20/20: Nixon and the 1960 Election

Nov. 11, 2000 -- It was an almost superhuman effort, an exhausting push to the finish.

The last few days of the 1960 presidential campaign were a blur in black and white. And for the two men involved — young, vibrant and wealthy John F. Kennedy and then-Vice President Richard M. Nixon — it was the fight of their lives.

Gen. Don Hughes, Nixon’s military aide and appointments secretary, recalls the candidate’s exhaustion during one of the last nights of the campaign.

“I went down and he was asleep… and it was a deep sleep. I shook him gently and he didn’t respond… so I finally just picked him up physically and put him in bed,” Hughes recounts. “And at that time he opened his eyes, and he said, ‘It’s going to be alright. God is with us.’ And he went to sleep.”

When election day dawned, Nixon had no choice but to stop his fevered campaigning and wait. When the results seemed clear — with Nixon losing the popular vote by only two-tenths of a percentage point — he walked into the glare of the lights … and conceded.

Herb Klein who was Nixon’s campaign press secretary, says one of the candidate’s concerns in the aftermath was how his family would take the defeat.

“I can recall a poignant moment, [when] he was having breakfast with his daughter Julie and tried to explain to her how did it feel to, to lose an election,” Klein says. “[I was] almost tearful… as I listen[ed] to him very painstakingly tell ‘that you win things and you lose things, but you have to keep fighting again.’ ”

In the end, the race was the closest of the century. But even before election day, rumors had circulated about fraud, especially in Chicago where then-Mayor Richard Daley’s machine was known for delivering the Democratic vote, often by whatever means necessary. Friends and some Republican leaders called on Nixon to investigate the vote count in key states like Illinois and Texas.

A Historic MeetingAs he weighed his options, Nixon decided to distance himself from the aftermath of the election and went to Florida with his family for a vacation.

Six days after the election, Nixon and his wife were having dinner with a group that included Hughes and Klein. The two men recall they were all trying hard to cheer up Nixon, when a phone call came for him at the maitre d’s phone. Klein got up and took it. It was former President Herbert Hoover.

Klein says Hoover — who had been a friend of Joe Kennedy for many years — had received a phone call from the president-elect’s father asking him to serve as intermediary between Nixon and his son. Hoover told Klein that Kennedy wanted to know if Nixon “would be willing to meet with the president elect sometime soon, to discuss the fact that the country was divided.”

After talking to Hoover, and conferring with President Eisenhower, Nixon agreed to meet with Kennedy. They arranged to meet in the afternoon of Nov. 14. to discuss what they would do in the future.

Kennedy, who had been staying at his family’s compound in Palm Beach, arrived in Key Biscayne, and a small but historic summit was held.

In his memoirs, Nixon said that Kennedy began their conversation by saying, “well, it’s hard to tell who won the election at this point.” Then Nixon described a conversation by the sea in which Kennedy offered him a possible role in his new administration. Nixon politely declined.

But former Nixon aide Hughes suspects there was another reason for the meeting. “I think president-elect Kennnedy wanted to be sure that perhaps there was not going to be a recount,” he says. “It’s just speculation on my part. But I think that was probably the real purpose of the meeting.”

Nevertheless, Hughes says Nixon’s choice to let the election results stand was wise. “The whole country was in effect split down the middle if you will. It would have been harmful to the country to contest the election… to put our system on trial would not have been good for us.”

Ultimately, Nixon himself was at peace with his decision. “Then and all the times that I talked to him about it afterwards,” says Klein, “he never had any regrets. He felt it was the right decision for the country.”