Heather Cox Richardson:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Now & Then. I’m Heather Cox Richardson.

Joanne Freeman:

And I’m Joanne Freeman. Today we’re going to be talking about a topic that very recently was in the news and is going to be in the news again and again looking forward to next year and the oncoming presidential election. And that is the topic of presidential debates. On Wednesday, August 23rd, eight candidates for the Republican nomination debated in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in an event that was sponsored by Fox News. And the candidates were Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, 38 year old pharmaceutical executive, Vivek Ramaswamy, former Vice President Mike Pence, former UN Ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, former New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson.

And as we certainly all know from one way or another now that former President Trump did not participate in the debate. Before the debate, he was up around 46 percentage points in Republican primary voter support from his nearest challenger Ron DeSantis. And so he declined to participate in the debate and of course had much to say about why he didn’t need to participate in that debate. And we’ll be addressing in this episode some of why people do or don’t or should or shouldn’t participate in these kinds of debates.

Heather Cox Richardson:

So this particular debate was a really interesting one because of course it was a primary debate and it was a debate in which the people who were on stage are all running so far behind Trump, who’s the front-runner that it seemed like Hamlet without Hamlet there, if you will. So that brought up the point of these people debating and the point of Trump not debating and what it says to the American people that these other candidates were theoretically supposed to be arguing about whatever one argues that a debate. Crucially, there was a moment in the debate when the moderator, Brent Bayer asked each debater to raise their hand if they would support Trump, if he were the Republican nominee. And all of them except Hutchinson raised their hands. Although Christie later clarified that he was in fact lifting a finger to say that he would not, but he wanted to explain why he would not.

Joanne Freeman:

There were a couple moments during that debate that just made you catch your breath. Equally remarkable to me was the fact that they were asked to raise their hand if they believe in climate change and they didn’t.

Heather Cox Richardson:

What really jumped out to me about that particular debate is the degree to which it was performative. That is, I don’t feel like we learned anything new there at all. What we saw were a number of people who were trying to appeal to Trump’s base and yet provide an alternative to Trump should something happen to him. But he really was the elephant in the room. And that kind of begs the question of what is the purpose of debates in today’s political scene? And also I think harks back to the way that Trump used debates in what really was a very new way in 2016 and 2020, in a way that to me is different not only by the way he acted, but also because debates nod to the idea that we voters get to have a sense of what’s going on in the heads of the people we’re electing to office. And instead in 2016 and 2020, Trump used debates as a way to dominate, as a way to demonstrate the way that he would govern and as what was really a rejection of democracy rather than participation in it.

Joanne Freeman:

Right. I mean, particularly in lurking behind Hillary Clinton in that one memorable debate, you could argue he was using technology and media in a different kind of a way. He was debating, I suppose you could say, with his presence, it’s worth thinking about what it means to participate or not participate. And then if you participate, what are you saying with your presence and what you’re doing? I mean, the simple fact that we started out by talking about people raising their hands, whether they do or don’t believe in something is pretty striking. That would be hard put to define that as debate. That’s categorization.

Heather Cox Richardson:

I do think though it’s important to take a look briefly at least of the way Trump used that debate stage as a performance because you pointed to that incredible, I can still see it in my head, that incredible debate with Hillary Clinton where he was very deliberately using his physical presence. He’s a big man using his physical presence to intimidate her. And she remembered what that was like in her book, what happened in 2017, in which she said, “It was one of those moments where you wish you could hit pause and ask everyone watching. Well, what would you do? Would you stay calm, keep smiling, and carry on as if he weren’t repeatedly invading your space? Or do you turn, look him in the eye and say, loudly and clearly, back up, you creep. Get away from me.”

Joanne Freeman:

And of course there’s a visceral response to that statement of hers, right, that some part of you, because of the power of that image and the ways in which it was so stalking is what it looked like, is what it felt like. That certainly for me, some part of me was yearns in that situation for the person being stalked to turn around and say back up. But again, this is a public performance of sorts. And on his part, what he was doing was certainly novel, but that put her in an interesting and novel situation. And also the fact that she was a woman tangled that further as to how she should or shouldn’t respond.

Heather Cox Richardson:

The other thing that jumps out since then is in 2020 and the 2020 debates in that debate where Trump tried to dominate Joe Biden and clearly was trying to get him to stutter and to lose his composure. That was another really interesting moment where if you remember, that’s the one where he directly addressed the Proud Boys, the far right hate group. When asked to disavow them, he told them to, “Stand back and stand by.” And the thing about that of course, is that they did in fact stand back and stand by and they turned up when they were called to come to Washington DC on January 6th, and a number of them are now serving quite long jail terms. So there’s some degree to which the things that Trump would say and then try and walk away from, we know now you absolutely have to accept that it’s not just a performance, it’s a warning about what’s coming.

