The Kennedy - Nixon Debate

As I went off to school in the fall of 1960, the country was caught in the grip of another presidential election. John F. Kennedy was creating a stir throughout the nation. Here was a young man, only in his forties, running for the highest office in the land, and he wasn't afraid to criticize our country and all its flaws. He was running against Richard M. Nixon, who had been our Vice-President, a man who stood for the way things were.
What did we kids know about it? Presidents and elections were mysteries to us. A president was someone you respected, the man who ran the country and all, but we had no idea what it was about, not really. What we saw and what we heard would bore us silly, and yet here we were arguing about who would be the better man for the job.
We knew who our parents were supporting, so that's who we thought should be president.
The arguments were a lot like the foolishness surrounding the age-old question young boys would always pose to each other: "Do you think your Dad could beat my Dad in a fight?" The question was always pointless, yet the argument would go on and on, leading nowhere until someone gave up in frustration, or a real fistfight would ensue. If our fathers had only known that in their sons' world they played the part of Roman gladiators, fighting to the death in endless combat, just to prove who had the better parent. We would have looked on as eager and as bloodthirsty as the mob in the Coliseum, waiting for that moment to turn our thumbs down and watch another father fall.
The election would be just as pointless for us. We would argue that Kennedy was better, no Nixon, according to the bumper sticker on our parents' car.
What did we know of the issues? We heard that John F. Kennedy was a Catholic, and that being so might be bad for the country. He might take orders from the Pope in Rome, or some such nonsense, but it meant nothing to me or my brother. Richard Nixon was a Commie hunter, a lawyer with a heavy five-o'clock shadow, and he had been Vice-President under General Eisenhower, and that's all we knew.
We did hear Senator Kennedy tell us that America was a great nation and that it could be even greater if we all just worked together. He talked about sending Americans all over the world to help the poor and the sick, a Peace Corps he called it. He talked about sending men into outer space to explore the stars and told us we had nothing to fear from the Communists because we were strong and we could be even stronger. We knew next to nothing about Richard Nixon. We saw a man with a scary face who seemed nervous and arrogant, with very little to say about the future.
I was a Kennedy man. Why? Because my Mom was going to vote for him, that's why. I think Dad was for Kennedy too, but you never really knew how Dad felt about such things, because he was at work most of the time.
So I joined in with the great debate that year. I stood in support of John F. Kennedy back in the day. Not because he was younger and more handsome. Not because he stood for something grand and noble, and not because he was leading the charge to make America and the world a better place to be.
No, I was a Kennedy man because Mom said so and besides, he could take that Nixon guy any day of the week.