by Ted Sorensen
The television producer in charge of the show later concluded, after rerunning a tape of the first debate a dozen times, that the only thing wrong with Nixon’s appearance was an oversized shirt collar. Others charged sabotage by Nixon’s makeup man. Some said Nixon’s schedule had left him fatigued. Others blamed the television studio for its bright lights and intense heat. Some said it was just Nixon. “Kennedy did not necessarily win the debates,” one survey concluded, “but Nixon lost them.”
The first debate, James Reston wrote the next day, “did not make or break either candidate.” Most of the headlines called it a draw. Very few voters said they had switched their allegiance from one candidate to the other. Many said Kennedy had talked too fast. Teachers of debate said both had scored equally. Many who listened on radio were amazed to hear TV viewers’ reaction to Nixon. (But not all radio listeners had this reaction. When I hailed a cab to return to my hotel, the driver said the debate had stifled his business. Everyone was staying home or in bars to watch. He, like many others, had pulled over to the curb to listen. He didn’t know who I was and he didn’t care whom I supported. “Kennedy,” he said, “clobbered him.”)
Even a draw, if it was a draw, was a Kennedy victory. Millions more voters now knew Kennedy and knew him favorably. Doubting, dissident Democrats now rallied to his cause. Shocked Republicans could no longer talk about his immaturity and inexperience. Protestants no longer thought of Kennedy only as a Catholic. Nixon talked less of who could best stand up to Khrushchev. Seventy million or more people, most of whom knew little of Kennedy before, many of whom had not made up their minds, had scrutinized both candidates in a unique situation of stress and judgment, and while both candidates were impressive, it was Kennedy who impressed the great majority as being more decisive, more informed and more vigorous.
The fact that large proportions of both parties had expected a Nixon victory made Kennedy’s showing all the more effective. They may not all have understood the issues he presented. They may have marveled at Nixon’s highly informed presentation also. But they liked Kennedy’s informal style, his alert and forceful manner, his cool strength. He looked both more poised and more determined. In the surveys, more Republicans than Democrats agreed that the opposing party’s candidate had “won,” whatever that meant. More Democrats than Republicans became more negative to the opposing candidate. And more independent and undecided voters moved in Kennedy’s direction.
“I switched from being an anti-Nixon Democrat to a pro-Kennedy Democrat,” said one Stevenson die-hard. An Alabama Protestant who switched from Nixon to Kennedy said Nixon “seemed more easily ruffled…. It appeared they wanted things covered up that they didn’t want us to know about.” A Nebraska independent decided to vote for Kennedy because he liked the sound of the New Frontier. A Massachusetts lady felt the debates showed Nixon “wasn’t as smart as I originally thought he was…. Also, when it was divulged that his party was against the majority of the people, I felt more against him.” Nixon may well have scored more debating points, but Kennedy scored with the voters.
Neither Kennedy nor Nixon needed these later surveys to know what had happened. Both had quick polls taken minutes after the debate was concluded. As the Caroline flew late that night to Ohio, the Senator, relaxing with a beer and a bowl of soup, reviewed his role and replies with almost total recall. He was physically and emotionally exhausted. But he was confident and happy. He had no regrets. He did not worry over what he wished he had said on any point. “You can always improve afterward,” he remarked later, “but I would settle for the way it went. I thought it was all right.”
He soon discovered that millions more thought it was all right. The size and enthusiasm of his crowds increased immensely and immediately. Nixon’s press secretary had to issue a release to the effect that his candidate was “in excellent health and looks good in person.” Kennedy was warmly congratulated in a wire from the previously dubious Southern Democratic governors, who watched the debate nine strong from their conference in Hot Springs. Nixon was besieged with Republican politicians telling him to look healthier and talk tougher. Ohio’s conservative Senator Frank Lausche decided to join the Kennedy caravan. Democrats who had been cool since long before the convention—Stevenson supporters, big-city bosses and, above all, Protestants—started working for Kennedy.
