pretty much crowned as the next Republican candidate. That’s easy. He knows he’s there. Now, the downside is in history, not counting the first couple, which is when they had the rule of the runner up comes vice president, but basically from Jefferson onwards, there have only been two incumbent vice presidents who’ve won election as vice president. And at this point there had only been one, Martin Van Buren in 1836. George Bush Senior wins in 1988, but that’s it. Remember, Richard Nixon ultimately does become president, but not directly. And Joe Biden becomes president, but again, not directly.

And history is littered with vice presidents who get the nomination, who then lose. So Nixon’s got it, and he’s vice president of a very popular president, but getting out of that shadow is really difficult. Kennedy has a completely different challenge. Kennedy is kind of upcoming, bit of a nondescript politician. He hasn’t really done much in terms of achievements. He’s very charismatic, he’s very good looking. He’s now got a beautiful wife, he’s a socialite, et cetera. He’s a Pulitzer Prize winner. But is he very serious? And if it’s left to the old smoke-filled rooms approach in terms of the election, there’s a real concern that he will not stand a chance. The old guard kind of want either Adlai Stevenson to come back, that wouldn’t have ended well, or they want, or Lyndon Johnson has a strong base with the South and has a lot of credibility with the managers of the party, and then the Stuart Symington of Missouri, who’s also very well respected. So there’s a possibility there of the old guard when kind of just, if it gets to the convention, it will go the usual way of the smoke-filled rooms. So Kennedy knows he’s only got one opportunity, which is at this point primary system, which we now know doesn’t exist to the same degree. There’s only 16 primaries and Kennedy needs to show that he’s a vote winner. So he enters all the primaries, as does Hubert Humphrey, young at this point, young senator for Minnesota. John Kennedy wins the first primary, Massachusetts, he gets 85%.

But everybody discounts it because, to be honest, Massachusetts in terms of television markets, et cetera, et cetera, is a submarket. I’m really going to offend anybody from Massachusetts who’s on this, so I apologise. But it’s a submarket of Massachusetts. So if you’re the senator of Massachusetts, you have massive name recognition. So everybody goes, “Well done, but doesn’t really count.” He then enters Wisconsin. Now, Wisconsin’s interesting because he’s against Hubert Humphrey, who’s from neighbouring Minnesota, who’s also nicknamed the third senator from Wisconsin. So has great presence locally and Kennedy goes on to win. It’s a dirty campaign. Let’s be honest, the Kennedys do not run nice campaigns. We talk about Richard Nixon running nasty campaigns, Kennedy’s pretty much the same. Kennedy wins, he gets 56.5% of the vote, damages Hubert Humphrey quite badly. But then there’s a narrative. “Well, Wisconsin’s got quite a Catholic population. He probably did well with the Catholic population. It’s not, da da da da da da da.” Well, not discounted like New Hampshire, but fairly discounted. Then what happens is he decides, “Right, we’re going to go to West Virginia.” Now, West Virginia at this point, and I don’t think it’s changed much since those days, this is a very much a Protestant state. So much so, 96% of the vote is Protestant. So Kennedy hasn’t got this residual Catholic vote to be able to rely on. He goes in, as I said, hugely dirty campaign. You know, Hubert Humphrey is quite naive in the way that he campaigns. And Kennedy crushes him. Gets over 60% of the vote and therefore proves that he can win as a Catholic in a Protestant state. This point, by the way now, West Virginia is one of the most Republican states in the country. Back in 1960, it was one of the most Democrat states in the country.

It’s an amazing journey for one state from going safest end of the Democrat party in the 1960s to the safest end of the Republican party nowadays. We see the migration of electoral college states, but, again, that’s for a separate lecture. Kennedy arrives in Los Angeles at the convention with a real wind in his sails in terms of, “I’ve proven I can win votes.” But ultimately you’ve still got to win on the convention floor. And the people think that it’s going to go to some other candidates, et cetera. But because what they learned in 1956, Bobby and the campaign managers are able to get Kennedy to win on the first ballot. Genius. And what then happens is that he gets the nomination, everything falls away in terms of the challenges, et cetera. And the first choice, and this is what’s very interesting about presidential candidates, the first thing they have to do is choose a vice president. And John Kennedy goes against a lot of Northern liberals, a lot of Midwestern liberals, and he chooses Lyndon Johnson. Hugely controversial. Almost causes a stampede and a counter demonstration on the floor.

