Video footage of the first 1960 Presidential debate between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon
The stage was set on September 26, 1960 with the current Vice-President Richard Nixon enjoying a slight lead in the race for President in the 1960 Presidential campaign. 88 million Americans now had television sets and nearly an estimated 70 million people turned into the evening debate between the young, relaxed and confident Senator John Kennedy and VP Richard Nixon.
From foreign policy to domestic issues, Kennedy and Nixon went at each other back and forth. After listening to the debate video, both candidates sounded wonky to me. They both went into each issue in depth listing statistics and factoids. Something that is missing from today's sound bite based debates full of zingers.
The standard myth is that Kennedy won the debate because Nixon was not willing to wear the proper makeup. Nixon's five o'clock shadow made him look old while Kennedy came across as young and confident. From the video, Nixon appears to have sweat streaming from his chin but I couldn't see any evidence of the so-called five o'clock shadow.
Who really won the first televised debate? The polls showed that after the debate Kennedy pulled ahead of Nixon slightly and of course went on to win a close election 303 to 219 electoral votes with only about 100,000 popular votes separating the two candidates.
5:24 PM PT: Interesting side note: According to a Time magazine article on the 1960 debate, radio listeners believed Nixon won the debate while TV watchers rated Kennedy as the winner.
http://www.time.com/...
5:26 PM PT: The Museum of Broadcast Communications also has some nice coverage of the 1960 debate.
http://www.museum.tv/...