American - Historian | November 30, 1955 -
To people who remember JFK's assassination, JFK Jr. will probably always be that boy saluting his father's coffin.
Michael Beschloss
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During his last 18 months in office, Eisenhower flew to Asia, Europe, and Latin America and deployed his war hero's popularity to seek new friends for America while trying to improve relations with Moscow. By the time Ike left office, most Americans had forgotten their anger over losing the space race to the Soviets.
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We insist that ours is a government of laws, not men, but it is striking how often large historical forces pivot on something so unpredictable as the continued good health of a politician.
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The founders were very worried that if parties developed in America, you might have something like the modern Italian system, where you have 20 different parties that divide Congress and the country and can't govern.
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You have had presidential candidates over the last 30 years who would have had a very hard time getting nominated under the old system. One example is John Kennedy.
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The things we obsess about today, in 40 years seem trivial.
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Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan each suffered through his second four years. FDR was checkmated by Congress and the Supreme Court. Ike was dogged by Sputnik and reckless charges that the United States suffered from a Missile Gap. Reagan had to wend his way through Iran-Contra.
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As parties began to develop around the turn of the 19th century, you had party nominees for President nominated in caucuses made up of party members in Congress.
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First of all, there's no mention of political parties in the Constitution, so you begin American history with not only no political conventions but also no parties.
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From the beginning of the presidential nominating conventions in the 1830's really through the 1950's, you had conventions that actually did real business.
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Oftentimes during the period in which conventions really did business, you had situations where the delegates were divided and you would have ballot after ballot before there was a final nominee.
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So if 1960 had occurred under the old convention system, Kennedy would have had a very hard time getting the Democratic nomination because he would have been rejected by all those people who had worked with him in Washington.
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