Also, on this day...
Sep. 26th, 2004 09:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
iamlachesisOn this date in:
1777 British troops occupied Philadelphia during the American Revolution.
1789 Thomas Jefferson was appointed America's first secretary of state and John Jay the first chief justice of the United States.
1898 Composer George Gershwin was born in Brooklyn, New York.
1914 The Federal Trade Commission was established.
1950 United Nations troops recaptured the South Korean capital of Seoul from the North Koreans.
1957 The musical ''West Side Story'' opened on Broadway.
1969 The album ''Abbey Road'' by the Beatles was released.
1980 The Cuban government closed Mariel Harbor, ending the freedom flotilla of Cuban refugees that began the previous April.
(We should all watch "Scarface" in honor of this event. :))
1986 William H. Rehnquist was sworn in as the 16th chief justice of the United States, while Antonin Scalia joined the Supreme Court as its 103rd member.
1990 The Motion Picture Association of America announced it had created a new rating, NC-17, designed to bar moviegoers under age 17 from certain films without the commercial stigma of the old X rating.
1991 Four men and four women began a two-year stay inside a sealed-off structure known as Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Ariz.
1995 The prosecution began its closing argument in the murder trial of O.J. Simpson.
1996 Richard Allen Davis, the killer of 12-year-old Polly Klaas, was sentenced to death in San Jose, Calif.
2000 Slobodan Milosevic conceded that his challenger, Vojislav Kostunica, had finished first in Yugoslavia's presidential election and declared a runoff - a move that prompted mass protests leading to Milosevic's ouster.
2002 WorldCom former controller David Myers pleaded guilty to securities fraud, saying he was told by ''senior management'' to falsify records in what became the largest corporate accounting scandal in U.S. history.
2002 A state-run Senegalese ferry capsized in the Atlantic, killing more than 1,800 people.
On Sept. 26, 1960, the first televised debate between presidential candidates Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy took place in Chicago.
"Nixon And Kennedy Clash in TV Debate on Spending, Farms and Social Issues
Exchange is Calm Sharp Retorts Are Few as Candidates Meet Face to Face Nixon and Kennedy Divided in Debate
Chicago, Sept. 26--Vice President Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy argued genteelly tonight in history's first nationally televised debate between Presidential candidates.
The two men, confronting each other in a Chicago television studio, centered their argument on which candidate and which party offered the nation the best means for spurring United States growth in an era of international peril.
The candidates without ever generating any real heat in their exchanges, clashed on the following points:
Mr. Nixon's farm program, which Senator Kennedy said was merely another version of policies that had been tried and had failed under Ezra Taft Benson, Secretary of Agriculture.
The Republican and Democratic performance records on efforts to increase the minimum wage of $1 an hour and broaden its coverage, school construction legislation and medical care for the aged. Mr. Kennedy charged that the Republican record on these measures showed the party gave only "lip service" to them.
The comparative records of the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations on fiscal security. Mr. Nixon asserted that in school and hospital construction the Republican years had seen an improvement over the previous seven Democratic years. Moreover, he said, wages had risen "five times as much" in the Eisenhower Administration as during the Truman Administration, while the rise in prices has been only one-fifth of that in the Truman years.
In one of the sharper exchanges of the hour-long encounter, Mr. Nixon charged that the Democratic domestic program advanced by Senator Kennedy would cost the taxpayer from $13,200,000,000 to $18,000,000,000.
This meant, Mr. Nixon contended, that "either he will have to raise taxes or you have to unbalance the budget."
Unbalancing the budget, he went on, would mean another period of inflation and a consequent "blow" to the country's aged living on pension income.
"That," declared Senator Kennedy, in one of the evening's few shows of incipient heat, "is wholly wrong wholly in error." Mr. Nixon, he said, was attempting to create the impression that he was "in favor of unbalancing the budget."
In fact, Mr. Kennedy contended, many of his programs for such things as medical care for the aged, natural resources development, Federal assistance to school construction and teachers salaries could be financed without undue burden on the taxpayer if his policies for increasing the rate of economic growth were adopted.
"I don't believe in big government, but I believe in effective government," Mr. Kennedy said. "I think we can do a better job. I think we are going to have to do a better job."
Continuing his portrayal of the Eisenhower years as a period of stagnation, he asserted that the United States last year had the lowest rate of economic growth of any industrial state in the world. Steel production, he noted, was only 50 per cent of capacity. The Soviet Union, he said, is "turning out twice as many engineers as we are."
At the present rate of hydroelectric-power construction, he went on, the Soviet Union would be "producing more power than we are" by 1975.
