when President Eisenhower's second term is up he could not run for a third a third term this was now illegal or rather not allowed by the 22nd amendment which was passed in the late 1940s so he had to step aside and and for a new candidate and the Republicans will choose Richard Nixon this guy in the button here in the middle Nixon was Eisenhower's vice president and I had for both terms and he had also previously been governor of California the Democrats will choose John F Kennedy obviously they're on the Left Kennedy whose qualifications for the presidency were not very strong but he was young he was only 43 years old in fact one thing that actually hurt him was the fact that he was Catholic there had never been a Catholic president and this was still an issue because of discrimination particularly in the Midwest the Ohio that area and in the South but JFK was well spoken Edie was very highly educated was wealthy he was a veteran and he was good-looking considered good-looking so these characteristics allowed JFK to more effectively use the new medium of television and in fact during this election we have the first televised debates presidential debates these are the Kennedy Nixon debates so the first time that there are presidential debates on on TV and this is actually one of the biggest negatives of Nixon's campaign I mean 70 million people tuned in to watch these first-ever debates JFK looked poised and articulate whereas Nixon looked nervous and tired for example you know and part of this Nixon had been ill he also had a bad back you see Nixon on the right where he's got this rag and he was constantly moving about because his back hurt him and you know so war you know he also didn't really understand presenting an image on TV the tan suit just kind of has bled into the background no no if it was I think it was tan it may have actually just been gray it's hard I don't I don't know how to differentiate with black and white to Technicolor he also refused to put on makeup anybody you've ever seen on TV is wearing makeup and it's usually very thick makeup because the lights on any scent whether it's television or movie or whatever the lights are incredibly hot and so you sweat a lot so Nixon not only was ill and moving around and didn't really look good you know and you know as far as his clothes goes clothes go but he was also sweating profusely on the other hand Kennedy like I said was poised he was articulate he he also had a bad back from his time from his service in World War two but he was you know he wore the makeup he knew how to present himself and this was this was actually one of they did this for different times and the experts as far as like policy experts agreed that that Nixon won three of the four if not all four however as for the public it was a different matter if if people watched these debates on television they overwhelmingly believe that that Kennedy had won however if they listened to the debates on the radio they overwhelming you believe that Nixon had won so the image JFK's image became a huge factor here and this is where you start to see the the presentation you know the representation in the media of a president become a big deal where the the appearance of a president you know how they look how they dressed all of that because starts to become important here with the 1960 election how did the election turnout it was real close the electoral vote doesn't necessarily look that close but that's actually is a very close election because if a state like New York or Pennsylvania had gone the other way that's real close but you look at the popular vote about a hundred and twenty thousand votes separated the two that was it out of I have 78 I'm sorry 68 million votes only 120 thousand decided this and and Nixon are you know kidded E Kennedy lost these states down here because of his endorsement for civil rights movement but they couldn't support Nixon as well for because he was the Republican and they don't vote Republican in the South the solid south so and Kennedy himself was actually from Massachusetts and this is we're starting to see the shift of the parties and their power bases and well with all of this and we'll talk about that a little bit more with with with Johnson so JFK becomes president his inaugural address is actually one of the more important inaugural dresses in American history and you see here on the left is the outgoing President Eisenhower and here's Kennedy's Vice President Lyndon Johnson it's also widely considered to be one of the best inaugurations inaugural dresses in American history he focused particularly on the concepts of duty and power and and on the Cold War anew again understand he was taking office at what was the height of the Cold War and we've talked about that foreign policy you know the Cuban Missile Crisis you know Eisenhower's policies of massive retaliation and you know the Bay of Pigs invasion that Kennedy would authorize less than a later this year in 1961 so what he said here would set the tone not just for the United States before the whole world and so couple of important quotes from the inaugural address first and the most famous that's not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for your country duty right we talk about duty and power the responsibility of Americans to do their duty for for their country second quote let us never negotiate out of fear but let us never fear to negotiate that is never negotiate out of fear but let us never fear to negotiate so you know Kennedy wasn't going to negotiate with the Soviets