Having lived through the ‘60s, I understand the significance of JFK’s election, but was not the number one cause of the decade, but rather an effect. Demographics was the prime cause of the ‘60s. The huge Boomer generation was coming of age at the same time older people were anxious to move on from the age of Eisenhower and the greatest generation. I actually met Kennedy at a campaign rally he held at Montgomery Blair H.S. A little more than two years later, I was standing outside of the Bethesda Naval Hospital watching his body arrive in a grey ambulance.
The 60s was the decade of the generation before the boomers.
In 1960 the oldest boomer was 14.
If Eisenhower’s veep, the 1960 version of Nixon, had won the election most of the 60s would not have happened and the left would not have had so much raw meat to work with and then the follow up mass 3rd world replacement immigration to keep it going.
No Vietnam, no 1960s era dominated by Vietnam and draft resistance, no Kennedy assassinations, no unionizing of government employees, NO 1965 IMMIGRATION ACT that led to the end of America, no creating of the myth of the JFK Camelot fantasy built into the American Psyche as something that existed and then was killed by the non-liberal ugliness of the American people.
No Watergate, no Bay of Pigs fiasco, a possible President Reagan in 1968 without any Bush dynasty being created, no LBJ, no Goldwater debacle, no creation of Ted Kennedy the Senatorial Giant, no mass transformation of so many institutions such as the left solidifying control over the universities, no war against the mental hospitals, probably no affirmative action Executive Order and so much more.