Nixon's the one! in 1960

Great Debates
1

A little bit of alternate history that I don’t think we have ever covered in GD

So, Richard Nixon doesn’t slam the car door on his leg. Then for the debate with Kennedy, Nixon wears full make-up. Now Nixon doesn’t look quite so much like a criminal in that debate. Nixon carries Illinois & Texas in route to a close electoral victory.

IIRC, Nixon is still the 2nd youngest president ever elected [had he been elected], so while not “young & handsome” like Kennedy, Nixon would have just turned 48 in January 1961.

Nixon paranoia: not feeling cheated out of a victory in Ill & Texas, and losing to Pat Brown in '62 CA governor’s race Nixon is not quite so mistrustful of his “enemies.” The Nixon White House has no “Plumbers.”

Viet Nam: Nixon, with the anti-comunist bona fides, does not feel pressured to get involved and Asian land war the way JFK & LBJ do.

President Henry Cabot Lodge: Lee Harvey Oswald still assassinates the 37th president. Does Massachusetts become so “liberal” as the Kennedys perhaps don’t become ascendant in MA.

Would the Civil Rights movement been changed? No Goldwater defeat in '64, therefore no 'Reagan Revolution" in 1980?

BTW, interesting piece of “vandalism” in Nixon’s bio in Wikipedia right now.

2

Interesting premise. Don’t know enough about the era to discuss what you’re saying, except for a few things:

Nope, Grant and Cleveland are both younger than a Kennedy-beating Nixon, as is Clinton.

Are you assuming that, or stating it as an additional change?

3

I’d say the Oswald scenario is unlikely at best. Would Nixon have made a motorcade trip through Dallas? Oswald got JFK by the incredible fortune of having the parade pass under a building in which he worked during the lunch hour.

4

I think he’s assuming Oswald takes out Nixon, elevating Lodge (Nixon’s Veep candidate in 1960) to the Presidency. I don’t know about the likeliness of this, since Oswald’s antisocial behaviour was tied up in Kennedy’s actions toward Cuba so unless Nixon did the same… hmm, I can actually imagine Nixon taking a harder approach in 1962 and setting off WW3… fun stuff.

5

I don’t see it.

6

I wonder how much of the stuff about Nixon looking dark and glowering with bad makeup and thus losing the debate is bona fide.

If Kennedy was perceived to have won that debate at all (this was disputed at the time) it may have been more of a victory for JFK as opposed to Nixon blowing it. What Nixon’s people were hoping for was that he would appear much more experienced than the callow Kennedy. Instead Kennedy held his own.

Nixon might have been calmer and less paranoid if he hadn’t had to deal with defeat in '60 and '62. Then again, getting crunched in Vietnam as President (and he would likely have fallen into the same “domino” trap) might have made him even weirder, hard as it is to imagine.

7

It’s gone by now. I looked in the history, and it’s really just juvenile ‘humor’.

8

From what I’ve heard, people who watched the debate thought JFK won and people who heard it on the radio thought Nixon won.

9

My dad once told me he’d heard that, too.

10

I think it was Ted Thorsensen’s (unsure of the spelling) account in The Making of a President that was the first description of what took place that made sense of what I saw. President Kennedy appeared calm and self-assured. Nixon had a five o’clock shadow and was sweating. He looked sinister no matter what he said.

Incidentally, my first impression of Senator Jack Kennedy at the Democratic Convention in 1956 of unfavorable. I thought he looked a little intoxicated. It may have been his sleepy eyes. I’d never seen or heard of the Kennedys before.

In 1960 I had read two magazine articles about Nixon and Kennedy and I did not like something personal I had read about Nixon. (When he was a young man, he had his mother smell his breath before he went on a date. Hey, I was seventeen at the time and that seemed significant at the time.)

That’s about all I knew when I saw the debates except that Kennedy was Catholic and Nixon had been Vice President. I don’t remember anything that was said, but I do remember how they looked. I don’t think that it is all from post-debate suggestion.

