The Night TV Changed Politics

Forty years ago the transformation of American politics began - with the first televised presidential debate.

The showdown between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy took place on Sept. 26, 1960 at CBS television station WBBM in Chicago. Since it was the first-ever televised debate, everyone involved knew they were making history.

But they didn't know what the impact would be.

Aides to Nixon, for example, were so concerned about the color of the TV studio set that they ordered it repainted six times - all different shades of gray.

But neither the gray set, nor the other changes requested by the Nixon camp ended up helping the Republican candidate in the eyes of history.

At the time, inside Studio One at WBBM, few knew they were participating in what would become a watershed in American politics, and few felt Nixon lost. Moderator Howard K. Smith, who saw mostly the back of the candidate's heads, scored the debate 18 1/2 to 18 in favor of Nixon, reports CBS News' Drew Levinson.

"These two guys are standing there, one looks like young Lockinvar - he's maybe the most handsome man that ever ran for office in America. But Nixon looked sort of pasty and sallow," said Sixty Minutes executive producer Don Hewitt, who directed the debate.

"We looked at the candidates. We didn't see monitors," said Sander Vanocur, a former TV reporter and panelist at the debate. "We didn't have the proper judgment of how this would affect the American people."

Nixon, who had been sick, looked hollow-eyed and unshaven. He also wore a gray suit, which blended into the gray studio background. Nixon also refused makeup - and it cost him.

Kennedy, in a blue suit, was tanned, made-up, and relaxed.

Images of the candidates filtered through black and white television screens to an estimated 75 million people. Nixon, perspiring and shifting from foot to foot because of an injured knee, may have lost the election that night, historians say.

While radio listeners picked Nixon as the winner, polls after the debate show television viewers thought Kennedy had won. The era of TV debates had begun.

"That was the night politics went to hell in America," said Hewitt, "That was the night television and politics became engaged."

Both candidates took the debate seriously, spending days preparing. Kennedy was quizzed by aides while tanning on the roof of the Ambassador East Hotel in Chicago on the morning of the debate. That afternoon, he fell asleep in his hotel suite, covered in white cards with questions and issues written on them.

Once at the studio, Kennedy needed little coaching on how to act before the camera, said Theodore Sorensen, adviser and speech writer for Kennedy.

"That would be like advising Sammy Sosa on how to hit," Sorensen said. "Kennedy was a natural. He looked good. He was relaxed."

Nixon went through rigorous uestioning from his own staff, but was tired from a 10-day tour of the country and a knee infection. To make matters worse, he bumped the knee on the way to the stage.

"We didn't know when he came in that he had banged his knee (getting out of his car) on the way to the studio," said former Nixon adviser Herbert Klein. "I didn't know. He didn't want anyone else to know."

It might be impossible to accurately measure the ramifications of that night in 1960, but few argue American politics were not transformed. "I feel the wings of history brushed me very lightly that evening," Smith said.