Tag: John F. Kennedy

Boomers Watched the First Presidential TV Debates

We are well into the 2020 presidential election with more than an estimated 6 million people having already cast their ballots in early voting as of this writing. We have had one televised presidential and vice presidential debate each, already. There was to be a televised debate this week, which was to be a town hall format and was cancelled for health reasons. There is still one more planned for next week.

The situation could not be further from what transpired 60 years ago, the first year that presidential debates were televised. However, an examination of the history shows that spats between the two parties appeared from the very first of the TV debates. Mister Boomer has written about that very first debate, which aired on September 26, 1960, between then Vice President Richard Nixon and Senator John Kennedy (The First Televised Presidential Debate was Broadcast In Our Boomer Years).

Nixon and Kennedy had agreed to three debates. Consensus in the press put Kennedy as the victor in the first debate. Kennedy had talked to TV producers to get some pointers on what to wear. The vast majority of viewers would be tuning in on black & white TV sets, and the background was light, so they suggested he wear a navy color suit to stand out in contrast. He also asked about camera angles and lighting. In other words, he tried to prepare for his appearance in this new medium. Nixon was caught off guard in his gray suit and blended into the gray background. Worse yet, unaccustomed to studio lighting and recovering from the flu, close-up shots showed him sweating profusely on his upper lip. Nixon did not fare well in his first TV appearance.

For the second debate on Friday, October 7, 1960, Nixon’s staff got to the TV studio early and turned the thermostat down so their candidate would not be shown sweating. When Kennedy’s people arrived, the studio temperature was described as “frigid.” They went to the thermostat only to find it guarded by Nixon’s people. A discussion ensued and a more reasonable temperature was agreed upon. Most press at the time placed Nixon as the victor in round two.

The third of the debates on October 13, 1960, had the scintillating topic of whether military force should be used to prevent two islands off the coast of China from falling under Communist rule. Now, 60 years later, what is fascinating about that debate is that due to scheduling difficulties, the candidates could not appear in the same studio. Both were on the campaign trail, so Kennedy appeared in a New York studio, while Nixon was in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, the debate moderator and panel of questioners were in Chicago. It was real TV history — a broadcast from three combined locations that was beamed to the TV audience on all three networks (ABC, CBS, NBC). The background was the same for each candidate, so on a split screen the two appeared as if they were in the same studio. The press called this one a draw.

Both parties were exhausted from the rigors of what the televised debates placed on them in the last weeks before the election. Nixon, especially, was said to be devastated by the experience. As a result, there were no more televised presidential debates for three election cycles. Lyndon Johnson refused to participate against Barry Goldwater in 1964, and Richard Nixon declined to participate versus Hubert Humphrey in 1968, and again versus George McGovern in 1972. The next televised debate would not appear until then President Gerald Ford debated former Governor Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Boomers had a front row seat in their living rooms for this historic series of events. Mister Boomer certainly recalls those first TV debates, and remembers having to write about them in Civics class in school. How about you, boomers? Do you remember the first televised presidential debate you watched with your family?

Boomer History: The Cuban Missile Crisis

Fifty years ago this week — on October 14, 1962 — a U.S. reconnaissance plane flying over Cuba took photos that confirmed that Soviet missile sites were being constructed on the island, just 90 miles from the U.S. mainland. Since the U.S. had previously deployed more than 100 nuclear missiles in both Italy and Turkey capable of reaching Moscow, the Soviets had concluded that this deployment gave the U.S. an advantage for first strike capabilities in a nuclear confrontation. Therefore, their perception of the balance of powers required them to mount missiles in the Western Hemisphere.

As Soviet ships headed for Cuba, presumably with intermediate-range ICBM missiles on board, President John F. Kennedy ordered what was, in essence, a military blockade around Cuba to prevent the ships from reaching their destination. The action was officially deemed a “quarantine” in order to avoid using the term “blockade,” since doing so was considered an act of war. Nikita Khruschev accused the U.S. of an act of war and from there the incident crossed over into a crisis that has been described as the closest point to nuclear confrontation by the two countries than at any other time in the Cold War. It was at this time that the term mutually assured destruction was coined. Estimates of a full nuclear war between the two powers stated that the result would entail 100 million deaths on each of the sides.

While the Soviets publicly denounced the actions by the U.S., privately they were negotiating with the U.S. through the United Nations to resolve the situation. By early November, the Soviets agreed to dismantle the sites and return the missiles already on the island back to the Soviet Union. The U.S. agreed to dismantle the 100 sites it had deployed against the Soviets in Italy and Turkey and to publicly state it would never invade Cuba. These were amazing compromises considering the brinkmanship both had displayed, and the failed Bay of Pigs invasion that the U.S. had supported just one year earlier. Another part of the settlement was the creation of a hotline between Washington and Moscow. This is the often-called “red phone” that sits on the President’s desk in the Oval Office. The idea was that if another crisis arose, the two leaders could instantly talk and the situation might be diffused more quickly and easily.

The hotline plays a prominent role in the satirical nuclear movie, Dr. Strangelove (1964), when a rogue Marine commander initiates a first strike order against the Soviets without authorization. The movie is perhaps the greatest satire ever made on the folly of a nuclear exchange between countries.

Several books were written about the Cuban Missile Crisis, most notably the then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s Thirteen Days. A 1974 movie, The Missiles of October, was based on his book. The movie Thirteen Days (2000), though bearing the same name as Kennedy’s book, was actually based on The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis by Ernest May and Philip Zelikow (1997). However, most of the movies have been criticized for historical inaccuracies by living members of the Kennedy administration.

In 1962, Mister B was in elementary school. He doesn’t recall the Cuban Missile Crisis being talked about openly in the classroom or by his parents. He does remember hearing about it on TV, and sensed the tension that was rising among the adults around him. This was especially confirmed when his school conducted “tornado drills,” where the kids would hunker down as low as possible against an interior hallway wall. Mister B knew that October was past the traditional tornado season, and had been “briefed” earlier by the government Duck and Cover movie on what to do in the case of a nuclear blast (see Mister B’s earlier post, Laughing Through the Cold War). He didn’t think they were about tornadoes at all. The factories of the Midwest had become the U.S. center of manufacturing during World War II and, now in the early 1960s, it was the engine that was propelling the economic boom that helped facilitate the Baby Boom. Even the school kids knew our area would be targeted by a Soviet attack. That’s why bomb shelters became so popular.

In the end, Mister B was too young to fully comprehend the severity of the situation until many years later. It is truly amazing to think how the leaders of the two countries were able to come to an acceptable conclusion while saving face with their own citizens, and the world. Now that history is part of our shared boomer history.

What memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis come to mind for you, boomers?