You can view an excerpt of the first Kennedy-Nixon debate at the website of the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago at:
http://www.museum.tv/
debateweb/html/
greatdebate/index.htm
(Real Player must be installed in your computer in order to view this video.) A curriculum resource guide is also available on the same site.
A full transcript of this debate can be found on the John F. Kennedy Library Website:
http://www.jfklibrary.org/60-1st.htm
You can also view the Kennedy ad that featured President Eisenhower's questioning of Nixon's experience by going to the website of the American Museum of the Moving Image in New York at:
http://livingroomcandidate.movingimage.us/style/index.php?nav_action=style.
Click on "Kennedy, 1960, Nixon's Experience?"
Both the Nixon and Kennedy Presidential Libraries include extensive websites, with the Nixon site offering an exhaustive bibliography of works about Nixon:
Richard M. Nixon Library and Birthplace Website:
http://www.nixonfoundation.org
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum Website:
http://www.jfklibrary.org/index.htm
While television greatly influenced the 1960 campaign, the election of 1960 produced an equally important change in the way in which American journalists wrote about presidential races. Theodore H. White traveled with both candidates in researching his book, The Making of the President, 1960 (New York: Atheneum, 1961, with many later editions).
White went on to produce books tracing the "Making of Presidents" in 1968 and 1972, and his methods influenced every historian and journalist who writes about national politics to this day. White's book was itself the basis of a television documentary, The Making of the President, 1960, Wolper Production, Inc., 1972.
To sample significant writings about the debate and the debaters, students may want to consult:
- Gellman, Irwin F. The contender: Richard Nixon: the Congress years, 1946-1952 (New York: Free Press, 1999).
- Hinck, Edward A. Enacting the Presidency: Political Argument, Presidential Debates, and Presidential Character (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993).
- Jamieson, Kathleen Hall, and David S. Birdsell. Presidential Debates: The Challenge of Creating an Informed Electorate (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).
- Matthews, Christopher. Kennedy & Nixon: The Rivalry That Shaped Postwar America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
- Morris, Roger. Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician (New York: Henry Holt, 1990.)
- Nixon, Richard M. RN, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978).
- Parmet, Herbert S. Jack: The Struggles of John F. Kennedy (New York: Dial Press, 1980) and Richard Nixon and his America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990).
- Schroeder, Alan. Presidential Debates: Forty Years of High-Tisk TV (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000).
- Sorensen, Theodore C. Kennedy (New York: Harper & Row, 1965).