"I think it's time America started moving again," he declared.
Nixon Disagrees
Mr. Nixon replied that he had no quarrel with Mr. Kennedy's goal of increasing the rate of national growth. But, he said, Mr. Kennedy's statistics showing a slow growth rate last year were misleading because they were based on activity in a recession year. This year, by contrast, the rate is 6.9 per cent--"one of the highest rates in the world," he said.
In other areas of debate, these were the major points:
Mr. Nixon asserted that Senator Kennedy's failure to get any significant part of his program enacted at the August session of Congress was not due to President Eisenhower's threatened vetoes but to lack of national support for the items in the program. It was "not because the President was against them, " Mr. Nixon said. "It was because the people were against them. They were too extreme."
Mr. Kennedy answered Mr. Nixon's frequently repeated campaign assertion that he was too immature for the Presidency by asserting that Abraham Lincoln had come out of obscurity, as an inexperienced Congressman, to the White House. He and Mr. Nixon had "both come to Congress together" in the same year--1946, Mr. Kennedy noted.
"Our experience in government is comparable." And, he contended, "there is no certain road to the Presidency. There is no guarantee that if you take one road or the other you will be a successful President."
Mr. Nixon, using the only language heard all evening that bordered on the colorful, contrasted the Republican program for national growth with Mr. Kennedy's in these terms. Mr. Kennedy's, he said, "seem to be simply retreads of programs of the Truman Administration."
For the most part, the exchanges were distinguished by a suavity, earnestness and courtesy that suggested that the two men were more concerned about "image projection" to their huge television audience than about scoring debating points.
Senator Kennedy, using no television makeup, rarely smiled during the hour and maintained an expression of gravity suitable for a candidate for the highest office in the land.
Mr. Nixon, wearing pancake makeup to cover his dark beard, smiled more frequently as he made his points and dabbed frequently at the perspiration that beaded out on his chin.
The debate was carried simultaneously by all three major television networks, the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company and the Columbia Broadcasting System. It was also carried by the radio networks of all three and that of the Mutual Broadcasting System.
The first debate, produced by C.B.S., took place in a big studio at the C.B.S. Chicago outlet, Station WBBM-TV. Studio One, in which they met, was sealed off from the hundreds who swarmed through its corridors and sat in adjoining studios to watch the show on station monitors.
When the debate was over, the two candidates were spirited out of the studio through a freight driveway.
Nixon Noncommittal
At his hotel later, Mr. Nixon was noncommittal about how well he thought he had done. "A debater," he said, "never knows who wins. That will be decided by the people Nov. 8."
Mr. Kennedy was not available for comment, but his advisers said they were elated over his performance.
The only persons permitted in the studio besides television crewmen were two wire service reporters, three photographers and one aide to each candidate.
When the show ended, each man was asked how he felt about the outcome.
"A good exchange of views," said Mr. Nixon.
"We had an exchange of views," Mr. Kennedy agreed.
Under the rules agreed upon by the candidates, each man opened with an eight-minute exposition of his general position on domestic affairs.
This was followed by about thirty-five minutes of question-and-answer with the questions being put by four television newsmen selected by each of the four networks. This was followed by three minute closing statements by each candidate.
The television news representatives on the panel were Sander Vanocur of N.B.C., Robert Fleming of A.B.C., Charles Warren of Mutual and Stuart Novins of C.B.S. Howard K. Smith of the C.B.S. Washington staff acted as moderator, but except for introducing the two, had a quiet evening.
Nixon Arrives First
Mr. Nixon arrived first at the studio on Chicago's Near North Side near the lakefront. His car entered the building through a freight driveway and pulled up by a receiving line of network executives.
Mr. Nixon made small talk for a few moments, then entered the studio accompanied by his press secretary, Herbert G. Klein.
Senator Kennedy arrived eight minutes later, accompanied by several of his campaign aides.
After working the broadcasting executives reception line, he entered the studio where Mr. Nixon was waiting. The two men smiled and shook hands.
"Good to see you. I heard you had a big audience in Cleveland," Mr. Nixon told Mr. Kennedy. The Senator's reply was lost in the hubbub as the photographers worked.
Outside the building several hundred demonstrators with printed placards demonstrated at the curb for Mr. Kennedy. There was no evidence of any Nixon rooting section."
1777 British troops occupied Philadelphia during the American Revolution.
1789 Thomas Jefferson was appointed America's first secretary of state and John Jay the first chief justice of the United States.
