The election of 1960 became a classic commanded the political landscape of American political history. It at- since the first term of Franklin D. tracted the highest rate of voter par- Roosevelt. ticipation in half a century (64 Broadly speaking, contemporary percent), marked the emergence of a liberalism could claim legitimate de- glamorous new personality (John F. scent from historic bourgeois liberal- Kennedy), and restored to power, ism, with its affirmation of reason, after an eight-year...