Notebook: 1960 Election

• The Democratic nominee for president in 1960 was a young Massachusetts senator named John Kennedy.
• He promised to "get America moving again"
• He had a well-organized campaign, was handsome, and charismatic
• The Republican nominee for president in 1960 was President Eisenhower's  Vice President, Richard Nixon.
• The candidates agreed on many domestic and foreign policy issues.
• Two main factors helped put Kennedy over the top: Television and Civil Rights support.
• On September 26, 1960, Kennedy and Nixon took part in the first televised debate between presidential candidates.
• Kennedy looked and spoke better than Nixon.
• Journalist Russell Baker said, "That night, image replaced the printed word as the national language of politics"
• Television had become so central to people's lives that many observers blamed Nixon's loss to Kennedy on his poor appearance in the televised presidential debates.
• JFK looked cool, collected, and "presidential"
• Nixon, according to one observer, resembled a "sinister chipmunk"
• The 2nd major event of the campaign took place in October 1960.
• Police arrested Martin Luther King jr. for conducting a "sit-in" at a lunch counter in Georgia.
• King was sentenced to hard labor
• While the Eisenhower Administration refused to intervene, JFK phoned King's wife and his brother, Bobby Kennedy, worked for King's release.
• The incident captured the attention of the African-American community, whose votes JFK would carry in key states.