The Making of the President 1960

Written by Theodore H. White

Narrated by Wayne Mitchell

A Harper Perennial Political Classic, The Making of the President 1960 is the groundbreaking national bestseller and Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the 1960 presidential campaign and the election of John F. Kennedy.

The Making of the President: 1960 revolutionized the way modern presidential campaigns are reported. Reporting from within the campaign for the first time on record, White’s extensive research and access to all parties involved set the bar for campaign coverage and remains unparalleled. White conveyed, in magnificent detail and with exquisite pacing, the high-stakes drama; he painted the unforgettable, even mythic, story of JFK versus Nixon; and most of all, he imbued the nation’s presidential election process with a grandeur that later political writers have rarely matched.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Jan 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9780062975690

Theodore H. White

Theodore H. White (1915–1986) was an American political journalist, historian,and novelist, best known for the Making of the President series: his accounts of the1960, 1964, 1968, and 1972 presidential elections, all of which are being reissued withnew forewords by Harper Perennial Political Classics. His other books include ThunderOut of China, America in Search of Itself, and In Search of History: A Personal Adventure.

Reviews for The Making of the President 1960

[breic-1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

White comes across as incredibly naive, and lacking any perspective whatsoever. I can't take his reporting seriously.

[tungsten_peerts · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A wonderful book which manages to impart a real (as closely as I can remember it - I was born in mid 1961) feel for the early 1960s as well as for the characters involved. Paradoxically, though he is far and away less psychologically "attractive" I found myself drawn to the figure of Nixon -- not as a fan of his political stances but as an informal student of human psychology (which we must all be to some extent in order to navigate life). There is real pathos there: conflict, darkness and suffering. I'm of the opinion that this bore fruit in his presidency and eventual disgrace ... but seriously, if one were to draw parallels between this story and that of Milton's Paradise Lost (and those are some REMOTE PARALLELS), Nixon is definitely Satan, and more interesting in his way than Kennedy.And, no, I'm not calling Richard Nixon Satan. Nor am I calling John Kennedy Jesus. I'm merely making a call here similar to William Blake when he said of Paradise Lost "Milton was of the Devil's Party without knowing it." Losers can be more interesting and complicated than winners, and I thought that was the case here.Note: I always squirm internally when writers use the term "stock" with reference to human groups. White does this a lot.

[jonfaith · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Every American election summons the individual voter to weigh the past against the future.

Last Tuesday my wife worked half the day and came home. We then walked the two blocks or so to vote. Early voting allows one to go to the polls weeks in advance yet there is something uplifting about going out on Election Day. Walking back, I rattled off my list of those I voted for which failed to find victory. That was likely just nerves.

Theodore White leaves the reader with a different sort of anxiety. The election process remains such an experiment, so prone to caprice and misunderstanding. It was difficult to not frame the 2016 election in the terms revealed. Instead I found pleasure in measuring the temperament of Nixon and Johnson, leaving the Kennedy cool for another day. 1960 was the campaign where the candidates pushed hard for the primaries to give mandate ahead of the convention. Such is a remarkable process. the idea that Kennedy's Catholic faith was an issue strikes me as almost quaint. The concluding chapter fleshes out the opening days in Camelot, though the spectre of Asia that White sniffs is from Laos -- not Vietnam.

There is always a tendency to look ahead, to imagine omens for the future. That is likely a reckless pursuit. I did appreciate White on race which features prominently, perhaps at the expense of foreign policy.

The book is concerned with the quotidian drudgery of the presidential candidate. There is much to appreciate. I am not sure much has changed in the interim despite advances in technology.

[gbelik_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A great political story . I look forward to the later elections too.

[bookconcierge · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Subtitle: A Narrative History of American Politics in Action.About a year before the November 1960 election, Theodore H White began studying the likely candidates. He focused on a handful of men with aspirations and/or apparent qualifications: Humphrey, Kennedy, Stevenson, Johnson, Nixon, Rockefeller. He travelled from state to state reporting on the primaries or state caucuses / conventions. (In that era, there were only sixteen states that held primaries!) He attended the Democratic and Republican national conventions. And he closely followed the candidates as they campaigned for the presidency. I was fascinated to learn some of this history, and the first-hand look at the “political machines” that produced these two candidates, and ultimately President John F Kennedy. I also found this a surprisingly nostalgic book … It was published in 1961, shortly after Kennedy’s inauguration, so there is no hint of what is to come in November 1963. It’s somewhat dated – the process is different more than half a century later. And yet, there is something timeless about this story. Serious issues of race, the economy, potential for nuclear war, etc still plague our country. Good men and women still struggle to find solutions. My face-to-face book club had a fascinating and spirited discussion of this work.

[cvanhasselt_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It is fascinating to read an "in-the-moment" account of history, as opposed to a historical look back at history. This really gave me a great sense of the issues of the day and the sense of driven energy JFK used, not to mention a good bit of family connections and money, to win the 1960 Presidential race. It also was interesting to see how when the chips were down, Kennedy acted without regard to politics, calling Coretta Scott King at a crucial moment in the campaign. Nixon, in contrast, refused to comment because that was the politically astute play, in his mind. Nixon considered the political outcome, rather than the morality of his action, or inaction. In that sense, JFK earned the right to be President.

[mason_100-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I love political books- I rate Richard Ben Cramer's "What it Takes..." as my favourite ever book in fact. This however was an utterly tedious read.Although it covers an exciting election, and it does give you a somewhat new perspective on Nixon/JFK and the challenges they faced before and after their nomination, it is done in a painfully unreadable way. For example entire lists of names are hurled at the reader, with a brief explanation of each person's role. These become impossible to recall- and yet paragraph after paragraph are filled with these names and their minor duties. No personalities, just duties- and even these are described in a way which is difficult to understand. Another example is the final chapter, which is as irrelevant as it is dull.When I saw that a book about each election from 1960 to 1972 had been written by the same author I was excited, and was looking forward to reading every book. Now however I am certain I will not be picking up another book by this author.

