Obituaries for Roger Ailes, who has died at 77, are likely to focus on Ailes' crucial role in the history of Fox News, the cable television network from which he resigned last year amid a wave of sexual harassment allegations, after having shaped it into a major force in American media and political life.

But before he managed Fox, he managed Richard Nixon, prepping the candidate for television interviews ahead of the 1968 presidential election.

As a 29-year-old, he was tasked with transforming the public image of a man about twice his age, the former Vice President whose pale and sweaty image during the 1960 presidential debate with JFK had significantly damaged that previous presidential run. Ailes "made Nixon into the media candidate he clearly was not in his saggy-jowled, I know what it's like to be poor days," as TIME put it in 1972.