Thanks to TV debates, Kennedy wins in 1960

According to the moderator of the first debate, Howard K. Smith, “It was apparent to Nixon that he had made a mistake. He should not have agreed to debate. He was downcast. He knew it was a mistake.”

A tormented relationship with Ike
Eisenhower’s dutiful subordinate for eight years, Nixon sometimes seemed to have a tormented relationship with the president.

In a press conference in August, a reporter asked Ike to identify one major policy suggestion of Nixon’s that he had adopted.

“If you give me a week, I might think of one,” Eisenhower replied.

Asked about that comment during the first debate, Nixon suggested that “if you know the president, that was probably a facetious remark.”

Wanting to prove that he was his own man, Nixon limited Eisenhower’s role as a campaigner to only the final eight days of the campaign.

“The fact that the president wanted to do so much more, the fact that Eisenhower, with his magic name, sat waiting for a call to participate that never came, still rankles bitterly among Eisenhower men, and probably in the memory of the ex-president himself,” wrote White after the election.

Another error, in White’s view, was Nixon’s bungled strategy for winning black voters.

"Even more than the election of 1948, the outcome of 1960 was to be dependent on Negro votes," said White.

Under pressure from the liberal Republican governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller, Nixon agreed to replace the cautious GOP platform plank on civil rights with a more progressive Rockefeller-sponsored one.

Which way for Nixon on civil rights?
A progressive stance on civil rights could benefit Nixon only in Northern states such as Illinois where there were large numbers of black voters.

(In 1960, officials in southern states kept many black people from registering and voting through a variety of barriers including poll taxes, literacy tests, and intimidation.)

But during the fall campaign Nixon “apparently could not decide whether he was campaigning for Northern electoral votes or Southern electoral votes,” White said, and he muddled his position on civil rights “alienating Northern Negro and Southern white, losing both along with the election.”

Kennedy also won the gratitude of black voters when he made a sympathy call to the wife of civil rights leader Martin Luther King. King had been arrested and sent to a state prison in Georgia after taking part in a “sit-in” at an Atlanta restaurant.

With Illinois putting Kennedy over the top by a mere 8,858 votes out of 4.7 million, some Republicans alleged vote fraud by the Chicago Democratic machine.

The charges of fraud both in Illinois and in Texas “were too widespread, and too persistent, to be entirely without foundation,” wrote Nixon biographer Stephen Ambrose.

But Nixon decided not to contest the election.

He was worried about the effect of a U.S. recount battle on young democracies in Africa and Asia — where the United States was vying with the Soviet Union for influence.

“I could think of no worse example for nations abroad, who for the first time were trying to put free electoral procedures into effect, than that of the United States wrangling over the results of our presidential election,” Nixon said.

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