Jeremiah Johnson
Dr. Wilson
October 20, 2004
Directed Study
Presidential Debates
Presidential debates are a modern television age creation. The nominees of the two major parties did not debate until 1960, when Republican candidate Richard Nixon faced challenger John Kennedy, the junior Democratic Senator from Massachusetts. This first debate helped Kennedy win the presidency because his youth and vitality showed through the television, and he seemed more energetic and enthusiastic than Nixon. Although the 1960 debates were popular with the public and broadcast nationally on network television, presidential debates took a hiatus until 1976. Their absence is due, for the most part, to incumbents refusing to debate and laws that required equal time for all presidential candidates, even minor ones.
Since 1976, the television networks have used an interesting loophole to get around the equal time law. The debates are sponsored by an outside group (currently the Commission on Presidential Debates) and the networks cover the event not as their own debate, but as an outside news story, which does not require equal time. The debates have been present in the presidential election process since 1976, and although their significance in each election is different, the debates always play an important role. In 1976, Jimmy Carter took advantage of Gerald Ford’s statement, “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.” The press ridiculed this statement and it may have helped Carter take the election. In 1988, Michael Dukakis deepened and cemented his image as a stiff, unfeeling politician when he answered the question “Would you support the death penalty if your wife were raped and murdered?” with a turgid “No.”
