I'm George Severis and I'm Julia Clair.

Happy New Year, Kennedy Sichos.

This is the United States of Kennedy, a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty.

Every week we go into one aspect of the Kennedy story, and today we are talking about the infamous nineteen sixty presidential debate between JFK and Richard Nixon.

Nixon was, of course President Eisenhower's vice president, and Kennedy was a charismatic, handsome young senator who was winning hearts and minds despite the Catholic question.

The Kennedy Nixon debate was the first televised presidential debate in American history, and if you went to high school in the US anytime in the last few decades, you likely learned that people who watched on television thought JFK won the debate, and people who listened on the radio that Nixon won.

But it isn't quite that simple, and that myth has actually been largely debunked by media scholars over the last few decades.

So to help guide us through this, we're joined today by Craig LeMay, Professor of US and Comparative Media Law, at Northwestern Universities Middill School of Journalism and co author of Inside the Presidential Debates They're Improbable past and Promising future.

Craig, Welcome to the United States of Kennedy.

Thank you so much for talking with us.

I think let's get right into some historical context here.

We were doing some research ahead of this episode, and we had a few sort of conflicting accounts of what presidential debates looked like before JF.

Kin Nixon.

So yeah, in our research document it says that largely speaking, the candidates themselves did not do a lot of the debating, and surgeons would do a lot of the debating.

But then I was thinking, because I remember years ago reading Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death where he talks about the famous Lincoln Douglas debates, and his whole argument was, you know, people used to have the attention span to watch these three hour live conversations, which seemed to be kind of in contrast with what we learned sure here.

So I'm wondering, as an expert on this, if you can walk us through a little bit, you know, before the television era, what debates looked like.

Well, first of all, there was no such thing as a golden era of debate.

You mentioned the Lincoln Douglas debates, and that era surrogates debated usually, And when Lincoln and Douglas debated, that debate was sponsored by the Chicago Tribune, and it was actually considered unseemly by a lot of people because they were campaigning for a Senate seat.

In those days, senators weren't elected by the popular vote.

They were appointed by state legislators.

So the idea that these two guys would debate seemed to many people, though not unseemly than just odd.

And of course people think Lincoln won and he lost the seat.

But also then, as was true throughout the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, debates were always part of other events, carnivals, shows, and they were a fur of popular entertainment.

I think it's great you referenced Neil Postman.

That's one of my favorite books.

I think it's worth a reread.

But people paid attention, that's true, and they were parts of other entertainment events.

And if you flash forward to nineteen sixty, the most remarkable thing about the nineteen sixty of Base vers is that they happened at all, because they wouldn't have happened if Congress hadn't have stepped in to make them happen.

Secondly, that was not just the first televised debate.

That was the first time in history presidential candidates met face to face.

It had never happened before.

Again, it was just something that candidates didn't do, and that was the role in the vice presidential debate in earlier period too.

The vice presidential candidates were the ones who would go fight it out on behalf of the guy further up the ticket.

Really.

Yeah, something that was mentioned when we were doing some research on this that we didn't quite look into, and I would love your take on is in nineteen fifty six, Sometimes this is called the first televised presidential debate, but it was Roosevelt versus Senator Margaret Chase Smith, and they were acting as surrogates for their candidates.

And I was shocked by the fact that in some ways the first televised presidential debate was between two women.

Were they actually in the same studio, because that's the other thing you often had debates what in fact, one of the Nixon Kennedy debates, I forgot which one one of them was in New York and one was in LA and the first one here in Chicago.

Of course they were in the same studio.

I can't remember anyway, the particular debate you're referring to.

But one of the other remarkable things about television debates in nineteen fifty six is the year that television penetration crossed that fifty percent mark in the United States.

Before that, most people didn't have television sets and they didn't get a signal.

And even in fifty six, if you had a signal because you were in a significant metro area, but I would be curious because they obviously were they candidates.

They were each acting as a surrogate.

That's interesting because the other thing that happens is people don't realize this.

One of the things that people always argue about is why is it only the two major parties to debate?

Why there are other parties?

And that's an interesting discussion we should have.