Bobby Kennedy’s livid. He tries to get Lyndon Johnson to come off the ticket, he won’t, et cetera, et cetera. John Kennedy has to resolve, Lyndon Johnson, it’s a whole saga between two different floors of the hotel in Los Angeles. And eventually Lyndon Johnson secures the vice presidency and decides that the vice presidency is something that he genuinely wants. He gives up being majority leader, a hugely powerful, arguably the most, if not one of the most important majority leaders and legislators in history in America to take a post that is mostly ceremonial and really only is relevant if something bad happens. Which of course we know does. But, he takes that. At the same time over, that’s in Los Angeles, though not in parallel 'cause they don’t run them in the same weeks, but in Chicago the Republicans get together, they essentially crown Nixon, and Nixon chooses, this is one of the most unexplainable and not necessarily great. Nixon was clever in so many ways, but this makes no sense. He chooses Henry Cabot Lodge. For those of you are paying attention about 20 minutes ago, that same Henry Cabot Lodge who was the only person to be defeated, incumbent to be defeated, by a Democrat in Massachusetts in 1952. He chooses the guy that’s lost to Kennedy. Who’s very well respected, ultimately has become ambassador to the UN, is very important, et cetera, et cetera, you know, real statesman, but he is not a vote winner. And he chooses him because Nixon wants to emphasise foreign policy and his authority, et cetera, et cetera.

But it’s a really odd choice. Kennedy’s choice, hugely influential. And I would argue, and you can argue with me, I’m happy to have that debate, it’s the most important choice in certainly the last hundred years as vice president. It almost certainly, if it does not clinch the election for Kennedy, it comes down close to it. Texas is won ultimately, which probably wouldn’t have been won otherwise had Lyndon Johnson not being on the ticket, and he also helps swing a few other of the Southern States that might have peeled off from the Democrats otherwise. So you have this situation, which is Kennedy is now the nominee with Johnson and Nixon has Henry Cabot Lodge as his vice president, and they launched the campaign in September. Now, I’m going to just put a couple of slides up for you. Here it goes. This is where it could all go wrong. Nope, I think that works. We’re now used to presidential debates. Guess what? One is happening this evening. They’re very important, but they’re not that important in as history goes. 1960 was the first presidential debates that were televised and actually the first ever proper presidential debates. Now, some of us like me until recently goes, “Ah yes, but there were the Douglas-Lincoln debates.” But they weren’t actually presidential debates, they were debates when Douglas and Lincoln were going against each other in 1858 for the Senate. So there’s never been presidential debate. The two candidates usually run in parallel around the country going around. Kennedy and Nixon agree to have four debates. And they have four debates, and three of them are mostly forgotten.

But unfortunately for Richard Nixon, the first one is remembered. He arrives in the debate studio during the day. He’s just come out of hospital. Nixon has decided to campaign in all 50 states. This is the first election where there are 50 states in the United States. Hawaii and Alaska have both been added since the 1956 election. However, the District of Columbia doesn’t get to vote. So this is the only election in history where getting to what a 269 is a winning vote, as opposed to now you need 270 to win the election. Little bit of trivial pursuit, does sort of fit. Nixon says he’s going to campaign in all 50 states, which kind of now just seems bizarre. Because let’s be honest, Kamala Harris is never going to set foot in Alaska and Donald Trump is almost never going to set foot in Rhode Island. You know, there’s seven states that matter and those two will be crisscrossing them pretty much for the next two months. Nixon decides to campaign all 50 states, which is a grandiose gesture, but he bangs his knee badly getting off a plane, ends up with inflammation, ends up in hospital, arrives tired, exhausted. Kennedy rests for the week beforehand. There’s some press, et cetera, but the Playboy guy thing comes into play and does, you know, comes to the studio rested, tanned, or is he slightly jaundice because of Addison’s disease? But in perception he looks good. Nixon arrives exhausted, tired, and in pain. They also have a backdrop which is dark in rehearsal, when they’re looking at the stage, it’s not rehearsal but they’re just doing a prep.

