On this day in 196o Democrat John F. Kennedy defeated the Republican Richard Milhous  Nixon in the Presidential Election. The popular vote was very close. Kennedy defeated Nixon by 112,827 votes nationally. In the Electoral College Kennedy beat Nixon 303 to 219 which was the closest since 1916. If you took Texas and Illinois away from JFK and gave them to Nixon, Nixon wins. Who knows what the vote really was in Illinois. The Daley Machine in Chicago was notoriously crooked. They let people who were long in the grave vote there. The choice of Lyndon Johnson as Vice Daddy for Kennedy was a great choice. It helped Kennedy carry the state of Texas. This is an election that America got right. Nixon of course was not finished. Even when he lost the 1962 race for Governor in California and famously said “You won’t have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore” He came back from the political graveyard and won election in 1968.

After FDR’s being elected 4 terms the Twenty-Second amendment was passed in 1947 limiting a POTUS to two terms. If there had been no term limits no doubt in my mind POTUS Dwight Eisenhower would have won a third term in 1960.