But the other thing that consider is that I don't know what the number was in nineteen sixty.

I used to know.

But every year there's hundreds of people who are legally registered candidates for president of the United States, and one of the tricks with the debates is always this is true not just the United States but every country that has debates.

Who gets the debate right, who gets invited?

And then there's a whole bunch of extra questions about is there any free time for candidates?

Can they buy time that the candidates get equal time?

What about third party candidates?

So I don't know about that.

This is a long way of saying I don't know about that fifty six debate you're asking me about, but I would be curious if they're actually you said it was television.

There were radio discussions and debates before that too, of course, but again you didn't have the candidate's meetia face to face until nineteen sixty.

That's really interesting, And I want to go back to something that you mentioned about Congress clearing the way for the nineteen sixty debate.

I think a lot of people don't know about that.

Could you explain that for us?

It's because when Congress wrote the nineteen thirty four Communications Act, there's a part of it it's called Section three fifteen, which is called the Equal Time Law, and it's still in a force and it says, at any time a qualified candidate for public office gets airtime.

Other candidates for the same office can claim the equal time.

And the way that originally work, believe it or not, was that anytime a candidate got so even in routine news coverage, other candidates could step up and say, well, hey, you had that guy in the news for five minutes.

And of course it's obviously Newsworth, you know, if you're an incumbent, cover what the incumbent's doing.

But then are you seriously expecting that we're going to give equal time to fifteen other people?

And so Congress eventually changed the equal time law to say it only applied to bonafide news programs, news interviews, documentaries, and things like that.

It specifically did not say debates, and so it wasn't clear that, you know, if you had a debate between the candidates, that you wouldn't have to provide equal time in some form or perhaps have other debates or invite the other candidates to the debates under the equal time rule.

So in order to make it work, Congress actually in nineteen sixty had a one time suspension of the law.

They just said not this year, and it made it possible for the Nixon candidates to happen.

Oh, I actually had the number here.

There are fourteen candidates for president in nineteen sixty So that's how they did it.

They did it, and then in nineteen sixty four, in fact, until nineteen seventy six, there were no more debates because Congress didn't change the law to include the word debates.

Johnson decided he didn't want a debate.

He told Congress, don't do this, and then Nixon didn't want a debate later because he had had a bad experience in nineteen sixty and so it it just took forever.

And then the way it finally happened is the FCC of Federal Communications Mission, acting really quite ingeniously and on its own authority, decided that debates were news events if they were sponsored by somebody other than the parties or the candidates.

And so you'll recall it was the National League of Women Voters for many years until nineteen eighty eight.

They sponsored the debates, and they did the best they could, and they were dealing with candidates who made life really difficult for them.

I mean, one of the things when people complain about all that's wrong with the debate, and there's plenty that's wrong with them.

The question has never been between great debates and not so great debates, is between having debates and having no debates, right.

And then there's this other question that people raise is that they're all a waste of time.

Anyway.

I don't believe that, as you could guess, it's the only time in the presidential campaign where you see the candidates side by side under circumstances they don't control.

Right, And I think the historical context that they used to be part of a carnival is especially salient because people love to talk about political media as you know, a circus, and it's like, well, that is literally its legacy.

There was originally an entertainment event as part of a carnival.

I wonder if we can talk a little bit about the media ecosystem of the time, what did television and radio look like, and political media especially look like.

What was the baseline onto which this debate was added, Because I don't know, we are just so used to the world now of cable news and TV personalities and even in the slightly previous era like Rush limbought type figures on the radio, But what did it look like in the fifties, let's say leading up to this debate.

First of all, I was born in fifty seven, so my personal knowledge of this is a little thin.

But of course the dominant media at the time would have been newspapers and including especially for news and political news.

And the newspapers in the United States largely panned the nineteen sixty debates.

They thought, I don't know what they thought.

They thought this was not serious business.

And of course in nineteen sixty now you have television much more widely penetrated around the United States, but you still only have what less than a handful of channels.

You have two or three.

You don't even have the UAHF channels.

By nineteen sixty, the educational UHF band comes along because of Newton Minno Kennedy's FCC chairman, and ABC is a fairly functioning network at this point.

