The Making of the President 1960 (9).

Theodore H. White. New York: Pocket Books, Inc. 1961/1962.

Why read it? The strategies used by John Kennedy and his associates and by Richard Nixon and other candidates in the presidential election of 1960.

Sample ideas:

“He [JFK] had always acted as if men were masters of forces, as if all things were possible for men determined in purpose and clear in thought….” p. 458.

JFK: “While the so-called religious issue is necessarily and properly the chief topic here tonight, I want to emphasize from the outset that I believe that we have far more critical issues in the 1960 election: the spread of communist influence, until it now festers only ninety miles off the coast of Florida—the humiliating treatment of our President and vice-president by those who no longer respect our power—the hungry children I saw in West Virginia, the old people who cannot pay their doctor’s bills, the families forced to give up their farms—an America with too many slums, with too few schools, and too late to the moon and outer space.” Houston, “Tex., Sept. 12, 1960. p. 468.

JFK: “So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again—not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me, but what kind of America I believe in.” p. 468.

JFK: “But let me stress again that these are my views—for, contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for President, I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for President, who happens also to be a Catholic.” p. 471.

JFK: “But if this election is decided on the basis that 40,000,000 Americans lost their chance of being President on the day they were baptized, then it is the whole nation that will be the loser….” p. 471.

The End.

Next: The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer.