the interesting advantage of surfing the web of newspaper coverage in a way that made it mpossible to do before the at the ties between nixon and a formal anti-catholic effort. an interesting argument, although i think it kind of pushes the argument further than it should. perhaps gary donaldson who actually was maybe the first of these news studies has the right title "the first modern campaign." it was the first election where tv drove the election. i would agree with that part, that tv was important. and laura gifford in her recent book sees what's important in 1960 is the rise of conservatives within the republican party which, of course, manifests itself at the republican convention and goldwater is speaking to the entire convention. it's interesting to think that if nixon hact 1960 election, goldwater would never have been nominated, of course, in '64 and probably not

later either and the whole direction of the republican party might have been quite different. one could speculate about that. i think what actually drives the '60 election and what makes it important historically is that it is the point where both money and television entered into politics in a big way. now, money, of course, is not new in politics, and one can go back to alexander hamilton to see that, but money is used in which larger quantities in 1960, and especially when kennedy comes up with the idea that the only way he can actually win the democratic nomination is through -- by winning primaries and he has to spend a lot of money, a lot of it his own money in order to do so. and the combination of the money for the tv ads but also money for staff and the running a campaign that starts way before the nominating convention, all of this is an innovation.

nix nixon, since he has the nomination locked up more or less ahead of time doesn't have to worry about the nomination but he can see kennedy is onto something and in 1968 he copies the kennedy formula of running in the primaries and using a lot of money and lining up television commercials and so forth and is, of course, successful in '68 as well. i think one of the thing we need is actually a big book on the 1960 election. i wrote one that was commissioned by a press to be short and so i didn't really have space, but a book similar to the one that was done on 1968 by the three british journalists, something that would go into all of the details at the state level because the fact is that presidential elections are not a national election so much as they are 50 separate state elections. and what happens in a particular state often depends upon the political combinations that operate in that particular state and the personalities and the relationship of the candidate to

those particular people particularly inside the candidate's own party. looking at the papers of state leaders, for example, governors and senators would be very interesting, as well as the presidential candidates themselves. now, it's interesting that if you look at the 1960 election, ke kernd and nixon had a similar strategy. they both knew from polling data that the election was going to be very close. they knew that from the beginning. and they also knew they were fairly equally balanced in terms of the electoral college. therefore, the winner of the election was likely to be the person who carried a majority of the most populous states. there were seven key states in 1960, new york, pennsylvania, ohio, michigan, illinois, texas, and california. lay that are important today but you will notice florida hadn't made it to the list yet. if you could carry four out of seven of those, you probably would win. if you carried five out of seven there was almost no way you could lose.

and interestingly enough in 1960 almost all of those states were actually fairly competitive. it was not a case that either side could really totally write off any of the big seven. and so both candidates made major efforts to win those seven. now, joe kennedy had maybe back in '56 figured out that kennedy's catholicism could give him an edge in new york and pennsylvania, states that had large numbers of catholics and where catholics after world war ii had begun to move away from the democratic party, especially catholics who had moved out of fifth and new york city into the suburbs and eisenhower got a fairly substantial vote among those catholics in '52 and a bigger margin in '56. and nixon with his anti-communism which played especially strongly among catholics and his appeal to conservative catholic democrats was a natural for continuing

that in '60, but this could be neutralized by the democrats if they nominated a catholic candidate and cultivating catholic votes on that basis. and so it was always, i think, problematic whether nixon could really carry new york or pennsylvania. in addition, michigan was increasingly under the control of the uaw during the 1950s. and so by 1960 the odds of nixon actually being able to carry michigan were probably somewhat less than 50/50. this meant that nixon really had to carry all four of the remaining states, ohio, illinois, california, and texas. well, he had the home state advantage in california and although the democrats did make an effort in california, i don't think the kennedy campaign electoral map ever really thought that california was likely, even though it turned out to be very close. they couldn't really count on

california ending up in the kennedy column. ohio had a natural tendency toward the republican party that was not true of some other midwestern states so nixon probably had a little bit of an edge there. also had fewer catholics. illinois, the polls showed nixon running ahead in illinois all spring more than in other parts of the country and nixon was probably confident he could carry illinois. the key to the election actually maybe turned out to be texas. kind of strange. i mean, texas hadn't played that key role before, but eisenhower carried texas very easily, and if nixon could hold onto texas and illinois, he could, in fact, win the election. a couple days before the democratic national convention, nixon wrote a letter to a friend in which he said that he expected that kennedy almost certainly would be the democratic nominee, but he wasn't sure what the total ticket would be, but that if kennedy could persuade johnson to get on the ticket with him

