JFK: The Making of Modern Politics

David Cameron and his lovely kitchen.

Tony Blair and his lovely tennis and his children.

Vladimir Putin stripped to the waist

with a hunting knife scampering around with the bears.

Nicholas Sarkozi and his lovely...

Carla Bruni.

When did it start, this business of politicians selling themselves

not on the basis of their ideas or their policies

but on what they get up to in their spare time

when they're not being politicians?

The lifestyles!

Well, look no further.

It started here at Cape Cod,

with Jack and the Kennedys.

This is the story not of the presidency, not of a mythical

king shot down in his prime, but of how John F Kennedy kicked

his way to power as the little known senator for Massachusetts.

I believe that the times require imagination

and courage and perseverance.

I'm asking each of you to

be pioneers

towards that new frontier.

But the 1960 presidential race saw the triumph of style over substance,

the influence of vast sums of money

and the cynical manipulation of voters.

You might say it marked the beginning of modern politics.

Let's not be too snotty about this.

Kennedy, as a Catholic, was an outsider and felt he had to do

anything to kick his way to power.

But what happened in that 1960 campaign did change democratic

politics everywhere and not for the better.

Hyannis Port is a quiet, relaxed sort of place.

On the 8th November 1960 it was boiling with tension.

The eyes of America, the eyes of the world,

were fixed on the group of houses known as the Kennedy compound.

One of the richest, most powerful and most ambitious families in

American political history are huddled together in

front of their television screens, almost visibly shaking with tension.

Because the result of the closest presidential election

campaign in American history is still in the balance.

That Kennedy had got this far was down to one thing,

the brilliance of his ground-breaking election campaign.

At the beginning of 1960, half of America hadn't even heard of him.

Now, barely ten months later, he was on the brink of becoming president.

Our story starts here, in the small

out of the way state of West Virginia.

In April 1960,

this would be the most important place in America for John F Kennedy.

He was attempting to win the Democratic nomination for president.

He'd already shown he could succeed in New England and amongst fellow Catholics in Wisconsin.

Now he had to travel to America's heartland to show the sceptical

bosses of the Democratic Party that he could win over the ordinary

Joe and working class Wilma of mainstream America.

It looked quite a hard sell. JFK

was a wealthy East Coast socialite, 43 years old, blessed and charmed,

groomed by his millionaire father, Joe.

The Kennedy's were well connected New England Catholics whose links

with the Democratic Party went back two generations

and they had a war chest of millions

to spend on getting Jack to the White House.

The family's brimming confidence

reflected that of most of the country.

Well 1960 is more

or less smack in the middle of what could well be described as the most

prosperous, self-congratulatory moment in all of American history.

But not everywhere shared in the prosperity.

Hard scrabble states with economies dominated by

farming, coal mines and unions, were shut out and struggling.

Places like West Virginia.

When the Kennedy bandwagon rolled in

here in the spring of 1960, JFK had his work cut out.

In certain areas, you were running as high as 30% unemployment...

..and we were going through a period when mechanisation was taking over in

the mines and unemployment was part of the price we had to pay.

If a Catholic millionaire could win here he could win anywhere.

High stakes.

Kennedy had a formidable opponent for the Democratic nomination -

Hubert Horatio Humphrey, the veteran senator for Minnesota.

He entered the primary contest with a 20 point lead.

More and cheaper power sources,

better school buildings and laboratories and greatly expanded

land water timber conservation practices in appropriate areas.

These are not expenditures, my friends. These are investments.

They build dividends.

I wonder if a certain Gordon Brown ever read

Hubert Humphrey's speeches!

Let us pause for a few words about Hubert Humphrey.

Poor, brave, visionary and extremely tough.

He'd cleaned up his state and kicked out the crooks

and kicked out the communists.

He was the first person to raise the issue of civil rights

on the floor of the Democratic National Convention 12 years

earlier, against everybody's advice.

He was experienced, radical,

an extraordinary, unusual politician

who did not deserve what was about to happen to him.

What was about to happen was the birth of a new kind of politics.

Humphrey's ideas would be drowned out by a rich, glamorous operation

the like of which West Virginia had never seen before.

Humphrey was bumping around the state in an old bus with a broken

heater while his wife, Muriel,

offered the journalists, cold and irritated, her recipe for beef soup.

Kennedy, meanwhile, was flying overhead, offering the journalist's

cold Martinis in a private jet bought for him by Daddy.

