DBWI Kennedy beats Nixon in 1960

Richard Nixon's opponent in the 1960 presidential election, Senator John Kennedy of Massachusetts, is not that well known, but he came very close to beating Nixon. By popular vote percentage it was the closest presidential election in history and really with a result that close, just about anything could have caused the election to go the other way. The Democrats made big gains in Congress two years earlier, so with that in mind it is even surprising that Nixon won.

What would a Kennedy administration have been like? One interesting fact is that Kennedy was Catholic, the USA still has not had a Catholic President.
 
Nixon was the the GOP's one last hurray for decades. While I appreciate his creation of the EPA, his work into China, reforming student loans and even subsidizing a bit of the film industry, he was alot wrong with America at the core.

His drug policies were criticized by the Democrats, especially since many drew out the parallels to the era of Prohibition. Also, the USSR got ahead leads and bounds into the space race, with the only reason the USSR attempt to the moon failing due to their secret rocket scientist dying from stress-induced work as we found out later on.

Also, his handling of the rising counter-culture actually not just reinforced it, but made it popular, especially among veterans. Then of course, he got impeached in the 7th year after he got re-elected. It was a complete scandal and one that President McGovern had to fix starting in 1972 after Ford tried to do damage control.
 
Would the wars in Laos and Cuba still occur under a Kennedy presidency?
The invasion of Cuba is unavoidable as no administration, Democratic or Republican, in 1960 was ever going to tolerate a communist regime just of our coast. The war was set in stone the instant Castro took power.

Laos on the other hand I'm not so sure.
 
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What would a Kennedy administration have been like? One interesting fact is that Kennedy was Catholic, the USA still has not had a Catholic President.

I was six years old in 1960 & can remember then and in subsequent years grownups ranting about what a danger it was that a Catholic was a presidential candidate. Years later as a teenager I learned those men and women were the sons and grandsons/daughters of the local KKK membership in the 1920s.
 
Immediately after Nixon sent US troops to overthrow Castro (Nixon having concluded that exiles alone couldn't do the job, even with air support), Khrushchev retaliated by building the Berlin Wall. Maybe the Wall would never have been built if JFK had been elected and cancelled the invasion--as he claimed in his memoirs he would have done.
 
Cambodia would had not been an Asian Tiger, as the war in Laos depended entirely on a Cambodian supply route which led to massive amounts of US aid to Cambodia along with investment even as the Laotian War ended.
 
The invasion of Cuba is unavoidable as no administration, Democratic or Republican, in 1960 was ever going to tolerate a communist regime just of our coast. The war was set in stone the instant Castro took power. ...

In his memoirs Nixon endorsed the post Cuban war view that we should have let the Castro regime rot for a few years, for its support to fade and Communist cadre to disintegrate. As it was invading while the Communists were still popular and the memories of the hated Batista era fresh contributed to the 18+ years guerrilla war that cost the lives of 25,000 US servicemen in Cuba. My original round of military service starting in 1972 was in that hot rathole, another US Marine keeping up a sixty year tradition of keeping Latin American safe for United Fruit, or Chiquita as it was known then. The corruption and arrogance of the returnees, the Blanka Pojos as we called them caused us to hate them as much as the Cuban resistance did. When someone in my company wasted the local Jefe not even the officers said a word.

Another bit of speculation is if the invasion might have been better thought out had Nixons NSC advisors not panicked when Soviet missiles and nuclear warheads were discovered to be enroute to Cuba.
 
Nixon was the the GOP's one last hurray for decades. While I appreciate his creation of the EPA, his work into China, reforming student loans and even subsidizing a bit of the film industry, he was alot wrong with America at the core.

His drug policies were criticized by the Democrats, especially since many drew out the parallels to the era of Prohibition. Also, the USSR got ahead leads and bounds into the space race, with the only reason the USSR attempt to the moon failing due to their secret rocket scientist dying from stress-induced work as we found out later on.

Also, his handling of the rising counter-culture actually not just reinforced it, but made it popular, especially among veterans. Then of course, he got impeached in the 7th year after he got re-elected. It was a complete scandal and one that President McGovern had to fix starting in 1972 after Ford tried to do damage control.
I swear, the Anaheim scandal has to ge the most overblown of political scandals, espdcially one that removed a sitting President. What those files showed was, honestly, standard operating procedure for both political parties. Just because Hunter Thompson had a hate-boner for Nixon, suddenly Nixon becomes freaking Satan.