and have a kennedy/johnson ticket that would be by far the moths most difficult ticket for nixon to defeat. that was i think a correct analysis. the truth of the matter is that johnson, and this is something i point out in my book, johnson was e tension to kennedy's victory. without johnson on the ticket there is no way texas would ever have gone to kennedy because kennedy was simply too liberal or ran as a liberal in that election. and also senator clinton anderson of new mexico in his memoir says without johnson that kennedy would not have carried new mexico because there are about seven counties along the texas border that were settled by texans and they were greatly influenced by johnson. in addition, johnson learned that there was a move afoot by the states rights governor of louisiana to have the democratic lectors in louisiana had been unpledged and not vote for kennedy in the electoral college

and this was stopped by personal intervention of russell long acting at the request of lyndon johnson. if johnson hadn't been on the ticket, that request would probably not have been made and it would have been hard for russell long to argue the case. as it turned out the state central committee voted 51 to 48 to put kennedy elect tors on the ballot. so it was very close and could easily have gone the other way. johnson's campaigning was extremely important in the south and is almost certainly responsible for kennedy carrying south carolina and possibly north carolina as well. so when you kind of add it all together, johnson was one of the few cases in history where a vice presidential candidate actually made a difference. sam rayburn after the election said it was the most important vice presidenti vice presidential candidacy since teddy roosevelts back in 1900. so johnson had an unusual role to play as it turned out. the election turns out to be much closer perhaps than the

kennedy people expected. but nixon had problems at the state level in, for example, illinois, where you had a weak incumbent republican governor, william stratton, who was insisting on running for a third term. he really didn't control the republican party, and mayor daley, who was not yet famous but was about to become famous as a result of the 1960 election, mayor daley arranged for a brilliantly balanced democratic ticket with kennedy at the top to draw out the suburban catholics but then running for governor a lutheran, otto kerner against the very unpopular stratton, and then the popular senator paul douglas picking up the university of chicago vote or the intellectual vote and also douglas had cultivated farmers in southern illinois for the entirety of his senate career, so he could campaign in southern illinois not only for himself but also

for otto kernor and jfk. and so the republican party in illinois was in shambles. even though nixon had been ahead in the polls, well, he didn't win the election in illinois, did he? now, whether he got the most votes, of course, is another matter. actually, that raises an interesting question. which is the vote count in both illinois and texas. it seems that in illinois there is now a few years ago someone developed new techniques for evaluating vote stealing which involve random sample numbers and apparently if you try to add votes, steal elections by simply making up numbers, you don't do it randomly the way you would if it were actually counting real votes, and so you can tell in the way -- if you have the precinct tallies you could tell the difference. this was another study that needs to be done and ed's not

very satisfactory book of voting in chicago really needs to be supplemented. in addition we know that in texas that the democratic officials controlled everything. all the way through the entire political system. there wasn't a single elected republican state or county official anywhere in the state of texas, and the way some of the vote counts were done in texas is truly bizarre and spectacular is the only way to describe it. without going into the details. i would suggest that probably more votes were stolen in texas than in illinois. in reality. well, in 1968 richard nixon copied kennedy's 1960 formula to run in the primaries, to show popularity by winning primaries, to build party organizations by winning in primaries and to use television advertising in order to massage the electorate and win the election. the bigger budget and the bigger staff really mattered.

yeah, is it? well, that's good because i'm at the end. as nixon hinted in a letter just before -- well, anyway so the 1960 election was a big disappointment, of course, to nixon and, indeed, republican party officials were really angry with him because they believed that the underlying fundamentals of the economy and the peace and prosperity eisenhower eight years and so forth should have given nixon the victory. and, of course, one does wonder if he only hadn't done the debate in chicago under those sort of strange conditions wearing a gray suit that faded into the gray background and being sick, i think a 101 degree fever, perhaps that debate is what really cost him the election. or maybe he was just up against the fact that in the country he was only the number -- the second most popular politician

or third i suppose putting eisenhower number one opinion kennedy was just simply more popular and there wasn't anything nixon could do about that until 1968 and he didn't have to face that problem. i will end with one thing, i don't think that religion was as important in 1960 as many people said at the time. and the reason i say that is if you overlay the returns for 1968 on 1960, you see that nixon's vote is similar in both elections and that humphries vote more or less mirrors jfk's. and so the idea that there were large numbers of people who voted for nixon on grounds that kennedy was catholic, presumably they would have turned around around voted for humphries who was, of course, protestant. in fact, that's not what happens, and i think the loss of democratic votes in states like oklahoma can actually be explained by the shift of oklahoma away from the democrats because they were a party that was becoming too liberal and it

was really a rejection of liberalism and that would, of course, become a theme for years after 1960. thanks. [ applause ] >> terrific. so why don't we open up the discussion to our audience and please wait until a microphone comes to you before you start asking your question. so there's a guy in the way back with the white shirt and the tie. wait until the microphone comes to you because we're on camera. >> i'd like to address this question to dr. coffey. had you given much thought to milton eisenhower's motivation behind his statement that they do everything -- >> can you hear? the letter is rather opaque.

