Launching what it calls its “Golden Anniversary Series” in the Newcomb Hall Ballroom at the University of Virginia on September 30, the UVA Center for Politics hosted a panel discussion on the Kennedy-Nixon presidential debates of 1960.
The near-capacity audience watched excerpts from the first of the four Kennedy-Nixon debates – the most famous of the series – and then heard comments from CNN analysts Alex Castellanos and William Schneider, as well as from Center for Politics director Larry Sabato.
In an interview after the program with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner, Sabato explained why the Kennedy-Nixon debates were unique up to that point in American history, and could have remained unique in the years since.
Was television necessary?
“There could have been a debate on radio just as easily” without the invention of television being necessary for the first-ever presidential debate, Sabato said, “but the candidates had been living in the tradition of the front-porch campaign or the whistle-stop campaign. There were other traditions” for campaigning that did not include face-to-face debates.
Sabato added that he could “certainly think of candidates who would have benefited from having even a radio debate. In fact, any challenger who was losing to an incumbent would have wanted any kind of debate” to take place in order to establish their credentials and credibility.
It was not until 1960, however, that there was “a circumstance where both candidates agreed it was in their interest to do it,” Sabato explained, in that both then-Senator John F. Kennedy and then-Vice President Richard Nixon thought that debating would be to their advantage.
Before then, Sabato asked, “Why would an incumbent president even go on the radio with a challenger? It would just elevate the challenger.”
Even in 1960, Sabato exclaimed, “the amazing thing is it ever happened -- and the second amazing thing is it ever became a tradition.”
Referring to the Gerald Ford-Jimmy Carter debates 16 years later, Sabato noted, “If we hadn’t had the second series of debates in 1976, I think we’d still be talking about ‘that extraordinary 1960 debate series that has never been repeated.’ So thank goodness we got two presidential campaigns within 16 years that enabled us to establish this new standard for campaigns.”
Golden Anniversaries
Professor Sabato explained how this program on the Kennedy-Nixon debates fits into the Center for Politics’ Golden Anniversary Series.
“The reason we’ve chosen to look back at events that are 50 years old,” he said, is that “some of the principals are still living, but they’re approaching the end of their lives. I think they’ll be inclined to be honest about what they’ve seen. And there’s a certain perspective supplied by 50 years that you can’t get any other way.”
The attractiveness of looking back at such events, he suggested, is perhaps because “it’s a ‘golden oldie’ after 50 years.”
Sabato noted that there is currently “great interest in the Sixties and Seventies” – the years of Vietnam, Watergate, domestic unrest, economic uncertainty, and sinking confidence in government.
“We’re just starting this” project, Sabato said, but “for the next 20 years we’ll have, gosh, hundreds of events.”
The Golden Anniversary Series melds into the overall mission of the Center for Politics, Sabato added, “because we’re all about civic education.”
Reliving these events, he said, “enables us to teach people about the basics, the fundamentals, of American government.”
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