When Kennedy Met Nixon: The Real Story
By TED SORENSEN
NYT
FIFTY years ago today, the “Great Debate” between Vice President Richard M. Nixon, the Republican nominee for president, and Senator John F. Kennedy, the Democratic nominee, attracted 70 million viewers — the largest audience in American history for any political event.
Six myths have persisted throughout the innumerable reports on this historic confrontation. As someone who helped Kennedy prepare and negotiate the terms for the Chicago debate, I’d like to set the half-century-old record straight.
1. “Nixon won on radio,” where the audience could not see his haggard, tense appearance (resulting from his recent hospitalization for a knee injury), his perspiration-streaked face and his nervously shifting eyes. My friend Herb Klein, Nixon’s press secretary, blamed television for Nixon’s defeat — to which I should have replied: “The fault, dear Brutus, was not in the stars, just one of them.”
For the second debate in Washington, Nixon’s handlers insisted on a cooler studio (it seemed to me below freezing!) and more Nixon reaction shots (which we welcomed). Radio listeners, too few in comparison to make a “win” meaningful, could still hear the vice president’s surprising reluctance to disagree with or even answer Kennedy on many points, instead dwelling on a boring comparison of Eisenhower’s and Truman’s statistics, in a futile attempt to present himself as a “new Nixon.” Like a college debater, he defensively addressed Kennedy, while Kennedy addressed the nation and its competition with the Soviet Union.
(More here.)
NYT
FIFTY years ago today, the “Great Debate” between Vice President Richard M. Nixon, the Republican nominee for president, and Senator John F. Kennedy, the Democratic nominee, attracted 70 million viewers — the largest audience in American history for any political event.
Six myths have persisted throughout the innumerable reports on this historic confrontation. As someone who helped Kennedy prepare and negotiate the terms for the Chicago debate, I’d like to set the half-century-old record straight.
1. “Nixon won on radio,” where the audience could not see his haggard, tense appearance (resulting from his recent hospitalization for a knee injury), his perspiration-streaked face and his nervously shifting eyes. My friend Herb Klein, Nixon’s press secretary, blamed television for Nixon’s defeat — to which I should have replied: “The fault, dear Brutus, was not in the stars, just one of them.”
For the second debate in Washington, Nixon’s handlers insisted on a cooler studio (it seemed to me below freezing!) and more Nixon reaction shots (which we welcomed). Radio listeners, too few in comparison to make a “win” meaningful, could still hear the vice president’s surprising reluctance to disagree with or even answer Kennedy on many points, instead dwelling on a boring comparison of Eisenhower’s and Truman’s statistics, in a futile attempt to present himself as a “new Nixon.” Like a college debater, he defensively addressed Kennedy, while Kennedy addressed the nation and its competition with the Soviet Union.
(More here.)
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