Making of a Cold War President

Last year, 2020, marked the sixtieth anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s election as president in 1960. Given the heated nature of last year’s presidential campaign, few Americans were inclined to look to past elections for guidance or comfort. Some historically minded commentators did look back, ominously, to 1860. As for the 1960 presidential contest a century later between Kennedy and Richard Nixon, it was largely marked by a general consensus on the rightness and necessity of waging the Cold War, with Kennedy claiming that the United States had become complacent and sluggish in doing so. Even in his opening statement in the first televised debate with Nixon, the focus of which was to be domestic affairs, Kennedy insisted that the main challenge facing the United States in 1960 was “our struggle with Mr. Khrushchev for survival.”