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8. The Final Days of the General Election Campaign, October 22–November 7
- University Press of Florida
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158 8 The Final Days of the General Election Campaign, October 22–November 7 “With every word he [Eisenhower] utters, I can feel the votes leaving me. It’s standing on a mound of sand with the tide running out. I tell you he is knocking our block off. . . . If the election was tomorrow I’d win easily but six days from now it’s up for grabs.” —John F. Kennedy on the impact of Eisenhower’s campaigning in the last week of the campaign When Robert F. Kennedy scorched Sargent Shriver for instigating his brother’s telephone call to Coretta Scott King, he was motivated by a belief that the call was dangerous because the presidential contest was so tight. But most observers believed that John F. Kennedy was in a position to win decisively, and there was growing optimism within the Kennedy camp. According to Theodore White, “confidence had swollen to overpowering certainty.” Those who traveled with JFK “became dazzled, then blinded, with the radiance of approaching victory.” Pollster Lou Harris placed Kennedy ahead in each of the nine states with the largest number of electoral votes. Among Democrats, only occasional doubters like Lawrence O’Brien thought the outcome was still in question. For most, the only issue was the margin of victory.1 This view was not restricted to Democrats. A late October Gallup Poll showed Kennedy ahead 51 percent to 45 percent, his largest lead of the campaign. A New York Herald Tribune survey gave Kennedy 187 secure electoral votes and another 160 leaning his way. (The winning number was 269.) The New York Daily News, another newspaper sympathetic to the Republican candidate, placed Kennedy ahead in states with almost 400 electoral votes. It put JFK ahead of Nixon in California by 200,000 votes. Within Republican circles, gloom was the predominant mood. Theodore White claimed that there were individuals in Nixon’s entourage speculating about the names of individuals Kennedy would appoint to his cabinet.2 Then, sometime in the last ten days of October, the Kennedy tide began to recede, and a Nixon surge took place. Exactly how and why this shift occurred is uncertain. By November 7, although a number of Kennedy aides remained oblivious to what was happening around them, John F. Kennedy The Final Days of the Campaign, October 22–November 7 * 159 was trying to avoid becoming the Democratic version of Thomas E. Dewey. The story of the final phase of the general election campaign on the Democratic side was one of overconfidence and miscalculation, offset by enough fortuitous events to allow the Democratic nominee to hold on and win by an excruciatingly small margin. What happened to the unstoppable Kennedy wave? The lack of any more debates was part of the answer. For the previous month, the Democratic campaign had been capitalizing on them. They provided the oxygen for the campaign. Without the debates to provide free television exposure , free publicity, and fresh enthusiasm, the campaign had to find new sources of energy. With its candidate approaching a state of exhaustion and with a poorly planned and coordinated television schedule, the campaign struggled. Beginning October 30, the last nine days of the campaign had Kennedy spending two days in the Philadelphia suburbs, two days in California, a two-day whirlwind trip through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma to Virginia, Ohio, and Chicago. The Saturday before election day had the Democratic nominee in a motorcade in New York City, followed by a trip to New England, where he spent Sunday and Monday. John F. Kennedy, ever the realist, sensed that something was wrong. On Saturday, as his motorcade got lost and spent the afternoon driving around the Bronx searching for crowds, JFK became infuriated. He asked, “What am I doing here?” He knew New York was his. He also knew he should have been in California, which was still in doubt. Kennedy lashed out, blaming Carmine DeSapio, blaming Mike Prendergast, blaming Kenneth O’Donnell (his scheduler), and blaming the “son-of-a-bitch” who was driving him. Kennedy, who was the master of television, now found himself assaulted by a Republican television blitz that Democrats were poorly prepared to offset. They lacked the funds for a counterattack, and the shows they aired were badly done. One of his advisers later admitted, “our election eve shows in Boston were not nearly as good as they could have been, and even hurt us.”3 John F. Kennedy understood that he was...