ABC really cut its teeth on the Army McCarthy hearings about earlier in nineteen fifty four.

So it's really NBC and CBS, and of course, in those days, and you know, well into my lifetime, they were the gold standard for television news.

And of course they didn't make any money.

They weren't expected to make money.

That was also another different thing about there.

They were lost leaders for their networks, but they were part of the CBS's Tiffany brand, for example, part of what gave it that, you know shine, And that would have been true for Sarnoff over at NBC too, And they were very concerned.

You know, when the original idea for debates came along.

It happened because of Adalys Stevenson, who of course ran for President Whatt twice and got beat Sally twice, and he.

Didn't want a debate.

Is that Correk?

He was resistant?

Did that kind of guy?

He actually score on television?

He made some comment once, so I should back up Newton minnow my mentor, and I suppose the reason we're talking is because I worked for him for so long.

He was an agic senator.

Stevenson and Mino saw a great potential on television, as did his friend and his colleague on the campaign trail, Robert Kennedy.

And they had small children at the time, so they both envisioned the world in which television would be a much more vital resource and public education and elections and the rest.

Stevenson thought it was like selling soap, and it was beneath him to do this, but nonetheless his young aides prevailed upon him.

And the way it all happened is in nineteen fifty nine, Sunday Newspapers had a Sunday magazine supplement under various names.

I can't remember which one it was, but Stevenson published an article that Minno wrote urging it's the candidate time on the networks, and that the networks would give free time to each of the candidates to speak to the nation.

And the networks didn't really like that because they were afraid of setting a precedent where they would do this, and of course that would have required a waiver of Section three fifteen to two.

But the way Congress actually held hearings and they were led by Senator John Pest's story from Rhode Island, and the way it eventually worked out, I think Frank Stanton, the president of CBS News, really prevailed upon them here, was that we won't give them free time, but let's have a debate.

Let's do that.

It'll be much more entertaining, frankly, and he convinced Congress, and so that's why they had the debates.

But the idea came from this article that appeared under Stevenson's name in nineteen fifty nine.

So that was the media environment of the time.

And yeah, a lot of people watch this thing, and as you know a lot of people listen to it on the radio to this day.

Presidential debates when they air, if you take them together, they have audiences that rival major sporting events.

Not quite super Bowl levels, but if you're add it all up, it's quite extraordinary.

And of course let's assume we have presidential debates.

Ever again, I'm not at all confident that we will, because we really remember, the Commission for Presidential Debates got pushed out of the picture in twenty twenty four by the Biden campaign and they just completely sidelined the commission.

But these things are watched globally.

They just don't have a domestic artists.

They're watched all over the world.

And the other thing to note about these debates, I think that's really important about them is nobody in the world admires the Americans for the way they conduct presidential campaigns.

They're just an absolute blank show and they go on forever, yes, interminably, yes, and they cost godly sums of money, dark money and all the rest.

You know, a British campaign for Prime minister last what six weeks or something like this by a law.

I mean, it's one of those things that has an American you know, the American mind can't comprehend.

Nope, and it's exhausting for people.

But what they do admire because the United States is really the first country to ever have presidential debates, and it's partly because we were early to the poll with television in nineteen six or only you know how many countries that had television around the world, especially national networks.

But they did think these debates are a really cool idea, and so one of the things the Commission of Presidential Debates has done for years is train people from around the world and help them set up their debates under their own law.

Because those original questions I toosd at you about who gets the debate, who gets free time, who gets paid time?

Are their content restrictions on debates?

What about minority party candidates?

You know, in parliamentary system, that's a bigger deal than it is here.

In any event, everybody around the world has looked at the debates for all their problems and said, yeah, we should do that.

That's a good idea.

Yeah, And just to add some figures to what you were saying, the nineteen sixty debate was watched on television by seventy million people, seventy million Americans, and the population at the time of the United States was only about one hundred and eighty million people, So that is a huge swath of the population, probably as many people who has had TVs at the time.

We're watching the presidential debate.

We'll be back with more United States of Kennedy after this break.

And we're back with more United States of Kennedy.