The second, third and fourth “debates” were almost an anticlimax. Not only were they viewed by fewer voters (though still a phenomenal number)—particularly by fewer uncommitted and uninformed voters—they also had less impact. All three were judged to be very close. Nixon changed to an aggressive style, but it was too little and too late. He put on weight and changed to a new kind of makeup to conceal his stubborn beard stubble, but he still looked less appealing than the handsome Kennedy. Some say he “won” the third round—when he and the Senator were screened from separate cities, which apparently made Nixon feel more at ease—but it was to no avail. The debates as a whole, said the surveys, were won by Kennedy.
The remaining three joint appearances served Kennedy’s interest primarily by preserving and reinforcing the gains he had achieved in the first one. Nixon’s own pollster reportedly summed up the debates to his client by concluding that Kennedy, who had started out lesser known and with doubts in his own ranks, “has increased his standing on every issue test…[and] has succeeded in creating a victory psychology.”
Kennedy’s quick mind was equal to even the new, aggressive Nixon (some said it was the old Nixon). While Kennedy continued to pour out facts and arguments in answer to each question, Nixon hedged some on the grounds that he would later have a speech or “white paper” on the subject. While Nixon was berating one Kennedy answer and demanding a retraction, the camera caught Kennedy broadly grinning. When Nixon accused Kennedy of weakening the country with his criticism, Kennedy fired back:
I really don’t need Mr. Nixon to tell me about what my responsibilities are as a citizen. I’ve served this country for fourteen years in the Congress and before that in the service…. What I downgrade, Mr. Nixon, is the leadership the country’s getting, not the country.
When Kennedy was questioned on Harry Truman’s profane language in the campaign, his answer sharply contrasted with Nixon’s:
KENNEDY: I really don’t think there’s anything that I can say to President Truman that’s going to cause him to change his particular manner. Perhaps Mrs. Truman can, but I don’t think I can.
NIXON: One thing I have noted as I have traveled around the country are the tremendous number of children who come out to see the Presidential candidates…mothers holding their babies up…. It makes you realize that whoever is President is going to be a man that all the children of America will either look up to or will look down to…. And I only hope that, should I win this election…whenever any mother or father talks to his child, he can look at the man in the White House and say…
One major issue in the debates, which related to Kennedy’s entire campaign and which worked to his advantage, was that of American prestige abroad. The decline in that prestige, as evidenced by a variety of riots and adverse reactions in foreign capitals, fit well into Kennedy’s major themes. Nixon retorted that our prestige was at an all-time high. Upon learning that the administration had refused to release to the Congress certain USIA overseas surveys on this subject, Kennedy called upon Nixon to show his influence and answer Kennedy’s charges by obtaining their release. Nixon said the polls supported his contentions—but the polls remained secret.
In October Mike Feldman in Washington was told he could obtain copies of the polls from a source outside the USIA. He telephoned me about his acquisition, and I asked him to forward them to me at our next overnight stop. The polls strongly backed the Senator’s position and made Nixon’s claims about them look like deliberate misinformation. To avoid charges that he had improperly obtained classified material, Kennedy turned the polls over to the New York Times, who immediately printed them without mention of how they
had been acquired, and the Senator was then free to quote them as official proof of our plummeting prestige. An Eisenhower aide promptly asked USIA Director George Allen to issue a statement saying his polls showed American prestige at a record high, but Allen refused, and the issue continued to help Kennedy.
Two other foreign policy issues arose in the last three debates, and neither of them worked to Kennedy’s advantage or, fortunately, persisted in the public mind. The question of the two Nationalist Chinese islands off the coast of Communist China, Quemoy and Matsu, was raised, not by either candidate, but in questions directed to Kennedy by newsmen—both one week before the second debate and near the close of that debate. Kennedy’s reply, citing considerable military authority, opposed “withdrawal at the point of a Communist gun” but felt the chances of being dragged into an unnecessary war would be lessened if the Nationalists could be persuaded to draw the line of defense specifically and exclusively around Formosa and the Pescadores. Nixon went beyond the Eisenhower policy of leaving their status in doubt:
The question is not these two little pieces of real estate; they are unimportant. It isn’t the few people who live on them; they are not too important. It’s the principle involved. These two islands are in the area of freedom…. [Kennedy’s answer] is the same kind of woolly thinking that led to disaster for America in Korea.
