Ted Sorensen: When Kennedy Met Nixon: The Real Story
[Ted Sorensen was a special counsel, speechwriter and adviser to President John F. Kennedy.]
FIFTY years ago today, the “Great Debate” between Vice President Richard M. Nixon, the Republican nominee for president, and Senator John F. Kennedy, the Democratic nominee, attracted 70 million viewers — the largest audience in American history for any political event.
Six myths have persisted throughout the innumerable reports on this historic confrontation. As someone who helped Kennedy prepare and negotiate the terms for the Chicago debate, I’d like to set the half-century-old record straight.
1. “Nixon won on radio,” where the audience could not see his haggard, tense appearance (resulting from his recent hospitalization for a knee injury), his perspiration-streaked face and his nervously shifting eyes. My friend Herb Klein, Nixon’s press secretary, blamed television for Nixon’s defeat — to which I should have replied: “The fault, dear Brutus, was not in the stars, just one of them.”...
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FIFTY years ago today, the “Great Debate” between Vice President Richard M. Nixon, the Republican nominee for president, and Senator John F. Kennedy, the Democratic nominee, attracted 70 million viewers — the largest audience in American history for any political event.
Six myths have persisted throughout the innumerable reports on this historic confrontation. As someone who helped Kennedy prepare and negotiate the terms for the Chicago debate, I’d like to set the half-century-old record straight.
1. “Nixon won on radio,” where the audience could not see his haggard, tense appearance (resulting from his recent hospitalization for a knee injury), his perspiration-streaked face and his nervously shifting eyes. My friend Herb Klein, Nixon’s press secretary, blamed television for Nixon’s defeat — to which I should have replied: “The fault, dear Brutus, was not in the stars, just one of them.”...