Television’s Interface With Kennedy, Nixon, and Trump: Two Politicians and One TV Celebrity

Abstract

With the historical televised first presidential debates of John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, television made its national debut as a political influence. Television became a third player in the debates in the way it filmed the candidates. Kennedy and Nixon respectively served as models of effective and ineffective presentations of oneself on the electronic screen. Because of this event, “The Image” emerged as part of the sensibility for any public figure as well as an intrinsic part of the political lexicon. Kennedy, as President, also developed a model of his frequent usage of television as an outreach connection to the public. A few years later television became the dominant media when it presented the Vietnam War to the viewers’ living rooms. This sparked a series of protests not only anti-draft but from other movements: civil rights, black protest, student rights, women’s rights in a society that was becoming part of an unprecedented information age. Television not only reported these events, it repeated its visual imagery which helped to reinforce changing norms in our society. Fifty-five years later, Donald Trump, known for his television celebrity as well as his reputation as a successful businessman, became an unusual marker of reality about public tolerance and acceptance, largely helped by cable television and its effect after fifty-five years of viewers and the additional factor of hundreds of cable channels. Kennedy, Nixon and Trump serve as bookends for television’s prominent and definitely mediated influence on American history.