Vic Socotra

27 September 2008

Master Debaters

I was not going to get caught short like I did in the Nixon-Kennedy debates. That was the goal, anyway, but of course it got away from me.

There were Chinese astronauts doing a space walk, according to the last message I read before leaving the office. I was uncertain if this was the past-tense account of what was going to happen tomorrow or not. The journalists of the PRC find it convenient to write future history in order to have it handy for ready use, though keeping everything synchronized is a bit of a challenge for them.

It had been a hell of a day. Frantic at the front end, I forget about what, then drag-ass slow, and then the news lit up the cell phones that the government awarded us a big contract right around quitting time that dragged things out well past the cocktail hour.

I know how to do debates. I have been watching, eagle-eyed since the 1960 election cycle. I was only nine at the time, but the evening’s battle between the Senators in Mississippi was 48 years to the day from the first television-age presidential debate. It was 26 September, 1960, at the WBBM studio in Chicago.

70 million U.S. viewers tuned in to watch. Millions more who clung to the old technology listened on the radio, which in those days still had networks just like real media.

Nixon was the man- he had been Captain of the Wittier College debating team, a letterman, if they gave those them to geeks, and everyone knew John Kennedy was a shallow fellow, though pleasant enough like all the Kennedy boys.

It was too bad his brother Joe got killed in the war- everyone knew that he was the one that old Joe had groomed to smash the stereotypes about Irish Americans, and their alien Catholic faith.

Religion had no business in public life, that i s the way it was supposed to be, unless it was some reference to a higher Power like Providence, which had no human face. Unlike Pope John XXIII, who wore the Papal crown with élan and undisputable authority.

Unless you happen to be a "Sedevacantist," of course, since they believed that Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was not the true Pope, but an imposter. The “Empty Seat” Catholics came out of the traditional wing of the faith, and maintained that everything after the Vatican II conclave was a heretical fraud.

They still do. I do not have an opinion on that, then or now, though I confess to liking the sound of Latin that died with the old Roman mass. It would have been interesting to have heard a good debate on the matter, but the proceedings were mostly in Italian, which was a problem.

The first Nixon-Kennedy debate was about domestic issues. Nixon was just recovering from the flu, and he refused stage-makeup. Kennedy went the whole hog, and looked relaxed and tanned under the bright lights, like he had just swum in from his PT boat in the broad Pacific.

Much has been made about that, with the conventional wisdom being that Nixon was better prepared and the master debater. People who listened on the radio thought he edged out the young Senator from Massachusetts. Me, watching from the wall-to-wall carpet in suburban Detroit, thought that John Kennedy looked pretty damn good.

It was the first Presidential election that I had any opinion about, so it is memorable still. I actually thought that the fate of the world rested on who lived at the White House. Maybe growing up under Dwight Eisenhower’s grandfatherly gaze made it that way.

The debate last night was supposed to focus on foreign policy, just as fixing dinner was supposed to focus on meat and potato issues but wound up consumed with business minutia. Since I was running late on my civic duty, I turned the radio on in the kitchen to follow along. Naturally enough, moderator Jim Lehrer tried to get the two Senators to focus on the catastrophe on Wall Street that has wiped out the nation’s piggy banks.

Neither of the candidates wanted to play, and veered back to their traditional positions on taxes and change. I certainly understand why they were reluctant to address the issue.

The recession is going to put a real crimp in Senator Obama’s grand plans. With the shortfall in tax revenue, an imbalanced budget, collapsing dollar and an energy crunch, you do not have to be a rocket scientist to understand that the only way to fund the things he says he wants to do is to increase taxes.

Senator McCain, for his part, doesn’t seem inclined to say that he has a rabbit in his helmet bag and everything is going to be OK.

I listened to20the candidates bob and weave while I cooked the escalloped potatoes and ladled the spicy hot sauce over the chicken.

When everything was done, I carried a plate into Tunnel Eight’s dining area and turned on the television. The debate was totally different in the visual context. The Senators were salt and pepper under the bright lights, and Jim Lehrer looked a little like the whack-a-mole at the arcade, looking up at them with wide blinking eyes.

The nice people who do the commentary for the networks were going to tell me who won the debate, since they are the real20masters of these things. What is said doesn’t really matter. It is the body language that counts.

So I picked up the remote, put the sound on “ mute,” and settled in to watch the candidates talk. When they were done, I was pretty sure I knew exactly who won.

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