In May he had made a rash statement after the Soviets had shot down one of our U-2 spy planes, suggesting that Eisenhower should apologize to Khrushchev. I argued that an American President should never apologize for action taken to defend America’s security. I also hammered hard on Kennedy’s shortsighted unwillingness to defend the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu, occupied by Chiang Kai-shek’s forces.
After the second debate, the consensus was that I had had the better of it. The New York Times reported that I “clearly made a comeback, came out ahead.” A New York Herald Tribune editorial stated that I had “clearly won the second round.” But 20 million fewer people had watched this debate than had watched the first one.
In the third debate, on October 13, I appeared in a studio in Los Angeles while Kennedy spoke from New York. I continued on the offensive throughout. Once again I hit hard on the Quemoy–Matsu issue, stating that Kennedy’s willingness to surrender the islands to the Communists under threat of war was no different from submitting to blackmail. Shortly after the third debate I learned that one of Kennedy’s top foreign policy advisers had telephoned Secretary of State Herter to say that Kennedy did not want to give the Communists the impression that America would not stand united against aggression and was therefore prepared to revise his position in order not to appear to oppose the administration on this issue. I saw this as Kennedy’s way of trying to slide away from an unpopular position, and my immediate inclination was not to let him get away with it. But the Quemoy–Matsu situation was so tense, and the importance of America’s role in discouraging Communist aggression was so great, that I decided not to press the point if Kennedy modified his stand. I pointed out how his changed attitude reflected his lack of experience, and then let the issue drop.
The fourth and final debate took place in New York on October 21. This was the foreign policy debate, which we had hoped would have the largest audience. Instead, the number of viewers stubbornly remained 20 million fewer than for the first.
The day before, afternoon newspaper headlines had proclaimed: Kennedy Advocates U.S. Intervention in Cuba; Calls for Aid to Rebel Forces in Cuba. I knew that Kennedy had received a CIA briefing on the administration’s Cuban policy and assumed that he knew, as I did, that a plan to aid the Cuban exiles was already under way on a top-secret basis. His statement jeopardized the project, which could succeed only if it were supported and implemented secretly.
I knew that this matter would be raised in our debate. In order to protect the secrecy of the planning and the safety of the thousands of men and women involved in the operation, I had no choice but to take a completely opposite stand and attack Kennedy’s advocacy of open intervention in Cuba. This was the most uncomfortable and ironic duty I have had to perform in any political campaign. I shocked and disappointed many of my own supporters and received support from all the wrong places for what I considered to be all the wrong reasons. I was praised in the Washington Post for my restraint. Within a few days Kennedy modified his position; but only a fraction of the debate audience ever was aware of that. In that debate, Kennedy conveyed the image—to 60 million people—that he was tougher on Castro and communism than I was.
Those who claim that the “great debates” were the decisive turning point in the 1960 campaign overstate the case. To ascribe defeat or victory to a single factor in such a close contest is at best guesswork and oversimplification.
The public opinion polls seem to indicate that the debates had little significant effect on the outcome of the election. Before the first debate, Gallup had shown Kennedy ahead, 51 percent to 49 percent. Seven weeks later, after all debates and intensive nationwide campaigning, Gallup showed Kennedy with 50.5 and me with 49.5. On Election Day the polls were virtually even: 49.7 percent for Kennedy, 49.6 percent for me.
As for television debates in general, I doubt that they can ever serve a responsible role in defining the issues of a presidential campaign. Because of the nature of the medium, there will inevitably be a greater premium on showmanship than on statesmanship.
After the last debate, with just over two weeks left before the election, I intensified my efforts even more. The polls showed me slightly behind, but I could sense a momentum beginning to develop, and I felt that with a final push we could go over the top.
I continued the killing pace of the rally speeches and in the last week added several fifteen-minute television talks on the major issues. I tried to draw even more sharply my major differences with Kennedy over domestic issues, primarily the economy. The government spending programs he was proposing would raise the federal budget some $15 billion and set off rounds of higher prices. I wanted to reach as many voters as I could in these last days, and television would have been the ideal way. But television time costs money, and our campaign had run short. We could afford only one telethon, which we scheduled for the day before the election.
From the earliest days of the campaign I had planned to keep Eisenhower in reserve as a political weapon that would be the more powerful for having been sparingly used. We felt that his appearances in the last two weeks of the campaign might tip the balance to me in some close areas in key states. Eisenhower fully agreed with my strategy at the outset. But as Kennedy began to attack the record of his administration—especially on the phony issue of the alleged “missile gap,” which insulted Eisenhower’s intelligence as well as his competence—he began to bridle under his self-imposed restraint.
I was to have lunch with Eisenhower at the White House on October 31 to discuss a specially expanded campaign schedule, which he had suggested undertaking. The night before the luncheon Pat received a phone call from Mamie Eisenhower. She was distraught and said that Eisenhower was not up to the strain campaigning might put on his heart. But he was so determined to get out and answer the attacks on his record that she could not dissuade him. She begged Pat to have me make him change his mind without letting him know that she had intervened. “Ike must never know I called you,” she said.