Joanne Freeman:

Well, and in that case, that was a direct address to a public who heard it and responded. So in a way, we’re going to be talking throughout this episode about performance versus content and impact. There’s a case in which one could argue more than anything else, he was displaying who he wanted to appear to be as a leader. But boy, he appealed to a certain public effectively with that one comment which still, “Stand back and stand by,” a sort of zinger phrase that’s now attached to Trump.

Heather Cox Richardson:

So this whole idea of debating and appealing to the public and certain publics doesn’t really start until 1858. So why don’t we jump right into the Lincoln Douglas debates.

Joanne Freeman:

No, no, no. Now, that’s actually normally the opposite of what you do, whether you normally are like, “Let’s look back at early America,” and you just go, “Joanne.”

Heather Cox Richardson:

Well actually we’re going to end up there because I was actually really interested when we were prepping for this to hear your take on early appeals to the public. ‘Cause I guess I’d never really thought about how lawmakers or hopeful lawmakers did that in the early republic and why it may or may not have been scandalous.

Joanne Freeman:

The fact of the matter is as much as public opinion mattered in the new American Republic, it was a huge issue.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Just stop right there. Say that again because we take it so for granted. But of course in a monarchy, popular opinion only matters in sort of the general Machiavellian sense, well, you got to keep people happy enough that they don’t come cut off your head.

Joanne Freeman:

Correct. And that was from the very beginning, something that the founding generation was very aware of, that in a monarchy public opinion does not matter in the same way that in the new American nation, it was going to matter to an extreme degree that whatever happened. It was one reason why Americans in this period thought that the press was so important because it would take things to the public so that they could have their opinion be informed and shaped. But what this meant was that throughout this sort of early period, people were on the one hand saying, “Public opinion matters here. It’s why we’re something different. We’re small r, republican government, we are democratic republic that appeals to the people.” On the other hand, who is the public? How does one appeal to them? And even should we be directly appealing to them? It’s one thing to say public opinion matters.

It’s another thing to say we should be personally appealing to the public. And that latter instance, the idea that politicians in some way or another should be appealing to or speaking directly to the public was not something that was really accepted. Hamilton at one point branded it in all capital letters, “VANITY.” “It’s appealing to the vanity of the people. The people like to think that they’re being spoken to, but we shouldn’t be doing that. We should be spreading our message around and the people should be judging us based on our message and what we represent and not based on personal appeals to the public.” And you can see a handy example of how shocking it appeared for people, particularly high political elite people, to address the public in what took place during the presidential election of 1800. There you have the fact that in the presidential election of 1800, which everyone recognized as a kind of key moment when some fundamentals about the nation might be decided as in what direction was the nation going to go something that was a little more small d, democratic or was it going to stick more…?

I know every time I say small r or small d, I want to laugh because you and I spent a lot of time saying that, but that’s because when we teach and when we speak, people always hear it with the capital letter. So was the nation going to move in a more Jeffersonian direction and be more democratic, small d, or was it going to stick with federalists and be in that sense a lot more aristocratic. 1800 people recognized was going to help push the nation in one direction or another, and New York was going to be a really key state in deciding the election. And so there you have Aaron Burr, who actually is a vice presidential candidate, and Alexander Hamilton, who’s a, if not the leading federalist in New York, decide that they themselves actually are going to go from polling place to polling place and debate. And as people described it at the time-

Heather Cox Richardson:

At the polling places.

Joanne Freeman:

At the polling places, literally.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And does the election last for a single day?

Joanne Freeman:

No, in New York City it was actually three days. So it was over a three-day period. The two men argued what at the time were called the debatable questions before large groups of people at the polling places. One would stand up on some platform of something… Make a platform of something and speak about what he thought the pressing issues are, and then would politely step down and the other person would step up and he would respond in turn. And they went from polling place to polling place, having these weirdly not really planned, but far more public and far more directly engaged with the public than what people had seen before. And the press at the time was stunned on both sides. So for example, a federalist newspaper seeing this, The Daily Advertiser said, “How could a would be vice president stoop so low as to visit every corner in search of voters?”

