How did the Biden – Trump debate compare to the Kennedy – Nixon debates in 1960?
Is David Frum correct when he argues that debating Trump normalizes his lies and crimes? Should both Biden and Trump be seen as law-abiding citizens deserving equal respect?
Who won the Nixon-Kennedy debates, the first time Presidential candidates debated live, publicly, on television?
Those who listened on the radio concluded that Nixon won the debates. But those watching on television thought that the well-rested, confident, youthful, debonair Kennedy clearly won the debate, upstaging the experienced Vice-President Nixon.
Should there be another Biden-Trump debate? How can you debate a pathological liar? What should Joe Biden do differently?
YouTube video for this blog: https://youtu.be/_YvIst9oxXo
OVERVIEW OF BIDEN-TRUMP DEBATE
Biden won based on the contents of the speech; he would have easily won if this was a true debating contest. His advisors said he was fighting off a bad cold, and he cleared his throat at the very beginning of the debate, he was not at the top of his form. He found it difficult to recover, his stutter means public speaking is always a challenge for him, a handicap he has largely overcome, but he will never be a natural speaker like Obama.
In fact, his lines, had they been delivered by Obama, would have played well. But Biden could not project his voice, apparently due to his cold. Biden was also unable to think on his feet, his bad cold seemed to dull his senses, and he did not deliver zinging responses.
COMPARISON WITH KENNEDY-NIXON 1960 TELEVISED DEBATES
In the 1960 debates, the Kennedy camp was aware of the critical importance of the debate, clearing the candidate’s calendar to thoroughly prepare for the debate. We wonder, did Joe Biden get sufficient rest before the debate? History tells us that Nixon kept a full calendar up to the time of the debate, which hurt his performance, while Kennedy did nothing else but prepare for a week before.
We remember how a famous ex-president, Franklin Roosevelt, who had significant health problems, insisted on relaxing to recharge even in the stressful days leading up to and during World War II. We remember how FDR came up with the brilliant idea of assisting Great Britain militarily with the Lend-Lease program while relaxing on the Presidential yacht. FDR famously compared shipping military supplies to England to lending your water hose to a neighbor so he can quench his house fire. How England would return these shot-up tanks and planes and munitions after the war was never explained.
Many pundits claimed that Trump had not prepared for the debate. But in a way, Trump had been preparing for the debate for the past decade. Trump does not care about his legacy, Trump does not care about policy, Trump does not care about governing, all Trump looks forward to are his beloved rallies, where he continually practices his lines, searching for the zingers the crowds love. As John Bolton observed, Trump only cares about his ratings and his upcoming reelection campaign.
In her book, An Unfinished Love Story, the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and her husband, Richard Goodwin, Kennedy’s speechwriter, reminisced about serving on the White House staff in the Sixties. This account has a more complete telling of the Kennedy Nixon debates. One evening, Doris and Dick rewatched the Kennedy-Nixon debates on YouTube.
John F Kennedy, Cuba, Russia, and Civil Rights, Book Review of An Unfinished Love Story
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/john-f-kennedy-cuba-russia-and-civil-rights-review-of-an-unfinished-love-story/
https://youtu.be/krkJki2vQ2o
Doris recalls: “After the candidates were announced, I immediately noticed Kennedy’s dark suit, sharply defined against the gray background” of the black and white recording, “in contrast with Nixon’s indistinct gray suit. Kennedy’s composed posture, hands quietly folded in his lap, one leg crossing the other, similarly contrasted with Nixon’s body language, painfully ill at ease, lips pursed, eyes shifting, legs splayed awkwardly beneath his chair.”
“It’s not fair!” blurted Doris. “It is a debate, not a beauty contest.”
“What has fair got to do with it?” Dick retorted.
Unlike Nixon, Kennedy knew that on television he needed to speak to the camera, directly to the people, rather than responding to Nixon or the moderator. Doris noticed: “Watching the two men side by side, the contention that Vice President Nixon was the more seasoned and mature candidate, possessed of greater authority and capacity to lead, had vanished before the first debate was over.”
Trump unmistakably has a better appearance on television, he simply appears to be younger than he is. Plus, his signature red tie always looks good on television, but Joe Biden’s skinny, wan appearance clad with a dark blue suit and dark blue tie made him look more like an undertaker.
Dick Goodwin observed: “A TV debate is not exactly a format for levity, complexity, or reflection. Time is short, stakes are enormous. A single, serious mistake could prove fatal to months of campaigning. Style, out of necessity, towers over substance.”[1]
Although televised presidential debates can derail campaigns, a bad first debate performance does not necessarily doom a Presidential campaign. Barack Obama and George W Bush both had bad first debates and recovered.[2]
What would be my humble recommendations to Joe Biden, if he decides to debate Trump again? On the days before the debate, relax at Camp David with his advisors, swim some laps and ride the bike, catch up on his sleep, don’t travel the weeks before the debate, make everyone around you wear masks a month before, and whatever you do, don’t catch another cold.
