Question

While Kennedy won the election, did he win the debate and why/why not?

In Kennedy vs. Nixon - 1st 1960 Debate

Answer 1

About 40% of the nation's 180 million people tuned into the "Great Debates" of 1960, a series of four televised matchups between Kennedy and Nixon. Many political experts, like the New York Herald-Tribune's Washington bureau chief Earl Mazzo, credited Kennedy's debate performances for lifting him over the top in a tight election.

The forums' wide exposure and impact on the election made them perhaps the most renowned political debates since 1858, when U.S. Senate candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas faced off in Illinois towns.

The Nixon-Kennedy debates' significance extended well beyond 1960. The use of television to transmit an image or idea instantly to millions soon made presidential campaigns more of a spectator sport.

"I don't think it's overstating the fact that, on that date, politics and television changed forever," said Bruce DuMont, a nationally syndicated radio talk show host and president of the Museum of Broadcast Communications. "After that debate, it was not just what you said in a campaign that was important, but how you looked saying it."

Kennedy was generally seen as winning the debate and he ultimately squeaked through with an election victory. But the real lasting winner of that first debate was the medium through which most people experienced it television.

The first-ever televised presidential debate took place on September 26, 1960, in Chicago and was broadcast on CBS to 66.4 million TVs across the country. The two very different candidates were neck-and-neck in the polls at the time, but only one of them seemed to understand the potential power of the event in which they were about to participate.

The difference in their preparation in the weeks leading up to the debate was stark.

Late that summer, Nixon injured his knee during a visit to Greensboro, North Carolina. He didn’t feel much pain at first, but the bruise wound up getting infected and sent him to the hospital for several weeks. He lost 20 pounds during his forced sidelining and when he hit the road again, he was weak, pale and exhausted-looking.

In 1960, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon squared off in the first televised presidential debates in American history. The Kennedy-Nixon debates not only had a major impact on the election’s outcome, but ushered in a new era in which crafting a public image and taking advantage of media exposure became essential ingredients of a successful political campaign. They also heralded the central role television has continued to play in the democratic process.

September 26, 1960 is the day that changed part of the modern political landscape, when a Vice President and a Senator took part in the first nationally televised presidential debate.

The Vice President was Richard M. Nixon and the U.S. Senator was John F. Kennedy. Their first televised debate shifted how presidential campaigns were conducted, as the power of television took elections into American’s living rooms.

The debate was watched live by 70 million Americans and it made politics an electronic spectator sport. It also gave many potential voters their first chance to see actual presidential candidates in a live environment, as potential leaders.

The importance of the event can’t be underestimated. Before 1960, there were candidates who debated (Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas were 19^th century examples) and there were candidates who appeared on television. And there were candidates who went out on the trail and “stumped” for votes, appearing in public at pre-arranged events or at whistle-stop tours on trains.

But most voters never had a chance to see candidates in a close, personal way, giving them the opportunity to form an opinion about the next president based on their looks, their voice and their opinions.

Going into the debate, Nixon was the favorite to win the election. He had been President Dwight Eisenhower’s vice president for eight years. Nixon had shown his mastery of television in his 1952 “Checkers” speech, where he used a televised address to debunk slush-fund allegations, and secure his vice presidential slot by talking about his pet dog, Checkers. Nixon had also bested Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in the famous Kitchen Debate.

Kennedy was the photogenic and energetic young senator from Massachusetts who ran a calculated primary campaign to best his chief rival, Senator Lyndon Johnson. But Kennedy had debate experience in the primaries and said, “Nixon may have debated Khrushchev, but I had to debate Hubert Humphrey.”

The debate took place in Chicago and CBS assigned a 38-year-old producer named Don Hewitt to manage the event. Hewitt went on to create “60 Minutes” for CBS. The highly promoted event would pre-empt “The Andy Griffith Show” and run for an hour. Hewitt had invited both candidates to a pre-production meeting, but only Kennedy took up the offer.

When Nixon arrived for the debate, he looked ill, having been recently hospitalized because of a knee injury. The vice president then re-injured his knee as he entered the TV station, and refused to call off the debate.

Nixon also refused to wear stage makeup, when Hewitt offered it. Kennedy had turned down the makeup offer first: He had spent weeks tanning on the campaign trail, but he had his own team do his makeup just before the cameras went live. The result was that Kennedy looked and sounded good on television, while Nixon looked pale and tired, with a five o’clock shadow beard.

The next day, polls showed Kennedy had become the slight favorite in the general election, and he defeated Nixon by one of the narrowest margins in history that November. Before the debate, Nixon led by six percentage points in the national polls.

There were three other debates between Nixon and Kennedy that fall, and a healthier Nixon was judged to have won two of them, with the final debate a draw. However, the last three debates were watched by 20 million fewer people than the September 26^th event.

Kennedy versus Nixon in Chicago 1960 changed the way American politics was conducted. On its 60th anniversary, Christies is offering a rare manuscript - very likely the one that Kennedy can be seen focusing on in this photograph.

On 26 September 1960 two of the most fascinating men in US politics, Senator John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) and Vice President Richard Nixon (1913-1994), met in Chicago to take part in the first-ever presidential debate on television. Seventy million people tuned in to watch as the pair parried questions from four political reporters.

Unlike today's presidential duels, the Kennedy-Nixon contest was respectful, leading the British journalist Alistair Cooke (1908-2004) to observe wryly that, for two men who openly detested each other, little bloodshed was spilt as they laboured under the strain of good behaviour. He ended his article for The Guardian by describing the opponents as 'two bloodhounds done up in party frocks'.

'The debate was a milestone for Vanocur. Kennedy was known at times to leave his notes lying around, so it is possible he picked them up as a souvenir' - specialist Peter Klarnet

The most memorable moment of the night was when Vanocur invited the Vice President to explain why Eisenhower, when asked to give one example of a major idea of Nixon's that he had adopted, replied, 'If you give me a week I might think of one. I don't remember.'