So they both decide to set into pale suits. Kennedy, one of Kennedy’s team forgets something and then goes back later in the afternoon and finds somebody had fallen through the backdrop and the backdrop had been replaced by the pale backdrop you see here. Goes back to Kennedy’s hotel and says, “You know how you thought it was a dark backdrop and you were wearing a pale suit? Actually it’s now a pale backdrop, wear a dark suit.” Kennedy wears a dark suit. Nixon doesn’t know, one of the quirks of history, has a pale suit. He’s got his dark eyes. He’s a real man’s man, so he decides not to wear any makeup, where Kennedy knows, he wears makeup. Now there’s two reasons to wear makeup, because you look better, but also under hot television lights you don’t sweat. Nixon has this bizarre thing 'cause he’s got a very, very heavy five o'clock shadow, has this thing called lazy shave. Lazy shave makes him look like some sort of Mickey Mouse kind of character with sunken eye… Disaster. Those who hear the debate on the radio think that Richard Nixon’s won, those who watch it on television overwhelmingly think Kennedy’s won because he looks calm and composed, stands out against the backdrop. Nixon, as time goes on, looks more and more sweaty, fades into the backdrop, dark and sunken eyes, sweaty, et cetera. Somebody said he looks like a criminal. I wouldn’t comment whether that’s true or not, but it doesn’t do well. Given that 70 million people watched that debate live, that is one of the most important pieces of television in history.

If you think about it tonight, they’re talking that the audience will be between 40 and 50 million. So that gives you an idea just how important that debate was and how it was just a phenomenon. And it helps Kennedy. It makes Kennedy. And you’ll hear this thing quite regularly in terms of challenges. It’s particularly when you’ve got a debate around incumbents and et cetera, et cetera. The challenger wants to look presidential. Now, Nixon has been around, he’s been the vice president, et cetera, so he’s got a little bit of that aura of presidentiality about him. John Kennedy is young, there’s doubts about his Catholicism, there’s doubts about his age, there’s doubts about his lacklustre House and Senate career. But what he does that night is he looks presidential. And that is arguably one of the most important things that has happened in post-war American history. This bit of television cannot be underestimated how important it was in deciding the election. The other three debates happen, Nixon, the opinion polls go backwards and forwards, and they jump between one and the other. This is from one of the other debates. Interesting, Nixon’s now. Even though it’s a dark backdrop and you will never see a president ever in a debate wear a pale suit in our lifetimes, in my view. Look at the trouble Barack Obama had just wearing a tan suit when he went out to do a press conference. They do the other three debates. It’s backwards and forths, but it’s neck and neck right the way through.

The results, I do like, by the way, sorry, I’m just going to go back to the slide before. I love the quote from Kennedy. Mischievous, naughty, slightly irreverent. “Do you realise the responsibility I carry? I’m the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House.” Love that. Nixon, on the other hand, is always more serious. “Finishing in second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.” It’s those kind of stakes. They pretty much know that if one of them win, whoever wins, the loser will probably be consigned to history books. Nixon will have to flounder around trying to find something 'cause he’s not got the Senate to go back to. JFK has got the Senate, he gets reelected in 1958 with the biggest landslide in Massachusetts history. But he’ll be yesterday’s person and he might not be allowed to be the nominee again. So lots at stake for both of them. In the last couple of weeks, the difficult relationship between Eisenhower and Nixon goes a bit wrong. Eisenhower does want Nixon to win. He’s loyal, he’s tribal, but he gets asked as a throwaway rather, “President Eisenhower, you know, you say Vice President Nixon has been very important to you. Can you give an example of where he is affected policy?” And Eisenhower jokingly comes back and says, “If you give me a week, I might think of one.” It completely undermines Nixon’s campaign. Eisenhower, in years to come, really regrets it. Nixon thinks it’s one of the reasons he loses. He actually just says this is just, not fatal for the Nixon campaign, but it just really undermines this argument of, “I’ve been in the room where it happens. I’m very important. I’ve been Eisenhower’s right-hand man. I’m his deputy, I’m ready to take over.”

And Eisenhower tries to bring it back over the next couple of weeks, but damage is done. And here it is, the election for 1960. Now, on the face of it there’s a lot of red, but remember there’s a lot of red in places that don’t add up to much. This is one of the closest elections in American history. The actual final result in terms of the popular vote, and we all know popular vote and electoral college don’t necessarily go hand in hand as we’ve learned in the last few years, but Kennedy gets 34.2 million votes, Nixon gets 34.1 million votes. There’s only 120,000 votes between the two of them. Now of course that might not matter because the electoral college can go awry in terms of losers of the popular vote can still win. However, also the electoral colleges has a job of magnifying in some cases, and that’s what happens here. Is that Kennedy wins a lot of the really important states. And he wins New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Texas, big payloads of the electoral college votes. So he wins the electoral college by 303 to 219 votes. There’s a rogue candidacy of Senator Harry Byrd. He wins a couple of states and one faithless elector in Oklahoma, but essentially it’s an electoral college landslide win for Nixon. Very, very, sorry for Kennedy. Very successful win. Nixon is vanquished. However, if you look at the map and you’re good at maths, you’ll realise that there are two states, Illinois and Texas, which were heavily disputed at the time between, they were both very, very close.

