Countdown 1960

Countdown: 312 Days

January 2, 1960

Washington, D.C.

The moment arrived. U.S. senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy of Massachusetts entered the majestic Senate Caucus Room, looking more like a movie star than a politician. He calmed the applause, stepped up to a bank of microphones, and told the world he was running for president of the United States.

After hinting for years, he made it official, surrounded by family members and friends.

He was polished and articulate, a mature but still youthful forty-two. He stood tall and slender, tanned and well rested after a nearly two-week family holiday in Jamaica. His blue eyes, toothy smile, and neatly tousled hair gave him a healthy, confident appeal.

Jack Kennedy shone in the historic room, dressed in a perfectly tailored pinstriped suit, white button-down shirt, and blue necktie.

He'd picked the perfect place and time to introduce himself to the electorate. The news conference was scheduled for 12:30 p.m. on the first Saturday after the New Year's holiday. It would be a slow news day, so his announcement would get plenty of media attention in the heavily read Sunday newspapers.

And it was no accident that JFK chose the Caucus Room-one of the most impressive places in the nation's capital. Sunlight streamed through three grand windows and sparkled on crystal chandeliers. Corinthian columns and the marble floor gleamed. Kennedy might have appeared young, but the stunning backdrop would quietly convey to voters that he was serious.

The Caucus Room had served as a stage for some of the Senate's most dramatic public hearings: the sinking of the Titanic, the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Tennessee senator Estes Kefauver's hearings into organized crime, and Wisconsin senator Joe McCarthy's televised anti-communist crusades.

Standing before the microphones, Kennedy glanced at the text he had prepared on notecards. He lifted his head, took a deep breath, and stared straight ahead.

"I am today announcing my candidacy for the presidency of the United States," he said, in his distinct Boston accent.

Kennedy promised to take the nation into a new decade of global leadership. He laid out a list of challenges facing the United States, with America's relationship with the Soviet Union and Communist China as his campaign's top issue. He warned that the United States had to find a way to end the arms race, which threatened the very existence of civilization.

But JFK didn't stop there. He brought up issues that would become campaign staples. He vowed to reinvigorate American science and education, prevent the collapse of the farm economy, and stop urban decay.

Without missing a beat, he said prosperity must be extended to all Americans, without increasing inflation or unemployment.

If Jack Kennedy was nervous, he didn't show it. The speech flowed. He was firm, direct, and polished from years of practice. He had been running unofficially for the Democratic Party's nomination since 1957. He had traveled all over the United States to introduce himself to voters. He had made numerous speeches and campaign appearances on behalf of Democratic candidates, picking up IOUs along the way as he built his own formidable organization.

But Kennedy knew that many Democratic leaders still thought he was too young, too inexperienced-and Roman Catholic, to boot-to lead the party into the November general election.

That day in the Senate Caucus Room, Kennedy unveiled a new campaign strategy-one that could play to his strengths and cut out the old political bosses.

Before 1960, presidential primaries were minor events. Party leaders settled on who would be the standard-bearer in the proverbial smoke-filled rooms at national conventions. The candidate with the best connections to state and regional political kingpins usually became the nominee.

But Kennedy vowed to flip the script. Bucking tradition, JFK would campaign in primary elections and empower voters-not party bosses-to win him as many delegates as possible.

Kennedy indicated the Democratic primaries were a true testing ground for candidates with presidential ambitions. If he could win over primary voters, they'd follow him in the general election.

It was a gamble. So far, only Hubert H. Humphrey, the liberal Democratic senator from Minnesota, had announced that he was running for president. Senators Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas and Stuart Symington of Missouri were still deciding whether to seek the Democratic nomination.

So, Kennedy challenged any rival to face him in the primaries. He asked, if they couldn't beat him there, how could they defeat Vice President Richard Nixon, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate in the fall?

Kennedy was confident that his strategy would pay off.

"In the past 40 months, I have toured every state in the Union, and I have talked to Democrats in all walks of life. My candidacy is therefore based on the conviction that I can win both the nomination and the election," Kennedy said.

