I read a dozen biographies of Nixon by learned men and still feel like I don't have much of a handle on the man. But here are my hot stove takes on him as it relates to 1960 and beyond. I think the 1960 election was not a Kennedy win but a Nixon loss.
Yes, there were some weird things that went on in Texas and Illinois, but, um, it's Texas and Illinois and you got an (R) after your name and running against LBJ and Daley. I mean, honestly. How can any human being as the Vice President of the United States deal with the Senate and not walk away with the feeling that the Majority Leader of it (LBJ) would not kill your grandmother and boil her bones in front of you if it meant winning a race, any race, much less the race for the White House? And Daley is... The guy supported Truman and fought for him back when all thought Truman was a goner (including Daley's then boss), just because he believed in Party loyalty. The dead have always voted in Chicago and they have voted Democrat.
And arrayed against this skulduggery... Nixon goes to Alaska, to keep his silly pledge to visit all states. *Sigh*
Yes, Ike did not help, for a lot of reasons, but in the end Ike did cotton on that if he did not help Nixon it would besmirch his (Ike's) reputation, as a man could not ride his coattails (which were not as wide or long as Ike really thought).
We can talk Kennedy money, machine and dirty tricks (Dick Tuck really deserves his own alcove in the Church of Dirty Campaigning), but Nixon could have run better and did not, and that loss and his inability to deal with it unleashed a lot of "demons."
But Nixon in '60 as President would have been an odd duck. Many have written timelines on that presidency here, and had their takes. I am not sure I can, because it is hard for me to imagine a Nixon who is not haunted by the loss in 1960. It's a bit like picturing Poe without the mustache, even though he did not have it for the majority of his life. It defined the man.
Nixon's take on civil rights was... curious. I do not know what he felt about it. I read the bios, listened to the tapes, read his self serving memoir and the memoirs of his cronies, and watched them talk about it on documentaries and still have no notion of what he really felt. Nixon was a blurter. And he would blurt dumb as dog shit things. And then do the opposite of what he would say. You could not take what he said at face value. But judging him by his actions alone is also hard, because everything has to be weighed in the time and context of it. For instance, EPA. For years, I believed that Nixon really gave a shit about the environment. That even though elected by pro-business interests he decided that they need regulating and as a California man he had that unique touch of being conservative on a lot of things, but liberal on others. That belief and quirk of his personality was enshrined in a lot of books I read as well, until some learned fellows pointed out that Nixon only started giving a shit about EPA once it became clear (to him) that Muskie was using the environment and the support for it to make himself the front runner for the Democratic Party nomination. So, to forestall the Dems from using environment as an issue, Nixon waded into it. So there went that image.
Domestic agenda bored Nixon to tears. It was the petty bullshit of Congress that he had to wade into to promote his Party and ensure his chances, and yet... I think he gave a shit about health care based on his (not entirely accurate) childhood memories of the family dealing with the fear of poverty due to medical bills for his brother's treatment. He also did not reject the Great Society, but merely wanted to limit some of its parts. Then again, how is that argument any different from what the Tories said after Labour started creating the welfare state in the '50s, or how the Repubs ran against FDR in the '30s, when they argued that they will not dismantle what their predecessor created. But would they have created that which they promised not to dismantle?
Vietnam would have been a lodestone. McNamara once postulated that it is a war that the American people could not understand because it had no true beginning. Nixon would have waded into it and there is no telling if he would have made things worse or better and how many (more or less) people would have died.
Cuba was... Nixon said a lot of strange things about Cuba and some poignant things as well, and he was as I said a blurter, capable of saying something really bizarre and then his closest aides would nod sagely and ignore it. How would he have dealt with Castro? Probably as badly as Kennedy. How he would have dealt with Khrushchev? Hard to say. Nixon has always claimed he understood the Commie mind. And on the surface of it, his bromance with Brezhnev shows some of it. As does his going to China at the height of the Sino-Soviet split. But how would he have handled the Crisis? I have no idea.
