Indiana Bicentennial 11 (1961 – 1977)
With Indiana Bicentennial 11, we will be covering the 60s and 70s, into the nation’s bicentennial. Now we’re entering territory I was alive to see. As we approach the present, history has a way of insensibly turning into “news.” I’m not sure how I will approach the end-game of this project inasmuch as I don’t have a particular desire to, for example, spend a lot of time talking about the Pence administration — or even the Daniels administration, for that matter. I’m running out of time and, in any event, I covered those years contemporaneously with my regular blogging. I guess we’ll cross that bridge later. For now, I’ll follow my usual pattern — try to give an overview of the national scene and then head into the governors.
The Presidents were Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. We’ll see four Presidents over this 16 year period, which had to be fairly jarring for the country since it had only had four Presidents over the previous thirty-two years. The governors were Matthew Welsh, Roger Branigin, Edgar Whitcomb, and the first term of Otis Bowen.
This one may end up being a little shorter than in recent months. My schedule is a little challenging.
JFK was the son of the wealthy Joe Kennedy. The way I often heard it, Joe made his money through sketchy Wall Street practices, then after the Depression, was consulted to help the government guard against the schemes that made him rich. He got out of the market at an advantageous time, then plowed his profits into real estate during the Depression; turning a modern day net worth of $55 million into a modern day net worth of $3 billion within the space of 6 years.
JFK had a privileged childhood, but one that left him (despite a variety of health challenges) well-educated and well-traveled. During World War II, Kennedy served in the Navy. In April of 1943, Kennedy was commanding the PT-109 in the Solomon Islands when it was rammed by a Japanese Destroyer. Rather than surrender, the survivors swam to an island three miles away and was rescued about a week later. Kennedy had been rejected from the Navy on his first attempt due to a bad back, and he struggled with back issues during the war.
In 1946, Joe arranged to have a Congress seat in a strongly-Democratic Boston district open up, and John ran for that seat and won. He served in Congress for six years before running for the Senate and beating Henry Cabot Lodge II for that seat. Despite being absent due to health reasons for long stretches during his Senate term, Kennedy came in second in the Vice-Presidential ballot during the 1956 Democratic primaries.
When he ran for President in 1960, he broke new ground as a Catholic. He felt compelled to make a statement that he would not be beholden to the Catholic Church. As the nominee, Kennedy picked Lyndon Johnson as his running-mate over some internal opposition. He needed Johnson’s strength in the South in what was anticipated to be a close election. Nixon and Kennedy participated in the first televised Presidential debates. This is considered a milestone in the transition from radio dominated politics to television. The story goes that those who watched TV considered Kennedy the winner while those who listened to radio considered Nixon the winner. The common wisdom on this is that Kennedy was the better looking candidate, and it was form over substance when the debates were on TV. But, this is apparently more folklore than evidence-based. And, to the extent Nixon did do better with radio listeners, it could be a function of the demographics of radio owners versus TV owners at the time — for example, maybe TV was more prevalent in urban areas with more Catholics.
In any event, Kennedy beat Nixon by a narrow margin in 1960. In the popular vote he won by .2%. In the electoral college, his victory was more comfortable – 303 to 219. Some electors from the South refused to vote for Kennedy due to his support for Civil Rights legislation. In his inaugural address, Kennedy famously asked citizens to be active, saying “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
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