And a republican newspaper, The Commercial Advertiser said that there was a, quote, “Astonished electorate greeting these kinds of efforts.” Particularly they were stunned at Hamilton, who was certainly not Mr. Democracy running around as well, debating and trying to engage people one by one on the street. The Commercial Advertiser said, “Every day Hamilton is seen in the street hurrying this way and darting that. Here he buttons a heavy hearted fed,” federalist, “And preaches up courage. There he meets a group and he simpers in unanimity again to the heavy headed and hearted he talks of perseverance and God bless the mark of virtue.”

So these two men for three days are running around in the streets, debating each other in a semiformal way at polling places and then just trying to engage with the voters. Supposedly at one point, Hamilton arrives at a polling place on a horse and is actually pulled off of his high horse. May or may not have actually happened, but certainly there are people who describe it having happened. So on the one hand, they’re engaging with the public to make a point. On the other hand, no one gets past the fact that these are elite politicos who are gasp among the public, appealing to them directly. That was really not the norm.

Heather Cox Richardson:

I’m sorry, I’m back here. Not only on the fact that that is such a shocking thing, but also that these two men who are linked in history for all time because one of them shot and killed the other, were running around opening up the concept of debating before the public. I just had no idea.

Joanne Freeman:

Maybe not opening it up, but certainly practicing it in a way that people were stunned by, well, this has to do with the small world of politics too, in this time period, they practiced law cases together. They were at the same parties, they were elite politicians in New York City. So it was a relatively small world. So in that sense, this makes perfect sense. But you’re right, the only thing we really know about them in conjunction with each other is the fact that one killed the other, which is kind of on the other end of the spectrum as far as they’re getting along with each other or not.

Heather Cox Richardson:

It’s just so funny to me to hear them described as politicians going about their daily lives, riding horses, talking to people, doing everything, when in fact, since we know how the story comes out, it’s bizarre. And one of the things that always surprises me about history is that time isn’t really even fully one dimensional because you can’t go forward and backward. You can only go forward. So to be able to look backward and say, dude, run, he’s going to kill you. I’m listening to you talk about them doing this and going to place to place. And I’m thinking, Al, hit the road.

Joanne Freeman:

Oh man, I can promise you if there’s something that man was never called in his entire life, it was Al.

Heather Cox Richardson:

But if I could go back, you know. So if the idea of appealing to the public is beginning to be popular in the early republic after 1800, and I think that really is a sign of the opening up of the-

Joanne Freeman:

But let me phrase that a little way. It’s beginning to be attempted not to be accepted. So many things, and it’s one of the things that fascinates me about this early period. They have a need to do something and they’re not sure how to do it, and they try something out and they’re not sure how they feel about it and they’re not sure how it’s going to play. And looking back from our point of view, we’re like, well, of course they appeal to the public, or of course they needed a party mechanism to spread pamphlets or whatever. There are things that now we take for granted that political parties and political organization can do, that they didn’t have and that they didn’t do.

And what you see in New York as an example of that is people just addressing the moment and responding to a need and a feel of urgency and doing something. And it wasn’t that necessarily people said, “That’s a brilliant idea,” but it was a change and it was a movement towards what increasingly people would understand was necessary.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Well, so if they begin to open that door in 1800, the idea that politicians should interact with the public, that really foreshadows what’s going to happen in the 1830s and then in the 1840s when there is so much of an opening up of what we would now call democracy, small d democracy and the need to appeal to people the way that presidents like Andrew Jackson did. But that brings up a new approach to debates in 1858 with Abraham Lincoln, who’s candidate for the Senate in Illinois, and Stephen Douglas who is the sitting senator in Illinois who is hoping to be reelected. And it’s important to remember when we talk about the Lincoln Douglas debates of 1858, that in fact in those days before the 20th century, senators are elected by the state legislature.

So when we talk about the Lincoln Douglas debates and about how they’re about a Senate seat from Illinois, Lincoln and Douglas are not actually running to get votes for literally for themselves from the people, but rather to get their candidates of their party to dominate the legislature. Because if they can do that, then they will in turn be elected. So in 1858, Douglass is the democratic candidate for reelection in the Illinois Senate, and he is the person who’s trying to articulate a vision of democracy that says that what really makes somebody a democrat, I’m sorry, small d democrat in the United States, is that they believe in local government. So long as people at the state level vote for a policy, that policy should be the one that’s in place, even if the Congress, which represents the whole of the country, wants to do something else.

And of course what this is really coming down to, especially in the American South, is the issue of human enslavement. And also though it’s worth pointing out that this also is tied up in the issue of taking over land from indigenous Americans in especially the southern states. So this idea of popular sovereignty, the idea that the people get to decide is the idea that Stephen Douglas is pushing in 1858 at a time that really matters. Because in 1854, Congress has gotten rid of the prescription that you can’t have enslavement in the lands above the Missouri Compromise Line, which runs to the south of Missouri. And the Congress has said, “No, no, no, no. Congress is going to go ahead and let enslavement be established in those parts of the old Louisiana purchase that are above that line.” And then in 1857, the Supreme Court has gone further with the Dred Scott decision and said that in fact, Congress has no power to legislate in the territories.

The idea is popular sovereignty that people get to vote on whether or not there’s enslavement in the territories that are eventually going to become states. What that means is that so long as an enslaver brings even a single enslaved human being into one of those territories or states because of the constitution which protects the right to property and human beings are property in this period, that state is going to have to become a slave state. And what that will do is it will enable enslavers to take over first the entire American West, but then as well the West and the South together will have enough votes to overall the free states in the union.

So what they’re really arguing about with the issue of popular sovereignty is whether the majority of people in the United States who have the control of the House of Representatives in this period, whether they are going to be able to maintain states that do not honor enslavement in the face of this expanding what Lincoln is going to call slave power. All right, so if that’s the background worth pointing out that Steven Douglas was a short little guy, very famous as an orator, very profane, wildly profane, I have to say. Lincoln is tall, not known at the time as an orator, although he’s going to become known as an orator with a high squeaky voice. And that’s a little bit of a problem because his voice isn’t going to carry as far as Steven Douglas’ is. Most people don’t… You didn’t hear that, Newbie goes beep.

Joanne Freeman:

I heard a little squeak actually that time. He’s just doing his Lincoln impersonation.

Heather Cox Richardson:

I was going to say maybe Newbie is Lincoln reincarnated. So Lincoln is trying to steal Stephen Douglas’s thunder, and Douglass starts to make these speeches around the state in 1858 in which he is going to try and get people elected to the legislature to support him going forward. And Lincoln starts to go along behind him and give speeches following Douglas because Douglass is a famous enough guy that all these people are coming in to hear him speak, coming in from their farms or wherever where not much goes on. There’s a famous guy speaking, we’re going to show up and hear him. So then Lincoln starts speaking afterward and Douglas starts to grumble about it. But Lincoln’s people go to the Douglas people and say, “You know what we should really do? Why don’t we have them debate each other?” Douglas has no interest in debating Lincoln. Douglas doesn’t want to give Lincoln a platform because no one’s going to show up to listen to Lincoln. They’re going to show up to listen to Douglas.

Joanne Freeman:

It’s worth noting too, that part of what Lincoln is doing here at the very same time that as you say, Heather, they’re running for Senate and so they’re trying to get people to vote the right people into the state legislature. So that will affect who gets into the Senate seat. But Lincoln is also promoting himself because he’s an up and comer. He belongs to a party that’s an up and comer. Part of why he really wants this to happen is it will help him and his party regardless of what happens in the election.

Heather Cox Richardson:

So Douglas though recognizes that if he doesn’t agree to debate Lincoln, he’s going to look like he’s chickening out because Lincoln is very much on the rise. So he agrees to give these debates with Lincoln, and they are of course what put Lincoln on the map as a candidate for the Illinois Senate. But they’re also what really puts Lincoln on the map as a national political character.

Joanne Freeman:

I just want to add one point because I’m always interested in honor and reputation in politics. Lincoln supporting newspapers explicitly said Douglas would be a coward if he refused to take part. So it wasn’t even that he was afraid of being seen as cowardly. The Lincoln people said, “All, right, okay, you don’t want to take part, go ahead, but boy, you’re going to really seem like a stinking coward.” And again, that in and of itself would’ve had some play, and that was something that both Lincoln and his people and Douglas and his people would’ve realized the power of. And that’s what ultimately helps lead to what we now know as the Lincoln Douglas debates is that for Douglas, he didn’t want to take part, but he felt that he had to, for Lincoln, boy, it was going to be helpful in any number of ways no matter who won that election.

