1960: the first mass media election: the new medium of television played a decisive role in the race between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon: 'image' ruled, and presidential elections changed forever.

• Author: Davey, Monica
• Position: TIMES PAST

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They stood side by side in Chicago, peering out from America's black-and-white television sets one Monday evening in September 1960: John F. Kennedy, the tanned, photogenic Democratic candidate for President, and his Republican opponent, Richard M. Nixon, who many viewers thought looked pale and sweaty beneath a noticeable 5 o'clock shadow.

The imagery of that first nationally televised presidential debate, one of four that fall, marked a turning point in the election and, more significantly, a sea change in what the nation's political contests would look like forever after.

In many ways, the 1960 election was the first modern American political campaign, with all its TV-induced stagecraft, symbolism, and microscopic media glare--so evident this year in the race between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain as another new medium, the Internet, scrambles the rules all over again.

"Those debates changed the conversation entirely," says Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. "Television is all about image, not substance," Sabato says, adding, "Kennedy was elected based largely on what happened in those debates."

More than 70 million people (out of a nation of 179 million) watched that first debate. Vice President Nixon, 47, had been a debater in college and was expected to overwhelm Kennedy. But the 43-year-old Massachusetts Senator, with his TV-friendly poise, seemed to gain support from many people who had questioned his relative inexperience and youth.

DEBATING WHO WON

On a Chicago studio set far more simple and stark than any seen in the 2008 campaign, the pair ticked off answers to fairly dry questions about education, the minimum wage, and the federal debt.

The next day, the nation's reaction underscored the power of the television tableau: People who had listened to the debate on radio were more likely to think Nixon had "won," while those who watched it on TV were more likely to think Kennedy came out on top. TV viewers tended to think that Nixon, who was recovering from the flu but had declined to wear makeup, looked awful, fight down to his light gray suit, which made him blend into the studio's backdrop.

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Impressions of viewers from Nixon's hometown of Whittier, Calif., made clear just how indelible the television images had been--even to an exceptionally friendly crowd.

"He looked sick, but also a little unsure," Albert W. Upton, who had been Nixon's drama coach at Whittier College, told The New York Times. And Nixon's former law partner, Thomas Bewley, said, "Dick just didn't look good. His ... clothes were wrong. He didn't have the old spirit."

'THE ACTION IS IN THE STUDIOS'

Nixon learned his lesson: In the three debates that followed, he wore a darker suit and makeup and didn't pull his punches, as some felt he had in the first meeting.

Much like the Internet today, television seemed to become ubiquitous...