THE 1960 ELECTION—AND 1968
The American people in November of 1960 will be making a decisive choice – and one that will be with us for years to come. For history indicates that the man and party selected to govern our national affairs in 1960 will, under normal circumstances, be re-elected in 1964. So, in effect, the American people may well be deciding next fall on the kind of leadership this country is going to have during the next eight years – eight crucial, critical years – years of decision, years of change and challenge.
When, as voters next fall, we make our choice, let us not think only in terms of the current trends and the popular whims of November 1960. Let us consider the events, the changes, the revolutions which will confront this nation and its leaders in all the years from 1960 to 1968.
When at the end of those eight years, the next administration – whether it be Republican or Democratic – relinquishes the reins, the nation and the world will be very different from the nation and the world of eight years earlier in November 1960. There will be some 10 million more children in need of a decent education, in need of adequate classrooms and well-trained, well-paid teachers. There will be some 8 million more households – individuals and families looking for decent homes in decent neighborhoods, where their children can grow up in safety and in health. There will be some 2 million more people age 65 and over, who will want a decent job or a decent pension, who will be entitled to live out their lives in dignity and not in lonely poverty. There will be some 28 million more people in the United States – and they will need jobs and highways and hospitals and the other public services which the Federal Government must help provide.
There will be 5 million more people in the west alone, urgently in need of sufficient water and power for their homes and industries.
There will be some 15 million more people in our cities, who will need homes and schools and utilities and sewers and transportation and libraries and health centers – and no matter how crowded those cities become, they will still want and deserve clean water to drink and pure air to breathe and room enough to drive and park their cars.
There will be other problems during those years. The hard patterns of the business cycle cause most economists to look for another recession in 1961, and perhaps still another one before 1968. There will be growing concern about juvenile delinquency – there will be repeated problems of race relations, in all parts of the country as well as the South. There will be increasing problems in agriculture, chronic areas of unemployment, a tremendous increase in imports of goods from abroad, serious lags in education.
And the world around us will be a very different world in 1968 also. There is every indication that that eight-year period alone will add half a billion people to the population of the world. The burden of this fantastic increase – which will be approximately equal to the entire population of Europe – will fall upon those nations in the bottom half of the globe which are least able to bear it – the nations of Africa and Asia, of the Middle East and Latin America.
New nations will emerge from the old colonial areas. New political movements and leaders will fight for the center of the stage. The elder statesmen of the world – Adenauer, DeGaulle and their contemporaries – will be gone, and even Mr. Khrushchev, judging from the average term in office of his immediate predecessors, is more likely by 1968 to be visiting Siberia than America.
But during those eight years, the Russians will also be moving ahead. Their steel capacity, electric power output and industrial development – their production of trained technicians, engineers and scientists – their development of weapons and scientific achievements – their steady economic and political pressure on every weak spot of the globe – all of these will continue and grow and reach critical proportions between 1960 and 1968.
If nuclear testing is not immediately stopped, several nations will possess atomic weapons by 1968. Every hour of every day, during that period the next administration will serve, devastation will be literally only minutes away. During those eight years, in terms of military proximity and warning, we will be closer to the Soviet Union than France was to Germany in 1939.
But these could be eight wonderful, fruitful years for America and all mankind. We are likely, sometime during this period, to solve the great problem of converting salt water to fresh water – to find efficient ways of obtaining food from algae and from the bottom of the sea – of obtaining energy from the granite that lies beneath the earth – of utilizing the heat which is locked within our globe. We may learn how to utilize solar energy – power derived from tides and winds – or electricity from the so-called “magic cells” of reverse electrolysis.
We may be enjoying the benefits of nuclear power in every part of the country – of thermo-electric refrigeration – of ultrasonic surgery. We are on the verge of breaking through to find a cure for cancer and hardening of the arteries. We can look forward to using radio-isotopes to sterilize and preserve food, improve crops, print books, provide lights without batteries, and exterminate insects. And during those eight fateful years we will learn more than man has ever known about the far side of space – and the inside of men’s minds.
There will be opportunities during that period of 1960 to 1968 – there will be challenges, there will be crises and problems and dangers. But one thing we know there will not be – there will be no status quo.
And that is why the American people cannot turn to the Republican party to lead us through those eight exciting, turbulent, critical years. For the Republican Party has traditionally been the part of the status quo – and from 1960 to 1968 there will be no status quo.
The Democratic Party, on the other hand, has traditionally been the party of peaceful revolution and change. We have been the party of new ideas, new experiments and new approaches. We respect new ideas and we respect the people who have them. For we know that our country has surmounted great crises in the past, not because of our wealth, not because of our rhetoric, not because we had longer cars and whiter iceboxes and bigger television screens than anyone else, but because our ideas were more compelling and more penetrating and more wise and enduring.
In 1960, I am confident, the American people will not be content to remain standing still – they will be weary of the status quo – they will want new ideas, new action and new faces. And for those qualities they will turn once again as they have in the past, to the leadership of the Democratic Party.
Source: Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-Presidential Papers. Senate Files, Box 905, "Democratic dinner, Wichita, Kansas, 19 November 1959." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.