The Making Of The President
May 14, 2008 Collectible 1 Comment
The Making Of The President 1960
By
Theodore H. White
With An Introduction By James Reston
Illustrations For This Edition Selected By Joan Paterson Kerr
Hardcover In Dustjacket Slipcased
Published 1988 By The American Past Book
Book Of The Month Club Edition
Author’s Note :
This Book is an attempt to tell part of the story of how the Americans chose their President in 1960.
For no man can tell it all–either now or much later. The transaction in power by which a president is chosen is so vastly complicated that even those most intimately involved in it, even those who seek the office, can never know more than a fragment of it. For it is the nature of politics that men must always act on the basis uncertain fact, must make their judgments in haste on the basis of today’s report by instinct and experience shaped years before in other circumstances. Were it otherwise, then politics would not be what they are now–the art of government and leadership; politics would be an exact science in which our purposes and destiny could be left to great impersonal computers.
It was my thought that later historians would tell the story of the quest for power in 1960 in more precise terms with greater wealth of established fact, there might, nonetheless, be some permanent value in the effort of a contemporary reporter to catch the mood and the strains, the weariness, elation and uncertainties of the men who sought to lead America in the decade of the sixties. For, to me, the central fact of politics has always been the quality of leadership under the pressure of great forces.
The reading I have made here of the seven men who in 1960 aspired to govern the American people is an entirely personal one, and many will disagree.Yet it is the best that this citizen could make. I began this book in the fall of 1959 and tried to follow as many of the men involved as I could, both in travel and in thought, from then until November 8th,1960. I have spent months since putting on paper what I saw and learned in these travels.
There are all too many people who helped me to list them all by name. And there is a further complication in contemporary political reporting. A historian must list his sources and attribute fact to exact reference. But a reporter’s obligation is to protect the privacy of those who have befriended him with information. Therefore, since I wrote this book as a reporter, rather than giving an unbalanced table of acknowledgments, I prefer to leave all my kind and generous friends unmentioned except as text and footnote make specific reference.
I cannot, however,fail to invite the reader’s attention to two of my associates who have been absolutely essential in giving this story whatever readable merit it may have. They are Chouteau Dyer, whose reportorial skills and even greater skill in the rhythm of our language, have contributed so much; and Shirley Farmer, whose judgment, grace and encouragement have stimulated and sustained so large a part of this effort.
Beyond that, I owe two general acknowledgments:
First, to the politicians of America–men whom I have found over the long years the pleasantest, shrewdest and generally the most honorable of companions. Their counsel, Republican and Democrat alike in state after state, has shaped every page of this book.
Second, I must thank my comrades of the press–whose reporting at every level of American politics purifies, protects and refreshes our system from year to year. Without their shared confidences and magnificent public dispatches the writing of this book would have been entirely impossible.
Stumble it!
