Despite his youth, John F. Kennedy captured the Democratic nomination in 1960 and went on to win one of the closest elections in U.S. history.
The 1960 election campaign was dominated by rising Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. In 1957, the Soviets had launched "Sputnik," the first manmade satellite to orbit the earth. American political and educational leaders warned that the nation was falling behind the communist countries in science and technology. In 1960, an American U2 photo reconnaissance spy plane was shot down over Soviet territory and its pilot captured. The resulting crisis led to the cancellation of President Eisenhower's planned trip to Moscow and the collapse of the Paris summit meeting with Soviet Premier Khrushchev. In Cuba, the revolutionary regime of Fidel Castro had become economically and militarily dependent on the Soviet Union, heightening fears of communist subversion in the Western Hemisphere. Public opinion polls revealed that more than half the American people thought war with the Soviet Union was inevitable.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy captured the Democratic nomination by winning a series of state primaries despite his youth (he was only 43), charges by his opponents that he lacked experience in foreign affairs, and his Catholic faith. He had to overcome the traditional assumption that a winning candidate must have the support of entrenched party leaders from states with large blocs of electoral votes. A solid victory in overwhelmingly Protestant West Virginia launched him toward a first ballot victory at the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles--although he did not reach the 761 votes required for the nomination until the final state in the roll call (Wyoming). After choosing Texas senator Lyndon Johnson as his running mate, Kennedy told the convention delegates that he would get the nation moving again and declared that the United States would have the will and the strength to resist communism around the world.
The Republican nominee, 47-year-old Vice President Richard M. Nixon, pointed to the peace and prosperity of the Eisenhower administration, especially low inflation and several balanced budgets. Nixon promised to campaign in all fifty states and assured the voters that he would maintain American prestige, leadership and military strength. He chose Henry Cabot Lodge, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, as his running mate. (Kennedy had defeated Lodge for a U.S. Senate seat in 1952.)
Nixon, regarded as more mature and experienced, led in the polls after the national conventions. Kennedy then challenged the Vice President to a series of televised debates. Many in the Nixon camp, including President Eisenhower, urged the vice president to reject the debate proposal and deny Kennedy invaluable national exposure. Nixon confidently agreed to share a platform with his rival on nationwide television.
In 1950, on1y 11% of American homes had television (all black and white); by 1960 the number had jumped to 88% (a tiny fraction in color). An estimated seventy million Americans, about 2/3 of the electorate, watched the first debate on September 26th. Kennedy had met the day before with the producer to discuss the design of the set and the placing of the cameras. Nixon, just out of the hospital after a painful knee injury, did not take advantage of this opportunity. Kennedy wore a blue suit and shirt to cut down on glare and appeared sharply focused against the gray studio background. Nixon wore a gray suit and seemed to blend into the set. Most importantly, JFK spoke directly to the cameras and the national audience. Nixon, in traditional debating style, appeared to be responding to Kennedy.
Most Americans watching the debates felt that Kennedy had won. (Most radio listeners seemed to give the edge to Nixon.) The candidates had appeared as equals. Almost overnight the issues of experience and maturity seemed to fade from the campaign. Studies would later show that of the 4 million voters who made up their minds as a result of the debates, 3 million voted for Kennedy. Nixon seemed much more poised and relaxed in the three subsequent debates, but it was the first encounter which reshaped the election.
When Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested in Georgia for leading civil rights protests, Kennedy, against the advice of several key campaign strategists, called Mrs. King on October 26 to offer help in securing her husband's safe release. Kennedy was subsequently endorsed by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr., father of the civil rights leader. The black vote went heavily for Kennedy across the nation, providing the winning margin in several major states.
As Election Day approached, the momentum seemed to be running toward the Kennedy-Johnson ticket. Even though Kennedy had eloquently confronted the religious issue in a September appearance before the Greater-Houston Ministerial Association, anti-Catholic feeling remained a wild card in the campaign. Television, for the first time, became the dominant source of information for the voters as both candidates sought the potentially decisive support of the steadily growing suburban population.
Kennedy tried to identify himself with the liberal reform tradition of the Democratic party of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, promising a new surge of legislative innovation in the 1960s. JFK hoped to pull together key elements of the Roosevelt coalition of the 1930s (urban minorities, ethnic voting blocs and organized labor), to win back the conservative Catholics who had deserted the Democrats to vote for Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, and to at least hold his own in the pre-civil rights movement's "Solid South."
Nixon, emphasizing the record of the Eisenhower years, pledged to keep the federal government from dominating the free market economy and the lives of the American people. In the final days, the immensely popular President Eisenhower began a speaking tour on behalf of Republican candidates. Several key states seemed to shift toward Nixon and by November 8th the pollsters were declaring the election a toss up.
John Kennedy was elected president, in one of the closest elections in United States history. Kennedy's popular vote margin over Nixon was 118,550 out of a total of nearly 69 million votes cast. His success in many urban and industrial states gave him a clear majority of 303 to 219 in the electoral vote. Kennedy was the youngest elected president, the only Catholic and the first born in the twentieth century.