Are Biden’s speechwriters partly to blame? The prepared contents were great for a normal campaign speech. But a debate with a pathological liar like Donald Trump is a verbal knife fight. If Biden decides to debate Trump again, Biden needs zingers and attack lines like those composed by Steve Schmidt. The Lincoln Project fighters fight knife fights with knives, which would make them excellent consultants.
DAVID FRUM’S ATLANTIC EDITORIAL
We will quote at length from David Frum’s short editorial from the Atlantic magazine, we can do no better:
David Frum begins his editorial: “The first question about January 6 was asked at minute 41. Donald Trump replied with a barrage of crazy lies, ending by seeming to blame Nancy Pelosi’s documentarian daughter.”
Among Trump’s lies CNN later listed were these whoppers related to the January 6th riots, though his lies were largely unchallenged by the CNN hosts on debate night:
- Trump claimed that “former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi turned down 10,000 National Guard troops for the US Capitol on January 6, 2021,” which was simply untrue.
- Trump claims that “fraud marred the results of the 2020 election.” There was very little fraud during the election, but there was plenty of fraud afterwards committed by Republicans trying to overthrow the election.
The CNN hosts were far more concerned with getting through all the questions on their list than challenging bald-faced lies. Perhaps their CNN bosses, to be fair to both sides, instructed the hosts to handle Trump with kid gloves.
CNN lists the favorite lies that Trump repeated in the debate:
- “Some Democratic-led states allow babies to be executed after birth,” which is a bald-faced lie made up from whole cloth. It passed the whoop and holler test at Trump’s political rallies. After all, if Trump shouts lies confidently, loudly, and repeatedly, that must make them true, right? Especially if the crowds whoop and holler.
- Trump also wrongly claims that “every legal scholar and everybody in general wanted Roe v. Wade overturned.” Again, these scholars are not named, and everybody does not support the overturning of Roe v. Wade, including the dissenting Supreme Court justices in the Dobbs decision.
- “Biden is planning to quadruple people’s taxes,” which is a total lie. Biden will allow the Trump tax cuts on corporations and the wealthy to expire and increase the taxes on those making over $400,000 a year, to decrease both deficit spending and fund the actuarial increases needed for the Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid programs as our population ages.
- “Americans don’t pay the cost of his tariffs on China and other countries,”
which is a bald-faced lie that makes no logical sense. - “Trump shepherded the Veterans Choice program through Congress,”
except that he did not.
We have numerous reflections on Abortion from a Pro-Compassion, Pro-Doctor, and a Christian perspective. We quote from and agree with the teachings in the Catholic Catechism regarding abortion.
Supreme Court Dobbs Case Overruling Roe v Wade: Should Christians be Pro-Compassion? Pro-Doctors?
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/supreme-court-dobbs-case-overruling-roe-v-wade-should-christians-be-pro-compassion-pro-doctors/
https://youtu.be/Jb_vUFnAf3g
Regarding Abortion, Should Christians Be Pro-Compassion? Answering Questions, Further Reflections
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/regarding-abortion-should-christians-be-pro-compassion-answering-questions-further-reflections/
https://youtu.be/ll9wOR0t2yQ
A Democrat Christian Ponders Abortion and Morality
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/a-democrat-christian-ponders-abortion-and-morality/
https://youtu.be/C4rH6qhhw70
CNN lists additional Trump lies from his speech:
- “Biden for years referred to Black people as ‘super-predators.’
- There were no terror attacks during his presidency.
- Iran didn’t fund terror groups during his presidency.
- Europe accepts no American cars.
- The US has provided more aid to Ukraine than Europe has.”
While it is true that the United States has provided far more aid in total dollars to Ukraine than any other country, fifteen other countries outspent the United States by the percentage of aid to their total Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, which measures the size of their economy. The reason is that the United States economy dwarfs the size of the European economies. Many Baltic countries spend four times more than the United States based on the proportion of total aid to GDP.
Trump also lied when he claimed that the “US currently has its biggest budget deficit and its biggest trade deficit with China” under Biden. “Both records actually occurred under Trump.”
DANGERS OF THE BOTH-SIDES NARRATIVES
David Frum remembers: After asking Trump about the events of January 6th, “then, just to be fair, CNN moderator Jake Tapper followed up with a question to President Joe Biden. Did he really mean to imply that Trump’s voters were a danger to democracy? Biden fumbled the answer, as he fumbled so many other answers. The octogenarian president delivered a fiasco of a performance on the Atlanta debate stage. But the fiasco was not his alone.”
