My point was that Nixon, for some crazy reason, picked the guy Kennedy had beaten for US Senate to be his running mate from the same state as Kennedy.
Is that nuts or what?
Wow. What a brilliant political strategy. Let’s make this campaign about Massachusetts, Nixon must have said. What an idiot.
He should have picked Robert Taft of Ohio, or someone like that.
Bob Taft would have been excellent, but he died n 1953. He could have picked Goldwater — indeed, there was a Goldwater for VP boomlet at the convention, which Goldwater himself quashed. There were other choices, such as Norris Cotton, Roman Hruska, Karl Mundt, etc. (John Tower was not yet n the Senate, indeed lost the Senate election that year — and never stopped running until he won the special election.)There were other choices as well.