Election of 1960 and Camelot Years

The 1960 election was between senator John Kennedy from Massachusetts, the Democratic candidate, and Vice President Richard M. Nixon the republican candidate.  The two main factors that helped Kennedy win the election was television and civil rights.  The first televised debate was on September 26, 1960, even though Kennedy was very inexperience, he looked and talked better then Nixon did, and it helped Kennedy to win over voters.  The second thing that helped Kennedy win the election was when Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and 30 other African Americans were arrested for sitting at a segregated lunch table.  King was sentenced to months of hard labor, for nothing more then a traffic violation.  While the Eisenhower administration did not intervene and Nixon took no stand, Kennedy called Correta Scott King, King's wife, and talked to her and expressed his sympathy.  While this was happening Kennedy had sent his brother to convince the judge who sentenced to release King on bail.  All of this really won over the Africa American vote in the South and Midwest for Kennedy.  These two events together really gathered a diverse group of people voting for Kennedy, but it was still a very close race between the two candidates.

JFK's time in the White House was said to remind people of Camelot, with the Presidents youthfulness and his brilliant advisers.  His advisers were very diverse and called "the best and the brightest" by a journalist.  Kennedy relied on all of his advisers, but the one he relied on most was his brother Robert Kennedy who he had appointed attorney general.