1898 Composer George Gershwin was born in Brooklyn, New York.
1914 The Federal Trade Commission was established.
1950 United Nations troops recaptured the South Korean capital of Seoul from the North Koreans.
1957 The musical ''West Side Story'' opened on Broadway.
1969 The album ''Abbey Road'' by the Beatles was released.
1980 The Cuban government closed Mariel Harbor, ending the freedom flotilla of Cuban refugees that began the previous April.
(We should all watch "Scarface" in honor of this event. :))
1986 William H. Rehnquist was sworn in as the 16th chief justice of the United States, while Antonin Scalia joined the Supreme Court as its 103rd member.
1990 The Motion Picture Association of America announced it had created a new rating, NC-17, designed to bar moviegoers under age 17 from certain films without the commercial stigma of the old X rating.
1991 Four men and four women began a two-year stay inside a sealed-off structure known as Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Ariz.
1995 The prosecution began its closing argument in the murder trial of O.J. Simpson.
1996 Richard Allen Davis, the killer of 12-year-old Polly Klaas, was sentenced to death in San Jose, Calif.
2000 Slobodan Milosevic conceded that his challenger, Vojislav Kostunica, had finished first in Yugoslavia's presidential election and declared a runoff - a move that prompted mass protests leading to Milosevic's ouster.
2002 WorldCom former controller David Myers pleaded guilty to securities fraud, saying he was told by ''senior management'' to falsify records in what became the largest corporate accounting scandal in U.S. history.
2002 A state-run Senegalese ferry capsized in the Atlantic, killing more than 1,800 people.
On Sept. 26, 1960, the first televised debate between presidential candidates Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy took place in Chicago.
"Nixon And Kennedy Clash in TV Debate on Spending, Farms and Social Issues
Exchange is Calm Sharp Retorts Are Few as Candidates Meet Face to Face Nixon and Kennedy Divided in Debate
Chicago, Sept. 26--Vice President Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy argued genteelly tonight in history's first nationally televised debate between Presidential candidates.
The two men, confronting each other in a Chicago television studio, centered their argument on which candidate and which party offered the nation the best means for spurring United States growth in an era of international peril.
The candidates without ever generating any real heat in their exchanges, clashed on the following points:
Mr. Nixon's farm program, which Senator Kennedy said was merely another version of policies that had been tried and had failed under Ezra Taft Benson, Secretary of Agriculture.
The Republican and Democratic performance records on efforts to increase the minimum wage of $1 an hour and broaden its coverage, school construction legislation and medical care for the aged. Mr. Kennedy charged that the Republican record on these measures showed the party gave only "lip service" to them.
The comparative records of the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations on fiscal security. Mr. Nixon asserted that in school and hospital construction the Republican years had seen an improvement over the previous seven Democratic years. Moreover, he said, wages had risen "five times as much" in the Eisenhower Administration as during the Truman Administration, while the rise in prices has been only one-fifth of that in the Truman years.
In one of the sharper exchanges of the hour-long encounter, Mr. Nixon charged that the Democratic domestic program advanced by Senator Kennedy would cost the taxpayer from $13,200,000,000 to $18,000,000,000.
This meant, Mr. Nixon contended, that "either he will have to raise taxes or you have to unbalance the budget."
Unbalancing the budget, he went on, would mean another period of inflation and a consequent "blow" to the country's aged living on pension income.
"That," declared Senator Kennedy, in one of the evening's few shows of incipient heat, "is wholly wrong wholly in error." Mr. Nixon, he said, was attempting to create the impression that he was "in favor of unbalancing the budget."
In fact, Mr. Kennedy contended, many of his programs for such things as medical care for the aged, natural resources development, Federal assistance to school construction and teachers salaries could be financed without undue burden on the taxpayer if his policies for increasing the rate of economic growth were adopted.
"I don't believe in big government, but I believe in effective government," Mr. Kennedy said. "I think we can do a better job. I think we are going to have to do a better job."
Continuing his portrayal of the Eisenhower years as a period of stagnation, he asserted that the United States last year had the lowest rate of economic growth of any industrial state in the world. Steel production, he noted, was only 50 per cent of capacity. The Soviet Union, he said, is "turning out twice as many engineers as we are."
At the present rate of hydroelectric-power construction, he went on, the Soviet Union would be "producing more power than we are" by 1975.
"I think it's time America started moving again," he declared.
Nixon Disagrees
Mr. Nixon replied that he had no quarrel with Mr. Kennedy's goal of increasing the rate of national growth. But, he said, Mr. Kennedy's statistics showing a slow growth rate last year were misleading because they were based on activity in a recession year. This year, by contrast, the rate is 6.9 per cent--"one of the highest rates in the world," he said.