Humphrey had a truly terrible election slogan.

"Over the hump with Humphrey."

But by now, poor old Humphrey was feeling pretty humpy himself.

Ted Sorenson

was Kennedy's speechwriter and one of his closest aides.

He'd prepared the ground in West Virginia.

Nobody campaigns like the Kennedys campaign and John F Kennedy went into

every hill on the hamlet and the hollow in West Virginia and he

presented himself to the people there as someone who cared about them.

Well, I was in Raleigh County, West Virginia for a week during

the primary, and,

contrary to what I expected, because on paper it looked

to be a very strong Humphrey area with the United Mine workers, what I

found was that much more work was being done on the Kennedy's side.

What are your plans if elected

president for the situation existing in the coal mines in West Virginia?

Well, I think that, and I've been in the Congress now for 14 years,

and the fact is that in my own state

of Massachusetts we've had a similar problem.

We've lost all our textile industry.

I think there are at least four or five things the government can do.

Kennedy had that ability,

wherever he went, was to talk to these individuals

and they would tell him

the problems they had and he would listen and he made them a promise.

I'll make things better for West Virginia, just

work for me, vote for me.

Kennedy's easy charm disguised one

of the most ruthless tacticians in modern American history.

Like every modern politician, he recognised

that elections can be won and lost through the influence of the press.

That was the first time I was out on a presidential

campaign, so it was all new to me.

But Kennedy would almost casually walk up to you after an event

somewhere and say that was a good lead on your story, and you thought

to yourself, man, the candidate's reading what I'm writing!

And it was a form of flattery that went very far.

Kennedy knew exactly how to use journalists to his advantage

because he'd worked as a reporter before going into politics.

He was also splashing out cash to secure local voters, with dash and

no apparent embarrassment at all.

He had a hugely wealthy operation and was frankly buying support

everywhere he could go.

Humphrey was no angel.

In one district, he too tried to buy a little bit of help,

but the shadowy figures he'd offered the money to

quickly returned it in a satchel.

The Kennedys had offered a great deal more.

Indeed, Humphrey found all his financial support draining away,

partly because the Kennedy's had warned the donors

that if they stuck with Humphrey it would be regarded as an act of war

and they would be punished if the Kennedy's won the presidency.

Humphrey was being outsmarted and outspent.

Kennedy had a budget of 34,000 just for TV advertising.

Humphrey had nothing like that.

For his last TV ad, he had to raid the 750 stash

his wife, Muriel, had hoarded for their daughter's wedding.

He felt as if he were a mom and pop store, as we say, alongside

some sort of giant supermarket, and so he was overwhelmed by the

Kennedy money and organisation.

Humphrey or JFK?

Muriel or Jackie?

West Virginia was rapidly

falling for the Kennedy glamour and succumbing to the Kennedy machine.

But there was still hope for Humphrey.

Kennedy was Catholic, and West Virginia

was overwhelmingly Protestant.

America had never had a Catholic president

and 24% of Americans said they wouldn't consider voting for one.

Kennedy had to convince the people

that they had nothing to fear from a Roman Catholic candidate.

The question is whether I think that if I'm elected president

I would be divided between two loyalties, my church and my state.

Let me just say that I would not.

I have sworn to uphold the constitution in the

14 years I've been in Congress, in the years I was in the service.

The Constitution provides that Congress shall make no laws

abridging the freedom of religion.

It was a question that wasn't going to go away easily.

But West Virginia was a carefully chosen battleground.

Here, Kennedy knew

that concerns about his religion would be offset by something else.

His record as a World War II hero.

In August 1944, John Kennedy was awarded the Navy

and Marine Corps medal for courage, endurance and leadership.

As a young naval officer,

John Kennedy had rescued his men after their boat, the PT109,

had been cut down in the South Pacific.

Exploiting this story was the key

that unlocked West Virginia, a state that continues to provide

one of the highest proportions of volunteers for the US military.

In 1960, a third of the male voters in West Virginia were war veterans.

There were more drop-in centres for veterans

than there were high schools, so the Kennedy campaign bombarded it with

newspaper and broadcast messages about Kennedy's war time heroism.

And it worked.

Kennedy the Catholic became Kennedy the decorated war hero.

But it wasn't enough just to be a war hero.

The other man had to be seen to be a coward.

That's why Franklin Roosevelt Jnr, a Kennedy supporter and son of the

legendary FDR, was pressurised by the Kennedy's into publicly

suggesting that Hubert Humphrey was a draft dodger in World War II.

