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In the television debates, the camera was endlessly kind to Kennedy, whose charm passed through the lens and directly into the American consciousness. Nixon fared badly on the camera. It exaggerated the depth of his eye sockets, picked up the sweat on his upper lip and the shadow of his heavy whiskers. Kennedy had the video sense to address the camera, and the American people, while Nixon addressed himself to Kennedy, as a pre-video debater would. Some had thought the 43-year-old Democrat a depthless rich-boy dreamboat who missed too many votes in the Senate. His only previous executive experience ended with his getting his PT boat sawed in half by a Japanese destroyer. But the first debate established him in the public mind as at least the equal of the two-term Vice President.
The professionalism of the media handlers in 1988 invigorates the political process infinitely less than the emotional intimacy of the 1960 campaign. For all its spooky powers, television rarely achieves any ignitions of the personal in a campaign. Never in the 1988 campaign does one see anything like the public passion that was displayed, for both candidates, during 1960. Kennedy had his "jumpers" -- females who forested the parade routes, who swooned and leaped and shrieked. "It was flat-out every day and most of the night, ten or 15 days at a time without a day off," remembers Ted Sorensen. "Today it feels more like a missile exchange instead of war in the trenches. Kennedy would saturate a state. He'd do ten or 15 events a day. Now they do two, usually timed carefully to make the evening network news. There aren't many large crowds now. Kennedy would go after the largest possible crowds."
Herb Klein, Nixon's press secretary then, says, "We'd come into a city concentrating on a downtown noon rally. Pierre Salinger ((Kennedy's press secretary)) and I would compete to get the biggest crowd estimate out of the local police chief. The biggest difference between the two campaigns is that the candidates now are not exposed to the public the way they used to be."
As Arthur Schlesinger Jr. remarks, "Television has replaced the political party." It controls agenda and voter turnout at the polls, two key traditional functions of the party. In the election of 1880, the political parties were so good at motivating voters that 80% of them voted, despite two weak candidates -- Garfield and Hancock -- and no strong issues.
PHOTO OPS, 1988