Re-Viewing the '60 Debates

"The revelation of any man comes through flashes of light." So said CBS President Frank Stanton before a journalism group in 1960 as he analyzed the Kennedy-Nixon TV debates of that year. It is a remark worth recalling as the Ford-Carter debates of 1976 approach. While it has become fashionable to belittle the first televised clash of major presidential candidates, the 1960 debates did illuminate important personal qualities of the two men--more so, in fact, than anyone realized at the time.

The flashes sometimes came as the cameras cut away from the candidate who was speaking to focus on the other's reaction. In the first debate, a grim Nixon, his features taut, avoided looking at his adversary, and his eyes darted warily about the studio. As Nixon spoke, a seemingly relaxed Kennedy looked directly at the nervous Vice President.

Sometimes the revelations came in the candidates' words. One of the newsmen quizzing the candidates asked Kennedy if he owed Nixon an apology for former President Harry Truman's remark that those who vote for Nixon and the Republican Party "ought to go to hell." Kennedy replied lightheartedly: "I really do not think there is anything that I can say to President Truman that is going to cause him, at the age of 76, to change his particular speaking manner. Perhaps Mrs. Truman can, but I do not think I can."

Nixon, by contrast, seized on the topic to proclaim: "I see mothers holding their babies up so that they can see a man who might be President ... It makes you realize that whoever is President is going to be a man that all the children of America will either look up to or will look down to. And I can only say that I am very proud that President Eisenhower restored dignity and decency and, frankly, good language to the conduct of the presidency of the United States." The Nixon tapes, of course, later showed just how self-righteous that statement was.

Kennedy went into the debates as an underdog to Nixon. The boyish-looking Senator was widely seen as an attractive but inexperienced and unpresidential lightweight. Nixon had hoped to show him up as a rich political playboy. But the self-assured Kennedy tossed off facts and statistics with ease, demonstrating that he was every bit as knowledgeable as his opponent.

If Kennedy's confidence and competence went a long way toward overcoming his underdog status, Nixon's drawn appearance in the first debate probably helped even more. Nixon had learned that Kennedy planned to wear no makeup. Before CBS Producer Don Hewitt had a chance to explain that the deeply suntanned Kennedy really did not need any makeup, Nixon rejected an offer of professional cosmetic help from the network. Instead, Nixon had his own makeup man apply Lazy Shave, a light pancake makeup, for the famous 5 o'clock shadow. Yet even a poor makeup job does not wholly account for his pale, sickly appearance in the first debate. As Ted Rogers, Nixon's radio and TV technical adviser, later explained, "No TV camera, no makeup man can hide bone-weariness, physical fatigue. He was actually sick. He had a fever."

Four one-hour debates were held, in Chicago, Washington, then an innovative split-screen appearance with Nixon in Los Angeles and Kennedy in New York City, and a final joint presentation from New York.

The first debate was on domestic issues. Each candidate made an eight-minute opening and a three-minute closing statement and fielded questions from network correspondents in the interval. Each debater was also allowed to comment on the other's answers. The two middle debates consisted of answering questions on any topic posed by reporters. The final debate was similar to the first but was confined to foreign policy.

The networks went to great lengths to give the candidates equal technical treatment. The separate lenses trained on the two were perfectly matched. ABC, which handled the split-screen debate as well as the final one, constructed two identical, fully furnished cottages in its largest New York studio so both men could prepare in comfort. The background cloth for the split sets in New York and Los Angeles was bought by ABC from the same mill. After the set was painted in New York, cans of the same paint were taken by Production Service Director Fred Schuhmann in an airplane to Los Angeles, to be used there.

For the first debate, CBS constructed an entire set in New York, shipped it to Chicago, repainted it to darken the background, then spent 200 man-hours reviewing the set, painting it once more, building new furniture and restitching the green carpeting for the candidates' platform. At air time an estimated 700 technicians, reporters, television executives and candidates' staff members jammed the WBBM-TV building in Chicago. The network said it spent $633,000 on the production. The producers kept trying to move the candidates closer together than they wished; ABC did best, placing their lecterns just six feet apart.

The chief continuing dispute between the contenders was over the temperature in the studios. Nixon wanted it low to check his tendency to perspire. Bobby Kennedy spoofed the problem at one point by walking into NBC's Washington studio, pulling his sweater up to his chin and waving his arms to increase circulation. For the split-screen debate, temperature was no problem: Nixon had his Los Angeles studio chilled to 58DEG; a continent away, Kennedy enjoyed a more normal environment.

The on-screen argument between the candidates was less than edifying at the time and now echoes with irony. A disproportionate amount of time was taken up by the tiny Nationalist Chinese islands of Quemoy and Matsu, some five miles off the mainland Chinese coast. Nixon argued that they should be defended by the U.S. against any Communist attack; Kennedy insisted that they should be defended only if assaulted in a clear prelude to an invasion of Taiwan, some 100 miles across the Formosa Strait. Also argued excessively was the issue of U.S. prestige. Kennedy contended that it had fallen dangerously throughout the world, while Nixon claimed that it was "at an all time high."

The Nixon who was later to break historic ground by opening personal diplomacy with Communist China argued in 1960 that "the international Communist movement" was a threat to freedom posed by "the most ruthless fanatical leaders that the world has ever seen." Kennedy sounded almost as much the cold warrior. The election of 1960, he said, might well determine "whether the world will exist half slave or half free, whether it will move in the direction of freedom ... or in the direction of slavery." Kennedy deplored the "loss of Cuba" to the Communists and foresaw further Communist gains in Indochina. Nixon, colossally wrong as events turned out, claimed that "the civil war" had ended in Indochina and that South Viet Nam was "a strong, free bastion."

Though the oratory seemed strained, public interest was huge. Estimates vary, but CBS reported soon after the debate that the average number of Americans viewing the four debates was 71 million; that 101 million different individuals watched at one time or other; that nearly 90% of all families with television sets tuned in; and that the average family stayed with each debate for 54 minutes of the hour.

Analyzing the reaction of that vast audience, most of the researchers conclude that Kennedy gained the most, although not necessarily on the merits of his arguments. Radio listeners, for example, sometimes rated Nixon as having done better. On TV, Kennedy was generally seen as the clear winner of the first debate, a narrow loser of the third, while the other two meetings were tossups. In the Gallup poll, Kennedy picked up three percentage points after the debates and Nixon one, as the number of undecided voters declined. The net effect was to pull Kennedy from one point behind Nixon to one point ahead. Since Kennedy finally won the election by only .2%, any gain at all was critical.

Whatever the impact in votes, the debate format provides an instantaneous comparison of how two candidates react under the intense pressure of circumstances they cannot control or precisely anticipate. The face-to-face meeting also ensures that millions of voters--who normally would listen at length only to the candidate most likely to please them--find themselves irresistibly tuned into the other candidate as well.

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