With the United States presidential election heading towards a photo finish, history reminds us of another hotly contested race which occurred in 1960 when, on November 8, John F Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon in a virtual dead heat to become the 35th president of the USA.

In the national popular vote — hold on to your seats —Kennedy led Nixon by just two-tenths of one per cent: 49.7 per cent to 49.5 per cent. In the Electoral College counting, he received 303 votes to Nixon’s 219, enough to take him over the edge and confirm his presidency.

Defeated presidential candidates can learn a lot from Nixon’s concession cablegram to Kennedy the morning after the election on how to accept defeat. Before the final count was in that night, he called his rival and congratulated him.

Can we expect any similar reaction or response come Tuesday, November 8, 2016? The race tightened last week and both candidates are riding popular surges, but the real prize will be in the Electoral College votes which decide the victor, even if the successful candidate loses in the popular count.

We had a similar circumstance in Jamaica in 1949 when, following our second general election, the People’s National Party (PNP) received 43.5 per cent of the popular votes to the Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) 42.7 per cent; but the JLP formed the new Government, having secured 17 seats to the PNP’s 13.

The presidential debates played an important role in the US 1960 election campaign. These were the first-ever televised political debates. Unfortunately for Nixon he, at that time, was suffering from what we call “sore foot” in Jamaica, having suffered an injury earlier in the year. He looked uncomfortable during the debate and perspired profusely. On the other hand, Kennedy looked at ease before the cameras, and the huge television audience fell in love with this handsome, articulate young senator. The polls declared him to be the winner.

Both candidates were young. Kennedy, the Democratic nominee, was only 43, while Nixon, at 48, was the Republican vice-president to President Dwight Eisenhower. He was a national figure and quite widely admired.

The debates and the campaign had none of the vitriol associated with today’s campaign. This was the cold war era, and the electorate trusted their political leaders enough to back their respective policies and personalities without the acrimonious behaviour and ‘stand-pipe’ tracing matches that accompany today’s contest.

The loser accepted the decision and the new president entered the White House without the threat of lawsuits and prison terms.

Nixon’s concession speech was gracious and immediate. It should be a lesson to the candidate who has declared his intention not to accept the results unless it is in his favour.

He sent a cable from his hotel room the following day: “To President-Elect John Kennedy. I want to repeat through this wire the congratulations and best wishes I extended to you on television last night. I know that you have the united support of all Americans as you lead this nation in the cause of peace and freedom during the next four years.”

It is said that Kennedy, who was assassinated just three years into his presidency, remains the most popular US president, with an average approval rating of 70 per cent.

At this time the jury is out on what the ratings will be when the time comes up for President Barack Obama’s legacy to be measured by history. I believe that Obama is clearly going to be rated as one of the best US presidents ever.

Among his achievements he will leave behind a record of low inflation, reduced unemployment, expanding exports, and recovery from the worst recession ever to hit the world. He is highly regarded for his honesty and courage. He enjoys a 55 per cent favourable rating as his presidency comes to a close, although he will regret the mistakes of his approach to the Syrian civil war, racial unrest at home as a result of police killings, and the remaining uncertainties of his Obamacare programme.

Donald Trump taunts him as “the founder of ISIS”, but it appears to me that Obama’s strategy in this present war against ISIS may prove to be a winner this weekend, much to the discomfort of the Trump camp, the delight and upward surge of the Clinton opinion polls, and a great going-home triumph for the president.

Note that no matter how Trump and his Tea Party Republicans try, there is not a spot of personal or professional scandal that can be attached to Obama’s name. The White House, and the American nation, ought to be grateful that in an era where global leadership has been tainted by cases of corruption, infidelity, and personal misconduct, the Obamas have maintained the dignity of the president’s office, and have been a role model for family values and moral leadership during their tenure.

For those of us who remember the Kennedy years, it was a time when Jack and First Lady Jackie Kennedy brought a unique sense of style and glamour, youth and energy that Washington had never seen before. And, in her own inimitable way, First Lady Michelle Obama rekindled and reinvented that freshness and energy, putting her own stamp of graciousness on the White House that made the social side of the presidency relaxed and at ease.

But the Kennedy years were also marked by a series of high tension incidents that distinguished his presidency from the ordinary or the commonness that now threatens that high office. The early years marked a period of sustained confrontation with the Soviet Union. Enter Premier Nikita Khrushchev, the belligerent and aggressive premier of the Soviet Union, who banged his shoe on a desk at a United Nations General Assembly while threatening to “bury the West”.

On June 4, 1961, the young Kennedy met with Khrushchev in Vienna and left the meeting angry and disappointed that he had allowed himself to be bullied by the much older man. He got his own back in October the following year when the USA discovered that the Soviet Union was building ballistic missile sites in Cuba — next to Jamaica, if you please. He immediately ordered a naval blockade around the island, demanding that the sites be dismantled and warning the Soviet premier that all ships on their way to Cuba would be stopped and searched. This is what history refers to as the Cuban Missile Crisis; a crisis that brought the world closer to nuclear war than at any point since or before.

Consider this: We in Jamaica were only 90 miles away from the focused attention of a nervous world as Kennedy and the Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev stood toe to toe: one challenging the other to “say feh”, and both men refusing to blink.

For the next few days Khrushchev ignored Kennedy. The world held its breath as the ships approached Cuban waters. True to his word, Kennedy ordered a Soviet-flagged ship to be stopped and boarded. It was anybody’s guess what would follow. But on October 24, Khrushchev gave in and agreed to dismantle the sites. Jamaica and the world breathed a collective sigh of relief. The crisis improved the American president’s willpower and credibility. His approval ratings shot up from 66 per cent to 77 per cent.

The Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs reversal, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the establishment of the US Peace Corps, the Space Race, and the civil rights movement all took place during his two short years in office. These are the moments, the experiences, the historical and epochal, that are entrenched in history, and are among the attributes that have made leaders great in their management of events. Kennedy was assassinated by a sniper’s bullet on November 22, 1963. There was stunned reaction in the USA and all over the globe. People wept openly. Churches opened up their doors for prayer.

Famous newscaster Walter Cronkite had these words for America on the night after the funeral: “Tonight there will be few Americans who will go to bed without carrying with them the sense that somehow they have failed. If in the search of our conscience we can find a new dedication to the American concepts that brook no political, sectional, religious or racial divisions, then maybe it will be possible to say that John Fitzgerald Kennedy did not die in vain.”

Perhaps tonight, or on Monday evening, America will again search their souls and conscience before they vote, and ensure that, indeed, JFK did not die in vain.

Lance Neita is a public and community relations specialist and writer. Send comments to the Observer or lanceneita@hotmail.com.