John Kennedy, "Superman comes to the Supermarket," 1960 Democratic Convention tTcket, PSA Slabbed

July 1960 Democratic National Convention Ticket, Sports Arena, Los Angeles California, 5.5" x 2.75" with entry stub neatly removed. FourthSession. Embellished with an engraving of the White House to the recto and lavishly engraved with a design to verso. PSA slabbed "authentic." Fine condition.

The Democratic platform in 1960 was the longest yet. They called for a loosening of tight economic policy: "We Democrats believe that the economy can and must grow at an average rate of 5 percent annually, almost twice as fast as our annual rate since 1953...As the first step in speeding economic growth, a Democratic president will put an end to the present high-interest-rate, tight-money policy. Other planks included national defense, disarmament, civil rights, immigration, foreign aid, the economy, labor and tax reform. 

The convention was perhaps best described by Norman Mailer who wrote a journalistic piece on the convention called "Superman comes to the Supermarket" Kennedy was seen as a hero who could capture the secret imagination of a people. His dry humor commentary depicted the convention as "It was on the one hand a dull convention, one of the less interesting by general agreement, relieved by local bits of color, given two half hours of excitement by two demonstrations for Stevenson, buoyed up by the class of the Kennedy machine, turned by the surprise of Johnson's nomination as vice-president, but, all the same, dull, depressed in its over-all tone, the big fiestas subdued, the gossip flat, no real air of excitement, just moments—or as they say in bullfighting—details. Yet it was also, one could argue—and one may argue this yet—it was also one of the most important conventions in America's history, it could prove conceivably to be the most important. The man it nominated was unlike any politician who had ever run for President in the history of the land, and if elected he would come to power in a year when America was in danger of drifting into a profound decline … Delegates are not the noblest sons and daughters of the Republic; a man of taste, arrived from Mars, would take one look at a convention floor and leave forever, convinced he had seen one of the drearier squats of Hell …  America is a nation of experts without roots; we are always creating tacticians who are blind to strategy and strategists who cannot take a step, and when the culture has finished its work the institutions handcuff the infirmity. A delegate is a man who picks a candidate for the largest office in the land, a President who must live with problems whose borders are in ethics, metaphysics, and now ontology; the delegate is prepared for this office of selection by emptying wastebaskets, toting garbage, and saying yes at the right time for twenty years in the small political machine of some small or large town; his reward, one of them anyway, is that he arrives at an invitation to the convention. 

The 1960 Democratic National Convention was held in Los Angeles, California, on July 11-15, and nominated Senator John Kennedy of Massachusetts for President and Lyndon B. Johnson for Vice President. Once campaigning as the Democratic candidate, Kennedy ran circles around Nixon with his Hollywood good looks, boundless enthusiasm, and mesmeric media presence.  John F. Kennedy was destined to capture the imaginations of the more than 70 million Americans who watched the nation's first televised presidential debate. Just days after beating out Richard Nixon by the narrowest margin in history, Kennedy himself said, “It was the TV more than anything else that turned the tide.”

A stunning example of the ticket for the Fourth session of this important historical convention, in fine condition.

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