And so you do get ultimately a series of debates. It’s worth saying this time period is really the age of oratory. So these debates in a way that is totally foreign now, these debates took roughly three hours in which one would say something and then the other one would say something, and there might be again a response back and forth. But people would stand in an audience and there were massive numbers of people at these debates and would listen for three hours to the points going back and forth. It’s a real debate as opposed to what we’re going to talk about soon, which are less than real debates. And it had an audience that was listening, some of average Americans listening, and of course reporters.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Well, and what’s interesting too about that is that the audience is yelling, they’re heckling, they’re laughing, they’re cheering. It is also a real demonstration on Lincoln’s part of a belief in, sorry, small d democracy that he’s willing to go into what are hostile audiences because they are, for the most part, hostile. Of course, the democrats are going to win this election and talk essentially, although the audiences are full of everybody who’s in the area, the women, anybody who’s around because this is exciting, but the only voters are white men. And to go to those voters and to say to them, “You must not support the idea of popular sovereignty,” which will give you everything that Douglass is trying to argue in the case of racial superiority, because it is against the Declaration of Independence. I’ve thrown three books across the room my life, and one of them is the Lincoln Douglas debates because Douglas is viciously racist.

He just hits on race again and again and again with every word and every epithet that you can think and gets the crowd whipped up behind him about all the racist possible things he can say, especially in the southern part of the state, which is very heavily influenced by the South. Lincoln backs off on defending racial equality. But he always says, “Wait a minute here, this country was formed on the idea that all people are created equal, all men are created equal. And if we’re going to tear that out of our history, let’s do it. Which one of you is willing to do that?” And he hammers on that again and again and again and again, and he keeps hitting at the concept of popular sovereignty and the fact that the Dred Scott Decision by the Supreme Court says that in fact, Congress has no power to legislate in the territories.

So he keeps saying to Douglas, “How can you keep saying that you’re defending popular sovereignty when the Supreme Court has just said that you actually can’t keep enslavement out of the territories?” And finally, Douglass gets so angry, I think is the right word in Freeport, Illinois. He comes up with what becomes known as the Freeport Doctrine in which he says, “Well, local people can just refuse to put together slave patrols and all the local legislation that otherwise would support the keeping of slaves in these territories.” And with that, the fat is in the fire because Lincoln is like, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You’re saying we should ignore a Supreme Court decision?” At the same time that enslavers say, “Hey, wait a minute, they really could do that. So we need a slave code in the territories.”

What happens in that debate becomes the defining line that goes into the election of 1860, when in fact the extreme southern enslavers go forward with a platform that calls for the federal government to protect enslavement in the territories. Douglas tries to protect popular sovereignty, and Lincoln looks at the whole thing and says, “See, I told you they’re going to make slavery national.” That debate, which again, three hours every day, they’re hammering each other, that debate in a way is first of all Lincoln’s belief I think that even farmers from the countryside can figure out reality if it’s put in front of them in very clear terms and pushing somebody until they make those terms really clear, that debate becomes almost a model for what a political debate should be.

Joanne Freeman:

And I want to add to that because there’s another way in which it if not models certainly demonstrates the realization, and again, the reach for reach, the fact that these debates, people understand that they matter. The two men, Lincoln and Douglas understand that they’re going to reach far beyond the admittedly massive audiences, tens of thousands of people sometimes listening to these debates. They’re going to have reach and they’re going to have an impact. And so press coverage of them really matters. And Lincoln in particular is very attuned to press coverage of what he’s saying. And again, in Freeport here, there’s a report in the Chicago Times on August 29th, 1858 of what happened at the beginning of Lincoln’s comments, which shows you the realization of the vital importance of capturing these and spreading these debates around. Supposedly Lincoln began by saying, “Fellow citizens, ladies and gentlemen…”

And then the presiding officer over the debate, Deacon Brass said, “Hold on, Lincoln, you can’t speak yet. Hitt ain’t here, and there is no use of your speaking unless the Chicago Press and Tribune has a report,” and Lincoln responded, “Ain’t Hitt here. Where is he? Now, apparently hit, who was Robert Hitt, who was a reporter, was there, but was in the back of the massive crowd and couldn’t find a way up front. And so allegedly he was passed over the heads of people so that he could make it up to the platform so that he could actually hear and report the debate. Now, The Chicago Press and Tribune and the Chicago Times for the purposes of these debates hired stenographers and stenography was relatively new at the time, trained in shorthand to take down every word as uttered.

They then raced to the trains to first of all get the shorthand translated back into actual English on the train ride, but to get them to newspaper offices to get them into print, and then the new National Wire Service, the Associated Press would spread this around. So that again, it feels primitive by our standards, but the fact that they’re going through all of this to capture these debates as they’re taking place to use sonography, to really capture them in a realistic way and to spread them around ultimately nationally, because the Associated Press, that’s really striking. And again, they’re fighting for Senate seats and they’re thinking on a very specific level of the state legislature, but they’re very aware of the fact, particularly Lincoln, that this is going to have a broader audience.

