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Unearthing a Buried Treasure: Gene Patterson on the Kennedy-Nixon Debate

By Roy Peter Clark

With the help of my colleague David Shedden, we've unearthed a buried treasure: a column by Gene Patterson, published October 8, 1960, in The Atlanta Constitution, covering the second televised Nixon-Kennedy debate.

I had the honor and pleasure of co-editing a book titled "The Changing South of Gene Patterson:  Journalism and Civil Rights, 1960-1968."  During Gene's eight years as editor of the paper, he wrote a signed column every day.  Eight years. Every day. More than 3,200 in all.

The column below was not about the South or civil rights, so it does not appear in the book. We are re-publishing it here in its entirety for the first time in almost 47 years.  We are not doing this just because we love Gene, who in his 80s remains an important figure in the life of The Poynter Institute, or for a nostalgic trip down memory lane.

We reprint "Kennedy Owes a Debt to TV" because it offers a lasting blueprint for how to cover and analyze a political debate.  Here are some of the lessons to be drawn from Gene's column:

• It helps to experience the debate in more than one medium.
• It is important to compare and contrast what the candidates say with how they say it and how they look saying it.
• It is only fair to recognize that a particular debate format or medium may naturally favor one candidate over another.
• That standing up to the rigors of a debate may prove something about a candidate, but not everything that is important.
• That telegenic presence may overshadow substance -- which is a danger.
• That you can use tough and interesting language without descending into snarky incivility.
• That you can accomplish all of this on deadline in about 600 words.
  

So please enjoy this column -- and learn.

Kennedy Owes a Debt to TV
By Eugene Patterson

Issues aside, it now seems clear that Vice President Nixon got caught in a bear trap when he decided to meet Sen. Kennedy on television.  The medium is good to Kennedy, and most unkind to Nixon.  It makes Kennedy look forceful.  It makes Nixon look guilty.

The contrast with radio was stunning Friday night.  On radio, Nixon's words sounded wise and measured.  On television they seemed hesitant.  Kennedy's radio voice, on the other hand, came through in a nervous rat-a-tat that made him sound brash.  On TV his self-confident manner made the rush of his words into an element of conviction.

Since the words were the same, one wonders why Nixon seemed weaker and Kennedy stronger when their faces were seen.  And vice versa.  And why it mattered, as it did.  Quite clearly this frantic game of fast-talk has carried politics into a dimension beyond what is said, and added the test of how it is said.

Nixon's patient pause on radio became a grope on TV.  Kennedy's radio breathlessness became drive on TV.

The words will have to be read to be fully grasped.  Yet it would be futile to prospect for hidden treasures of wisdom in these words.  They represent no carefully considered composition.  This evening was precisely what it looked and sounded like -- an electronic ordeal testing not the total or considered wisdom of the men, but testing a new dimension:  what they can come up with under pressure, against the clock, and how.

The exercise was valuable.  It let the voter scrutinize the powerful by the measurement he applies to everyday men -- their faces, their manners, as well as their words.  There is a danger as well -- the danger that a candidate of attractive physique and accomplished composure will seem to be wiser than his words, and that a plainer man, uncomfortable, will do a bad job of stating good answers.  With the mature citizen measuring all the elements by his own good sense, however, it has to be assumed that addition of the visual medium gives him one more item of evidence to judge by.

And it is Mr. Nixon's great bad luck that TV dulls him, and puts a glitter on Sen. Kennedy.

TV put an edge of uncertainty on Nixon's answers.  With the face seen, his confidential manner slipped uncomfortably near that of a salesman of cemetery lots.  Whoever coached him to stare fixedly into the camera eye ought to instruct him to look instead at his live questioner, as Kennedy did.  The Vice President's performance excelled his first one.  But he is in a bear trap.

As for Kennedy, a young man who really is in too much of a hurry when speaking, he should build a monument to the man who added the video to the audio.  It makes his mind seem to work as fast as his tongue, almost.

[Please share your thoughts and comments on these ideas and on anything you might have learned from reading Gene's column.]





 

Full post as published by Writing Tools on November 29, 2007 (boomark / email).