Heh, okay, I get it, I get it :)
And I didn't remember that, that Bush was Reagan's primary opponent. Huh. (Well, I -was- only 11 at the time). So did the media trumpet what criticisms there were? Or did those two run a substantially less acrimonious primary than John-John have?
What was the last example prior to Reagan/Bush? At that rate, it was probably no later than 1956 or so.
Qwinn
Actually, the media repeated, endlessly, that Bush had called Reagan's policies "voodoo economics".
They were quite acrimonious. As a matter of fact, there was this debate... I'll let Reagan explain:
I thought it had been unfair to exclude the other candidates from the debate. Most of them were also campaigning in New Hampshire that weekend, and since we were now sponsoring and paying for it, I decided to invite them to join the debate. Four of the other candidates - Bob Dole, Howard Baker, John Anderson, and Phil Crane (John Connally was campaigning elsewhere) - accepted. When we walked on to a platform set up for the debate at the Nashua High School gymnasium Saturday night, there was one table, two chairs, and six candidates. When he spotted the four other candidates, Jim Baker, George Bush's campaign manager, protested and said George would not participate in the debate as long as they were part of it. Since I had invited them, I couldn't go along with him and exclude the other candidates, so we were at an awkward impasse. George just sat frozen in his chair, not saying anything; I sat in the other chair with the four other candidates standing behind me, looking embarrassed in front of two or three thousand people while being literally told they had to leave.Unable to understand what was going on, the audience hooted and hollered an urged us to proceed. I decided I should explain to the crowd what the delay was all about and started to speak. As I did, an editor of the Nashua newspaper shouted to the sound man, "Turn Mr. Reagan's microphone off." Well, I didn't like that - we were paying the freight for the debate and he was acting as if his newspaper was still sponsoring it. I turned to him, with the microphone still on, and said the first thing that came to my mind: "I am paying for this microphone, Mr. Breen." Well, for some reason my words hit the audience, whose emotions were already worked up, like a sledgehammer. The crowd roared and just went wild. I may have won the debate, the primary - and the nomination - right there.
No offense, but man are you asking for it today :-)
1960; JFK & LBJ
BTW, LBJ despised Kennedy and wanted to be POTUS, but back then in the days of 'smoky back rooms', the candidate was really picked by the political machines, not the people.
LBJ 'owned' the Senate (and Texas) but Jack's dad had the Mob & the Daley Machine - kind of hard to beat that combo. The rest as they say - is history.
Kennedy/Johnson in 1960.