The American history podcast, bonus episode, The Cold War in the 1960s. The Okay, welcome back to the show.

Now, this is a special bonus episode.

As you guys know, the show is kind of on hiatus for about six weeks or so.

Our next projected episode for World War II's early February of 2022.

In the meantime, I'd like to give you some bonus episodes.

So this one is from our Patreon-only series, 1983, the year the world almost ended.

And you can get the rest of the episodes for this show over at Patreon for as little as, in this case case $5 a month. So without further ado, let's go

ahead and start off where the show started off. In 1960, it was an election year. In the U.S.,

the Republicans nominated Vice President Richard M. Nixon. He was Eisenhower's

vice president, and he was one of the most active Veeps in American history. Now, he often traveled

around the world, serving as Ike's troubleshooter, so to speak. He was also a strong anti-communist

and a cold warrior. Now, Democrats nominated Senator John F. Kennedy.

He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1946 and to the U.S. Senate in 1952.

Now, upon announcing his presidential run, some questioned both his youth and his inexperience.

However, he was charismatic and eloquent and quite able to win the

nomination on the first ballot. Ignoring the advice of his brother, Robert, Jack chose Texas Senator

Lyndon B. Johnson to be his vice presidential nominee. His acceptance speech is now referred to

as his New Frontier speech. In it, Kennedy called upon the American people

to make sacrifices to achieve their potential greatness and was reminiscent of just how eloquent

he could be. Now, the campaign ended up being a dogfight, even though Nixon started out

with a six-point advantage. Both Kennedy and Nixon presented themselves as strongly anti-communist.

Now, at first, Kennedy's Catholicism was an issue,

...