milton eisenhower writes saying don't get me wrong, and this is almost a direct quote, dick nixon is one of my dearest friends and the very next clause in the sentence is, but i cannot let him become president. earlier we were talking about how milton eisenhower wrote that his brother dwight could have stopped nix con from being the vice presidential candidate in '56. i think it's a personal thing. i mean milton eisenhower just -- i recall that milton eisenhower wrote negative things about nixon's trip to moscow. he would later say that he was embarrassed that nixon carried some of the family name with julia nixon eisenhower. milton is someone who probably deserves a lot more attention since he was the much more

famous eisenhower in the 1930s, but i just think mostly it was a personal thing. >> there was a gentleman right there, right next to him. >> bill, i think you rightfully say we should look at the presidential elections as a conglomeration of 50 state elections. that got me to thinking about a couple names that i think would -- we'd benefit from hearing aur folks' opinion on. i know spiro agnew was originally a nelson rockefeller man. and nixon in his letters i saw in the nixon project was particularly impressed with with himself, that he was able to turn agnew away from nelson rockefeller and john mitchell had a lot to do with that. and, tim, i know you have covered a person wh i think is critically important to nixon's electoral success and is also not mentioned very often and that's george romney.

bringing romney into the cabinet and turning the michigan election. so my question for you is, am i correct in assuming nixon had a great deal of skill in terms of working with the state executives so as to maximize his political success in those states starting with rockefeller and then with romney? >> well, let's go back to 1960. one of nixon's real problems in 1960 is of the ten most populous states there are only two with republican governors. one is the discredited william stratton on his way out and the other, of course, is nelson rockefeller, and rockefeller had no interest in nixon winning -- i mean, if rockefeller wants to be president, the best way is for nixon to lose the election. so rockefeller has very little interest in helping nixon win new york state or the election, either one. so i think having a weak republican party, you know, the party was really hurt by the

1958 elections, and so that really made a difference and it made it much harder for nixon to run in 1960 than it would have been had the governor -- republican governors who had been elected earlier in the '50s, had they still been in office. >> i think it helped a lot. one thing you had mentioned in your talk is the power of the uaw throughout the '50s, but the interesting thing about michigan is it's a ticket splitting state. had a democratic governor in '60, 1962 john swenson takes over. george romney gets himself elected in '64 and remained in republican hands for quite a long time. it was a master stroke. how many votes romney carried, there was no way of knowing when people voted that romney was going to become secretary -- the hud secretary, but it was a smooth move. >> guy in the middle.

>> in 1968 when nixon picked agnew, it defies common sense since the vice presidency for nixon and johnson led to the nomination and then the importance of 1960, johnson on the ticket. agnew just seems a puzzle being picked in 1960. all three of you should be able to comment on that. >> this is -- the question of why nixon chose agnew, the republican party in 1968 was not unified. this is very important. the republican party today is much more unifieied than it wasn 1968. nixon could not choose at liberal because the conservatives had so much power, and he couldn't choose a conservative because there was still enough moderates and

liberals. he couldn't choose, therefore, ronald reagan and nelson rockefeller, but further he didn't want either of them. you don't want to be overshadowed or have someone like that either. a few names -- a couple names were tossed out, gerald ford, george bush of texas, although a few hours before nixon chose agnew, he actually was talking to i believe rogers morton of maryland or i believe it's rogers. he had a brother in kentucky, was it thurston. he said, rogers, if you want the vice presidential nomination i'll give it to you. morton said no, no, so he settled on agnew. there wasn't a real ground swell for anyone, but also nixon couldn't afford to alienate anyone. there was -- he still had a tiny bit of fear that if i nominate someone that the party doesn't like, the floor might revote and

maybe they might go for reagan. so, yes, it defies common sense but consider nixon's options, he didn't have any. and agnew alienated nobody because the question was spiro who? >> also, by the way, you use the word puzzle. 1968 look at those times, that year. the whole year was a total puzzle. you have assassination of robert kennedy, martin luther king, two conventio conventions, total chaos at both of them but particularly at the democratic convention, vietnam war going crazy. the surprise announcement that lbj wasn't going to run again. if you look at the times, i mean, nothing made sense that particular year. >> there's another consideration, and that is that agnew is a play for white ethnic votes, and nixon is making a play for -- trying to peel off some votes that traditionally

