The Real Making of the President: Kennedy, Nixon, and the 1960 Election (American Presidential Elections) Review

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The Real Making of the President: Kennedy, Nixon, and the 1960 Election (American Presidential Elections) ReviewThis book's title is a reference to journalist Theodore White's book about the 1960 presidential election, *The Making of the President, 1960,* published in 1961. In addition to being a best-seller, White's book was the first in a series of books on US presidential elections and set the tone for the interpretation of the 1960 election, a tone which glamorized John F. Kennedy as the "good guy" and Richard M. Nixon as the "villain" and which viewed the outcome as the triumph of liberalism over conservatism. Now along comes historian W.J. Rorabaugh who wants to peel away the onion and get at the "real" 1960 election and to re-evaluate this contest and its significance. What, then, does he find?
Perhaps his most interesting observation is the key role played by the southern states in the outcome. JFK selected Lyndon B. Johnson as his V.P. for a simple reason: he needed him to win the election. LBJ campaigned effectively in the South and brought Texas' 24 electoral votes (and those of many other southern states), without which the Democrats probably could not have won the presidency.
Rorabaugh also believes Nelson Rockefeller would have run stronger against JFK than Nixon. And that the GOP's choice for V.P., Henry Cabot Lodge, was a disaster, as for example, when he pledged in a Harlem campaign speech that Nixon would name an African American to his cabinet.
Other important outcome factors, according to Rorabaugh, include: the Democrats' very effective use of videotape and television; JFK's access to a personal airplane; huge sums of money, thanks in part to Joseph Kennedy; JFK's early recruitment of a talented staff and superb organization; JFK's adeptness at manipulating and catering to the media; and of course the first of the televised "debates" between Nixon and Kennedy which helped the underdog JFK immensely.
Going way beyond White, we also learn that JFK's staff members were not always the good guys, that they sometimes used dark tactics ("dirty tricks") to their advantage. Just ask the Hubert Humphrey campaign people about what happened in the Wisconsin and especially the West Virginia primaries, primaries that were decisive in JFK winning his party's nomination. It's hard to say for sure which candidate benefited more from the religious issue, but Rorabaugh's conservative conclusion on this issue is that JFK's victory proved that a Roman Catholic could finally be elected to the highest office in the land, thus helping to break down barriers in the future for minorities. As for White's portrayal of JFK's liberalism vs. Nixon's conservatism, the author says neither candiate cared much about ideology.
Rorabaugh doesn't do much with JFK's sex life, in case anyone was wondering. He notes that both JFK and his campaign manager-brother, Bobby, played loose with the accusation that JFK was suffering from Addison's disease, a charge made initially by LBJ's friends. (JFK did have Addison's but not the common type of this disease, so this could have provided the technicality for their denial.) I found it interesting that the author talks very little about Jacqueline Kennedy's role in the campaign. One tidbit that I was not aware of is that Jacqueline had never voted before, and on election day 1960 voted, but only for her husband.
I suspect that this book will now be considered the "standard" work on the 1960 election. (But don't overlook Gary A. Donaldson's 2007 book titled *The First Modern Campaign: Kennedy, Nixon and the Election of 1960*.) I also suspect that many readers will find this book a bit on the dry side. I did. But I'm aware that Rorabaugh has written a couple previous books on the 1960s, and I intend to read and comment on them.
Tim Koerner May 2009
The Real Making of the President: Kennedy, Nixon, and the 1960 Election (American Presidential Elections) OverviewWhen John Kennedy won the presidency in 1960, he also won the right to put his own spin on the victory--whether as an underdog's heroic triumph or a liberal crusader's overcoming special interests. Now W. J. Rorabaugh cuts through the mythology of this famous election to explain the nuts-and-bolts operations of the campaign and offer a corrective to Theodore White's flawed classic, The Making of the President.Despite a less than liberal record, JFK assumed the image of liberal hero--thanks to White and other journalists who were shamelessly manipulated by the Kennedy campaign. Rorabaugh instead paints JFK as the ideological twin of Nixon and his equal as a bare-knuckled politician, showing that Kennedy's hard-won, razor-thin victory was attributable less to his legendary charisma than to an enormous amount of money, an effective campaign organization, and television image-making.The 1960 election, Rorabaugh argues, reflects the transition from the dominance of old-style boss and convention politics to the growing significance of primaries, race, and especially TV--without which Kennedy would have been neither nominated nor elected. He recounts how JFK cultivated delegates to the 1960 Democratic convention; quietly wooed the still-important party bosses; and used a large personal organization, polls, and TV advertising to win primaries. JFK's master stroke, however, was choosing as a running mate Lyndon Johnson, whose campaigning in the South carried enough southern states to win the election. On the other side, Rorabaugh draws on Nixon's often-ignored files to take a close look at his dysfunctional campaign, which reflected the oddities of a dark and brooding candidate trapped into defending the Eisenhower administration. Yet the widely detested Nixon won almost as many votes as the charismatic Kennedy. This leads Rorabaugh to reexamine the darker side of the election: the Republicans' charges of vote fraud in Illinois and Texas, the use of money to prod or intimidate, manipulation of the media, and the bulldozing of opponents.The Real Making of the President gives us a sobering look at all of this, fundamentally reshaping our understanding of one of the nation's most memorable elections.This book is part of the American Presidential Elections series.

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