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Season Three Research Files
Episode Six
6:00pm-7:00pm
Presidential debates are really a modern television age creation, and did not play a role in America's early presidential races. For most of the 18th century, any campaigning or direct appeal for votes was frowned upon by the public and newspapers. Important debates were limited to the Congress where the issues of the day were discussed at length on the House and Senate floor. Presidential candidates were expected to keep quiet, and it was not until 1840 that a presidential candidate (William Henry Harrison of the Whig party) even campaigned for his own election.
The most famous and studied debates of the pre-broadcast era are the senatorial debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in 1858 because the topic of slavery was at hand. Yet Lincoln did not debate once during his 1860 bid for president. Before 1960, there was little demand or interest in presidential debates on the part of the public or the candidates. There was a 1948 pre-primary debate on radio. In May 1952, the first nationally televised debate, Republican and Democratic contenders (or their representatives) answered two questions each at the annual convention of the League of Women Voters. In 1956, the Democrats participated in the first nationally televised intra-party primary debate before the Florida primary.
The 1960 debate was the first face-to-face debate of the major party nominees, when Republican Vice President Richard Nixon faced John Kennedy, the junior Democratic Senator from Massachusetts. Both candidates saw political advantage to using television. Although the 1960 debates were popular with the public and broadcast nationally, presidential debates took a hiatus until 1976. Their absence is due to front-runners not wanting to share the stage with low-level opponents, as well as the equal-time provisions of the 1934 Communications Act. In 1975, the FCC created a loophole regarding the equal time provision by ruling that debates were "bona fide news events." That meant if debates were sponsored by some organization other than the networks, then coverage of such an event was exempt from the equal time requirements. The League of Women Voters quickly volunteered to sponsor the debates, and that job was taken over by the Commission on Presidential Debates in 1988. Presidential debates are now an expected, if not institutionalized, part of the American political process.
Since 1976, debates have played an important role in presidential campaigns. Most experts agree presidential debates reaffirm people's opinions rather than change them. The debates are very useful for swing voters who, before the debates, have never seen the candidates without some type of a media filter.
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