Food for Thought

For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived, and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

- JFK, commencement address, Yale University,  June 11, 1962, written by Ted Sorensen, JFK's counselor and speechwriter, who died last week, age 82.

Myth-busting the Kennedy-Nixon Debates

Ten days ago, I ran a blog post on the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon Presidential campaign. The focus of the piece was how we make choices - including those that decide the fate of the world - based on emotion rather than reason. My piece made a brief reference to the three television debates, which Nixon won on radio but lost to the more telegenic Kennedy on TV.

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the first JFK-Nixon debate, with no shortage of media attention, including a NY Times op-ed piece by Ted Sorensen, a top JFK aide who helped prep his boss for the debates. The popular myth has it that the debates were a triumph of style over substance. That may have been the case, but as Sorensen notes:

In fact, there was far more substance and nuance in that first debate than in what now passes for political debate in our increasingly commercialized, sound-bite Twitter-fied culture, in which extremist rhetoric requires presidents to respond to outrageous claims.

Indeed, that is the case. In researching my previous blog post, I reviewed a number of clips from the three debates on YouTube. I was tremendously impressed at the quality of the debate, way higher than what passes for political discourse in this day and age. The two may have projected entirely different TV personae, but what they both showed in common was an extraordinary level of deep thinking.  Clearly, these were two forceful intellectuals with a thorough grasp of the issues, each one making a strong case that they were the right man to lead the US and the free world through a time of global and domestic uncertainty.

Why would this have mattered to an American public 50 years ago? The knock on Kennedy prior to the debate was that he was a lightweight, way too young to be taken seriously, with little experience compared to Nixon. Even though both were around the same age (the two served as junior Navy officers in World War II and entered Congress the same year), Nixon was perceived as Kennedy's elder.

What surprised me in reviewing these clips was Kennedy's gravitas, not his sex appeal. If anything, by today's standards, JFK could be considered a nerdy wonk. Yes, he looked better on camera than Nixon, but what the American public really saw was a serious Presidential candidate who deserved to be on the same stage as the better-known Nixon. An undecided voter could now vote for JFK with a clear conscience.

To drive the point home: Kennedy "won" these encounters by debating the favored Nixon to a draw, by convincingly displaying that he deserved to be taken as seriously as his rival. This is what would have mattered most to voters, not his pretty boy charm. Yes, the Kennedy charisma would have entered into it, but these were the days before movie stars ran for high office.

Does this mean that voters back then cast their votes according to considered reason rather than emotion? No way. Major and minor decisions 50 years later are still made by the brain's primitive limbic system. The more highly evolved cortical areas merely rationalize how the non-thinking pleasure and fear centers react. But the thinking part of the brain still needs something to work with. Voters may have "liked" Kennedy more and "hated" Nixon with even greater intensity, but most of them were still ready to vote for Nixon till Kennedy gave them a valid reason to "think" otherwise.

Then they became "comfortable" with their choice. So the progression works something like this: A "like" or a "hate" or both from the limbic system, then over to the cortical areas to justify the decision, then back to the limbic system for that comforting glow.

Sorensen also noted that on the key issues, the two candidates did not vastly differ. Intriguingly, "while Kennedy would probably find a home in today’s Democratic Party, it is unlikely that Nixon would receive a warm welcome among the Tea Party."

My guess is the reason Republicans have failed to rehabilitate Nixon has less to  do with Watergate than with the fact that he was far more liberal as a President (1969-1974) than Clinton. Nixon had no place for fringe conservatives, who have long ago taken over the Republican party. Of all things, Nixon could be called "the last liberal President," less liberal than his predecessor LBJ, but willing to serve a broadly progressive agenda for the common good.

Crazy, huh?

A Lesson in History: The 1960 Presidential Campaign

I recall my father sitting me down and offering this sage advice: "Son," he said, "there is no excuse for dancing like a white man."

Actually, he said no such thing. Rather, he counseled, "Son, there is no excuse for thinking like a Republican."

Okay, he never said that either, but I do recollect my father dragging me out on a bitter cold autumn night in New England fifty years ago. I was 10 going on 11, and an historic Presidential campaign was underway.

JFK was due to address an evening rally in nearby Waterbury, Connecticut. He should have arrived hours before, but no one was leaving. I was standing in the drizzling freezing cold with my father and thousands of others. People were warming their hands around improvised fires they had lit in steel trash drums.

I don't remember much about Kennedy that night, but I vividly recall that crowd. I recall my father, I recall the emotion. History was being made. Theodore White, in his book "The Making of the President," recounted that memorable night and how Kennedy was astounded by the turn-out and the enthusiasm. That reception, others have commented, animated the exhausted candidate, gave him a second wind, imbued him with the strength to squeak out a win in what was then the closest election in history.

Had my father and others voted according to reason rather than emotion, Nixon would have easily won the election. Nixon, after all, had more experience by far, having served as Vice-President under Eisenhower, a true moderate Republican who presided over a decade of unprecedented prosperity.

A continuation of the Eisenhower years under Nixon would have been the sensible choice, but many voters harbored a visceral hatred of the Republican candidate. Part of this had to do with Nixon's early rise to fame. Conservatives saw him as a principled man standing up to home-grown communism. Liberals saw him as a rat bag red-baiter out to ruin innocent people for his own personal gain.

Part of this also had to do with Nixon's unfortunate "Tricky Dicky" image, which JFK exploited to the max. (Would you buy a used car from this man?) By contrast, JFK literally invented charisma. All politicians who came after are mere pale imitations. In their first debate (see the above YouTube clip), most of those who heard the proceedings on radio thought that Nixon had won, but JFK emerged a clear winner to the TV audience.

During the campaign, JFK resorted to a scare tactic involving a fictitious "missile gap" with the Soviet Union. Nixon could not respond without disclosing classified information. There was also the complicating variable of JFK's religion, then a contentious issue. Make no mistake about it, in our Irish-Catholic household it wouldn't have mattered if Kennedy were Forrest Gump - he had the McManamy vote securely locked away.

Conversely, all hell could have frozen over before many Protestants would have voted for a Catholic. Then there was the "solid south," in those days staunchly Democrat, still irrationally nursing a grudge against the party of Lincoln.

Nixon and Kennedy entered Congress the same year, 1946. They became good friends, Kennedy a conservative Democrat, Nixon a moderate and almost liberal Republican. Both were thoughtful men, with sharp intellects. Both were keen students of history. On paper, very little separated the two. On all the intangibles - the things that reason cannot explain - it was an entirely different story.

In the final analysis, the right man won for the wrong reasons. Such is the capricious nature of democracy. Jefferson and our Founding Fathers naively assumed that a well-informed public, making reasoned choices, could be trusted with their own government. According to a recent Pew Research Poll, 34 percent of conservative Republicans think Obama is Muslim.

This time around, capricious democracy - fueled on cynically fanned emotions - is leading us to an inexorably wrong result. God help us all.