It wasn't true.

It was a cruel and vicious lie.

Humphrey hadn't served in the Second World War

because he had a double hernia and couldn't.

But as soon as the smear of cowardice

was well lodged in the voters' mind,

Kennedy denied any involvement,

washed his hands, and sailed on.

Well, it was a dirty trick, but as FDR said, well, look at the record.

He was a hero in World War II, his brother had died in that gallant

flight over the English Channel and Humphrey had not served.

As folks said, Humphrey had spent the war defending

a pharmacy in South Dakota.

Kennedy won easily in West Virginia.

Money, glitz, organisation, dirty tricks, media manipulation.

Well, you may say, so what!

Can we expect anything else from politicians?

Humphrey's thoughts about the Kennedy style

should give us all pause for thought.

To elect a president it's more important that he be good of heart,

good of spirit,

than that he be slick or clever or statesman-like looking.

Has the leader given you something

directly from his heart, or has it all been planned in advance?

All been scheduled.

Is it efficient?

From day to day, I read in the paper that the Hubert Humphrey campaign

is disorganised.

I think, thank God!

After the primaries, the scene shifts to Los Angeles

for the 1960 Democratic convention,

the most expensive such gathering

there had ever been.

In hotel suites and smoke-filled rooms, the same ruthless cutting

edge was shown by Kennedy as in the small town Main Streets and

far off smoky valleys.

His way of campaigning had won him every primary he had

entered and he had the support of delegates from all over the country.

Even now, other candidates, senior, nationally known politicians,

barely grasped how he'd up-ended the old rules.

Most delegations aren't run by US senators in Washington.

Those delegations consist

of local mayors and legislators and county chairmen and party leaders.

That's where Kennedy had been, at the grass roots level, and

by the time he had

a big lead in the number of delegates it was too late for the others to

catch up to them, and that's exactly how Obama beat Mrs Clinton.

Of all his enemies in LA in 1960, none was tougher, rougher or more

dangerous than the Texas senator, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who thought

he's swat the New England upstart posh boy like a horse fly.

Senator Johnson, running behind, took the initiative

and challenged Kennedy to a debate

before the combined Texas and Massachusetts delegations.

After first hesitating, Kennedy accepted and he appeared before

the heavily pro-Johnson crowd.

He listened to one of the most

blistering attacks made against him during the entire campaign.

Johnson was the senate majority leader

but he hadn't fought any primaries and somehow the upstart didn't seem

to notice the verbal thrashing LBJ thought he'd just administered.

..He replied confidently.

Mr Senator Johnson. Full of affection for him.

In support of a majority leader and I'm confident in that position

we're all going to be able to work together.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

I remember the roll call vote, listening to it on the radio,

in 1960, and it wasn't decided that Kennedy was going to be the nominee

until the very last state in

alphabetical order was polled on the floor. It was the state of Wyoming,

which in any alphabetical list of the United States is the last one.

It cast its vote for Kennedy and that was it to put him over the top.

It was a new dawn, was it not?

After 1960, getting selected to run for president meant that primaries

not connections mattered most.

A good thing, surely?

Except that it put the top

job beyond the reach of those who didn't have the vast sums of money

required for the

professional organisation, the jet travel and months of campaigning.

Great candidates would be shut out,

left staring helplessly upwards from the dusty tarmac.

All Kennedy's work paid off and he became the Democrat's

candidate for the presidency.

But immediately he had to take one very difficult decision.

Who was going to be his running mate?

All the rival candidates were possibilities but Kennedy

chose the man most useful to him.

The man who happened to be his most outspoken critic.

That was a dangerous thing to do.

Johnson would bring Kennedy lots of parts of the

US he couldn't reach by himself,

but Kennedy was putting his old rival

very close to the presidency.

Doesn't matter, said Kennedy to his friends, I'm 43.

I'm not going to die in office.

Hug your enemies.

Choosing LBJ was a smart move.

He made JFK more appealing to the South,

and, as we'll see, the Southern Democrats were most likely

to cause trouble when it came to civil rights.

The great domestic test lying ahead for Kennedy's America.

And so to the final round.

'Richard M Nixon was the choice of the Republican party.

'He has served as vice president for the United States since 1953.

'Now he was a candidate for the presidency.'

