A Note from Anna Carugati: Tonight’s Historic Debate

NEW YORK: Millions of viewers, some estimates predict up to 100 million in the U.S. alone, will be watching the presidential debate tonight between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

While all the attention is on what is at stake tonight and in this election between two candidates who couldn’t be further apart in temperament, tone and experience, it is worth noting that today actually marks the anniversary of the very first televised presidential debate, the one between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, which took place on September 26, 1960.

With that debate, and tragically with Kennedy’s assassination and funeral three years later, television catapulted over newspapers as the go-to source of information for breaking news. Television’s unmatched ability to transmit sound and images live drew millions of viewers and opened up the political arena to voters who would otherwise never have the chance to hear the candidates—some who didn’t have a television or couldn’t afford to read newspapers every day. Yes, there was radio, and it held a much greater role in providing news than it does today, but television, again, offered both sound and images—what the candidates said and how they looked when they said it, or how they looked when they reacted to their opponent’s remarks, which in this case made all the difference.

No one at the time could have imagined television’s impact on the political process. Back on that night in 1960, people who had only heard the debate on the radio deemed it a tie between Kennedy and Nixon, while viewers who had watched the debate live on TV clearly thought Kennedy had won. JFK was poised, eloquent, good looking—“telegenic”—a new word coined from television. Nixon, on the other hand, was perspiring, nervous, and looked awful.

In 2010, Ricardo Guise, World Screen’s president and publisher, and I had the huge privilege of speaking to Don Hewitt, the creator and executive producer of 60 Minutes. Hewitt was also the producer of that first historic televised debate. This is how he described the candidates:

“Jack Kennedy was Cary Grant. That night, he walked into that room, he looked like a Harvard undergrad, perfectly tailored, he was tan, he was in command, he looked like he owned the world. Nixon had a staph infection. He looked green. He had banged his knee on the car. He looked like death warmed over. So it was no contest.”

“That night, incidentally a historic night, we got the right guy for the wrong reason,” continued Hewitt. “You shouldn’t pick a president according to who’s the better looking of the two. You should pick Mr. America that way, but not your president. But we did and we got the right guy.”

Through the decades I have often felt that television’s potential to entertain, inform and enlighten has too often been squandered in the chase for ratings; in the desire to highlight individuals who are seeking their 15 minutes of fame in this celebrity-driven world; in the quest for the easy pithy attention-grabbing sound bite. Just look at how tonight’s debate between Clinton and Trump is being promoted by some channels—like a boxing match, or a major reality TV event.

How far television has come from its earnest, almost happenstance beginnings in 1960. During our conversation with Hewitt, he went on to give a somewhat bone-chilling analysis of another development that emerged from that first debate on September 26.

“You know what was wrong about that night? That was the first night that politicians looked at us in television and said, ‘That’s the only way to run for office.’” And we looked at them and said, ‘That’s a bottomless pit of advertising dollars.’ From that day on, no one can even think about running for office in the greatest democracy on Earth unless they’ve got money for television time. And you can’t get money for television unless you are doing something with a lobbyist you shouldn’t be doing. A word was born that night called ‘fundraising’. I had never heard about fundraising before. In politics it’s called fundraising, in business it’s called bribery. You’re giving money at a fundraiser to get someone to do what you want them to do. Politics in America has been ruined by television because it’s become a money game. If you don’t have the money, don’t even think about it.”

As I watch the debate tonight and the next two, I hope the discourse will be civilized and dignified as it was in 1960 without incendiary comments or catchy sound bites devoid of meaning. I hope to hear concrete stands on issues, substantive proposals for creating jobs, protecting our country, fighting terrorism, establishing fair immigration policies, keeping automatic weapons out of the wrong hands, improving our schools and infrastructure, and reforming campaign financing laws.

And I hope television lives up to its potential, with moderators who are up to the unquestionably challenging task of keeping candidates on topic, and news divisions that provide us with analysis devoid of partisan commentary.