And it’s why Lincoln pays so much attention after the debates to collecting them, to putting them in a scrapbook, to getting them published, to focusing on their accuracy for 1860 because he knows the power of these debates and he wants to deploy it in the next election down the road.

Heather Cox Richardson:

I’m also interested in that, in your anecdote because I’m pretty sure the Chicago Times was a democratic newspaper and Hitt represented the Chicago Tribune, which is the republican paper, and Lincoln was determined to make sure the republican was up there to hear it as well because the democrats and the republicans reported those debates somewhat differently and you wanted to make sure you had your version out there. But if that is the use of a debate to articulate a new ideology and to contrast it really powerfully with Douglas’s, if he had stopped with the Lincoln Douglas debates, it would’ve been enough. I mean, we would still study the Lincoln Douglas debates, and in fact, the fact that he went on to do other things means we don’t study them perhaps as much as we ought to have. But the link between racism and that state’s rights ideology and that concept of local government, state government is all there.

Joanne Freeman:

And public appeal and getting people’s emotions gunned up with those varied issues. Again, just as you’re describing the crowd, that popular or populist component of getting the public all riled up based on these things. Also, there in person happening demonstrably during these debates.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Which is one of the reasons I have faith in the American public to be honest, is because despite all that, they still elected Lincoln president. The fact that he was willing to do that and say, “Listen, here are my principles,” and he lost in the short term, but we all won in the long term. So if the Lincoln Douglas debates show the possibilities of principle and appeal to a voting population and how technology can spread that, the other famous debate that always comes to mind when we think about American political debates is of course the 1960 contest between democratic presidential nominee, John F. Kennedy and republican nominee Richard Nixon.

Joanne Freeman:

And of course, in the same way that we were just talking about some technological advances that gave the Lincoln Douglas debates a different kind of impact, we’re now going to be looking at a different form of technology that gives these debates a different kind of impact. And that’s television. The 1960 debates were really in a sense brought on by the explosion of television. In 1950, some 11% of the population had a TV in their home. 10 years later, 1960, around 88% of the population had a TV. So this is truly a technological explosion.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And politicians quickly use this to their advantage. And of course, the big person in this would be Eisenhower in ’52. And I love this because you can go on YouTube and look at the televised 1952 Republican Presidential Convention, and it’s so boring, meaning no offense if anybody here was at it. They put TV cameras where these guys are meeting in their white shirts and black pants and that’s it. It’s just a bunch of guys milling around occasionally making a speech. The reason I watched it is there’s a very famous moment where they try and make Robert Taft and Eisenhower kiss and makeup, and they’re both sort of sitting on opposite ends of a couch glaring at each other.

But quickly, Eisenhower’s handlers after he gets the nomination, recognize how popular he is having just won World War II. And they have him do what is essentially a triumphant parade across the country where people throw ticker tape and it’s becomes this TV moment. So of course, after Eisenhower is elected in ’52 and then reelected in ’56, it only makes sense that you’re going to manufacture something similar. But of course, JFK and Nixon don’t have the kind of popularity that Eisenhower does. So what are you going to do? You’re going to have him debate on a television stage.

Joanne Freeman:

So on September 26th, 1960, Kennedy, who at this point is a Massachusetts senator and Nixon, who’s President Eisenhower’s vice president, take part in the first of four televised debates, and apparently almost 70 million Americans tuned in for the first debate, which was hosted by CBS moderator, Howard K Smith, and this is notorious, but we’ll say it anyway, Nixon did not look his best at this debate. This is another Freeman diplomatic way of saying he looked really bad. He refused really extensive makeup.

He seemed pale, he seemed unshaven, supposedly there was even… You could see a gleam of sweat on his upper lip and on his chin, he blamed his appearance on a recent hospitalization for a staph infection that followed from cutting his knee on a car door, if that was the fact. And he knew that those were not wise decisions on his part to not get made up and to not really tend to his appearance more. But again, we’re in a learning process when it comes to television. Kennedy, on the other hand, of course, was characteristically tanned. His hair was carefully done. He was made up by his team just before going on to begin the debates.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Well, the debate itself was actually really quite interesting in that it was a careful debate. I mean, it’s funny now because you think about what Nixon becomes in ’68, but both he and Kennedy were answering specific questions about their experience, about their policies. And when I say about their experience, I mean literally they’re saying, well, I sit on this committee in Congress and this committee is responsible for this, and this is what I do on that committee, and here’s what I know about, and therefore, here’s what… I mean, it’s really specific policy oriented. It’s a job interview. It comes across as a job interview.