Understudy to the hugely popular Eisenhower for eight years,

Richard Milhouse Nixon was tough, experienced and a favourite to win.

One of the big beasts of the Republican party, he'd been

observing the rise of the senator from Massachusetts with interest.

In the draft of his speech accepting

the nomination, Nixon wrote, "this election must not be decided

"on the basis of money, who has the most glamour,

"who has the slickest organisation, who has the best PR experts.

"It must be decided by the facts."

Nixon still had good reason to be confident that he,

not Kennedy, would be the next president of the United States.

Nixon was the favourite.

A poll was taken which showed that most people thought that

Nixon would beat Kennedy.

Another poll showed that most members of the Democratic national committee

thought Nixon would beat Kennedy.

Nixon and Kennedy had been elected to congress in the same year.

They had offices across the hall from each other.

Nixon was only four years older than his rival.

And in 1960, Nixon wasn't regarded as particularly right-wing.

His policies were moderate.

So did Kennedy take on Nixon with different ideas, as his defeated

democratic rivals might have done?

No.

Kennedy's proposals were almost a mirror image of Nixon's,

tax cuts and minor reforms to social welfare and education.

This shouldn't be a surprise. After all, Kennedy had admitted

he was a realist not a liberal.

The atmosphere he set during this campaign would matter more than

his party's platform.

A lesson for all modern politicians everywhere.

If at all possible, avoid talking about details.

Ideology. Forget it!

Your political philosophy may inspire one voter

but frighten another or two more.

So don't write a programme.

Paint a mood.

Nixon emphasised his experience and,

securing Eisenhower's friendly legacy,

he offered reassurance and stability.

All he had to do was not rock the boat.

Kennedy's slogan seemed empty.

Getting the country moving again.

What it meant was youth and energy and what that meant was,

me, just me!

New America, new Democrats.

Plenty would learn that game in the years to come.

Kennedy understood

that he was a personality and that what people were

interested in was not simply the policy statements, but the man and

the whole package he came in.

Pleasure to have you here.

I want you to meet my daughter, Caroline, and my wife, Jackie.

How do you do?

I'm glad you had a chance to see something of the senate and now

to see our house, where we've lived a year and since Caroline was born.

I think it was inevitable for politics.

The television age

had brought to politics much more

focus on the person than the personality

and it's not a question if it's good or bad, because it happened.

Sell Jack.

He's handsome, young, vibrant, photogenic,

witty, charming, and it worked.

The selling of Jack had been orchestrated all along

by his father, Joe, who'd learned while making millions of dollars in

business that if you don't market a product properly it won't sell.

It was an example every politician followed after 1960.

Joe Kennedy

famously said he was going to sell Jack like soap flakes.

Do you think that something

bad happened in politics during that 1960 campaign as a result?

You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.

These are things you just have to deal with because you can't turn

back the clock, you can't pretend these things never got invented.

In America it had become increasingly

important to have this kind of high visibility.

So many of the people who command political attention

nowadays come out of some other venue, out of Hollywood or out of

the sports world or out of the business world because they have

made tons of money.

And so Joe Kennedy understood

the importance of public relations and he said at one point, you put

Jack on the cover of a magazine and it'll sell out overnight.

Of course, politicians have always

sold themselves on the basis of image.

Grand houses or log cabins or wood chopping.

What was different about Kennedy was that he wasn't simply selling

himself as a brave man, though he was, or as a clever man,

though he was, or as somebody with particularly interesting ideas.

He was selling a lifestyle.

That's very different.

It was said of the Kennedys that they created illusions

and called them facts, but sometimes the facts were simply false.

As election day grew nearer,

nothing that damaged JFK's radiant image was allowed.

John Kennedy's health was central to the way that he sold himself.

He was the sun-kissed, super fit, active, young New England boy.

Trouble was this was not true.

Not only did he have agonising back problems.

More importantly, he had a form of Addison's disease,

which is an adrenal disease which in those days was often fatal.

He was dealing with it by carrying everywhere with him

a little bag of hypodermic syringes and pills.

When he was challenged about Addison's disease, he flatly denied that he had it or ever had had,

and his doctor, Janet Travail, backed him up.

As his medical records, released here at the John Kennedy Library 40 years

after his death, make absolutely clear, he and she were lying.

It was a cover-up. All these pictures of him,

touch football and on the sea, on the ocean, yachting and vigorous.

The word vigour, the Massachusetts dialect, as they used it.

He was the embodiment of vigorous youth.