have been identified as democratic. >> strom thurmond submitted a list of who was acceptable and who wasn't acceptable and spiro or spyro as he was called i think was on the wrong list. my question is about chicago in '60. there is a saying from back this day that for every debt person that voted in chicago, a cow voted republican downstate. it's important to enter that into the record. but what is the state of investigation? bill, you kind of mentioned a study and kind of trailed off. it seems like one could take a hard look at this. someone tried to, i don't remember who, in 1960. >> as i understand it, ed collina who has written a book called "from courthouse to white house," anyway, he goes back and looks at the precinct returns

and while one can only speculate about the 3,000 chicago precincts that used machine counted ballots, maybe there were -- there may have been valid tampering but there's no way to prove anything with a voting machine, but the 600 fre singts that used paper ballots the republican insisted on reviewing those ballots. when they opened the ballot boxes and counted the ballots, and the chicago tribune was recording all this of course, what you found was that the vote totals on the tally sheets bore really no relationship at all to what was inside the ballot boxes. and the number of vots would be off by sometimes ten votes, sometimes 30 votes, occasionally 100 votes. it was pret consistent precinct by precinct. had it been random error you would find some where the error went towards nixon rather than kennedy. this adds up to thousands of

ballots. it's not enough to add up to the 8,800 vote margin kennedy won by illinois by. there were republican counties downstate which is to say outside cook county where republicans probably did steal ballots, although i have always thought there were probably a lot of democratic ballots stolen in east st. louis where republicans didn't have poll watchers. in cook county they had poll watchers and in those precincts there was much less of an issue. both sides were stealing in illinois but the democrats had more opportunity because of the fact that they controlled the political voting machinery in certain locations that the were operated to their advantage. the technical statistical analysis, and this is now being used -- when the united nations use vote monitoring overseas, this is what they do. you take each precinct and look at the final digit, and while you might logically think that

random numbers mean that 10% of the vote totals for a precinct would end in zero and 10% in one and 10% in two, it doesn't actually work that way if you spin random numbers. it turns out to be a different kind of distribution from that. and so you can compare the actual distribution on the ballots with the random number forecast and, therefore, the computer can actually tell you whether or not there's been vote tampering. >> sure. >> i'm from salisbury university. i have three really quick questions or comments to -- directed towards professor coffey all about agnew, as you can maimagine. i have worked through the agnew papers a little bit and i found them to be pretty interesting and pretty rich for what they held. they're at the university of maryland.

i thought you might want to comment on that. i was also fascinated to study agnew from the angle of native american indian policy. and it kind of dove tails with what you were talking about. he took an interest in that. >> he did. >> i think it showed his liberalism. when it got serious in 1970 he was nowhere to really be found in it. the last thing is when you mention these two marylanders, agnew and roger morton, you got this ideological divide in the party but it's also fascinating it's a geographical divide and maryland being something of a border state, that those two names come to the forefront. >> first of all, the agnew papers are at the university of maryland college park. after agnew resigned he worked with the staff for about nine months cataloging them. i worked with them. they're sensational papers. they're organized. the staff is very efficient, and i found things about agnew writing in 1964 about -- jotting down notes about how he was

worried about barry goldwater. also found letters he wrote to -- if any of you were from colorado, do you remember senator thomas keikel. agnew wrote him a letter saying i'm endorsing you for president. he wrote back and said i don't know who you are and i'm not running. agnew wrote and these papers are in the archives. agnew was saying you are a practical person and i don't want the party to go on in a crazy ideological direction either left or right. and so there are some real gems in the papers. the second thing about agnew and liberalism, he was someone who i think by 1972-'73 had become conservative in large part because he really believed that the liberals were out to get him. i mean, he really believed that particularly the media, "the washington post" and "the new york times" had really treated him unfairly, and he began to read national review and he

said, you know, they're giving me a fair shake, and he also -- his aide, david keen, told me that agnew really actually studied issues. he read a lot and he was involved -- he actually was intellectually curious, something that people don't give agnew credit for. he was very well-versed, very well-read, but in terms of in the nixon administration when it came to civil rights, particularly integrating schools, he was invited down to new orleans when they were going to do this in 1970. he said i'm not going. during the native american riots he actually said, okay, even though i was in charge of this policy i'm not going to do it. the final thing with maryland, maryland is a very strange state. is it south? is it north? is it east? is it west? it has a lot of people who are very difficult to discern what

they are even in terms of are you a democrat or a republican. so agnew fit because he wasn't south and wasn't north. i do disagree with you, i don't think agnew actually was there or -- i also disagree with the thing about strom thurmond. i don't think agnew was part of a southern strategy. i believe actually he was part of what i call a suburban strategy. nixon figured out by '68 voters in the suburbs and states like pennsylvania were the ones making the difference and that is why agnew was on the ticket. >> we'll take just one last question. you had your hand up in the purple. and then we'll continue later. >> okay. for the election experts, the election of 1960, especially for the person that thought that religion didn't have much to do with the election, there's a story that has gone