THE NATION: Election Week, 1960

On the peaks of the Rockies, looming up as majestically solid as they did when the first pioneers looked upon them, the snow lines crept lower day by day. In the Deep South the maples were red and gold; in New England bare trees stood dark and bleak against the greying skies. On the heartland plains, machines whirred through the corn and milo fields, methodically bringing in the last of another bountiful harvest.

To the eye the land looked rich and placid. The “farm problem,” huge headache for the new President, looked like anything but a problem in the countryside, with its fat herds, its brimming corn-cribs, its painted barns gleaming in the autumn sunshine, its farmers beaming over the high price of hogs (up about 35% over a year ago). In the cities, blotches of unemployment stirred talk of recession, but builders moved confidently to plan new highways and change skylines. In southern Florida, the fever has faded out of the land boom, but hotelkeepers and charter-boat captains are looking forward to a record invasion of sun-seeking vacationers. In Los Angeles, despite layoffs by airframe and electronics firms in recent months, department stores reported that the Christmas buying season was off to a roaring and premature start.

The voters, dinned at, cajoled, warned and saturated, were almost as eager as the weary candidates themselves to give it all a rest. Weekend fishermen headed for the streams and lakes, and hunters for the woods. It was football season, and more money was being bet on Saturday’s contests than on Tuesday’s. Even with a fellow Bay Stater running for President, a lot of Bostonians seemed less interested in politics than in how to get a ticket for Camelot, the new musical comedy at the Shubert Theater (see cover).

In Dallas, scene of Texas-sized political passions, society was far more interested in the Opera Ball, the city’s most bejeweled social event, and ordinary citizens talked about the prospects of their National Football League team, the Dallas Cowboys. In Atlanta, a group of segregationists announced formation of an organization called Georgians Unwilling to Surrender (G.U.T.S.), and the Atlanta Constitution suggested that they change the name to Georgians Against Surrender (G.A.S.). In Berkeley, pioneering on a nonpolitical new frontier, University of California scientists reported progress toward controlling thermonuclear reactions, potential sources of vast nuclear power for peaceful uses.

Out of the presidential campaign had come a national consensus that whatever the outcome, Big Government would get bigger, spending for defense and welfare would increase, and the nation would find itself more dynamically and financially involved abroad. But most citizens, most of the time, do their work, live their lives, and pursue their happiness outside the realms of government, even in election years. So it ought to be, and so it was in the U.S. in Election Week, 1960.