When I was a kid in the 1960s and early '70s, I read up on Kennedy and everyone made a big deal of how well he did in the debates against Nixon. How the televised debates made American electoral history. And yet, somehow, nobody bothered to arrange debates in 1964, 1968, or 1972.
I guess at some point enough people started saying “Hey, the 1960 debates really rocked, why don’t we start having them again?” in time for the 1976 campaign. We’ve had them every time since then, and they now look like a permanent fixture. My questions:
How come there were no presidential debates prior to 1960? How did they come up with the idea in the first place?
What was the reason for “nixing” the debates right after the first ones?
I think part of your answer lies in that 1964, 99% of the public knew that Johnson was going to win. In 1972, most people knew that Nixon was going to beat McGovern. 1968 might have been a fun debate. However, given the debacle the Dems had at their convention, the Republicans probably thought there was nothing to be gained by debating Humphrey.
Part of the reason there weren’t debates until 1960 (and then after, not until '76) was the “equal time” provision of the Communications Act of 1934, which said that if a tv or radio station gave or sold time to a candidate, it would have to give or sell time to all candidates, and FCC decisions seemed to say that would apply for debates. In 1960, Congress (in addition to clarifying that equal time didn’t apply to bona fide news stories) suspended the provision for the Kennedy-Nixon debates, but debates weren’t exempt for good until the early 70’s. So if tv or the radio had covered a debate in that time period, all the minor party candidates would have to have been invited as well, and there was no way the major party candidates would have agreed to that.
Beyond that, there was the attitude that a sitting president participating in a debate would be unpresidential…that it would put his opponent on the same level as he was.
Lyndon Johnson had no interest in debating Barry Goldwater in 1964, because he was far ahead. Richard Nixon had no interest in debating in 1968 or 1972 because he had been burned by the process in 1960 and had no desire to revive unpleasant memories and invite unpleasant comparisons.
Now that the custom has become more firmly established, it would be more difficult for a candidate to duck out just because he didn’t perceive an advantage. Reagan debated Mondale in 1984 even though he was far ahead.
Note that even as late as 1980, however, the process almost misfired. The party arranging the debates–I’m not sure if it was still the League of Women Voters at that point–insisted on inviting John Anderson as long as he remained above 15% in the polls, and Jimmy Carter refused to debate both Reagan and Anderson. Only after Anderson dropped below 15% very late in the campaign did Reagan and Carter hold one debate.
The 1976 debates were not exempt from the equal time rules. The way they got around it was to have The League of Women Votes host the event and the news people simply covered it, making it a bona fide news event. Since The LWV hosted the debates in 1980, I’m guessing the rules were the same then. I don’t know how – or if – the rules have been changed since then.
I had taken a course in broadcast law back in the late seventies. This is my authority on this. Sorry I have no cites.
The LWV doesn’t do presidential debates any more. Now they are arranged by a bipartisan consortium (or cartel?) of Democatic and Republican lawyers, who make sure to exclude all third parties.
Freddy the Pig, that was a good answer about Nixon nixing the debates in 1968 and 1972. Of course he would never agree to go through that again, after the miserable experience he’d had in 1960. D’oh! He was able to get away with it because there was the precedent in 1964 for having no debates. Maybe in 1964 the painful memory of Kennedy’s assassination was too raw and recent, and it just didn’t occur to anyone to even think of it. I was wondering if anyone did propose any debates in those three elections, 1964-1972, but was nixed. Whose idea was it in the first place, in 1960?
The initiative for the 1960 debates came from the TV networks. See here for some background.
You raise an interesting question as to why nobody thought about debates before 1960. It’s always hard to give a reason why something didn’t happen. Prior to perhaps 1930, at least one candidate in each presidential election chose to wage a more dignified “front porch” campaign, in which most of the traveling and public speaking would be left to surrogates. A debate in that era would have been considered impractical and even unseemly.
By the 1930’s, however, both FDR and his Republican opponents were campaigning vigorously, and radio would have offered a satisfactory medium for debate. For whatever reason, however, it never happened. Although the concept seems obvious today, it apparently wasn’t at the time. I’m not aware of anyone even attempting to organize a debate before 1960.
Most of the replies here dealing with the Equal Time requirement miss something that only Julius Henry caught. News coverage was always exempt from the equal time provision; to do so otherwise would be an infringement on the First Amendment. For example, just because the CBS Evening News gave 28 total minutes of stories covering presidential candidate Barry Goldwater during a week in 1964 did not obligate them to give 28 minutes each to the States Rights and Socialist Party candidates. The debates were always covered as news events, by the networks’ news divisions.
The equal time provision applied to advertising time or to free time air time given to candidates for their own usage.
Um… no. That 15% rule is a new thing concocted by the 2 major parties to keep smaller parties and candidates out of debates. For more info on the history of this and the movement to change it I suggest visiting:
Remember that Perot was allowed to debate in '92, and because the LWV would’ve allowed Buchanan and Nader debate in 2000 the two parties dropped the LVW and held a bilaterally-negotiated joint press conference (not really in a debate format, is it?) which was sponsored at least once by Anheuser-Busch. :eek: