The first Kennedy-Nixon debate: the McKeesport Junto of 1947

Abstract

ABSTRACT The first Kennedy-Nixon debate did not occur in the Fall of 1960, but rather in the Spring of 1947 when the Junto, a community group in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, hosted a forum on the Hartley bill, controversial legislation pending in Congress that substantively curtailed the power of labor unions. The freshman legislators selected to headline the event, Representatives John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Richard M. Nixon of California, would later become the 35th and the 37th presidents of the United States. The newspaper account of the McKeesport Junto, published the next day in the McKeesport Daily News, employed a content frame that focused on the substance of the debate. Later accounts of the Junto, published after the advent of television, shifted to a mediated frame that emphasized physical appearance and argumentative style. By highlighting the difference between the two analytical frames, this analysis explores the impact television had on the format for political debates, the history of the McKeesport Junto, and the famous presidential debates of 1960.