In other areas of debate, these were the major points:
Mr. Nixon asserted that Senator Kennedy's failure to get any significant part of his program enacted at the August session of Congress was not due to President Eisenhower's threatened vetoes but to lack of national support for the items in the program. It was "not because the President was against them, " Mr. Nixon said. "It was because the people were against them. They were too extreme."
Mr. Kennedy answered Mr. Nixon's frequently repeated campaign assertion that he was too immature for the Presidency by asserting that Abraham Lincoln had come out of obscurity, as an inexperienced Congressman, to the White House. He and Mr. Nixon had "both come to Congress together" in the same year--1946, Mr. Kennedy noted.
"Our experience in government is comparable." And, he contended, "there is no certain road to the Presidency. There is no guarantee that if you take one road or the other you will be a successful President."
Mr. Nixon, using the only language heard all evening that bordered on the colorful, contrasted the Republican program for national growth with Mr. Kennedy's in these terms. Mr. Kennedy's, he said, "seem to be simply retreads of programs of the Truman Administration."
For the most part, the exchanges were distinguished by a suavity, earnestness and courtesy that suggested that the two men were more concerned about "image projection" to their huge television audience than about scoring debating points.
Senator Kennedy, using no television makeup, rarely smiled during the hour and maintained an expression of gravity suitable for a candidate for the highest office in the land.
Mr. Nixon, wearing pancake makeup to cover his dark beard, smiled more frequently as he made his points and dabbed frequently at the perspiration that beaded out on his chin.
The debate was carried simultaneously by all three major television networks, the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company and the Columbia Broadcasting System. It was also carried by the radio networks of all three and that of the Mutual Broadcasting System.
The first debate, produced by C.B.S., took place in a big studio at the C.B.S. Chicago outlet, Station WBBM-TV. Studio One, in which they met, was sealed off from the hundreds who swarmed through its corridors and sat in adjoining studios to watch the show on station monitors.
When the debate was over, the two candidates were spirited out of the studio through a freight driveway.
Nixon Noncommittal
At his hotel later, Mr. Nixon was noncommittal about how well he thought he had done. "A debater," he said, "never knows who wins. That will be decided by the people Nov. 8."
Mr. Kennedy was not available for comment, but his advisers said they were elated over his performance.
The only persons permitted in the studio besides television crewmen were two wire service reporters, three photographers and one aide to each candidate.
When the show ended, each man was asked how he felt about the outcome.
"A good exchange of views," said Mr. Nixon.
"We had an exchange of views," Mr. Kennedy agreed.
Under the rules agreed upon by the candidates, each man opened with an eight-minute exposition of his general position on domestic affairs.
This was followed by about thirty-five minutes of question-and-answer with the questions being put by four television newsmen selected by each of the four networks. This was followed by three minute closing statements by each candidate.
The television news representatives on the panel were Sander Vanocur of N.B.C., Robert Fleming of A.B.C., Charles Warren of Mutual and Stuart Novins of C.B.S. Howard K. Smith of the C.B.S. Washington staff acted as moderator, but except for introducing the two, had a quiet evening.
Nixon Arrives First
Mr. Nixon arrived first at the studio on Chicago's Near North Side near the lakefront. His car entered the building through a freight driveway and pulled up by a receiving line of network executives.
Mr. Nixon made small talk for a few moments, then entered the studio accompanied by his press secretary, Herbert G. Klein.
Senator Kennedy arrived eight minutes later, accompanied by several of his campaign aides.
After working the broadcasting executives reception line, he entered the studio where Mr. Nixon was waiting. The two men smiled and shook hands.
"Good to see you. I heard you had a big audience in Cleveland," Mr. Nixon told Mr. Kennedy. The Senator's reply was lost in the hubbub as the photographers worked.
Outside the building several hundred demonstrators with printed placards demonstrated at the curb for Mr. Kennedy. There was no evidence of any Nixon rooting section."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Random Note
Date: 2004-09-27 06:36 am (UTC)Having seen a video of a good chunk of that debate I can vouch for the passage:
"Senator Kennedy, using no television makeup, rarely smiled during the hour and maintained an expression of gravity suitable for a candidate for the highest office in the land.
Mr. Nixon, wearing pancake makeup to cover his dark beard, smiled more frequently as he made his points and dabbed frequently at the perspiration that beaded out on his chin."
Several of my professors argued that this cosmetic mishap was a large factor in the election. I'm tempted to agree.