When Kenndedy Met Nixon [View All]

[mgc1961]

Fifty years ago today, the “Great Debate” between Vice President Richard M. Nixon, the Republican nominee for president, and Senator John F. Kennedy, the Democratic nominee, attracted 70 million viewers — the largest audience in American history for any political event.

Six myths have persisted throughout the innumerable reports on this historic confrontation. As someone who helped Kennedy prepare and negotiate the terms for the Chicago debate, I’d like to set the half-century-old record straight.

Read the rest of it at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/opinion/26sorensen.html?hp


My favorite part of the article is this:

Of course, Kennedy never agreed with those who believed that all he had to do was show up. He later said in Minnesota: “It’s easier playing Harvard after you’ve played Ohio State — Nixon may have debated Khrushchev, but I had to debate Hubert Humphrey in the primaries.”