The next morning I received an urgent call from the White House physician, Major General Howard Snyder. He told me he could not approve a heavy campaign schedule for the President. Eisenhower’s dander was up because of Kennedy’s attacks, but the strain of intense campaigning might be too much for his limited cardiac reserves. “I know what he wants to do, and he usually won’t take my advice,” Snyder said. “Please, either talk him out of it or just don’t let him do it—for the sake of his health.”
I had rarely seen Eisenhower more animated than he was when I arrived at the White House that afternoon. An expanded itinerary had been worked out that included several additional stops in the crucial areas of downstate Illinois, upstate New York, and Michigan, where the race was believed to be particularly close. He was confused—to put it mildly—when I opened the discussion with half a dozen rather lame reasons for his not carrying out the expanded itinerary. At first he was hurt and then he was angry. But I stood my ground and insisted that he should limit himself to the original schedule and to the election eve telecast with Lodge and me. He finally acquiesced. His pride prevented him from saying anything, but I knew that he was puzzled and frustrated by my conduct.
Those who traveled with Eisenhower for his few appearances during that final week said that they had never seen him show such partisan fervor, not even in his own campaigns. In retrospect, it seems possible that if he had been able to carry out his expanded campaign schedule, he might have had a decisive impact on the outcome of the election. For example, his appearance in southern Illinois, which would have had extensive coverage in eastern Missouri as well, might have tipped the balance in those states that Kennedy won by razor-thin margins.
Under the circumstances, however, I could make no other decision than to discourage him and limit his participation. It was not until years later that Mrs. Eisenhower told him the real reason for my sudden change of mind regarding his campaigning.
After one last frenetic week, it was over. Since the c
onvention in August I had traveled over 65,000 miles and visited all fifty states. I had made 180 scheduled speeches and delivered scores of impromptu talks and informal press conferences. There was nothing more I could have done. I did not let up once, nor did my staff. The campaign had an intensity of spirit that was at once exhausting and uplifting.
We flew to California to vote and wait for the results, which would begin coming in around six o’clock, after the polls closed in the East. To make the long afternoon pass more quickly, Pat took Tricia and Julie to Beverly Hills to have their hair done. I eased the tension of the wait by driving south on the Pacific Coast Highway with Don Hughes, Jack Sherwood, and a Los Angeles police driver. Hughes remarked that he had never been to Tijuana, so we continued all the way to Mexico. We were back in Los Angeles by the time the first results were coming in.
Any election night is an emotional roller coaster ride, but election night in 1960 was the most tantalizing and frustrating I have ever experienced. The Texas results went back and forth; Ohio leaned my way; but Pennsylvania was going to Kennedy. The Daley machine was holding back the Chicago results until the downstate Republican counties had reported and it was known how many votes the Democrats would need to carry the state. The overall trend seemed to favor Kennedy, but at midnight I was fast closing the gap of 1.7 million votes that had opened up between us early in the evening. It was problematical whether I could overtake him, but the race was still not over. Even so, most of the press had already predicted a substantial Kennedy victory, and there was tremendous pressure from reporters and commentators for me to concede. I decided to make a brief statement acknowledging the apparent trend of the returns thus far.
Pat, fierce with pride, adamantly opposed making any statement and said that she would not join me. A few minutes later, as I tried to jot down notes on what to say, she came into my room and said, “I think we should go down together.” I do not know which quality I loved more—the fight or the warmth. It is at such moments, when you see the effect it has on your family, that the ache of losing is the greatest.
At 12:15 A.M. we went downstairs to the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel. I said, “If the present trend continues, Senator Kennedy will be the next President of the United States.” Our loyal supporters in the ballroom were yelling, “Don’t give up!” and “You’re still going to win!” Pat could barely manage to keep back the tears. I wanted only to get away to the solitude of our suite.
Julie shook me awake at six the next morning. Kennedy’s lead had narrowed to 500,000 votes, and there were stories of massive vote frauds in Chicago and Texas. Everett Dirksen urged me to request a recount and demanded that I not concede. He warned that once I had conceded, voting records would be destroyed or otherwise disappear, and a recount would be impossible. After his call I sat alone for a few minutes reviewing the situation.
We had made a serious mistake in not having taken precautions against such a situation, and it was too late now. A presidential recount would require up to half a year, during which time the legitimacy of Kennedy’s election would be in question. The effect could be devastating to America’s foreign relations. I could not subject the country to such a situation. And what if I demanded a recount and it turned out that despite the vote fraud Kennedy had still won? Charges of “sore loser” would follow me through history and remove any possibility of a further political career. After considering these and many other factors, I made my decision and sent Kennedy a telegram conceding the election.
I had planned to sleep on the long flight back to Washington, but I found I could not. Instead, I thought about how close we had come and what we should have done differently.
The 1960 election was the closest presidential contest since Harrison–Cleveland in 1888. Kennedy received 34,221,000 votes and I received 34,108,000: a difference of only 113,000. The shift of one-half vote per precinct could have changed the outcome.