But in fact he was someone with lots of medical problems,

so it's so interesting as to how the image and the reality,

there was a serious gap there

but they managed to carry that off brilliantly.

They could carry it off by tapping into America's latest boom industry.

This was the era of Madison Avenue -

advertising agencies and commercials on billboards, radio and TV.

Kennedy's advertising agency was Guild, Bascom and Bonfigli.

They merged with the company that later became Saatchi & Saatchi,

creators of some of the most famous political advertising of all time.

# Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy

# Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy for me. #

-Kennedy!

-Kennedy!

-Kennedy!

-Kennedy!

# Do you want a man for president who's seasoned through and through?

# But not so doggone seasoned that he won't try something new

# A man who's old enough to know

# And young enough to do

# Well it's up to you It's up to you

# It's strictly up to you. #

What they lacked in sophistication,

the early JFK commercials made up for in hummability.

Within days it seemed that the whole country was singing along

to the Kennedy theme tune.

# It's strictly up to you.

# Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy

# Kennedy, Kennedy Candidate for me. #

Kennedy! Kennedy! Kennedy! Kennedy! Kennedy! Kennedy! Kennedy!

KENNEDY!

It does seem to me, and it's not an original observation with me,

that there has been a certain degradation

of the level of political seriousness in political campaigns

as major complicated issues get reduced to 15-second or 30-second

TV advertisements, or now internet advertisements.

That kind of thing can't enhance the complicated process of political decision-making.

Nixon would have agreed. He refused to be sold like a commodity.

Look, he said, I am and am going to be Nixon.

I will not change to please TV or Madison Avenue.

I am going to be what I am, for good or bad.

But no campaign can entirely ignore the big issues.

In July 1960, polls concluded that across America

the overwhelming majority regarded

relations with Russia as being the primary problem facing the nation.

There's all this anxiety about a potential nuclear exchange

with the Soviet Union.

Three years earlier,

the Soviets had launched their space satellite Sputnik.

Ever since, America feared that if the Soviets were ahead on rocket

technology then they must be ahead on nuclear missiles as well.

The fact that the country was in a dispirited mood

over the fact that the Soviets had eclipsed us with Sputnik,

and there was a lot of anxiety that there would be a missile gap

and the US was going to be behind the Soviet Union

in technology of this kind.

Both Nixon and Kennedy knew this wasn't true.

Secret intelligence reports showed the US was well ahead.

As vice-president, Nixon couldn't reveal the truth for fear

of compromising government security...

..but Kennedy was always looking for political advantage.

He made many speeches demanding more missiles,

even though he knew they weren't necessary.

This administration has failed to recognise the changing nature

of our times and we now see the Soviets heading to the moon

and what is true of outer space is true of every area of national

and international government.

Nonsense, actually, but it made Nixon look weak.

A master class in political manipulation.

Kennedy played on the fears of the public.

He had a sixth sense for what people wanted to hear.

There's something called a political athlete, who is the natural,

and he has enormous gifts that are quite natural

and Kennedy had those gifts. They develop more later on.

Ronald Reagan had them.

I don't think Richard Nixon had them.

He had to develop as a candidate and as a campaigner.

Kennedy's final problem was his inexperience.

How would he square up to the former Vice President?

Here he had a faithless, dangerous, addictive ally.

It's the thing you're watching right now.

Television debates between would-be presidents had long been

the dream of the broadcasters.

For years they'd worked to clear every obstacle.

With six weeks left in the campaign, Kennedy was given his golden chance.

-BROADCASTER:

-The presidential candidates meet face-to-face in television debates

seen and heard by millions.

The same people who will decide which of these two men shall lead the country for the next four years.

In 1950, 10% of American households had a television set.

By 1960, only 10% didn't.

The TV studio became a kind of political courthouse

but playing by very strange and unfair rules.

I think everybody in the United States

sees that 1960 debate as the touchstone.

Kind of the beginning of modern politics, television politics.

The problem is, as future generations of politicians have found to their cost,

if you're not perfect for television, you're stuffed.

It's unfair, capricious, shallow.

You're the wrong shape, you're bald.

You won't do well on television.

Conclusion.

There is no choice.

If the television studio doesn't become your personal theatre,

its cameras will be your firing squad.

Eisenhower had warned Nixon not to take part but Nixon

believed television would show up Kennedy's shallowness and lack of experience.

Ha-ha! Nixon the naive.

