Did Nixon Win???
Hard to believe, but with all the noise surrounding the current round of presidential “debates” we’ve heard many times that Nixon won the first televised presidential debate– among those who listened to it on the radio.
There is no doubt that Nixon looked terrible; Jack Kennedy looked great; Kennedy won the debate. For years this has been cited as proof that the presidential debates are heavily biased toward the candidate who looks good, is calm and collected, and comes across as a “nice guy.” Nixon was recovering from an illness (where have we heard that before?), looked shifty, and was visibly sweating, and that’s why he lost the debate. This has been gospel for over 40 years now, but it is only recently that we have heard the suggestion that those who listened to the debate on the radio awarded a victory to Nixon.
Was this said during the 1960 campaign, or is it just another example of debate gamesmanship/spin?
SG finds it just a little hard to believe. A lot of the earlier debates have been rebroadcast in recent weeks and we had occasion to review the 1960 Nixon/Kennedy matchup. Guess what– with the picture turned off, Nixon sounded as bad as he looked.
But here’s another factor that has been overlooked: the question “Who listens to the radio” was just as relevant in 1960 as it is today. There were clear demographic lines between TV owners and radio owners. And if you look at the demographic factors that are usually chosen to predict political party affiliation– age, income, education, religion, lifestyle (urban vs rural), etc.– you might be forgiven for expecting Kennedy to win among radio listeners, regardless of how the debate actually went. If you don’t like the apparent “results” of the current debates, you minimize them, trivialize them, call the debate a “prize fight” that is fun to watch but means absolutely nothing. Or say your candidate won in some other medium.
Funny, we are seeing a demographic technology war now– who wants to bet which side Internet users will lean toward?
Forty years from now the pundits will be saying that Candidate A won the TV debate but Internet users gave it to Candidate B. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
–SG
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