Joanne Freeman:

But it’s content heavy. They’re actually stating views and policies as opposed to tap dancing and trying to get attention.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And the people who heard it on the radio believe that Nixon won. The people who watch it on TV thought that JFK had won.

Joanne Freeman:

Nixon later said in his 1979 memoir, “It is a devastating commentary on the nature of television as a political medium that what hurt me the most in the first debate was not the substance of the encounter between Kennedy and me, but the disadvantageous contrast and our physical appearances.” And this is the line that I love. “After the program ended, callers including my mother, wanted to know if anything was wrong because I did not look well.” Nixon’s running mate, JFK’s fellow Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge supposedly cried out when he was watching the debate in Texas, “That son of a bitch just lost us in the election.”

Heather Cox Richardson:

Nixon went on then to try and make up lost ground, tried to get back in shape and to try and look good for the rest of the debates. But of course, nobody really remembers the rest of those debates.

Joanne Freeman:

But wait a minute, you can’t skip what his special diet was.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Go ahead.

Joanne Freeman:

It’s a four a day regimen of milkshakes so that he could gain weight and look better. I want that diet. I want four milkshakes a day.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Yeah, sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? It’s worth going into politics if you can drink four milkshakes a day.

Joanne Freeman:

Exactly.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Nonetheless, people did attribute Nixon’s performance in that first debate as being central to him losing to Kennedy by a very narrow margin in 1960. And Kennedy himself said, “It was TV more than anything that turned the tide.” Now, because of that, Nixon was adamant that he would never again do another television debate, and that introduces a change in the way that debates are going to be used going forward. Really dramatically, in 1968 when his handlers wanted him to go on TV, Nixon wanted absolutely no part of it. And in reaction to that, his handlers really emphasized how important it was for him to override that previous impression of himself on TV and to use television in new ways. So one of his media advisors told him, “Voters are basically lazy. Reason requires a high degree of discipline, of concentration. Impression is easier, the emotions are more easily roused, closer to the surface, more malleable.” And so Nixon’s campaign hires a television producer, a young man at the time named Roger Ailes, if that name rings any bells.

Joanne Freeman:

Interesting.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Yeah. He’s going to go on to be one of the early people on the ground floor of the Fox News channel, to stage town halls as they were called. And they were town halls in which the candidate answered questions from regular people, but they were all handpicked. The press was not allowed. Ailes arranged the questions, the sets, the camera angles, the makeup, the crowds, everything to present Nixon as a celebrity, as a figure, as opposed to somebody looking for a job interview.

Joanne Freeman:

What you’re describing there is a performance, like a real performance. He appears as a celebrity, he’s appealing to emotion. That’s a very different kind of performance.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Yes. And it’s a performance that is going to change the way that we think about debates going forward because Nixon doesn’t debate. He does it this way with Roger Ailes. So after that, in ’68, in ’72, when the democratic primary contenders have a debate before the 1972 New Hampshire Presidential primary, one of the people there, it was a long shot, a 32-year-old man named Ned Coll was technically too young to be elected, but he was allowed to participate nonetheless. And he brought with him a rubber rat to symbolize urban decay, which again, if you think about even 12 years earlier, the idea of showing up in 1960 is part of that presidential debate with a prop of a rubber rat, I mean, it’s unthinkable.

Joanne Freeman:

The lexicon of small d democratic debate is evolving. It’s fascinating. That’s what we’re talking about here is the lexicon, the vocabulary, the visual vocabulary, and the nature of these performances. Like just in the small narrative that we’re outlining here, you can see step-by-step people realizing what the different mediums can do and then trying desperately to take advantage of them in a new and more powerful way with each contest.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And so then of course, Nixon refuses to debate George McGovern, the democratic candidate from South Dakota, because he says, much as Douglas would’ve said about Lincoln, that it would give McGovern free airtime and it would make him look like a much stronger candidate than he actually was. So we don’t get another presidential debate until 1976.

Joanne Freeman:

2 years after Nixon leaves office televised presidential debates return. In 1976, the League of Women voters sponsors three presidential debates between candidate Jimmy Carter and incumbent Gerald Ford. And just as in 1960, there’s a gaff that ends up defining the proceedings. At one point, Ford rather incoherently suggests that the Soviets did not dominate Eastern Europe, citing his own Helsinki Accords with the USSR as evidence he said on October 6th, 1976.