So let's get into the debate itself, because it's this theoretical prompt that people use to make arguments.

But I realized in prepared for this, I don't actually even know what the main issues were, what the big questions were that.

I should have I mean, you can watch them on YouTube, and I should have gone back to watch them.

But I do know, for example, Vietnam didn't come up at all, right, okay, and said a couple of little Chinese islands did.

And the other thing is the candidates barely looked at each other, hm, at least in that first one in the CBS studios here in Chicago.

There are these basic things that are part of the mythology that has spread around this debate, where for example, jfk wore a dark suit and that made him look better on the TV set.

Nixon had a five o'clock shadow, and that made him look tired, he was sweaty.

All this stuff do you mind for anyone who might not even be aware of any of the narratives surrounding this debate.

Walking us through the main highlights, both substantial ones and surface level ones.

Well, let's start with the surface level ones.

Some of this is anecdotal, of course, and it's taken on a mythology of its own.

As you noted Nixon, of course, it was true he had a fever.

He was not well.

He also smacked his knee on the cab of the door when he was getting to the studio, so his knee hurt.

And to be fair, I mean, the guy was never in his life a capable television personality.

Kennedy was, of course very poised, very smooth.

The other thing I do know both had agreed not to wear makeup.

Kennedy wore makeup, Nixon declined it and of course it was offered to them by whoever does makeup in the CBS News studio.

And you know, in the days of analog television, you really needed to wear makeup or you would shine like a light bulb, right, And it was heavy makeup.

I mean when they took that stuff off, they soiled a towel doing it, but any of it.

Nixon wore no makeup and looked uncomfortable.

You can watch a little bit of the video and see how just uncomfortably looks.

Never mind you know, stories of perspiration or anything else.

So I think that's about all I know.

Re goding this superficial stuff.

Substantively, again, I think I'd have to go back and look there where it's going to be a fourth debate.

There never was.

I don't believe there was a vice presidential debate that year.

Gosh, I didn't check that, but I don't think so.

But again that substantively they were not that great.

Again, anecdotally, the person who wrote about this at great length is a former dean at Penn, Kathleen hall Jamison, and she wrote about the data around what you know, viewers saw and thought and all the rest.

But anecdotally, I recall, you know, many people thought, you know, kenn was still a dark horse.

Then you know, he's this Catholic guy running.

He's from this nobless, obliche family in Boston.

There's rumors about his family, some which are true.

And Nixon is a much better known personality.

And of course it was important in Chicago because this was, I think still is an overwhelmingly Catholic city.

And reportedly Kendy actually convinced a lot of voters in industrial centers like Chicago that he was a capable guy.

Because remember, as a senator, what was he in his first or second term?

Not especially strong political career behind him.

But you know, for all I can remember reading about those debates, almost nothing had to do with substance, and vicximp that it did.

It mostly incur the substance.

They did not talk about aspect all I can say on that subject.

Again, I would urge anyone who's genuinely concerned about this, you can go watch these on YouTube.

Hey, yeah, and our producer is sending us this message from Nixon's memoir, Yeah, he says.

The second debate was scheduled for October seventh, eleven days later in Washington, I knew I had to counter the visual impression of the first debate.

A four a day regimen of rich milkshakes helped me put on weight, and this time I agreed to use makeup.

That's great, that's great.

I do think it's true.

I mean, I do remember Nixon from my teenage years, and the guy was never a good performer on television.

You know.

One of the criticisms I suppose of that era was that it made television the essential medium for national politics.

And your criticism is that's not a good thing.

It goes to the deal postman God you open with that, it becomes more about entertainment values than substantive ones.

To this day, one of the harshest criticisms of the debates as either are not real debates and be mostly entertainment.

Right.

Well, both are true, but that doesn't mean they don't have.

Value, right.

And I think that the scene that we're setting in the nineteen sixty election was that Nixon and Kennedy were kind of each other's foils in a lot of ways.

For two white guys, they couldn't have been more different.

Nixon had famously always had a big chip on his shoulder about not growing up rich.

Not Plus, Eisenhower didn't thoroughly endorse.