One really strange thing must be said, I do not see De Gaulle pulling out of NATO with Nixon in the White House. Nixon rated De Gaulle in the holy trinity of politicians, along with Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. He would have bent over backwards to help out De Gaulle come to an understanding. Meanwhile, for his part, De Gaulle liked Nixon. So take that for what it's worth.
One butterfly the size of Mothra here, if Nixon wins in 1960, it derails Goldwater. Goldwater's faction was being propelled by the notion that a middle of the road Nixon lost in 1960 because he wasn't hardline enough. And thus the '64 beer hall putsch of the Repub Party nomination. Oh sure there would be right-of-Nixon candidates, but with Nixon sitting on the throne, he would have squashed these rebellions and consigned opposition within the Party to the fringe.
Race relations... this is a separate subsection of civil rights... Nixon's views and actions were contradictory. And I am not sure how long he could have sat on the fence or said one thing and done another with what was going on in the '60s. In '67, I believe he read the tea-leaves and made a conscious effort to withdraw from public life and hid out in his NYC firm because he saw the lit fuse to the powder keg in Detroit and other places. I don't think he would have been able to hide in the White House as effectively as he did in his private life. He would have had to have taken stances and here he would have waffled until the last second and then committed himself to it at the eleventh hour and blundered and then gotten it right and then agonized over it. I have no idea how it would have ended up.
Drinking and pills. Nixon's view on booze was as contradictory as anything, but it did not take him much to get plastered. The pills were another thing. He suffered from insomnia and experimented with whatever bullshit his rich pals suggested. Nixon went weak at the knees around successful self-made men who professed to him how they overcame their weaknesses. I think everything from meth to anti-epileptic seizure medication would have been on the table. He had around him quacks and marks that would make Hulk Hogan blush and go, "You need to see real doctors, brother." Reverend Billy Graham once opined that the downfall of Nixon were sleeping pills and demons. Would have the '60 election win reduce some of those demons, or at least not make them shout as loud? And would have the win helped him sleep at night? It's tough to say. Once again, I have such a vivid image of Nixon haunting the White House, railing against JFK portrait, with a highball in hand that I can't picture a smiling Nixon strolling by, whistling and saying goodnight at eleven o'clock. And yet... he did try to be happy. He had a habit of turning on all the lights when he would come home to cheer up his young daughters and putting on a record and singing along with tunes, because he wanted to not be miserable. So...
With Kennedy defeated, the Democratic party would have had its own moment of reflection. I think LBJ would have gone for it and he would have broken enough bones and boiled enough grandma bones to get it. The '64 Nixon-LBJ showdown would have been something, unless LBJ suffers a panic and decides to hold off until '68. The idea of Nixon-LBJ in '64 would probably make more than a few people disgusted enough with politics to stay away and maybe, just maybe, some kind of third party would develop, with Wallace also lurking in the shadows.
Triple H from Minnesota would have been in a quandary. He was the guy tagged with "too liberal" tag in 1960, but if LBJ takes the nom in '64, he might have tried to coopt Humphrey, or Humphrey might have stayed away and been the reconciliation candidate in '68.
One thing we cannot safeguard against is Agnew or some other horrid mediocrity crawling onto Nixon's ticket. One of the goofier aspects of Nixon's '68 win is the transition process. It was a cluster. At one point, Nixon's campaign lit upon the idea of sending out a questionnaire to Who's Who and literally asking them to name suggestions for who they would like to see in the Cabinet. Now, granted, in 1960, he would have had Ike's team to pick from, so it would have gone smoother, but Nixon's organizational skills were not high and the prospect of Agnew or some other sop to the ignorant, insane or incompetent could well have happened.
In conclusion, I'd love for someone to write this up and address what I said above, because while I have toyed with a Nixon '68 timeline that addresses some of this... I did not toy with Nixon in '60, because I have a hard time picturing that, because of the books I read about the Nixon brooding over '60.