Gerald Ford (archival):

Now, what has been accomplished by the Helsinki Agreement? Number one, we have an agreement where they notify us and we notify them of any military maneuvers that are to be undertaken. They have done it in both cases where they’ve done so. There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a foreign administration.

Joanne Freeman:

Many believe that that foreign policy gaff ultimately cost Ford the election.

Heather Cox Richardson:

That’s always an interesting moment because I always sort of feel like he was told to get that on the table to find some way to talk about the Helsinki Accords, and he thought that was a good opening. But only four years later, we’re going to have Ronald Reagan using debates against Jimmy Carter to foreshadow, if you will, what’s going to happen later with Trump in that they are performances that are based not in reality, but rather in this idea that whenever a democrat, in this case, Jimmy Carter is advancing a policy issue, Reagan responds with that sigh and that sort of genial.

Ronald Reagan (archival):

There you go again.

Heather Cox Richardson:

When in fact, Carter was right, his numbers were all right, and Reagan’s numbers were based in his ideological position.

Joanne Freeman:

The actor prevails.

Heather Cox Richardson:

The actor prevailed, in that the actor prevailed. And what do people remember about the 1980 debates? They remember, “Oh, there you go.”

Joanne Freeman:

“There you go again.”

Heather Cox Richardson:

Yeah, and that change in what the debates are supposed to be taken really out of ’68 and then going into 1980 and finally washing up on the shores of 2016 and 2020 is a really different thing than Lincoln and Douglas were doing. And then even I did this just so I could put it in here, Aaron and Al.

Joanne Freeman:

You had to get one last, Aaron and Al.

Heather Cox Richardson:

I did. I did. I did.

Joanne Freeman:

Al. Now there is one more point here that gets to be added in because it shows how there still is, even in this period that we’re talking about this assumption about the fundamental democratic importance of these presidential debates. And the simple fact that I’m talking about here is the simple fact of the formation of the commission on presidential debates, which takes place in 1987 under the joint sponsorship of both the republican and democratic parties. And the idea behind the commission was to ensure that the voting public would have a chance to see the leading candidates debate.

And again, we can put debate in quotation marks now depending on what we’re talking about, but the idea at least was to see the leading candidates debate during the general election campaign. Now, interestingly, Newton Minnow, who had a lot to do with the push to have this happen, he was the chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission, and one of the reasons why he thought these debates would be important, and I find this fascinating, is because if they were on television, they would be a shared experience by the American people, that the American people together would be able to witness this and experience it and think about it and discuss it. So he very much, to him in his mind, was promoting just by creating a sort of small d democratic, we can all share this moment that that would matter, and that there was no way to do that in his mind other than by doing this on TV.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Which is a good theory actually, I think. But I do think it takes us back to your earlier point about whether or not political debates are in fact any longer appealing to the public with the idea of achieving a clear understanding of the political issues. Because in fact, you could argue, and I think I might argue that political debate as it is currently being enacted, at least on the republican stage, we saw in late August a way of manipulating a public rather than of informing a public. And that seems to me to be a really important distinction. And how we get around that is harder to figure out, especially in the sense that so many candidates now, and especially former President Trump, go around any kind of moderation, go around any kind of anyone saying, this is the reality. Let’s deal with this and instead go onto social media and simply announce things that aren’t true. Are we still using debates to advance the cause of democracy or to break it?

Joanne Freeman:

So here’s what I think. On the one hand, I agree with what you just said, that in a sense these debates have become more manipulation than actual debate of any kind, and they’re often emotional appeals, and there’s a lot of display and show and even demagoguery tossed in. I think all of that is true, but I also think the simple fact that they’re still happening is a sign of a gesture towards the realization that we, the public, matter. That our votes matter and that our voices matter, so that yes, they are manipulative, definitely not what they should or could be, but the fact that they’re happening should be a reminder.

They’re happening because of us, they’re happening because of the audience, and that should be a reminder to us, the American people. Our votes matter, and our voices matter. That’s who’s being appealed to. That’s the ultimately point. However, manipulative and fake and showy they are, they’re happening because of us. And particularly at this moment in time when there are so many fundamentals about democracy that are seemingly up for debate in the worst possible way, it’s so vitally important to remember that part of the equation, these things are happening, these televised debates are happening because of us, because our voices and our votes matter. And that should be in the mind of every person who is watching those debates, who’s thinking about those debates, who is discussing those debates. Ultimately, this is about us.