REPORTER (ARCHIVAL): Senator John Kennedy of Massachusetts, Democrat, throws his hat in the Presidential ring at a Washington press conference.
JOHN F. KENNEDY (ARCHIVAL): I am, today, announcing my candidacy for the Presidency of the United States.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: When Senator John F. Kennedy ran for President in 1960, he wasn't the obvious candidate.
BARBARA PERRY: As many people did, thought that Jack Kennedy was too young and too inexperienced. And we should point out, there had not been a Catholic at the top of a major party ticket for President since 1928 in Al Smith, who had been defeated in a landslide by Herbert Hoover in 1928.
MATT PORTER: Even after winning the nomination in Los Angeles--
JOHN F. KENNEDY (ARCHIVAL): I'm asking each of you to be pioneers towards that new frontier.
MATT PORTER: Kennedy would face Richard Nixon in one of the closest elections in US history.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: If we think about how close this was, we have to ask, well, what was the difference? What were the reasons for Kennedy's victory?
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Inside the Democratic party, JFK would face difficult choices on race and civil rights.
TIM NAFTALI: Both Vice President Nixon and Senator Kennedy, as politicians, felt they had to navigate this issue so that they could still win southern states even though south had an apartheid issue. That was the awful dilemma that both candidates faced. And American Presidential candidates to that point all engaged in a Faustian bargain with white segregationists to become President.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: We'll look at how some of those racist roadblocks linger on today.
JAMELLE BOUIE: Though in the past couple elections-- Presidential elections, at least-- there have been stories of two, three, four hour voting lines, which are, themselves, a form of voter disenfranchisement.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: And how they recall a different kind of prejudice 60 years ago.
ADAM FRANKEL: People were trying to rule out Obama because of the color of his skin, while they had ruled out JFK because of his faith.
MATT PORTER: When a satellite called Sputnik soared into space, voters would also be consumed by the existential threat of nuclear war from the Soviet Union.
TIM NAFTALI: Sputnik shatters certain American certainties and a sense of security.
MATT PORTER: Echoes of which can still be heard today.
NICHOLAS BURNS: We might now, in 2020, be in the worst period of US-Russian relations since the height of the Cold War in the 1960s.
MATT PORTER: The election would be the first time Presidential candidates would debate live on television.
TIM NAFTALI: John F. Kennedy's reputation among many elites was of a lightweight. It made sense for Richard Nixon to think he would just cream John F. Kennedy in a debate.
JOHN F. KENNEDY (ARCHIVAL): The question really is, which candidate and which party will meet the problems that the United States is going to face in the sixties.
RICHARD NIXON (ARCHIVAL): So I would say that in all of these proposals Senator Kennedy has made, they will result in one of two things. Either he has to raise taxes or he has unbalance the budget.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: The 1960 campaign would have long-lasting effects on future elections.
DAVID AXELROD: His use of television, the way he used the primaries, the way he confronted the elephant in the room about his faith, the way he addressed the American people.
MATT PORTER: As the 2020 election heats up--
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: An emboldened left will launch a full-scale assault on American life.
VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Although the stakes couldn't be higher, that's why it's no time for the divisive politics we're hearing more about today.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: We'll reflect on how, 60 years later, Kennedy and Nixon still influence campaigns today.
DAVID AXELROD: I don't know of anyone who created a new sense about politics, and a new sense of energy and enthusiasm about it, and a sense of possibility, as John F. Kennedy. I mean, literally, everybody of my generation looked at him as a kind of inspiration about what could be.
MATT AND JAMIE (IN UNISON): This is 60-20.