Leadership since the Age of TV

[Hutch]

Here beginnith the rant...

Thinking about the election season and the choices we apparently have (Bush or Kerry) makes me wonder if the invention of Television was such a good idea.

I mean, what President since the advent of TV becoming a major factor in political races has really inspired, really LED the nation to the extent that he will be remembered in history books a century on for his actions? Kennedy, maybe? Reagan, possibly? But Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II…No new faces on Rushmore there. And even our views of Kennedy and Reagan depend a lot on what they projected on TV rather than the content of the leadership.

Maybe we should go back to the old “smoke-filled room” of political bosses and candidates staying at home and running on their platforms. Today we couldn’t elect a guy with a beard and ungainly walking habits (Lincoln), a loud, bucktoothed New Yorker who could out shout Dean (T. Roosevelt), A New England College professor (Wilson), or a cripple (FD Roosevelt). And are we the better for it?

OK, here endeth the rant.

[Peter Jenkins]

I understand that, in the 1960 presidential debates, Radio listeners generally thought that Nixon outclassed JFK. However, TV viewers went for JFK's confident look, compared to a sweaty, unshaven Nixon.

The first debate held on September 26, 1960, between Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard M. Nixon--especially the visual contrast between the televised image of the tanned, handsome Kennedy and the pale, sweating Nixon--is widely attributed as a key factor contributing to Kennedy's narrow victory in the November election. Approximately 70 million Americans, at the time the largest political audience in U.S. history, watched the first of the four debates.
(From Eagleton political archive (http://www.eagleton.rutgers.edu/e-gov/e-politicalarchive-JFK-Nixon.htm))

How would the Cuban crisis have been handled with Nixon in the whitehouse?
Peter