Him, right, and he wasn't smooth in front of the cameras.

He was kind of a backroom dealer, and that's a way in which he was most effective, whereas Kennedy was a prep school New England, new money, very smooth, suave, poised, handsome, handsome man again, kind of everything that Nixon, I think, in his heart of hearts, wanted to be.

And there were obviously, as you mentioned, the Catholic question was a big one on people's minds, and Nixon had publicly been saying I don't have any worries about a Catholic being president, but behind the scenes he was stoking a lot of the anti Catholic interesting sentiment, and I think that putting these two men side by side on television together is a great representation of just how different they were.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's really one of those foundational media texts.

Yeah.

Yeah, Actually think many of the presidential debates are.

I mean, if you retard of class on this, you might start with nineteen sixty and then you have to go all the way forward to nineteen seventy six, where you have Carter and Ford, and Ford makes that famous remark about Poland not being under Soviet domination.

I think that's the year.

And then in nineteen eighty Jimmy Carter refuses to appear in the States with John Anderson.

And of course I think it's beginning in seventy six when Saturday eight Live does an uninterrupted series of its own presidential debates where Chevy Chase played Gerald Ford and you know, other SNL people came to play other presidents and presidential candidates.

And then of course flash forward in twenty twenty where the debates during COVID were kind of a disaster and that was the reason why, according to them, the Biden campaign just pushed the Commission aside in twenty twenty four, and Trump didn't like the Commission either.

Everybody on every side or the political divides has accused the Commission of being somehow biased or partisan.

Most of this is just not true, it's just demonstrably not true.

But they're an easy target to kick around.

And of course the Commission didn't exist in nineteen sixty.

I was about to say, yeah, I'm curious, while we're on the topic, what is the history of the Commission When was it founded and also who is it made up of and how do they ensure that it's not biased?

Well, first of all, it's often accused of being bipartisan.

That would be illegal under federal election law.

It is, by law non party, nonpartisan.

Right.

This is why, no matter what the Wall Street Journal thinks, you can't just have these things run by the campaigns of the parties, because the Commission specifically provides for third party candidates to participate if they have fifteen percent national support in their total of five national polls.

And you remember in nineteen ninety two, Ross Brow was in all three debates for that reason, and then he was excluded in nineteen ninety six as he had no support.

But the commission came about because the League of Women the voters just didn't have the clout.

The argument that the campaigns run the show was kind of true, while the League ran the debates because they didn't have the clout of first they even make these people show up.

You know, if you're an incumbent, it's not in your interest to debate.

And one of the reasons they happened in nineteen seventy six is because Gerald Wober's thirty two points behind Jimmy Carter, and he felt he had to debate, and Carter felt that nobody knew who he was and he had to debate.

And then Ford close.

He only lost the election by two or three points.

But after that, oh my gosh, the campaigns, they would negotiate all the terms on the most bizarre things.

A lot of this was political jockey.

You know, what color pencils would be on the electern, how tall would electns be, where would the water glasses be, who speaks first, what would the topics be?

And this is not how you want to have a debate.

And again the League kind of had to acquiesce in this because if they didn't, the candidates would walk right.

So in nineteen eighty seven there were two different studies.

One came from Harvard that was the one that Mino was a part of.

It came from the Kennedy Center, I believe, another one, I want to say it came from JOHNS Hopkins.

But then even both proposed some new organization to sponsored these base and so out of the Harvard report came the proposal for the Commission, which is established in ninety seven and organizes its first debate in nineteen eighty eight, and over time, the Commission really ran the show.

Was once true, but it's long in a month that the candidates choose the moderators, they choose the topics, they choose the timing, they don't choose anything.

They still issue memorandum understanding and pretending to negotiate about things.

That's just puffery, political puffery because it looks good for their constituents.

But the Commission really ran the show, and that including also very importantly choosing the moderators.

Right, And you know, I forgot what year it was.

It was what I think was the last year that the League ran the debate, so that would have been eighty four.

The two campaigns went to a list of one hundred and three people to finally choose a moderator.

Wow.

Yeah, So the commissions put an end all that.

We're going to take a short break, stay with us.

