getting here is one thing...

 

Eisenhower and Nixon, 1952

In the movie Coal Miner's Daughter, when Tommy Lee Jones, portraying Doolittle Lynn, says, "Getting here is one thing, bein' here's another..." it reminds me of politics and government - to get elected president, you run a campaign.

That's one job.

If you win, then you are required to govern, and that's another, separate job from campaigning.

        In 1952 there was a presidential election in the United States of America:  on the Republican ticket were Dwight Eisenhower for president, and his running mate Richard Nixon, for vice president.

        The 1952 Democratic ticket offered Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson II for president, along with John Sparkman, a U.S. Senator from the state of Alabama as vice president.

        The Republicans won, that year.

Four years later, in 1956, the Republican ticket was the same:  Eisenhower / Nixon, for re-election.

        

The Democratic Party offered the same candidate at the head of the ticket:  Adlai Stevenson for president, but with a different vice presidential candidate:  Estes Kefauver.

(My history professor during my junior year in college, Arnie Offner, spoke of Estes Kefauver - our teacher said he rushed home every day from school to watch hearings on TV being conducted by Kefauver.

        Television was relatively new at that time. ...)

The Republicans won, in 1956.  Dwight Eisenhower (nicknamed "Ike") was the incumbent - it's hard to win over an incumbent.

Four years after 1956, in 1960, the Republican candidate for president was Richard Nixon, Ike's "veep" (vice president) for the past eight years.

        The Republicans' candidate for vice president was Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., an ambassador to the United Nations.

The Democrats' candidate for president that year was the U.S. Senator from Massachusetts John Fitzgerald Kennedy, with running mate (for vice president) U.S. Senator from Texas, Lyndon Baines Johnson.

The Democrats won, that year.

John Kennedy was our president from 1961 to November 22, 1963, when he was murdered in Dallas, Texas.

        As a really little kid at that time, I saw what a Vice President was for:  he steps in and does the job if something - "happens" - to the president. ...

1956

John F. Kennedy in 1960, Democrat candidate for U.S. President, with Lyndon Johnson, candidate for Vice President

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