Posted on 10/20/2004 5:46:32 AM PDT by OESY
...Kennedy did only slightly better in 1960, scoring 49.8% against Nixon. His plurality was one of the smallest in U.S. history..... This election was significant in that it marked the occasion when TV played a major, perhaps determining, part. Roosevelt had already demonstrated the importance of radio when his skill at the media, honed in his "Fireside Chats" as president, helped to secure his landslide re-election in 1936.
In 1960, the media (overwhelmingly pro-Democrat) judged Kennedy an outright winner in the TV debates. It was said that his team persuaded the studio to turn up the lights so that Nixon would sweat. Certainly, those who watched it on TV gave it to Kennedy, but those who only heard it on radio judged Nixon superior.
This contest was also significant because it marked the historical point at which a candidate's religion ceased to be important. Al Smith's Catholicism had cost him dear in the 1920s. In 1960, Catholicism was an asset in Kennedy, since he got over two-thirds of the Catholic vote, Nixon receiving only 22% (against 60 for Eisenhower in 1956), the lowest Republican total of the 20th century. Nixon had deliberately refused to bring up the Catholic issue, and he declared the result: "Bad for me, perhaps, but good for America." He also refused to challenge the results in Illinois and Texas, where widespread, highly organized cheating gave the two big states to Kennedy, and with it the election. Years later Nixon told me he had been tempted to ask for an inquiry (as Al Gore was to do in 2000), but decided it would be "dangerous for the nation at a critical time."
In recent decades the most significant election was 1980, when Reagan beat Jimmy Carter and so inaugurated the policies which demolished the "Evil Empire"....
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
of course the kennedy's stole that election between daley's corpse voting in chicago to lbj's corruption in texas. there was overwhelming evidence of massive vote fraud on the part of the democrats, and many people were outragedm but Nixon declared that the damage to the nation would be far greater had he elected to contest and fight it out in court - quite unlike the reactions of modern democrats.
and they're doing this again now. the question is will they succeed?
I don't remember the Democrats likening Nixon to Hitler in the 1960 debate. I don't remember the Democrats forging documents and the media presenting them as fact.
This election is definiitely the dirtiest, and there is no accountability. The media is part of the problem this time around.
I don't remember the Democrats endlessley repeating blatant lies about the incumbent, while using threats of violence and lawsuits to silence those who want to correct the record, either.
Anyone catch this piece written by Mark Levin in 2000?
Looks like he was right.
By the way, fellow FReepers, have YOU volunteered to be a poll watcher for the Republican Party in your county? It's not too late to sign up! Your Party needs you, esp. for the last 72 hours of the campaign.
Remember Mayor Daley stuffing those ballot boxes in 1960 for JFK.
I get so sick of always hearing these commentators say: "this is the dirtiest...in American history", "this is the worst whatever..in history".
Nobody knows these things unless they have been a student of history for their entire life, and even then they may not know.
It's hyperbole.
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