"I believe that any Democratic aspirant to this important nomination should be willing to submit to the voters his views, record and competence in a series of primary contests," Kennedy said, adding, "I am therefore now announcing my intention of filing in the New Hampshire primary, and I shall announce my plans with respect to the other primaries as their filing dates approach."

The audience cheered. Kennedy flashed his grin. And when the press asked following his remarks, Kennedy made it clear that he was running for the presidential nomination of his party-and under no circumstances would he be a candidate for vice president.

John Kennedy announcing his candidacy, January 2, 1960

(Associated Press)

Kennedy was hoping to become only the second Catholic to land the Democratic presidential nomination. The first, New York governor Al Smith, lost in a landslide to Republican Herbert Hoover in 1928.

Anti-Catholic bigotry was still alive and strong in the United States. Some voters believed that a Catholic president would be under the control of the Vatican, that church doctrine would influence his decisions. Kennedy knew it would take longer than a single news conference to put that to rest. JFK said he believed the voters' only question should be, "Does the candidate believe in the Constitution, does he believe in the first amendment. Does he believe in the separation of church and state?"

When the news conference was over, Kennedy's thirty-year-old wife, Jacqueline, smiled as she posed for pictures with her husband. For Kennedy, the day was a good start to what would certainly be a tough campaign. Yes, he was young, but he wasn't lacking in experience. He had served as a U.S. Navy officer. He was a decorated World War II combat veteran, not to mention a member of Congress.

But he had a long way to go to convince voters that he was more than just a handsome war hero with a picture-perfect, and affluent, family. Kennedy would have to show a skeptical nation he had character enough to tackle divisive issues at home, and the gravitas needed to stare down military threats that could destroy the world.

And he had to keep some other things carefully concealed. His personal flaws could easily derail his campaign. So far, he had been successful at keeping his private life and serious health issues separate from his public persona. He had a rare but potentially fatal disorder of the adrenal glands that leaves the body's immune system unable to fight off infection and disease. And he was a philanderer who'd had numerous affairs with staffers, actresses, and others. The only question was, How long could he keep the lid on?

Countdown: 298 Days

January 16, 1960

Miami, Florida

The big twin-engine Convair charter touched down in Miami just after midnight, and Vice President Richard Nixon dragged his weary body out of its folded-up position. His wife, Pat, his staffers, and a few Washington reporters gathered their things.

The candidate yawned, stretched, and put on his game face.

When the cabin door opened, Nixon bounded into the night air. He walked down the boarding stairs, measuring the boisterous crowd waiting for his arrival-at least a thousand of them. Suddenly, he felt a jolt of energy.

"People stay up later here than they should . . . It's almost one o'clock," Nixon quipped to the well-wishers on the tarmac.

Nixon waded into the crowd, shaking dozens of hands, soaking up the excitement. He could have stayed there all night, but his security detail was waiting with a ten-car motorcade to whisk him off to the Roney Plaza Hotel in Miami Beach.

On the way downtown, Nixon sighed and took his wife's hand in his. They were looking at a busy weekend, but that was fine. If he was going to win the White House, he had to do the hard work.

He'd learned a tough lesson in the 1958 midterms. Republicans had suffered massive losses. Nixon told GOP leaders the blunt truth: The Democrats deserved to win. "Republicans worked for two months. Our opponents worked for two years."

No one was ever going to outwork or outhustle Dick Nixon. He had an inner drive for success that he couldn't explain. He was an enigma, even to friends. Nixon was dogged, determined, and ambitious. Yet he could be distrustful, peevish, even paranoid at times.

In private, Nixon was reserved and insecure. He was an introvert in a profession that demanded outgoing, loquacious leaders. In an interview early in his career, Nixon admitted as much to Stewart Alsop, a newspaper columnist and political analyst: "But it is true that I'm fundamentally relatively shy. It doesn't come natural to me to be a buddy-buddy boy. . . . I can't really let my hair down with anyone."

But on the campaign trail, Nixon came alive. At just over five feet, eleven inches tall with a prominent nose and thick, dark eyebrows, Nixon was a skilled and energetic campaigner-a trait that emerged during his first campaign for public office.

A lieutenant commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve, Nixon had just been released from active duty in 1946 when Republican leaders in his hometown of Whittier, California, urged him to run for Congress.