David Frum continues: “Everything about the event was designed to blur the choice before Americans. Both candidates—the serving president and the convicted felon—were addressed as ‘President.’ The questions treated an attempted coup d’état as one issue out of many. The candidates were left to police or fail to police the truth of each other’s statements; it was nobody else’s business.”
David Frum continues: “It may be no coincidence that the modern television presidential debate was born at a time of national political consensus. In 1960, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon presented a choice very familiar to viewers in the days of three big channels and a limited number of mass-market products: You could choose Crest or Colgate, two very similar products.” “Now we live in a very different world, a world in which the choice is much more existential—and yet we retain the Crest-versus-Colgate format.”
Here David Frum misses the mark. Why did we have a national consensus in 1960? FDR built a bipartisan coalition to fight World War II, this bipartisan attitude persisted until it was destroyed during the Newt Gingrich and Tea Party era. Also, the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, which required that broadcasters fairly present both sides of political discussions, increased political polarization.
The rise of the right-wingnut media, including Fox News, Newsmax, Breitbart, Steve Bannon’s podcast, and Alex Jones, destroys political consensus by actively discouraging Republican politicians from compromising with Democrats and encouraging political chaos. These right-wingnut media outlets lie with abandon, they are not credible news sources. Today, right-wingnut Republican congressmen would rather pursue more airtime on television than do their jobs in Congress.
David Frum continues: “How could it be otherwise? We live in a political culture in which some of us think the supreme issue of our time was an attempted violent overthrow of the Constitution, while other Americans think it was Hunter Biden’s laptop. There are means and institutions to arbitrate those differences. That’s what elections do. But television debates cannot do it, because television debates don’t happen unless they get buy-in from both sides. Therefore, television debates are designed necessarily to ratify the concept of ‘both sides.’”
TRUMP SIMPLY DENIES THE REALITY OF THE PAST
When questioned about dubious past comments or actions, Trump often simply denies they happened.
For example, What was Biden’s motivation to run for President?
BIDEN: “What got me involved to run in the first place? After my son had died in Iraq,” “I said, I wasn’t going to run again. Until I saw what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia, people coming out of the woods carrying swastikas on torches – torches and singing the same antisemitic bile they sang when back in Germany.”
BIDEN continues: “What American president would ever say Nazis coming out of fields, carrying torches, singing the same antisemitic bile, carrying swastikas, were fine people?”
“This is a guy who says Hitler’s done some good things. I’d like to know what they are, the good things Hitler’s done. That’s what he said. This guy has no sense of American democracy.”
TAPPER: “President Trump?” No pushback from Jake Tapper.
TRUMP: “Biden made up the Charlottesville story and you’ll see it’s debunked all over the place. Every reasonable anchor has debunked it.”
We have Trump on tape saying there are fine people on both sides at Charlottesville. But, with a straight face, he simply denies the past.
Biden did score some zingers, or coaxed Trump into damning responses, that can later be inserted into stunning political ads.
BIDEN: “I mean, what are you talking about? You have the morals of an alley cat.”
TRUMP: “I didn’t have sex with a porn star.”
Often when you catch Trump with his hand in the cookie jar, he first denies that the cookie jar exists, then he denies that the cookies exist, and then he says it was perfectly fine to steal the cookies!
When reminded how he said that US servicemen who are captured in war, like John McCain, or who die in war, are suckers and losers, Trump simply denies he said such things!
TRUMP: “First of all, that was a made-up quote, suckers and losers. They made it up. It was in a third-rate magazine that’s failing, like many of these magazines. He made that up.” “We had nineteen people that said I didn’t say it.” Maybe Trump is referring to nineteen right-wingnut anchors on Fox News and Newsmax.
TAPPER ASKS TRUMP ABOUT HIS 34 FELONIES IN NEW YORK
Deep in the debate, TAPPER asks Trump: “After a jury convicted you of 34 felonies last month, you said if re-elected you would, ‘have every right to go after’ your political opponents. You just talked about members of the Select Committee on January 6th going to jail.”
TRUMP: “Well, I said my retribution is going to be success. We’re going to make this country successful again, because right now it’s a failing nation.”
That is just not true. Trump meant revenge, that is what retribution means.
TRUMP: “But when Biden talks about a convicted felon, his son is a convicted felon at a very high level.”
So, Trump is suggesting that it is okay for him to be a convicted felon because Hunter Biden is a convicted felon? But Hunter Biden is not on the ballot.
TRUMP: “But Joe could be a convicted felon as soon as he gets out of office. Joe could be a convicted felon with all of the things that he’s done. He’s done horrible things.” “This man is a criminal.”
