Countdown 1960 by Chris Wallace

Author:Chris Wallace [Wallace, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780593852200
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2024-10-08T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

The idea of broadcasting presidential debates had taken hold months earlier—well before Nixon and Kennedy became their parties’ candidates.

It took congressional action to make it happen. Section 315 of the Federal Communications Act of 1934 required broadcasters to allow political candidates equal time to present their views. Democrats and Republicans would have to share the debate stage with third-party candidates, and the events would drag on for hours—unthinkable within the tightly programmed TV format.

Congress passed a resolution to suspend the rule in late July, and Eisenhower signed it on August 24.

Television had brought new awareness and enthusiasm to the political process. In 1950, around 10 percent of the nation’s families owned a television. Now, in the fall of 1960, more than 90 percent of American families owned at least one set, a total of some 50 million TVs. The average American watched four to five hours of television every day.

And the Kennedy-Nixon face-off had the potential to be riveting. Both were experienced debaters. In fact, they had squared off long before, in 1947, when they were first-term members of the House of Representatives.

During their early days in Congress, they were appointed to the Education and Labor Committee.

In April 1947, they traveled by train to McKeesport, Pennsylvania, to debate the pros and cons of the Taft-Hartley Act, a law designed to significantly reduce the power of organized labor. The legislation would prohibit certain kinds of strikes and give workers the option of joining a union instead of forcing them. It had already passed the House and was before the Senate.

A coal-and-steel town of about 45,000 people outside Pittsburgh, McKeesport was the perfect location to debate the issue. The United Steelworkers, one of America’s most powerful unions, was based in Pittsburgh.

A civic group sponsored the debate at the Penn-McKee Hotel. They picked Nixon and Kennedy because they were considered rising stars in their respective parties. No surprises. Nixon spoke in strong support of the bill; Kennedy was opposed. Most of the pro-union crowd seemed to favor Kennedy, who’d later admit that Nixon won that debate: “The first time I came to this city was in 1947, when Mr. Richard Nixon and I engaged in our first debate. He won that one, and we went on to other things.”

After the debate, they headed to a local diner, where they bonded over burgers and baseball. Then they dashed off to the train station to catch the eastbound midnight train to Washington. They shared a compartment and had to flip a coin for who got the lower bunk; Nixon won that, too. Thirteen years later, they were together again on the debate stage, this time competing for the most powerful office in the world.

In midsummer, just before the start of the GOP convention, Robert Kintner, the president of NBC, had approached them about a debate, saying he’d reserved up to nine hours in prime time for a series of presidential debates. Would Kennedy be interested?

“I know the decision was made in 15 to 20 minutes that we should send a telegram to Kintner saying we accepted,” Salinger recalled.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.