Nelson Rockefeller, the leader of the Republican moderate-to-liberal wing. However, Rockefeller announced that he would not be a candidate for president, after a national tour revealed that the great majority of Republicans favored Nixon. After Rockefeller's withdrawal, Nixon faced no significant opposition for the Republican nomination. At the 1960 Republican National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, Nixon was the overwhelming choice of the delegates, with conservative Senator Barry Goldwater from Arizona receiving 10 votes from conservative delegates. In earning the nomination, Nixon became the first sitting vice president to run for president since John C. Breckinridge exactly a century prior. Nixon then chose former Massachusetts Senator and United Nations Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., as his vice presidential running mate. Nixon chose Lodge because his foreign-policy credentials fit into Nixon's strategy to campaign more on foreign policy than domestic policy, which he believed favored the Democrats. Nixon had previously sought Rockefeller as his running mate, but the governor had no ambitions to be vice president. However, he later served as Gerald Ford's vice president from 1974 to 1977. General election Campaign promises 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, Kennedy was too young and inexperienced to be trusted with the presidency. 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 United States President William McKinley 60 years previously, was (and remains) the youngest.) During Kennedy's campaign, he relied on his youth and promised to