And we're back with United States of Kennedy.

I think one of the most pervasive myths about the nineteen sixty debate, something that I was taught in school in high school, was that if you watched it on TV, you've thought JFK one and if you listen to it on the radio, you thought Nixon one.

Where does this myths originate?

I don't know, but I'm going to guess there's no hard data on that.

I'm going to guess there were no social scientists who went out and did a scientifically credible poll to kind of figure this out.

I think this is anecdotal, and you've seen contemporaneous newspaper accounts saying this, so that what that means is journalists talk to people, which is swell, but it's hardly social science.

Yeah, and so it's believable if you've actually watched it.

I don't know if there's a place where one could go listen to the audio, but I think for many of us we've had the experience of washing event or listening to it, and it's quite reasonable to think that when you listen to event you cognitively process the whole thing differently than when you watch it.

I think it's a credible claim, but I don't think there's any data behind it.

And there's a couple of things.

Polling was just so much less accurate and so new than political pulling writ large.

And then the other thing, which is so obvious in retrospect, but historically even to this day, radio audiences are more conservative than television audiences in terms of like political content.

Is that because that's what the content is available on radio?

I mean, if I'm listening to politics on the radio, it's overwhelmenly conservative, at least on over the air, but even on satellite.

I think this argument might be true.

And this is true from what I understand, at least this is true from this era, through Rush Limbaugh, through a lot of religious radio stations, these right wing preachers, and so to your point about social science methodology, it seems like such an obvious confusion of causality versus what's.

The we'd actually have to talk to a social science researcher.

I think Kathleen Hall Jamison might be deceased, but you'd be the one to ask about this.

But I can't believe if he knew this was coming, that social scientists wouldn't have geared up an advance to kind of measure audience responses.

But maybe they didn't.

But I think to your point earlier about who had televisions might also be something of a hint here, because I think if obviously partisan demographics have shifted a lot, but in the more rural parts of America that might have been more conservative.

I think you would probably be much more likely to only have a radio versus a television.

Very possibly.

I mean when televisions first became a consumer device, they were stupid expensive.

I mean back then it was equivalent of buying a car.

The major driver for selling television.

So that's with sports like it still is.

And of course a lot of people watch television in places like bars and department stores where it wasn't your set.

It was almost a community set, right I think you know with respect to that, you mentioned radio.

The other thing to note that's changed over the years is the FCC long ago during the Reagae administration abandoned the fairness doctor.

That was what made rush Limbaugh possible.

You couldn't have had a guy like that on the air without a counter or the opposing point of view on Well, that's long gone, so we don't worry about that anymore.

And I was thinking about the fairness doctrine when you were talking about the equal time law, because it's a similar idea, somewhat similar.

The equal time law is still in effect, and it comes into play where you don't expect it.

When Trump ran for office in twenty sixteen.

He had to leave the Apprentice because that would have been considered candidate time.

If you appear on a late night talk show of anything that's not a bona fide news of that triggers at equal time provision.

And you still have third party candidates, some of whom you might not have ever heard of, who will make equal time claims based on candidate appearances.

So another point that our researchers have tapped into was that Nixon came across as much more polite.

Nixon was kind of on his best behavior during the debate.

Interesting, his entrain into political life, into public life was a little bit uncomfortable.

It was a little bit of a square peg in a round hole.

Yeah, and so he came across as very polite and stiff.

RFK in advising his brother told JFK kick him in the balls.

That sounds like RFK advice too, That right exactly.

I know.

Well, it's funny because their opposites, because Nixon is naturally uncharismatic and is trying to be so polite that it seems phony, whereas Kennedy is naturally charismatic and so is able to get away with being more aggressive because it only makes him seem more presidential in this way.

Although it's interesting because for the longest time, and well into the seventies and eighties, the wisdom for presidential debates was that you do not attack your opponent, You do not behave aggressively because that looks bad in front of the audience.

That's for the vice presidential debate, right, those guys, those guys can slug it out, but you're supposed to.

In fact, who was great concern about appearing Obviously this day is long past, but it was great concern about appearing aggressive or belligerent.

