November 2, 2023: Contested Elections: 1960

[75 yearsago this week, Dewey didn’t defeat Truman—but the 1948 election was close andcontested enough that onenewspaper famously reported he did. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that electionand a few other hotly contested ones (not including 2020, because itreally wasn’t), leading up to a special Guest Post from an FSU alum andtalented young journalist who would never get it so wrong!]

On two clearand important factors in one of our closest elections ever, and onesignificantly more ambiguous but perhaps even more meaningful one.

1)     TV: I ended yesterday’s post on the 1948election with a comparison to the role of TV specifically and mass media moregenerally in1960, which is often seen as the first trulymodern election as a result of thatinfluence. As those three hyperlinked articles (and the many others I couldhave included) reflect, this is a factor that has been very thoroughlyexplored, and for good reason: it’s difficult to overstate how much TV and massmedia have shifted our politics, and continue to do so even in the age of theinternet (which is of course its own form of mass media). I don’t have a greatdeal to add to all those voices, but will say that I wrote a good bit in myrecent bookOf Thee I Sing about the “Camelot”mythos around the Kennedy administration as an exemplification ofcelebratory patriotism, and that whole narrative was deeply intertwined withKennedy’s boyish good looks and media-friendly charm.

2)     Johnson: Kennedy’s TV appearances (in bothsenses of the word) unquestionably influenced such narratives, and likelybrought folks out to vote as a result. But in American presidential electionsvoting matters more in a state-by-state way than an individual voter way, and tomy mind the single biggest influence on state voting patterns in the 1960election was Kennedy’s choicefor a running mate: Texas Senator and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B.Johnson. It’s not just that Johnson was a masterful party leader and politicalnegotiator, although those roles were never more crucial than in such a tightlycontested election. It’s also that the Dixiecrat revolt about which I wrote inyesterday’s post had only continued and deepened, and without a VP who couldtruly bring in Southern Democrats there’s no way Kennedy would have won the electoralvotes of the majority of the Southern states. Like Lincoln’sVP choice Andrew Johnson, similarly chosen for strategic reasons, this onealso became president himself due to a tragic assassination—but that’s a storyfor another post.

3)     Religion: The combination of Kennedy on TV andJohnson on the political landscape probably played the largest role in decidingthis very close election (and it seemspretty clear that fraud did not, despite the contemporaryand persistent arguments to the contrary). But throughout the campaign,there was a consistent debate which overshadowed either of those and any otherfactors: the questions surrounding Kennedy’s Catholicism. I wrote for my TalkingPoints Memo column back in 2015 about those debates, and won’t rehash thesame points here (although they’re worth remembering in an era when the majorityof our Supreme Court are devout Catholics, a clear reflection that thesenarratives have changed). Instead I’ll just note that whatever the effects ofthese religion debates on the election—and that’s a very complicated question,since Kennedy’s religion may at the same time have pushed some voters away andbrought in other new ones—they, and Kennedy’s significance as thefirst Roman Catholic President (and only one until ourcurrent administration), remind us that no election exists in a vacuum, andthat historic significance often goes far beyond the winners and losers in agiven year.

Lastcontested election tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?