History of the Soviet Union (1953–64)
Khrushchev anxiously awaited the results of the 1960 United States presidential election, preferring Kennedy to Richard Nixon, whom he took as a hardline anti-communist cold warrior, and openly celebrated the former's victory on November 8. In truth however, Khrushchev's opinion of Kennedy was mixed. He knew that the new president was from a wealthy background and Harvard-educated. On the other, Kennedy was the youngest elected US president at 43 and gave off the impression of inexperience and "a boy wearing his father's pants" that Khrushchev assumed he could pounce on and dominate. If however Kennedy was that weak, there stood the possibility that he could merely be a puppet of "reactionary" forces and the US military-industrial complex. Almost immediately after the polls closed on Election Day, Khrushchev attempted to barrage the president-elect with proposals and the hope of improved US-Soviet relations, specifically turning the clock back to the accommodating diplomatic atmosphere of President Roosevelt's time. However, Khrushchev was informed that he was acting too quickly and it would not be possible to have a formal summit with Kennedy until he took office in January, and even then, arranging such a meeting would still take time.
1960 United States presidential election
During the campaign, Kennedy charged that under Eisenhower and the Republicans the nation had fallen behind the Soviet Union in the Cold War, both militarily and economically, and that as president he would "get America moving again." The Eisenhower administration had established NASA in 1958, but Kennedy believed that the Republican Party had ignored the need to catch up to the Soviet Union in the Space Race. He promised that the new Democratic administration would fully appreciate the importance of space accomplishments for the national security and international prestige of the United States. Nixon responded that, if elected, he would continue the "peace and prosperity" that Eisenhower had brought the nation in the 1950s. Nixon also argued that with the nation engaged in the Cold War with the Soviets, that Kennedy was too young and inexperienced to be trusted with the presidency -Nixon was only four years older than Kennedy. Had Nixon been elected, at 48 years, 11 days, he would have been the fourth-youngest president at the date of inauguration. Kennedy, by contrast, was 43 years, 236 days, on the date of his inauguration; the second-youngest man to begin a Presidency (at 42 Theodore Roosevelt, who assumed the Presidency upon the assassination of President William McKinley 60 years previously, was the youngest).