Sublime

September 27

On November 8, 1960, forty-two-year-old John F. Kennedy was elected president of the United States.

Birdwell saw now what Latimer and Jones had seen years before: “He signed every letter,” no matter how brief, or how unimportant the subject matter. “No one rubber-stamped his name on a letter. He looked at and read every letter. If we wrote something that didn’t sound right, why, it was rewritten.” Success seemed only to have increased his tension

His speeches were very simple. He made no campaign promises; a reporter was to write that Coke Stevenson never once in his entire career promised the people of Texas anything except to act as his conscience dictated. He had made a record in Austin, he said. The record was one of economy in government, of prudence and frugality, of spending the peop

Taft had failed for the fourth time in his quest for the Republican nomination but seemed totally in control of the situation.

In his role as elder statesman, he buttressed Kennedy at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, and refrained from criticizing Lyndon Johnson over Vietnam.