Yes, concern long pasture.

Correct.

Yeah.

The other thing is Kennedy talked to the audience, whereas Nixon addressed the camera.

Yes, the camera, which is such an obvious thing that I'm sure is now.

I don't think it is obvious even today.

If we take somebody who's never been in a television studio, they will tell you look here, look there, don't look here.

And I'm not sure he had that coaching.

And I'm not even sure there was an audience for that one in Chicago.

You just had the moderators, right, But you can see them when you watch the television, his eyes flitting around on certain word to park them right.

Yeah, Well, it's interesting saying in real time people figure out a new medium.

I mean, it kind of reminds me of when someone our age older trying to use a new platform like TikTok.

Because we grew up with different you know, we're not as natural as a sixteen year old speaking straight to camera.

Every medium comes with its own set of internal logic.

I think part of the reason people now are so cynical about televised debates is because there's now so much research about what the best way to come across is.

It seems even more phony when you see people just hitting their mark, you know, like there.

You know.

I mean the rap on President Trump is that he disregards all of this advice.

Yes, and his mark is his mark, and that this is his authenticity.

But he's also such a student of television.

That's that's the true a lot of.

Experience, really, I mean, there's a guy who, above all else knows how to be on TV.

That's sure.

Yes, it's his biggest talent.

Yes, yeah, you got me.

You're right.

So, speaking of Trump, you are a literal expert on presidential debates.

I want to know what is the legacy of this debate.

I mean it is, as you mentioned, one of the tent poles, one of the debates people talk about when they talk about the history of debates.

But how did it influence how candidates after nineteen sixty acted, how they attempted to stage manage debates, what they agreed to versus what they didn't agree to, how the networks approach debates.

Well, Akunn, you don't have a debate for six another one until for sixteen years till seventy six.

And again you have the league women voters, and you have the Commission, and the candidates, of course prepare for these things and they are told by the Commission with the general topics will be so foreign policy, domess up policy, the economy, whatever, but nothing beyond that.

The heyday of debates, in my view, was when, if you remember, Jim Larrr was the sole moderator.

He was the PBS guy.

He really ran them.

Well, I don't like journalists being moderators.

I think it's a bad idea.

Journalists have a strong incentive to make news and that's not necessarily in the service of the debate.

You might remember when Bernard Shaw famously asked Mike tcaccas, what do you do if his wife was raped?

And it was just meant to poke him in the eye.

You know, I thought that was horrible at the time, but mister Tacaccus told me several years ago that knowing, he thought that was a fair question.

But again, that's more about entertainment values than debates, So that's always been the tension.

I think the immediate question that concerns me is, well, we have debates.

Again, We only had debates in twenty twenty four.

Then they kick the commission aside, and the only reason he had was because the race was close.

But in a future election, we have, you know, more than eight to nine points separating the candidates.

If I'm the incumbent, I'm not debating.

I have absolutely nothing to gain and everything by lose.

You can't win a debate, but you can absolutely lose what Look at what appened to Joe Biden.

Look what appened to Rebac Obama in that first debate with Mitt Romney.

All of a sudden, Mitt Romney seemed like a progressive Republican and Obama was not very well prepared and stumbled all over himself.

So substance aside, they do matter.

So social science with them is that they confirm people and what they already think.

But if you ask the candidates themselves, from Nixon and Kennedy forward, all of them will tell you that they thought those debates made a substantial difference to the outcome of the campaign, and in some cases, I mean, obviously in twenty twenty four, it disrupted the campaign.

So the big question for me is wh we have them again, and if we do, who will sponsor them?

The network sponsored them in twenty twenty four.

The campaigns and the parties cannot sponsor them.

That would be illegal.

Yeah, although who you know is anything illegal anymore?

I don't know.

So the next presidential debate is sponsored by Turning Points to USA, That's right, exactly.

Yes, Well they could do that, by the way.

I mean, anybody can sponsor debate, you just have to be credibly nonpartisan from the FEC's point of view.

But I think that the network's obviously have sponsor to the primary debates for years.

I think one of the reasons the debate have gotten a bad name is because the primary debates are singularly awful.

