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Nixon visits china broadcasted9/25/2023 ![]() ![]() Politicians, careful to avoid Nixon’s pitfalls, have stressed style as well as substance in recent decades, knowing that their words and actions not only will appear in newspaper accounts but will be repeated over and over in Americans’ living rooms. “The 1960 debates are the turning point from retail politics – glad handing and meeting everyone face to face – to the politics of mass media,” said Schroeder. About 90% of Americans could access television and its three major networks by 1960, said Alan Schroeder, author of “Presidential Debates: 40 Years of High-Risk TV.” The medium also gave politicians the chance to address tens of millions of people at once. “The innocence of the 1950s ended with (the bumping of) ‘The Andy Griffith Show,’ and the seriousness of the 1960s began with the first Kennedy-Nixon debate,” said DuMont, noting television until 1960 was largely defined by comedies, variety acts and game shows but little hard news. To air the 1960 debate, CBS bumped one of its most popular programs, “The Andy Griffith Show,” a lighthearted program about a sheriff raising his son set in a quaint North Carolina town. Some publications initially gave the vice president a slight edge, with The New York Times writing, “On sound points of argument, Nixon probably took most of the honors.”īut as the buzz grew about Nixon’s pallor and Kennedy’s vigor, most pundits identified the senator from Massachusetts as the clear winner – a strong enough verdict, say historians, to discourage Nixon from debating in 1968 or 1972.Īfter citing its support for Nixon, even the staunchly conservative Union Leader newspaper in Manchester, New Hampshire, concluded, “Frankly, we thought Nixon was clobbered.” “The American presidency is too great an office to be subjected to the indignity of this technique.” “The present formula of TV debate is designed to corrupt the public judgment and, eventually, the whole political process,” he wrote. Historian Henry Steele Commager, in a subsequent New York Times piece, said he hoped “TV debates will be eliminated from future presidential campaigns” after the 1960 affairs. Murrow said, “After last night’s debate, the reputation of Messieurs Lincoln and Douglas is secure.” One day after the Chicago encounter, CBS-TV newsman Edward R. Not everyone was impressed with the first debate or excited about the prospect that TV could change the face of politics. “After that debate, it was not just what you said in a campaign that was important, but how you looked saying it.” “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. The use of television to transmit an image or idea instantly to millions soon made presidential campaigns more of a spectator sport. The Nixon-Kennedy debates’ significance extended well beyond 1960. Senate candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas faced off in Illinois towns. The forums’ wide exposure and impact on the election made them perhaps the most renowned political debates since 1858, when U.S. ![]() 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. ![]() Kennedy was young and articulate and … wiped him out.”Ībout 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. “Then I saw the TV clips the next morning, and he … didn’t look well. Bob Dole, the GOP’s 1996 presidential nominee, recalled in a PBS interview. “I was listening to it on the radio coming into Lincoln, Kansas, and I thought Nixon was doing a great job,” former Sen. In a gray, ill-fitting suit and hastily added pancake makeup, Nixon looked – even if he did not necessarily sound – a pale shadow of the aggressive, composed senator from Massachusetts. He had just gotten out of the hospital, where he had lost weight after a knee injury. Nixon, on the other hand, appeared pale and a bit listless. Kennedy wore a dark suit and had a wide smile and vivid tan. Throughout the 60-minute program set in a Chicago TV studio, the 43-year-old Kennedy “looked to be radiating health,” said presidential historian Robert Gilbert. Kennedy a draw, with some giving the Republican contender the edge. On radio, most pundits and polls scored the September 26, 1960, debate between presidential candidates Richard M. ![]()
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