I mean, you get the man who got civil rights through, EPA, and FinEd passed, but what does everyone remember him for? A book of files left in Disney-fucking-land, just because some hayseed journalist from Kentucky with a grudge was in the park on the same day as the President.
 
I swear, the Anaheim scandal has to ge the most overblown of political scandals, espdcially one that removed a sitting President. What those files showed was, honestly, standard operating procedure for both political parties. Just because Hunter Thompson had a hate-boner for Nixon, suddenly Nixon becomes freaking Satan.

I mean, you get the man who got civil rights through, EPA, and FinEd passed, but what does everyone remember him for? A book of files left in Disney-fucking-land, just because some hayseed journalist from Kentucky with a grudge was in the park on the same day as the President.

And here we have a Nixon supporter. Civil Rights was actually the result of the Democratic majority in House and Senate. Nixon only supported it barely because of political reasons. Otherwise, he was a pretty big racist, with quotes like these:

"We're going to [put] more of these little Negro bastards on the welfare rolls at $2,400 a family—let people like [New York Sen.] Pat Moynihan ... believe in all that crap. But I don’t believe in it. Work, work—throw 'em off the rolls. That's the key,"

"I have the greatest affection for [blacks], but I know they're not going to make it for 500 years. They aren't. You know it, too. The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like."

"The Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality."

So yeah, these quotes haunted the GOP over time here.
 
In his memoirs Nixon endorsed the post Cuban war view that we should have let the Castro regime rot for a few years, for its support to fade and Communist cadre to disintegrate. As it was invading while the Communists were still popular and the memories of the hated Batista era fresh contributed to the 18+ years guerrilla war that cost the lives of 25,000 US servicemen in Cuba. My original round of military service starting in 1972 was in that hot rathole, another US Marine keeping up a sixty year tradition of keeping Latin American safe for United Fruit, or Chiquita as it was known then. The corruption and arrogance of the returnees, the Blanka Pojos as we called them caused us to hate them as much as the Cuban resistance did. When someone in my company wasted the local Jefe not even the officers said a word.

Another bit of speculation is if the invasion might have been better thought out had Nixons NSC advisors not panicked when Soviet missiles and nuclear warheads were discovered to be enroute to Cuba.

That was kind of the whole point though: if Castro had just been another agrarian reformer, do you really think the response would have been that hot? Everybody in the administration and even most of the 3rd world was screaming betrayal at the Soviets for rushing in to "protect" a nation right in the US's backyard after the leeway we gave them in Hungary and Czechoslovakia on the principal of the "Security Perimeter"; especially when they kept harping on the rhetoric of a "Detante". Granted, I did my 2 years for the national good and democracy abroad (Under the Universal Service Act... and the GI benefits diden't hurt either) as a journeyman electrician helping clean mess the Red Chinese left when they tried to prop up the Northern regieme in 'Nam , so I suppose I got to see the ugly side of Communism's mug instead of the worst examples of Capitalism run amuck.
 
Well, I don't think the missiles had much to do with the Cuban Communists being anything other than dupes for the USSR. I really don't think the Castro regime would have faded soon. Even absent missiles and other Soviet intervention/support. Still It would have been nice to avoid the long war.
 
And here we have a Nixon supporter. Civil Rights was actually the result of the Democratic majority in House and Senate. Nixon only supported it barely because of political reasons. Otherwise, he was a pretty big racist, with quotes like these:

"We're going to [put] more of these little Negro bastards on the welfare rolls at $2,400 a family—let people like [New York Sen.] Pat Moynihan ... believe in all that crap. But I don’t believe in it. Work, work—throw 'em off the rolls. That's the key,"

"I have the greatest affection for [blacks], but I know they're not going to make it for 500 years. They aren't. You know it, too. The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like."

"The Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality."

So yeah, these quotes haunted the GOP over time here.
And you think pretty boy Jack would have pushed as he did, even against what he thought was his best judgment? That speech he gave before those ministers in '60 was in part motivated by concerns that he'd listen to the clergy on civil rights! Jack Kennedy was many things, but he was no Humphrey or Nixon.

Who would you prefer, a well-spoken pretty boy who does nothing but mouth pieties, or a bigot who at the end of the day gets the job done and thrashes Ross Barnett?

Also, there's a reason it's called the Humphrey-Dirksen bill. Hint: Dirksen was a Republican. The Dems were floundering in the Senate before Dirksen pushed it through.
 
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