[bontley · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fascinating in that it was written in 1961, antipicating 4 more years of Kennedy. Otherwise perfectly prescient, cognizant and detailed. Dragged at the end with too much flourish.

[keylawk · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of the monumental contributions of a "journalist" in the days when that word referred to the professionals who reported the actual news.This report offers perspective and context, but is essentially a facts-only unbiased report on the election of 1960 between Nixon and Kennedy. There are inserts -- "Only one other nation in modern history has ever tried to elect its leader directly by mass, free, popular vote. This was the Weimar Republic of Germany, which modeled its unitary vote of national leader on American practice. Out of its experiment with the system it got Hitler." [12] {Cf. Note to Patriots: We know that fascist thugs were able to take over the most civilized educated prosperous nation on the planet. They did it by bullying, pretending to love the Homeland, and by telling lies. Is there a Party today that ignites the anger and fear of white men?}Some of the facts are obviously not "eyewitnessed", but they are largely corroborated and confirmed from eyewitness sources. For example, on election night "Eisenhower was angry that evening,..upset by Nixon's behavior throughout the campaign, bitter against Kennedy." [16]The IBM programs, with data from every state fed into computers to make advance projections, as late as midnite were predicting a Nixon victory. No certainty. First reports from Texas, when Laredo reported for Kennedy, it was obvious that Mexican-americans of South Texas were delivering for the Democrats with such force that the Republicans in Dallas and Houston could be matched. [23] {Texas will be blue within 4 years}Nixon did not have the grace to concede his defeat. [29] ..."the twisted barely controlled sorrow of Mrs. Nixon" [29]. I have corroborated this myself. {It has since emerged that Nixon was not only criminal, but gay. Nixon traveled without his wife, and the "friendship" with Bebe Rebozo included being in bed together.}[73, noting the bachelor home where Nixon's campaign for VP in 1958 began.]This election clearly "stirred every nerve end of the American political system, and that system would never be the same". The author does not skip past details concerning the actual, named, persons involved in this transmogrification.The numbers: On November 8, 1960, 68,832,818 Americans voted. About 4 million were active Party participants. Of these, less than a thousand had any idea of what was being done a year earlier by the one who would be their candidate. And less than 50 may have been involved in that activity."Truman, one of the greatest Presidents on the grand scale of world history". [50]The South sends approximately 1/4 of the delegates to the DNC. "Now that the Democrats have captured the liberal imagination of the nation, it is forgotten howmuch of the architecture of America's liberal society was drafted by the Republicans." [71] This liberality led to the most prosperous period of our history and saved us from centuries of slavery and of plutocracy."The Republican Party depends for support on the executive class of the great corporations as intimately as does the liberal wing of the Democrats on support from labor-union leadership." [86]"These corporation executives are not generally backward forces; by and large, they are far more enlightened than the regulars they finance...and force the regulars to support the liberal citizen wing." [86]"No measurable group in American life...has made so remarkable a stride in education and development over the past decade as the Negro." [279]The author documents the malice the press held for Nixon, and its roots in the fact that they hated being lied to.[329] "This was the greatest food-producing civilization in history, and Iowa, in the summer of 1960, had planted more acres of corn than ever before...".[332]The author missed many details, such as the fact that Bebe had the adjoining room on hotels in which Nixon was staying "alone". [343]The Index pin-points the people involved. What strikes one is the high quality of Americans involved in politics. Although Nixon was running things on the GOP side, and in the subsequent eventually winning campaign, he brought in a different set of operatives. See the change as Lee Atwater and his trainees, began taking over -- the trickster academy in which Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, Frank Luntz, and Karl Rove got their first taste of national politics. What strikes one is the dramatic shift in the GOP from a party with a liberal wing so clearly apparent in 1960, to a party with only a Right Wing.The author concludes, from studying the text of the speeches as well as the video, that Kennedy won the first debate largely because Kennedy appeared to be the equal statesman to Nixon, and that what Nixon had been saying about him all along was obviously a lie. [346] He was not a communist, immature, and inexperienced!Nixon based his campaign on "home talk" and civic values. But he had no home. His room was in a hotel. [381] {The subsequent unraveling of Nixon's usurpation of legitimacy was yet to come.}

[schmerguls · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read this still exulting in the magnificent victory of JFK in 1960 and this book enabled me to relive that glorious political year.

[robertmorrow_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ah, that politics were so accessible today. A fine work of the subtleties of political struggle.

[tomveal · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

With this book, Theodore H. White invented a new genre: the blow-by-blow campaign chronicle told by someone who had access to, but was not part of, the candidates' staffs. At the time, it was an exciting concept, and readers felt that they were looking into the smoke-filled rooms, watching political titans in combat. Half a century on, we know that White missed a great deal, particularly about the character of his central figure, John F. Kennedy. He saw the intellectual acrobatics and veneer of high culture - and missed the prostitutes, risky medications, deals with sleazy power brokers and (certainly in the decisive West Virginia primary, very likely on the national election day) outright vote fraud.Overall, The Making of the President, 1960 is a charming book that fits its subject into a naive template. Its innocence makes for pleasant reading, but it shouldn't be confused with history.

[smiley_13 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This first up close, and personal, view of a presidential campaign was quickly imitated but never equaled or surpassed, even when White went on to cover and write future campaigns. Evocative reading about a time long past. Be warned: The Kennedy charm, before we all recognized it, worked on White too.