Sick of the petty, scurrilous venality of the 2016 presidential race and its all-but-certain-to-be-catastrophic outcome? Take a trip back to 1960 with CNN’s new documentary series Race for the White House for a respite that will dash away any nostalgic nonsense in your head about how politics, once upon a time, were noble, civic exercises.
Scabrous name-calling! Empty-headed sloganeering! Religious bigotry! Vile dirty tricks! Zombie voters! If there’s a crooked or sleazy element of American politics that the race between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon didn’t have, television critic Glenn Garvin can’t imagine what it would be.
Race for the White House will explore a different election each week, going back as far as the Lincoln-Douglas race of 1860. But CNN couldn’t have chosen more wisely for an opening episode than the Nixon-Kennedy election.
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