And Nixon rightly had arguments, and Eisenhower supported them in this saying that they were stolen from the Republicans. Mayor Daley of Chicago might have, might not have done some bad things in terms of the votes in Illinois. And Lyndon Johnson notoriously was not great in terms of electoral college, sorry, electoral practise in Texas. And there was talk about them challenging it. Nixon decided against it. Actually, he was the statesman. He said, “This will just throw the election into chaos. We’re a beacon in the world in democracy. I’m not going to challenge the election.” Cynics say, well, yeah, for every dirty trick the Democrats have done, the Republicans were doing similar ones in different states. But if those two states, and you’re talking between them less than 100,000 votes, had swung the other way, you’d have had President Nixon in 1960 rather than President Kennedy. So, landslide win. Landslide win, but actually not. Electoral college one thing, popular vote, incredibly close. And Kennedy is very conscious that he doesn’t have that strong a mandate and works over the next few years to kind of build his presidentialness, if that’s a word. But he tries to grow into the presidency. He starts by his inaugural address. There’s Eisenhower looking old and frail on a freezing cold day, but Kennedy decides to give his address in jacket. Decides he’s not going to wear a coat, he’s going to be young and vigorous. Look at the cold air coming out of his breath and the smoke coming out because of the freshness out there. Eisenhower looks old, looks frail, and looks damn cold.

But again, youth and vigour, which we know was part of a facade given his health difficulties. And he basically says everything is going forward, a new generation, new decade, et cetera, et cetera. And at this point you would assume that Richard Nixon would disappear like all good losers do. I being slightly ironic there. But he doesn’t. He runs for the Senate in, sorry, he runs for governor of California two years later, fails, and then threatens to withdraw from politics. But by 1968, Richard Nixon makes a comeback. And that’s very unusual. And in fact, the next time we get together, we’re going to talk about the 1968 campaign, because I think that is one of the most tempestuous campaign. I think the '60 campaign is the most interesting in so many ways because they’re two brilliant candidates in so many ways, both flawed and politically genius. But at the same time, 1968 is a rollercoaster with assassinations, with Johnson withdrawing, et cetera. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Anyway, I will detach that and I will just check and see if there are any questions that I can answer.

Q&A and Comments:

“Henry Cabot Lodge gave Nixon class,” says Joan. I think that’s actually probably quite true.

And Wisconsin, Shelly makes a good point about Wisconsin. Wisconsin is interesting as a state. It’s one of those states that has got a left-wing tradition, but also a very much a populist decision, as she points out, because it’s got Joe McCarthy. So yes, I can see that in both ways. And it is a divided state. It’s the one that, you know, Hillary should have visited in 2016 and lost by I think 16,000 votes. So it continues to be an interesting state. Is it the Badger State? I think it’s called. I like Ronald’s quote. “Nixon did his own dirty work and Kennedy delegated his to his father.” I’d actually say delegated it to his brother.

I will just end with one little observation, which is Oliver Stone’s “Nixon” film, which is truly awful in many ways. No disrespect to Mr. Stone, it’s just not a great film. There’s Anthony Hopkins plays Nixon, Anthony Hopkins I love to bits. He does chew the scenery a bit. He does overact a little bit. He becomes very dramatically Nixon. But there’s this wonderful scene. There’s the famous picture that we all know about Kennedy looking down and pensive and it’s the one in the White House. If any of you, like I’d done, have visited the White House. It’s a truly stunning piece of portraiture. It captures everything you want to believe about Kennedy. And Nixon, given what we’ve talked about of them being friends and things, Nixon is one night just standing there and he talks to the picture and he says, and I’m paraphrasing here, I can’t remember his exact words. He goes, “The American people look at you and see what they want to be. The American people look at me and see what they are.” Which I thought was that was about the only bit of the film worth watching. I apologise to anybody who likes it. So, thank you very much. Hopefully you’ll join me for 1968. As I said, I think it’s a really interesting election from so many points of view. And hope you enjoyed yourself this evening and found out a few weird and wonderful facts.