For the next several days Nixon and the Republicans charged Kennedy with policies of appeasement, defeat, retreat and surrender. “I oppose handing over to the Communists one inch of free territory,” said the Vice President, misquoting Kennedy’s stand and implying it meant abandoning Berlin also. (On Formosa, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek joined in denouncing Kennedy.) The Senator responded in New York City with a full-scale speech pointing out that the Eisenhower administration had long advocated evacuation of these islands for the same reasons it evacuated the neighboring Ta-chen Island, and for the same reasons it had opposed the Nationalist build-up on Quemoy and Matsu—namely, on grounds that they were “indefensible.” He favored resistance, he said, to any direct or indirect attack on Formosa, but not enlarging our treaty obligations to fight for these islands alone. His closing quotation, which he often cited thereafter, had by luck been telephoned to me by an unknown researcher for the New York Democratic Committee: “‘These islands,’ said Admiral Yarnell, former commander of our Asiatic Fleet, ‘are not worth the bones of a single American.’ “
Nixon, replying in the third debate, said no Republican President had led this nation into war in the last fifty years and “there were three Democratic Presidents who led us into war. I do not mean by that that one party is a war party.” He then reviewed the history of the two islands as he saw it. “I don’t think it’s possible,” retorted Kennedy, “for Mr. Nixon to state the record in distortion of the facts with more precision than he just did.”
But Kennedy also recognized that his position, while correct, was too sophisticated for the average viewer who understood Nixon’s refusal to surrender one square inch of free soil. Consequently both Kennedy and Nixon began to emphasize the official administration position: defending these islands only from a Chinese Communist attack that was actually aimed at Formosa. Kennedy said they should not be defended unless the attack was aimed at Formosa. Nixon said they should be defended because any such attack was clearly aimed at Formosa. Each insisted that the other had originally been at odds with the official policy and backed down. But the issue died. Nixon later was to claim that he patriotically dropped the matter as the result of a request conveyed by Chester Bowles to Secretary of State Herter, but Bowles’s own notes of that conversation reflect no such request and certainly Kennedy never authorized one.
The other foreign policy issue involved in the debates was also dropped by mutual assent and adjustment of positions, and because both candidates thought it was harming them. The Communist-Castro takeover of Cuba had been steadily cited by Kennedy as an example of Republican ineptitude. The only Republican comeback was citation of a pre-1960 essay in The Strategy of Peace—unlike the bulk of the book, it had never been delivered in a Kennedy speech—which appeared to link Castro with the Latin-American revolutionary tradition of Simon Bolivar. Kennedy, even though he regretted the implication, was angry he had not caught it and was embarrassed by Republican attacks on this passage; nevertheless he refused to disown either the words or the junior staff member who had written them from a wholly different perspective. But he did maintain his own attack on Republican failures in Cuba. When Nixon, aided by a belated administration embargo, outlined his program to solve this problem, Kennedy called it “too little and too late,” and he then outlined in a statement a four-point program of his own which included an “attempt to strengthen the non-Batista democratic anti-Castro forces in exile, and in Cuba itself, who offer eventual hope of overthrowing Castro.”
Kennedy—who had not, contrary to Nixon’s subsequent assertions, been informed by the CIA that it was covertly training an exile invasion force—had no specifics in mind. Nor did his advisers, who were equally unaware of the invasion plan. It was, in all candor, a vague generalization thrown in to pad out an anti-Castro “program.” In the fourth debate, Nixon, who was aware of the CIA operation but could not disclose it, assailed Kennedy—as did many liberals—for proposing illegal intervention in internal Cuban affairs. A better solution was our procedure in Guatemala, said the Vice President, where our quarantine produced a “spontaneous” anti-Communist revolt. In fact, as both Kennedy and Nixon knew, the American CIA had engineered the Guatemala revolt, but Kennedy thought it inappropriate to say so publicly just as Nixon felt he could not disclose the Cuban invasion plans publicly.
