Or at least, certain perceptions of the first debate, which have themselves become the subject of debate.
At least, that’s the conventional wisdom about the Kennedy-Nixon debate of Sept. 26, 1960: that the images of the two men on TV mattered more than the words, rewarding the young, handsome Kennedy and punishing a perspiring, not-ready-for-primetime Nixon.
“Kennedy went on to narrowly win the election that most say he never would have had a shot at without that first debate,” TIME magazine declared in 2016, in a laundry list of the supposed greatest missteps in presidential debates. “Nixon’s fatal flub was in failing to recognize the power of the visual image.”
Max Frankel, then the executive editor of The New York Times, wrote several months after Nixon’s death in 1994 that “Nixon lost a TV debate, and the Presidency, to John F. Kennedy in 1960 because of a sweaty upper lip.”
Yes, Nixon perspired under the hot studio lights, but the truth is that few pundits at the time focused their commentaries on the Republican vice president’s appearance. In a revealing example of the impermanence of in-the-moment judgments, both candidates were described in the moment as seeming nervous and tentative. Some even said Nixon, who was still recovering from treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for an infected knee, got the better of the confrontation.
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