Tuesday, November 4, 1952
November 4, 1952 (Tuesday)
November 4, 1952 was election day. Most of the nation’s attention was on the race between Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson. But in Joe Kennedy’s rented apartment at 81 Beacon Street, all eyes were glued to the several television screens, eager for news of Jack’s Senate race against Henry Cabot Lodge.
Jack outwardly seemed confident. Early in the evening he went to a movie with long-time friend Torby Macdonald and then walked across Boston Common to the apartment. JFK mused to the assembled, “I wonder what sort of job Ike will give to Lodge” under the assumption that Lodge would no longer be a Senator from Massachusetts.
However sanguine JFK was about beating Lodge, a note of envy crept into his evening after he watched Richard Nixon and Eisenhower hold their clasped hands aloft after Stevenson conceded about 11 PM. Kennedy exclaimed, “Imagine that. Dick Nixon and I came into Congress together, and now he’s Vice President of the United States.”
[1, p. 183-4]