Kennedy knew exactly what he was doing.

He had his staffers stand him up and ask questions, they constantly threw

them at him, and so he did it verbally back and forth

whereas Nixon sat down there like a student grind,

but working and studying and preparing and then walking out

for the performance.

As many as 70 million Americans tuned in to watch the debates.

Good evening. The television and radio stations of the US

and their affiliated stations are proud to provide facilities

for discussion of issues in the current

political campaign by the two major candidates for the presidency.

Famously, Nixon had a very strong beard and was badly made up.

He also wore a light suit for the first debate,

so light that he seemed to disappear against the backdrop.

On the day of the debate, they kept repainting it in the agreed grey colour, to try to make it darker.

Every time they painted it, it dried light.

Bill Wilson was a young TV producer who'd left his job at the networks to join the Kennedy camp.

He was very happy with the colour of the paintwork.

I just said, "Lighter's better.

"Lighter's better. Relax, everybody. Light is fine."

With a dark suit and a good tan,

JFK just sparkled.

In the election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln said that

the question was whether this nation could exist half-slave or half-free.

In the election of 1960, and with the world around us,

the question is whether the world will exist half-slave or half-free.

Nixon, before the debate, several weeks before, he had smacked

his knee on a car door, had an infection and was hospitalised

for, I think, 12 days, and then when he got out

for the debate he smacked his knee again.

He was in pain, he had a bit of a fever, he looked pallid.

A couple of the TV experts there suggested,

"Do you want to postpone this debate?"

because they looked at him and he didn't look really well

and Nixon, of course, "I'm not going to back out of anything."

He went ahead with it.

Somebody said, "You look like a sinister chipmunk," and Kennedy,

who had the right clothes on him, the right make up,

they understood how to create this image.

We got to the stage with about a minute to air

and JFK said, "I got to go the bathroom."

Well, you don't say, "You can't go to the bathroom,"

so I took him to where it was.

We came back to the entrance to the stage as the stage manager

was going, "Three, two, one..."

and he hit that stage at exactly the time

that we hit the air.

At that moment, everybody on the stage, including Nixon,

didn't know what to think.

He wasn't there but there he was.

The comfort break to cause maximum discomfort.

Maximum discomfort!

It froze the room, psyched Nixon out completely,

and it was glorious.

You yourself said to Khrushchev, "You may be ahead of us

"in rocket thrust but we're ahead of you in colour television."

I think colour television is not as important as rocket thrust.

When I was in the control room, it was Nixon's man

on one side of the director and I on the other side of the director,

and I saw we were winning hands down.

I said, "We need a cutaway, we need another shot of Nixon,"

because I could see the streams of sweat going down his face

and I wanted to see that in a close-up.

Chicago mayor Richard Daly said of Nixon,

"They've embalmed him before he even died."

People who heard that debate on radio thought Nixon had won,

and those who watched it on television,

which was the great bulk of the population,

thought Kennedy had bested Nixon.

Nixon had imagined the debates would be about statesmanship,

but in the end, like everything about the Kennedy campaign,

they were about showmanship and, quite simply,

the greater showman won.

Kennedy had shown he could stand on a stage as Nixon's equal.

That was dramatic.

Secondly, Kennedy's very attractive appearance,

and third when Nixon, in his debating style, kept saying,

"I agree with Senator Kennedy," and still people judged it pretty close.

But then everybody waited for what the pollsters said the result was.

Most of us are suggestible creatures. We like to go

with the flow, and so it was very important that immediately after

the debate the pollsters called it for Kennedy.

-BROADCASTER:

-Four times he and Nixon met on the nation's television screens.

Kennedy appeared the equal of the Vice President and this represented

a tremendous gain for him.

Once again, Kennedy had met his opposition face-to-face,

and, once again, he had won.

When we were looking at the debates in 2008,

and I was coordinating the debate prep,

it felt like a great deal of the same dynamic in terms

of the argument at the time that Obama might be too inexperienced,

maybe not quite ready to be president,

and that the debate is the single best opportunity

to demonstrate, to show - not to tell people - that you're ready.

# I'm ready Ready as anybody can be

# I'm ready Ready as anybody can be

# I am ready for you I hope you're ready for me... #

Kennedy may have believed that he was ready

but his lead in the polls was tiny.

His religion was still a major issue for many voters.

Kennedy was not the first presidential candidate who was a Catholic.

