All Roads Lead To 1960
Dear editor:
Super Tuesday sealed the nominations of Joe Biden and Donald Trump for the November presidential election. Their combined ages of 158 if laid end-to-end would take us back to 1866 the year after a secessionist uprising was quelled although in some quarters it remains a source of nostalgia.
It should also be noted that in 2028, citizens born in 1993 will be eligible for election to the White House. You talk about going from Glenn Miller to Metallica.
As the 2024 election approaches there is much talk of generational change at the presidential level. President Biden will turn 82 in late 2024. Donald Trump will be 78. 1946, the first year of the Baby Boomer generation, produced a bumper crop of presidents. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump arrived on the scene that year.
All three of these future presidents realized early on their potential for transforming the United Sates into a vibrant expression of the best in mankind. With this in mind all three graciously declined to join their age-peers in the Mekong Delta.
John F. Kennedy was 43 years old in 1960 when he was elected president. Richard Nixon, the Republican nominee, was 47 years old. Their combined age was 90.
On election day Dwight Eisenhower was 70 years old and the torch had been passed to the junior senator from Massachusetts who promised “to get things moving again.” Within three months the Bay of Pigs was renamed the Bay of Turkeys.
The 1960 presidential election was a virtual dead heat in terms of the popular vote. There were certainly legitimate questions about the vote count in Illinois, especially in Cook County where late returns pushed Kennedy over the top in that critical state. LBJ’s Texas was close but broke for Kennedy as did Florida.
Ike thought Nixon had won the election and was willing to push Republican supporters for money to conduct a recount. Nixon declined the offer. At 47, Nixon knew time was on his side and he soon conceded the election to Kennedy.
1960 saw technological changes impact the presidential campaigns. Traveling by jet around the country was now possible.
Long gone were the days Harry Truman could inform the people of Iowa about the economic triumphs of the Fair Deal from the back porch of a caboose.
Television would play a critical role in 1960 for the first time. On September 26, 1960, JFK and Richard Nixon would square off for the first ever nationally televised candidate debate between the nominees of the two major parties.
The debate was supposed to be restricted to domestic affairs, but the ever-present and looming threat of the Soviets made more than a cameo appearance.
JFK was a tough candidate for the Republicans to tar and feather with allegations of being “soft on communism.” The Kennedys were always friendly with Senator Joseph R. McCarthy.
The Kennedys had donated money to Richard Nixon in his successful senate bid against Helen Gahagan Douglas (aka “The Pink Lady”) in 1950.
Kennedy falsely claimed that the Soviets had a ballistic missile superiority over the United States when, in fact, the opposite was the case.
There is virtually no evidence that Kennedy actually included tax cuts as part of his economic package. That would come later after he took office.
Tax rates were astronomically high with top margins exceeding 90% in 1960. But in the first debate which was centered around domestic policies JFK did not mention anything about a tax cut.
Early on in the first debate, which is readily available on YouTube, Kennedy talks about the faltering US economy. Kennedy quotes 1958 GDP statistics.
1958 was a recession year and Nixon was quick to point out that the apparently not yet released 1959 GDP number would show the economy grew at 6.9% in 1959 which was the more relevant number at the time.
In fact, the economy did grow at 6.9% in 1959 and that led Nixon to draw some conclusions about the economy and its impact on his narrow loss in 1960.
David Stockman notes that one of the reasons Nixon believed he lost the election in 1960 was due in part to the actions of William McChesney Martin who was Federal Reserve chairman at the time.
After the boom year of 1959 Martin believed inflation was creeping into the economy and the Fed raised interest rates which led to a mild recession in 1960. Although the economy grew at a 2.4% rate in 1960 unemployment was above 6% when voters went to the polls.
William McChesney Martin is considered to be a successful central banker by both sides of the political spectrum. He served as Federal Reserve chairman from 1951-1970 which pretty much coincides with the greatest economic expansion the world had ever witnessed as the United States had solid noninflationary growth for two decades. Interestingly, in 1941, Martin was a private first class in the US Army.
There is a surprising amount of nostalgia on the American right for the Bretton Woods agreement. In July of 1944 the western nations met at Bretton Woods to create the post-World War Two economic order.
With half of the world’s wealth the United States was calling all the shots at this point. International trade was to be transacted in US dollars.
The dollar would be pegged to a fixed price of gold and all foreign currencies would be pegged to the dollar. Central banks around the world would have to keep dollars on hand in order to conduct trade.
For years these banks were forced to buy dollars which kept the dollar strong and the US inflation rate generally low.
This far more resembles Keynesianism than the economic policies promulgated by the faculty at the University of Chicago, but it did, as David Stockman points out, instill discipline in central bankers and the unbridled printing of currency was not an option.
After a disastrous run for governor of California in 1962 it was thought that Richard Nixon’s political career was over. In 1964 Johnson defeated Goldwater in a massive landslide.
In 1966, Richard Nixon traveled the nation on behalf of Republican candidates in the midterm elections. The GOP fared well in the midterms as the people began to turn against the Great Society and the war in Vietnam. Richard Nixon had collected a lot of IOUs.
1960 gave us generational change. Then President Kennedy was assassinated. Then there was Johnson and the war in Vietnam and unrest in the cities. Nixon ekes out a narrow victory for the presidency in 1968 and dismantles the Bretton Woods economic regime. Then inflation. Then Watergate. Then the fall of Saigon. Generational Change has its limitations.
David Pilliod
Swanton, Ohio