The Real Making of the President

Kennedy, Nixon, and the 1960 Election

W. J. Rorabaugh

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English

Kansas University Press
05 March 2009

History; History of the Americas; Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000; Elections & referenda

Series: American Presidential Elections

When 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 re-examine 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.

By: W. J. Rorabaugh
Imprint: Kansas University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 238mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 25mm
Weight: 528g
ISBN: 9780700616398
ISBN 10: 070061639X
Series: American Presidential Elections
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 05 March 2009
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Professional & Vocational , A / AS level , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

W. J. Rorabaugh is professor of history at the University of Washington and author of four previous books, most recently Kennedy and the Promise of the Sixties.

Reviews for The Real Making of the President: Kennedy, Nixon, and the 1960 Election

Blunt, gritty, and written without illusions, this concise and pungent account depicts a cynical, rough-and-tumble political world at a time when money, alliances of convenience, elaborate organization, and new modes of communication were changing the character of presidential campaigning and governance. Alonzo L. Hamby, author of For the Survival of Democracy Captures the interplay of money, power, and politics in the 1960 election and brings a fresh eye and new material to an election that has taken on mythic proportions in the American imagination. Donald T. Critchlow, author of The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History