WI LBJ was Democratic nominee for the presidential elections of 1960?

[Stéphane Dumas]

There was lots of thread about what if Nixon won in 1960 and I wondered what if Lyndon Baines Johnson was chosen as the Democratic Presidential nominee for the presidential elections of 1960 instead of JFK and won against Nixon?

If LBJ was elected President in 1960, would had been victim of the "zero-year curse"?

 

[V-J]

May I ask something? Is your username meant to be like that? Or is it displaying weirdly due to my machine not recognising the actual characters?

 

[Meadow]

May I ask something? Is your username meant to be like that? Or is it displaying weirdly due to my machine not recognising the actual characters?

To me it's the word Stacphane Dumas spelled using an A with a ~ above it, followed by a copyright sign.

 

[V-J]

To me it's the word Stacphane Dumas spelled using an A with a ~ above it, followed by a copyright sign.

Same for me.

 

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

There was lots of thread about what if Nixon won in 1960 and I wondered what if Lyndon Baines Johnson was chosen as the Democratic Presidential nominee for the presidential elections of 1960 instead of JFK and won against Nixon?

If LBJ was elected President in 1960, would had been victim of the "zero-year curse"?

We all know only the power of Reagan can break the 20 year curse!

 

[Magniac]

I reckon a full-two-term LBJ should broadly do all of what he did in his OTL 5 years.

The domestic stuff: Plumber linked to a Rick Perlstein blogpost on Chat which argues that LBJ needed Dallas in order to pass the Great Soicety, i.e. okay, so no living JFK can pass that agenda, but no LBJ can do it without exploiting a dead Jack. I think that's much too pessimistic. I think he can work congress to get OTL's agenda passed after his own 1960 election. (Perlstein is nuts if he doesn't see civil rights was always going to become Johnson's natural strength.)

But I'm not optimistic that he could get difficult extras such as Medicare-for-all or the ERA passed just by having the additional time.

The foriegn policy stuff: Blow up the world with Cuba in 1962? Nah, I no longer think he's bound to do that. His handling of the (admittedly much less serious) Dominican crisis shows that when he got to the Oval Office he was looking for similar moderate, post-Dulles solutions in Latin America as Kennedy was. But does that mean he won't invade at Bay of Pigs when confronted with that choice too early in his own administration? Maybe, maybe not.

Test ban treaty? Yes, I think so. Very dentente-ish, of course. But in OTL he handled one major possible Super Power confrontation in a very detente-compatible manner--The Six Day War.

Vietnam? Heh, Johnson winning in 1960 is the one scenario where Kennedy loyalists are justified in saying he owns that war completely.

 

[Thomas Jefferson]

Johnson might end up losing to Nixon. In 1960 he was still publicly anti-Civil Rights, and an attempt to change his position during the campaign would just look like pandering. Plus he lacked Kennedy's charisma and appeal to Catholic voters.

 

[Glass Onion]

Johnson might end up losing to Nixon. In 1960 he was still publicly anti-Civil Rights, and an attempt to change his position during the campaign would just look like pandering. Plus he lacked Kennedy's charisma and appeal to Catholic voters.

How are you defining anti-Civil Rights? Johnson was still the Southern and Western Candidate, which on the surface implied a certain hostility to Civil Rights. But Johnson had been trying to moderate his image on Civil Rights since the 1956 convention. And Johnson's backers were well aware that winning the nomination, let alone the Presidency, meant broadening his national appeal. He couldn't be as anti Civil Rights as say Richard Russell, because then he'd be a Southern Regional Candidate, and he'd never win the nomination.

That said, I remain unsure what Johnson's path to victory in the general election would have been. I think it is clear the nomination could have been his given the right circumstances. His nomination in 1960 was far from impossible. But winning a national election would have been harder. In a Johnson vs. Nixon race, Nixon is the television candidate. And while Johnson would have doubtlessly have campaigned tirelessly, he wouldn't have the same appeal that Kennedy had. Johnson is as responsible for the status quo as Nixon is, arguably more so. So Johnson can't present himself as the same break with 1950's continuity Kennedy did. That said anything can happen in a Presidential campaign. For all we know, Johnson could so over exert himself that he drops dead of a heart attack in the middle of it.

 

[Plumber]

Johnson might end up losing to Nixon. In 1960 he was still publicly anti-Civil Rights, and an attempt to change his position during the campaign would just look like pandering. Plus he lacked Kennedy's charisma and appeal to Catholic voters.

Johnson would have carried the entire South and would have done very well in the West. Look to Truman in 1948. This includes California (p. 84-85).

Rough Johnson victory map:

 

[Rich Rostrom]

May I ask something? Is your username meant to be like that? Or is it displaying weirdly due to my machine not recognising the actual characters?

Select UTF-8 encoding, and it comes out OK.