because they were planning to put nuclear missiles in Cuba that could destroy the United States you don't negotiate out of fear but when the opportunity arose to negotiate he was not afraid to take that step and then finally if a free society cannot help the many who are poor it cannot save the few who are rich and that's Kennedy sort of refocusing and and going back to the Franklin Roosevelt's approach of you know if if those who are needy have nothing to help them there's nothing and if the country can't help them not just if they won't but if they can't help them they certainly won't be able to help the super wealthy or the rich so take the government's responsibility in taking care of those who are downtrodden or those who were repressed was a big theme you know the power of the government should be used to help people not to keep them down and really we've actually excited these two things we've really the the election and the inaugural dress we really talked about everything there is to talk about with Kennedy Cuban missle his President's Commission on the status of women as a kind of support for civil rights so really the only thing left to talk about with Kennedy is his assassination he visited Texas here not and starting in October from 1963 actually yeah that's supposed to be no that's right that's right no actually it isn't 22 November 11/22/63 sorry about that so yeah in November he would say had a few stops elsewhere in Texas Houston was where I believe where he was before he came to Dallas while driving through Dallas or riding in the car here you'd see the picture from not long before he was shot he'll be shot twice in the head and he will die shortly pretty much pretty much immediately the the man sitting right in front of him was the governor of Texas John Connally and he also was hit by by one of the rounds and people have tried to say that you know that's you know up with the whole conspiracy about the shooters and stuff that it didn't fit the angle it actually does because in photos like this it doesn't really show but Connally is actually sitting lower than Kennedy Connally was a tall guy but I'm kidding he was quite tall himself but Kennedy Connally is actually sitting pretty low and so the trajectory actually does work out for that and Connally survived because he didn't he got the the bullet that hit him and had actually already passed through Kennedy and it hit him and I think the shoulder of course the police will arrest a man named Lee Harvey Oswald about two days later before he could be fully interrogated he was killed while exiting being escorted out of the the Dallas City Jail or county jail by a nightclub owner named Jack Ruby so what happened here is there a conspiracy I have no idea I hope but I would say that you know don't believe you know if you go on the internet to read about this most of what you're gonna find is is probably unsubstantiated look was this the Russians probably not there's really not been any evidence to suggest that what I will say for certain at least for me I don't know who was who or if anybody was behind it but I firmly believe that there was only one shooter it just doesn't make sense a second shooter from the grassy knoll it's just there's nothing to substantiate that other than some eyewitness testimony which is notoriously unreliable the ballistics and the trajectories do work out for a single shooter but beyond that I have no idea there's been theories of the Russians of Cubans of the mob which I can search I can actually buy that one because Kennedy's inability to take back Cuba with the Bay of Pigs and a few other things they didn't like him much and predicted also his brother who was his attorney General Robert Kennedy and so the Mafia being behind the assassination does make a certain amount of sense I also conspiracy that I will endorse that has zero chance of being possible but I just think it's it's more fun is that it was all Marilyn Monroe's doing and if you don't know Kennedy and Monroe had had an affair now the difficulty with it that a conspiracy is that Marilyn Monroe had died a couple years earlier but I like to think that she had enough foresight to go ahead and get that done before she died and said all of this in motion is if she's some you know crazy crime lord or whatever so Kennedy dies here obviously that means his vice president will take over and that was Lyndon Johnson and Johnson do you see being sworn in on Air Force One on the way back and if the woman on his right looks to strike well that's Kennedy's wife that's Jackie Onassis Kennedy you see here there in the pink suit on the right she's dropped because her husband was just killed earlier that day or I think the day before and Johnson refused to be sworn in or to return to Washington DC until Kennedy's body was was prepared and on the plane and and for Jackie to go with but with him now it's also kind of a political ploy because he wanted to you know be seen taking the oath of office with mrs. Kennedy because there's also been rumored there are also rumors and and I wouldn't believe them for a second that Johnson was behind it so Johnson effectively you know spins the last couple the last month and a half a month in a couple weeks of 63 finishing kennedy's term and then sixty four is an election here so he's gonna go right into winning his own election now what he said when he was inaugurated that he basically just wanted to continue JFK's policies so that's what he'll do for the rest of the year but he's also gonna start working on his own campaign a night in 1964