His opponent was Representative Jerry Voorhis, a popular Democrat who was seeking his sixth two-year term. Democrats had a solid majority in Voorhis's Twelfth Congressional District. So, Nixon knew the GOP wasn't really looking for a viable candidate. They wanted a sacrificial lamb.

But Nixon had other plans. Yes, he was "absolutely green," but he vowed to win. Nixon was an attorney, and politics seemed like a natural extension of his profession. So, he turned to his wife, Pat: Would she be on board if he ran for Congress? She said yes. They decided to sink $5,000-more than half of everything they had saved-into the campaign.

Nixon's modest nest egg began in the Solomon Islands, where he'd served during World War II. He quickly became known as a card shark at poker and carefully tucked away his winnings for the future.

Nixon was an unlikely gambler. He grew up in a Quaker family where betting was frowned upon. A religion that abstained from any participation in violence, Quakers had been exempted from military service for generations. But after Pearl Harbor, Nixon felt the need to serve his country. How could he sit on the sidelines when his nation was in peril? When he joined, he was twenty-nine years old and working as an attorney for the Office of Emergency Management in Washington, D.C.

When the cards and dice were pulled out, Nixon watched his fellow officers closely, quickly picking up on their strategies and techniques. His disciplined approach came from his poker-playing buddy, a fellow named James Stewart, who offered sage advice: You didn't stay in the game unless you were "convinced" that you had the "best hand."

Nixon took lessons from Stewart, spent hours watching the best players, learning their moves, until "his playing became tops," Stewart said. A former Navy officer said Nixon turned into a brilliant poker player.

"I once saw him bluff a lieutenant commander out of $1,500 with a pair of deuces," James Udall recalled.

He returned home from the war with several thousand dollars in extra cash in his pocket. When he launched his congressional career, Nixon was a conservative Republican, staunch anti-communist-and a big underdog in the race against Voorhis.

But he initiated what soon became the Nixon formula for success, a mix of heavy campaigning and blasting the competition with negative, misleading information.

During the summer of 1946, Nixon painted himself as a "clean, forthright young American who fought in defense of his country in the stinking mud and jungles of the Solomons." Meanwhile, Voorhis had "stayed safely behind the front in Washington."

Nixon was relentless. In a series of five debates across the district, he suggested that Voorhis had connections to Communist groups. Soon, people began receiving strange telephone calls from an anonymous caller: "This is a friend of yours. I just want you to know that Jerry Voorhis is a Communist."

In November, Nixon was elected with 56 percent of the vote. It was the start of a meteoric career.

In six years, Nixon went from freshman congressman to vice president, riding the wave of America's anti-communist hysteria. He won his seats in the House in 1946 and the Senate in 1950 by accusing his opponents of being soft on communism.

Richard Nixon campaigning, 1960

UPI Photo

The U.S. Senate race was especially ugly. His opponent was U.S. representative Helen Gahagan Douglas, who was intelligent, articulate, and attractive. Nixon attacked her character by questioning her loyalty to the United States. He suggested that she had communist sympathies and printed information about her on a "pink sheet" that was distributed at campaign rallies. Nixon called her the "pink lady" because of her Soviet support, saying she was "pink right down to her underwear." Nixon's attacks were rough, even for a political campaign, but they resonated with the electorate, and in the last days of the campaign, some people threw rocks at her car as she left rallies.

Nixon's campaign style didn't change as the years passed. He put his technique to work helping other Republican candidates raise money and win elections across the country. In return, Nixon won the loyalty of GOP leaders from big cities to small towns. Nixon seemed to have the skills to unify his party.

It was no surprise that key Republicans from all over Florida-who called themselves Citizens for Nixon-had planned a series of public events for the vice president and his wife. They had billed the gatherings as nonpartisan, saying everyone, regardless of party affiliation, was invited to meet the Nixons.

But there could be no mistake-these were campaign stops. Comparable events were planned over the next few weeks in strategic spots all over the United States.

Hours before landing in Miami, Nixon had opened his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination by promising a crowd in Gainesville, Florida, that, if elected, he'd continue on the path blazed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. And why not?