If Trump becomes President, we know he will go after Biden, whether he has done anything wrong or not. Trump projects his lies and crimes onto his opponents with satanic skill.
TRUMP: “I did nothing wrong. We’d have a system that was rigged and disgusting. I did nothing wrong.”
Does Jake Tapper challenge these slanders? No, he simply says:
TAPPER: “Thank you, President Trump.” Now, to be fair, let us ask a similar question of Biden.
TRUMP SAYS MIGRANTS ARE RUINING AMERICA
Let us not forget that when he descended down the Trump Tower escalator, Trump kickstarted his campaign with his comments on Mexican immigrants: “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
In this speech, it is amazing how skillfully Trump suggests that migrants are responsible for nearly all of America’s problems:
TRUMP: “And I’d love to ask Biden, and will, why he allowed millions of people to come in here from prisons, jails and mental institutions to come into our country and destroy our country.”
Trump also claims that millions of migrants are destroying Social Security and Medicare.
“The only jobs Biden created are for illegal immigrants and bounce back jobs” “from COVID.”
“Migrants are killing our citizens at a level that we’ve never seen before.”
“Migrants are living in luxury hotels in New York City and other places.”
“Migrants are taking black jobs and they’re taking Hispanic jobs, and it could be 18, or 19, or even 20 million people.”
Why, oh why, did Biden not massacre Trump by reminding him that he defeated the Border Bill drafted by a conservative Republican Senator that gave the Republicans everything they have been requesting to control immigration?
Trump’s speech is full of blatant, bald-faced lies: lies about COVID, lies about Afghanistan, many lies about abortion, lies about NATO, lies about Ukraine, lies about inflation, lies about Democrats, even lies about his golf game, all lies coined to rock his MAGA rally crowds. Trump does not seek the truth, Trump seeks ratings.
DAVID FRUM CONCLUDES HIS EDITORIAL
David Frum concludes: “This most recent debate has taught the danger of spectatorship. The job of saving democracy from Trump will be done not by an old man on a gaudy stage, but by those who care that their democracy be saved. Biden’s evident frailties have aggravated that job and made it more difficult, but they have also clarified whose job it is. Not his. Yours.” It is your job.
Everyone who is alarmed about Trump must vote. Trump plans to destroy democracy. Biden will preserve our democracy. No other issue is more important than this.
David Frum continues: “Ferocious controversy will probably now erupt over Biden’s leadership of the Democratic Party. We’ll hear all kinds of plans to swap him out somehow. Maybe those plans will be workable, but probably not. Through the uproar, it will be important to keep in mind that this election is not about Biden. It’s about you and your commitments and your values. Biden is just the instrument. Like any instrument, he’s imperfect. But better an imperfect instrument than a would-be autocrat who demands a cult of personality.”[3]
You cannot throw your captain overboard in the midst of a storm and expect the ship to make it to port.
Democrats need to fight with the determination of Winston Churchill in his Battle on the Beaches speech, delivered before the Battle of Britain:
“Even though large parts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the Old.”[4]
We need to elect Joe Biden to show the world that the United States remains a beacon of democracy.
DISCUSSING THE SOURCES
Doris Kearns Goodwin shares how her husband, Richard Goodwin, JFK’s speechwriter, remembered the Kennedy-Nixon debates. We discuss this source more thoroughly in our reflections on the JFK and LBJ presidencies. We have two other reflections based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s An Unfinished Love Story on the momentous decade of the Sixties that defined their careers.
John F Kennedy, Cuba, Russia, and Civil Rights, Book Review of An Unfinished Love Story
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/john-f-kennedy-cuba-russia-and-civil-rights-review-of-an-unfinished-love-story/
https://youtu.be/krkJki2vQ2o
Lyndon Johnson, Enacting the Great Society and Vietnam, Review of an Unfinished Love Story
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/lyndon-johnson-enacting-the-great-society-and-vietnam-review-of-an-unfinished-love-story/
https://youtu.be/MgVEipHdvfM
Our blog includes footnotes for David Frum’s Atlantic editorial, CNN’s list of Trumpian debate lies, and the transcript for the debate. David Frum occasionally writes succinct editorials that are on point.
[1] Doris Kearns Goodwin, An Unfinished Love Story, Chapter 3, Aboard the Caroline, pp. 63-67.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_debates
[3] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/06/debate-trump-platform-january-6/678818/ and https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/27/politics/fact-checking-the-cnn-presidential-debate/index.html and
https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skrdyoabmgA , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84nfcKeT-qU , and https://www.nationalchurchillmuseum.org/we-shall-fight-on-the-beaches.html
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