That issue also faded, as Kennedy explained he was referring not to direct intervention but to stepped-up propaganda and political positions. Other issues rose and fell throughout the debates. The strain was at times relieved by some trivia. Kennedy complained in Round 2 that the studio, cooled at Nixon’s request to end the perspiration on his makeup, might require him to debate in a sweater. Nixon’s research staff discovered an old Kennedy text which included compulsory arbitration in a list of tools the White House should have available in case of national emergency strikes, but didn’t discover that Kennedy had deleted the phrase from his delivery and issued a corrected release. “I always have difficulty recognizing my positions when they are stated by the Vice President,” Kennedy commented. As Kennedy kept pressing that America must move again, Nixon twice said that “America cannot stand pat.”
The Senator enjoyed telling his staff and an occasional audience how Nixon, as the photographers gathered after one of the debates, raised his finger in Kennedy’s face as he had in the “kitchen” with Khrushchev. “I thought, here it comes, he is going to tell me how wrong I am about the plight of America—and do you know what he said? ‘Senator, I hear you have been getting better crowds than I have in Cleveland.’ “
As the fourth and final round approached, only the networks were eager for a fifth to be added. But correctly sensing that Nixon was even less eager for a fifth debate than he, the Senator publicly called for such a debate, pressed for negotiations between the staffs (which we carried out to no avail) and, in a barrage of telegrams and public statements, continually chided Nixon’s refusal to meet him once again.
THE WIND-UP
All this was consistent with the continuing atmosphere of Kennedy confidence. The campaign had entered its final phase. The debates were over, the World Series was over, Khrushchev had left the UN and a crucial 11 percent of the voters had still to make a final choice. The crush of Kennedy’s crowds continued to grow, people often waiting several hours, on occasion until 1, 2 and 3 A.M. His motor tour of economically hard-hit Pennsylvania cities from Bethlehem to Wilkes-Barre was, Governor Lawrence said, “like the coming of a Messiah,” as 500,000 shouting, crowding people hurled confetti at the candidate, gifts into his car, and flags and Kennedy banners into the air. Crowds choked his car engines with paper streamers in
Los Angeles, trapped him in a phone booth at Roanoke and paraded one million strong for him in Chicago. “I hope they won’t all be too tired to get to the polls Tuesday,” said the candidate to Mayor Daley. “They’ll be there,” said the Mayor (and they were).
His audience in New York’s garment district covered twelve blocks, and he touched all the hands he could. Jacqueline, who always joined him in New York, despite her doctor’s warning (“If he lost,” she said, “I’d never forgive myself for not being there to help”), felt the sides of the car almost bending. A motorcycle policeman with his sleeve torn off said it was worse than the Battle of Omaha Beach.
Kennedy was, if anything, calmer as the campaign closed around him. He radiated confidence as he preached concern. His speeches were more aggressive, more poised, more humorous and less tense. He was still informal, relaxed and unafraid. He was still himself. He fought off the effects of fatigue and pushed his vocal chords into one final drive. His anger exploded only once, when a series of motorcade errors marred his last visit to New York.
His hand was wrenched, scratched, swollen and infected. His face was creased with lines that had not been there a year before. “This campaign,” he told crowds in New York, “fortunately for us all, is coming physically and financially to an end…. If somebody told me the election is November 16 instead of November 8, I might just fade right out.” “Four more days,” he told a Phoenix airport crowd at 3 A.M., November 3. “We can hang on that long. The election is Tuesday…. We have timed it very well.”
Nixon, although his speeches had an increasing ring of desperation, felt his timing was right and that Kennedy had “peaked” too soon. Predicting an electoral landslide “if the tide continues,” he stepped up his attack, increased his television and unlimbered his biggest weapon: Ike. Kennedy, while still refraining from attacking the President, needled Nixon for needing Eisenhower, as well as Lodge and Rockefeller, to escort him through New York and to serve as his future peace council. Why not add Goldwater, Dewey, Hoover and Landon? he asked.