We found Washington astir with talk of election fraud. Many Republican leaders were still urging me to contest the results and demand recounts. Eisenhower himself urged that course, offering to help raise the money needed for recounts in Illinois and Texas.
There is no doubt that there was substantial vote fraud in the 1960 election. Texas and Illinois produced the most damaging, as well as the most flagrant, examples. In one county in Texas, for example, where only 4,895 voters were registered, 6,138 votes were counted. In Chicago a voting machine recorded 121 votes after only 43 people had voted; I lost this precinct, 408–79. The Washington journalist and editor Benjamin Bradlee, a close friend of Kennedy’s, has written in his book, Conversations with Kennedy, that Kennedy called Mayor Daley on election night to find out how things were shaping up in Chicago. “Mr. President,” Daley reportedly said, “with a little bit of luck and the help of a few close friends, you’re going to carry Illinois.”
Several years after Kennedy’s death, New York Times columnist Tom Wicker wrote in the foreword of Neal Peirce’s The People’s President: “Nobody knows to this day, or ever will, whom the American people really elected President in 1960. Under the prevailing system, John F. Kennedy was inaugurated, but it is not at all clear that this was really the will of the people or, if so, by what means and margin that will was expressed.”
As experienced as I was in politics by 1960, I encountered several new and unexpected factors, each of which had a strong influence on the outcome of the election.
First, there was the substantial and influential power that the emergence of television as the primary news medium gave the reporters, commentators, and producers. It was largely they who decided what the public would hear and see of the campaign.
Another new political phenomenon was the way so many reporters in 1960 became caught up in the excitement of Kennedy’s campaign and infected with his personal sense of mission. This bred an unusual mutuality of interests that replaced the more traditional skepticism of the press toward politicians. Theodore H. White described this in his book The Making of the President 1960:
By the last weeks of the campaign, those forty or fifty national correspondents who had followed Kennedy since the beginning of his electoral exertions into the November days had become more than a press corps—they had become his friends and, some of them, his most devoted admirers. When the bus or the plane rolled or flew through the night, they sang songs of their own composition about Mr. Nixon and the Republicans in chorus with the Kennedy staff and felt that they, too, were marching like soldiers of the Lord to the New Frontier.
Writing to me after the election, Willard Edwards, the Chicago Tribune’s veteran political analyst, put it more bluntly. He referred to the “staggering extent of . . . slanted reporting” as “one of the most, if not the most, shameful chapters of the American press in history.”
The other unique aspect of this campaign was the Kennedy organization and technique. I had been through some pretty rough campaigns in the past, but compared to the others, going into the 1960 campaign was like moving from the minor to the major leagues. I had an efficient, totally dedicated, well-financed, and highly motivated organization. But we were faced by an organization that had equal dedication and unlimited money that was led by the most ruthless group of political operators ever mobilized for a presidential campaign.
Kennedy’s organization approached campaign dirty tricks with a roguish relish and carried them off with an insouciance that captivated many politicians and overcame the critical faculties of many reporters. I should have anticipated what was coming as I observed some of what went on in Kennedy’s brilliant but coldly mechanical destruction of Hubert Humphrey in the primaries. In his autobiography, The Education of a Public Man, published sixteen years later, Humphrey wrote that the Kennedy organization was undeniably impressive and successful. “But underneath the beautiful exterior,” he added, “there was an element of ruthlessness and toughness that I had trouble either accepting or forgetting.”
Finally, I was not prepared for the blatant and hig
hly successful way the Kennedys repeatedly made religion an issue in the campaign even as they professed that it should not be one. Led by Robert Kennedy, they managed to turn the election partially into a referendum on tolerance versus bigotry. From this point on I had the wisdom and wariness of someone who had been burned by the power of the Kennedys and their money and by the license they were given by the media. I vowed that I would never again enter an election at a disadvantage by being vulnerable to them—or anyone—on the level of political tactics.
During the 1972 campaign, in the diary I was keeping at the time, I reflected on what might have happened if I had won the presidency in 1960:
If we had known then as much about how to campaign, etc., as we know now we would have probably won in 1960. Whether that would have been a good thing or a bad thing I am not sure. I am speaking now not personally but so far as the country was concerned. It might have been that we would have continued the establishment types in office too long and would not have done the job we should have done as far as the country was concerned. On the other hand, had we won in 1960 we would have handled the Cuban Bay of Pigs crisis much differently, and would probably have faced down the Russians and saved Cuba from Castro, with all the implications that might have had for the future. I think also that we would have handled Vietnam quite differently, and would have used our power effectively very early in the war if we had found it necessary to use it at all. In any event, history was certainly kind to us by arranging for the Cuban missile confrontation to come in 1962, which sealed the fate as far as the gubernatorial election was concerned. Had we won the gubernatorial election, as I have often pointed out, I would have inevitably been nominated in 1964 and would have lost. Of course, you could write the script a different way—had we won [in 1962] Kennedy might not have been going to Texas and Oswald might never have shot him and under the circumstances we might have had a re-run of the ’60 campaign with a better chance to win than was the case after the Kennedy assassination and the martyr halo which Johnson was able to clutch to his brow as against Goldwater.
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