(THE MAKING OF A PRESIDENT, USA 1963) - The United States presidential election of 1960 was held between Republican Vice President Richard Nixon, Democrat Senator John F. Kennedy, and Harry Byrd, an independent candidate. The year 1960 marks a tumultuous time in American history considering the building fear of communism. Kennedy was not the only man vying for the 1960 Democratic nomination. He was rivaled by Hubert Humphrey, Stuart Symington, Adlai Stevenson, and Lyndon Johnson. Campaigning for the primary election was not very common at the time, but Humphrey and Kennedy decided to, and it turned out to be beneficial for Kennedy. However this victory did not distract from the issue of Kennedy’s Catholicism, a heated topic given the Vatican’s power at the time. After Kennedy won the primary, he chose Lyndon Johnson as his running mate. Johnson was a Senator from Texas and could help Kennedy win the South. Also, according to American Decades 1960-1969, he turned out to be a better campaigner than Nixon’s running mate, Henry Cabot Lodge. As he had only been a representative for six years and a senator for two, Kennedy was generally less experienced and less well-known than Nixon. However, he successfully utilized the televised presidential debates to let the American public get to know him and his platform better. John F. Kennedy was victorious over Richard Nixon in the presidential election of 1960. That is a true statement, but there was so much more to the election than that. The popular vote was extremely close and made for a lot of tension within the country. Not only did the United States elect its youngest president in history, it elected the first Catholic one. Beyond the election itself and the president, 1960 marked the start of new ways of campaigning and debating. It is now common for nominees to campaign for the primaries just like Kennedy and Johnson did, and televised debates have become a sort of tradition for the American people. These specific debates also marked the start of massive media participation in the elections, even though there were no televised debates again until 1976. During this election American demonstrated how much it values equal participation in elections by the candidacy of a Catholic and the larger African-American voter turn out. It is because of the election of 1960 that presidential candidates and American voters have some of their current practices, expectations, and beliefs about elections that have overall improved the quality of elections.