 

[Magniac]

In 1960 he was still publicly anti-Civil Rights, and an attempt to change his position during the campaign would just look like pandering.

How are you defining anti-Civil Rights?

His 1957 Civil Rights Bill defines him as being in the same place as Ike, the POTUS who signed it into law. Ergo he isn't worse off than Nixon in this area. Not by a longshot.

But unless he wins over those AA establishment leaders he did in OTL (which he was doing even as VP), and calls the King family when Martin Luther is in gaol, he's hardly likely to build up a superiority over Nixon on this issue.

But does he even need to show himself to be that much better than his opponent here? I don't see why he has to.

In a Johnson vs. Nixon race, Nixon is the television candidate.

I dispute this. Nixon's TV problem was of his own making, it literally comes down to him campaigning stupidly, screwing over his health, and not just to him being simply contrasted to John "God, why did you make me so beautiful?" Kennedy.

Debates aside, the TV appearances of Nixon '68 would have been competitive against JFK '60. His studio audience stuff, his convention speech, they showed him at peak form; IIRC Reagan lauded the '68 acceptance speech as the best he'd seen.

There's a reason that Nixon wasn't able to build himself up in this earlier era.

OTOH, Johnson is renowned for having tamed his own presentational issues as soon as he got into the presidency in 1963--he didn't have that 5 years between the 'last press conference' and his declaration for 1968 that Nixon had to prepare in. (Though there was three years between Johnson's aborted convention 1960 appearances and his triumphant addresses to congress; still, that's a quicker learning curve than Tricky had.)

And while Johnson would have doubtlessly have campaigned tirelessly, he wouldn't have the same appeal that Kennedy had.

Kennedy almost lost the popular vote in 1960, and many people believe he would have lost the entire South without LBJ's barnstorming efforts down there.

Plus he lacked Kennedy's charisma and appeal to Catholic voters.

In this scenario the Catholic vote in 1960 has a choice between Nixon and LBJ, not Ike and LBJ.
Anyway, considering JFK ran four points behind the Dem nationwide congressional tally, it's a good bet he didn't win enough extra Catholic votes to make up for the Protestants he lost in the prez ballot.

Being a cross-denominational candidate is what is needed to win 50%. JFK unfortunately didn't hit 50% PV.

Johnson would have carried the entire South and would have done very well in the West. Look to Truman in 1948... Rough Johnson victory map

I doubt he carries the Mountain West, but I more seriously also doubt Nixon can build that solid midwest/northeast firewall you give him. This is the first POTUS race coming out the 1958 recession, after all.

LBJ had crazy alliance building skilz with labor, and this despite him voting consistently for Taft-Hartley type laws in the years after WWII. I also like to go with the fact he wrote a liberal GE manifesto with the help of the Reuthers when he was considering running in '56.

Also, he was seriously good with ethnics. He was a Philo-Semite, though Nixon should probably be lucky enough to avoid having this contrast with his own attitudes ever becoming apparent...

 

[Paul V McNutt]

I see him working to advance civil rights if elected. Jeff Greenfield had a Voters Rights Act of 1961. I also see him introducing the Great Society. With less success until he gets the big Democratic majority in 1965. That is if he is elected. He was not as popular in the North as Kennedy was.

 

[Magniac]

He was not as popular in the North as Kennedy was.

I'm like a broken record on this, but LBJ's cultural alien-ness to damnyankees is counterbalanced by the fact he's running against the most polarising big state Republican since Hoover.

Of course, he'd be in major trouble up north if his opponent were Rockefeller. But Rocky has at most a very trivial shot at being GOP nominee that year, while LBJ's chances of winning the Dem nomination quickly approach 50% if he just gets off his butt early and campaigns enough to stop Kennedy winning the West Virginia primary.

And I throw this out there: the Democratic convention was two weeks earlier than the Republican one. IMO Johnson could be loathe to even consider giving Kennedy the V-P slot if he thinks Nixon will choose Rockefeller for his ticket, because it's much too easy for him to believe in 1960 that the New Yorker might be the only person on either ticket who appeals to liberals. I think he'd much prefer Humphrey to cover for that demographic. Or Orville Freeman if he needs a veteran as running mate.

If we want to deal in the perceptions that existed at the time, then we have to look at the fact that a generation of liberals who felt they hadn't had a leader since FDR, or that Stevenson was the only heir to that throne, they looked at both Johnson and Kennedy as being too conservative.

I know a lot of people want to believe that even if Jack could never pass that agenda that Johnson finally got implemented, then at least JFK always had the laurels for being liberal champion in the '60 campaign. But that isn't true. The ADA crowd didn't want him coming out of the convention. Eleanor Roosevelt was cool to him, at best.

As winner at OTL's convention he was stretching his luck putting LBJ on the ticket. If it's the other way round, then I suspect Nominee Johnson just doesn't have the same political capital that'd allow him to choose Joe Kennedy's son as his running mate.