Yes, yeah, you have fifteen people.

I say, that's not a debate.

That's the shouting match.

Yes, when you're asking fifteen kendidates to raise or lowly your hand or response to some prompt, Oh my, heaven'ts that's a disserviceable thing.

And I think the presidential debates of the tarnished as a result, and I think they're very valuable.

Other countries obviously think.

So there's other ways to do debate.

You could actually do an Oxford cell debate or a debate a specific proposition.

But we'll see.

I mean this, the nineteen sixty election was extremely close, as we all know, was decided by about one hundred thousand votes.

But I'm glad you brought this up, truly, because I think that's another part of the common misconception people have, just anecdotally, because there's this myth that, you know, JFK surprised everyone by winning the televised debate.

I think I grew up thinking that there was a landslide victory or something.

But as you're saying, it was very close.

Oh, I was just going to see if you thought that it made a big difference one way or the other.

To the outcome of the election.

Yeah, we can guess all day at that one.

But you know, there was also stories about Mayor Daily, you know, as he was want to do to fix the election in Chicago, right, so, and that Chicago was the difference.

I don't know, that's not my area, but yeah, very very close.

And whether the debates made a difference or not, I don't know what they did.

I mean, Kennedy went on to become the Camelot President.

He was the first true television president in his whole you know, Camelot family and the whole thing.

So that really does It's more important for the future of television perhaps than it is for the future of the presidential campaigns.

Yeah, I mean, we can argue all day about how important it was, but yeah, it's not a coincidence that the first, as you're saying, television president also happened to be young and attractive and charismatic and his wife was a fashion icon.

That they're going around and being interviewed by television reporters in other countries.

I mean, it can be overstated by people that want to make some sort of determinist argument about the power of television, but it is at least somewhat true.

When there's no area, I'm actually a lot less concerned than you know, what is the effect on the outcome?

Then I still believe that they're important in their own right, and so I always react.

I have skin in this game, so that note.

But I react always when I hear people dismiss these as entertainment, not important, a distraction from the real issues.

All those things are true to some degree.

But once again, this is the only place ever in the course of a presidential campaign where you see the candidates together and a venue that they do not control and having to answer questions unmaneously.

Yeah, and you know, also move on their feet.

That's what a president is supposed to do.

We want people who are in a tough situation from sort of like jab Perry, and you know, that's what they do.

And there's something to be said about how widely available it is.

I mean, going back to the Neil Postman's point about the Lincoln Douglas debates, I'm sure those are more substantive, but they also could not be watched by hundreds of millions of people at any given time.

I'm so glad you keep referencing posts and I've actually been meaning to reread that.

You know, it's really been in.

The ether, didn't you write it?

And partly in response to the Reagan presidency, I.

Think so, yes.

And it's funny, like there are interesting little ticks he has, like he loves criticizing Sesame Street.

He thinks that it is a bad thing, that it is training children to think that all education should be entertaining, which is so funny because now I don't know my little niece, for example.

If anything I'm pushing Sesame Street has an alternative to.

Things I think of, it is so much worse.

Yeah, paw Patrol exactly.

I will say, though, it's true that was always a criticism of Sesame Street that it also taught short attention spans.

Yes, but I was too old for Sesame Street, but my baby sister watched it.

It was the most watch television program in the world, and I don't know how many different languages.

But the perfect is the enemy of the good here in debates and in children's television.

I'm always on the side of the people who want to do the good and are less obsessed with the perfect.

Well, that's a great place to end.

If I've ever heard one.

Okay, thank you so much.

Yes, it's my pleasure.

It's been a lot of fun.

So that's it for this week's episode.

Subscribe and follow United States of Kennedy for all things Kennedy every week.

United States of Kennedy is hosted by me, Julia Clair and George Saveres.

Original music by Joshua Chopolski.

Editing by Graham Gibson.

Mixing and mastering by Doug Bame.

Research by Dave Bruce and Austin Thompson.

Our producer is Carmen Laurent.

Our executive producer is Jenna Cagel.

Created by Lyra Smith.

United States of Kennedy is a production of iHeart Podcasts.