Aren’t these debates available for viewing?

11

Theodore H. White wrote “The Making of the President 1960” and similar books in '64, '68 and '72. Ted Sorenson was a a JFK speachwriter.

12

Rather unlikely. Assuming that nothing changed in the political environment before 1960, Dems will still hold eight of the fourteen seats in the Massachusetts House delegation, one of the two Senate seats, and a large majority in the state legislature. Moreover, Kennedy actually didn’t have any coattails in Massachusetts in 1960, as the Dems lost the Governorship and Leverett Saltonstall won the second-greatest victory margin in his political career. The Democratic majority in Massachusetts during this time owes itself largely to two factors (heavy support from Catholic voters and a leftward shift among Protestant voters), and I’m not sure what Cabot Lodge can do to stop that.

13

He was actually in Dallas that day, amusingly enough - but I guess he wouldn’t have had the motivations Kennedy did.

14

That is if you believe Oswald actually assassinated JFK :slight_smile: Which I do. Good point, all other things being equal, Oswald doesn’t get the perfect shot at Nixon, so President Henry Cabot Lodge never happens. And Richard Nixon is never our martyred President. whew.

I think it is generally accepted JFK “won” the debate because he didn’t “lose” the debate to the supposedly more experienced Nixon. There were spinmeisters even back then. Some of the old footage of the debate also shows Nixon often looking at JFK out of the corner of Nixon’s eyes, making it appear that Nixon was somehow “shifty”.

Cuban Missile Crisis: worse, the same or does it even happen? JFK is generally thought to have played it perfectly, but maybe Kruschev does not decide to place the missiles in Cuba in the first place since Nixon is seen as tougher and more experienced.

1964 election: Nixon re-elected on his ability to keep us out of a widening war in Viet Nam. In a similar fashion to LBJ in reality and Wilson in WWI.

The War in Viet Nam blows up anyway. Nixon quickly escalates the conflict as he has long planned to do.

Neither the 1964 Civil Rights Act nor Great Society legislation pass since LBJ isn’t President to shepherd the bill through. Race relations become worse [if that is possible].

In 1968 Nixon reverses course, and tries to secure his legacy with the passage of the 1968 Civil Rights Act. The Act passes after MLK’s assassination, and huge civil rights marches in the South.

The GOP in 1968 is hopelessly split between Nelson Rockefeller and Barry Goldwater. Rockefeller wins the nomination, but conservatives are so disheartened by the Civil Rights Act and the deteriorating situation in Viet Nam that they decide to give the Rockefeller wing enough rope to hang themselves and sit out the fall election.

Democratic anti-war candidate Senator Hubert H. Humphrey [yes, HHH is not LBJ’s VP, he has led the anti-war effort in the Senate for the last 3 years] is elected President.

Humphrey declares victory and rapidly de-escelates the war in Viet Nam. The American people mostly approve, seeing no reason to prop up a corrupt, undemocratic regime in the South or continue to be involved in a land war in Asia.

15

We’re missing the big question: Would Nixon have had a shot at Marilyn Monroe?

16

Hunter S. Thompson confirmed this. He ended up hating Nixon more than he hated anyone else in the entire world, and indeed he probably was the most vicious Nixon-hater there ever was in the world. But even he admitted that listening to the debate on the radio, he felt Nixon won. Seems Nixon had had a recent bout of flu and did thus not look so good on television, especially compared with the youthful Kennedy.

I wonder how many past presidents would have lost had they had modern technology. Could Lincoln have withstood the scrutiny of the television camera? didn’t I read somewhere that he had a squeeky voice?

17

This is the sort of alternate history I love, 5 time champ; postulating a small change and running with it. My 1812 thread didn’t go over as well as this, and I think much of that is because Nixon’s a lot easier to imagine differently than Monroe.

18

James or Marilyn? :slight_smile:

19

I stand corrected. The Oswald scenario isn’t the least likely to occur.

20

Ruth Buzzi, maybe.