On the morning of September 26, 1960, John F. Kennedy was a relatively unknown senator from Massachusetts. He was young and Catholic â?? neither of which helped his image â?? and facing off against an incumbent. But by the end of the evening, he was a star.
It's now common knowledge that without the nation's first televised debate â?? fifty years ago Sunday â?? Kennedy would never have been president. But beyond securing his presidential career, the 60-minute duel between the handsome Irish-American senator and Vice President Richard Nixon fundamentally altered political campaigns, television media and America's political history. "It's one of those unusual points on the timeline of history where you can say things changed very dramatically â?? in this case, in a single night," says Alan Schroeder, a media historian and associate professor at Northeastern University, who authored the book, Presidential Debates: Forty Years of High-Risk TV
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