Errol Smith in 1928 was a Catholic and of course he lost miserably to Herbert Hoover.

That left a mark on the American Catholic community - it reinforced a feeling of marginality,

a feeling that no-one of theirs could actually make it to the top

of the political ladder.

Kennedy's response was to take his biggest problem

and charge at it head-on, getting there before the critics did.

As part of a campaign swing through the South West states,

Kennedy was invited to defend himself

in front of 300 local Protestant ministers in Houston, Texas.

I believe in an America where no man is denied public office merely

because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him,

or the people who might elect him.

Do you say that with the approval of the Vatican?

I don't have to have approval in that sense.

APPLAUSE

Get there first!

As for Kennedy and Catholicism, so Obama and race, or Tony Blair

and middle-class fears of Labour,

or indeed David Cameron and being too posh.

But in 1960, pleas for a more tolerant society applied

more directly to another group - not Catholics, but black Americans,

held back behind the colour bar.

Not slaves. Not fully free.

# See the arrow on the doorpost

# Saying this land is condemned

# All the way from New Orleans

# To Jerusalem... #

The American South was still broadly segregated along racial lines.

Plans to integrate schools and buses were being approved but many states were digging in their heels.

Tensions were reaching fever pitch.

# See them big plantations burning

# Hear the cracking of the whips... #

It's the most vexed issue in American life historically.

Incidentally, I think it's no accident that the race issue

really gets grasped in that time of national self-confidence,

in the post World War II era. That's not an accident.

By 1960, neither presidential candidate could ignore civil rights

but Kennedy had a problem.

His party was split down the middle.

If he came out too strongly for African Americans,

he risked losing the support of the white Democratic south.

And his backing to date

of the civil rights movement had been at best lukewarm.

This is Ben's Chili Bowl.

A Washington legend and landmark.

They've all been here. Martin Luther King. Jessie Jackson.

Ella Fitzgerald. Nat King Cole.

Barack Obama.

But not John F Kennedy.

It's been said that the only black people that Kennedy knew

were valets and drivers.

Many people remember Kennedy as the great champion of civil rights,

and Nixon being on the other side.

That wasn't entirely true, was it?

Richard Nixon, quite frankly, even when I was with him,

really had a soft spot

for African Americans and how badly they had it in this country.

He was a Quaker and his mother was a Quaker,

and this idea that these people have had it tough and they need a break,

that was ingrained in Richard Nixon.

Richard Nixon was clearly more pro-civil rights than Jack Kennedy.

Kennedy may have had little instinctive empathy for civil rights,

but in some states

there were votes to be had by being seen to support black Americans.

Two weeks before the election, Martin Luther King was in jail

for a ludicrous technicality.

JFK made a clever tactical move.

Behind the scenes, he pulled strings to get him out.

The Kennedy campaign treated the news very carefully.

They released it to the black news organisations and churches

to garner black votes but played it down for the white press,

and for one very important reason.

Some of the most virulent racists around in 1960

were in Kennedy's own party, the Southern Democrats.

By selectively distributing the news of how they helped the King family,

the Kennedy's gained, in one district alone, a 16% swing of the black vote for JFK.

There's not much ambiguity in the Kennedys. They're all calculation

and they're very good at it but it was a coldly calculated decision.

So how did this play out when Kennedy became president?

It was a touchstone issue after all.

But after the election, Kennedy got no civil rights legislation through Congress.

Two-and-a-half years into his presidency,

a quarter of a million people marched on Washington

and Martin Luther King had a dream, because it was still a dream.

Kennedy didn't herald a new era of radical liberal law-making,

as so many of his supporters had hoped.

If one takes a hard, thoughtful look at the Kennedy administration

on the domestic side,

there wasn't really all that much you could point to in the way of significant accomplishments.

He, however, thought of himself as a foreign-policy president.

His goal was to deal with the Communist threat,

the Soviet Union and emerging China,

the danger from nuclear weapons, and there, one can say he did have significant achievements.

All of that was still to come.

But for the making of modern politics,

it was the 1960 campaign that made the difference.

In the final week, Nixon surprised Kennedy by outspending him

in a campaign advertising blitz.

They were now neck and neck.

70 million voters made their choice between Nixon's experience

and Kennedy's vigour.

-BROADCASTER:

-Tuesday November 8th is election day all over the country.

Streets and buildings are decked with flags.

The campaign clamour has died down and given way to quiet reflection.

In Hyannis Port, Kennedy and his family gathered for the results.

Ted Sorenson was with them.

We weren't certain he was going to win.

The polls had shown a very narrow race

and the lead changing back and forth.

We weren't certain how some states, which were very important states, were going to go.

Finally, Kennedy, in the early hours of the next morning, went to bed.

I stayed by the television, watching. I wasn't going to give up till I knew.

Huge boards post the returns as they come in,

minute by minute, hour by hour.

The sun was up and I walked over to his house.

I noticed there were secret service men around the house now.

That had not been true the previous day. That was a good sign.

I walked in and one of his domestic staff said,

"I heard him stirring upstairs, go on up."

So I went up and I walked into his bedroom and I said,

"Good morning, Mr President."

Kennedy beat Nixon by just 0.2%.

"So what?" you may say.

Kennedy may have won 49.7% of the vote,

but he had 100% of the White House.

-BROADCASTER:

-Shortly after Vice President Nixon officially concedes the election

on the afternoon of Wednesday, November 9th,

Senator Kennedy appears before the press in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.

With him are his wife, his father and mother, his many brothers and sisters.

After acknowledging congratulatory wires from President Eisenhower

and Mr Nixon, he addresses all Americans.

Every degree of mind and spirit that I possess

will be devoted to the long range interests of the United States

and to the cause of freedom around the world.

So now my wife and I prepare for a new administration,

and for a new baby, thank you.

Nixon learned lessons from his narrow defeat.

He recognised the new realities.

Next time, he would sell himself like Kennedy.

So would many others.

You, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, do solemnly swear.

I, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, do solemnly swear.

That you will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States.

That I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States.

And will to the best of your ability...

Perhaps the greatest lesson that modern politicians have learned

from Kennedy is that voters will always respond to a candidate

who makes anything seem possible.

We dare not forget today

that we are the heirs of that first revolution.

One of the things that everybody knows about Kennedy

is that he was an absolute master of political rhetoric

and speech-making.

Ever since, politicians all around the world have tried to mimic him.

Let the word go forth from this time and place,

to friend and foe alike,

that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.

When I listen to this, my heart rate starts to increase,

my spine stiffens slightly, and a little smile comes across my face.

Once we had a president who made people feel hopeful

about America and brought us together to do great things.

Today, Barack Obama gives us that same chance.

He makes us believe in ourselves again,

that when we act as one nation, we can overcome any challenge.

People always tell me how my father inspired them.

I feel that same excitement now.

We have to feel energised and enthusiastic and optimistic

about the new leader from time to time,

otherwise none of us would bother voting or funding or working for political parties at all.

And that was Kennedy's great secret.

He made people interested again.

And so my fellow Americans,

ask not what your country can do for you,

ask what you can do for your country.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And he remains a kind of liberal West Wing icon

because he didn't have time for the fresh paint to fade.

So potent is the Kennedy myth that even today, like a drum beat,

the question is asked, what would have happened if Kennedy had lived?

He would have had authority, a bit more authority.

I think an angrier looking man,

because being in power makes people angry.

When you try to imagine that kind of Kennedy,

something rather extraordinary happens.

You get President Bartlett from The West Wing.

That is in many ways the old Kennedy admirers' final poem of praise

and admiration to the lost king.

When it comes to verdicts, then most of us in the hurtle and buzz

of the modern world prefer to focus on the pretty picture. The image.

Isn't this really the story of the triumph of the flat

and the glossy and the perfectly posed?

After JFK, we expected our politicians to look good,

to make heart stopping speeches, have beautiful children,

to be masters of marketing and artists of spin.

But the higher the hope, the greater the fall,

the inevitable disillusion.

If you campaign in poetry, govern in prose,

you may be remembered in curses.

Kennedy escaped that for the worst of reasons

but the more you look at his campaigning,

the more the message must be that he is a better memory than a model.

Life would be better if today's politicians enjoyed the uplift

without copying the style.

JFK: 'I'm asking each of you to be pioneers towards that new frontier.

'My call is to the young at heart, regardless of age.

'To the stout in spirit, regardless of party.

'To all who respond to the scriptural call, be strong and of good courage.

'Be not afraid, neither be dismayed.'

# From a jack to a king

# From loneliness to a wedding ring

# I played an ace and I won a queen

# And walked away with your heart

# For just a little while

# I thought that I might lose the game

# I played an ace and I won a queen

# You made me a king of your heart. #

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