The autumn of 1960 shimmered with anticipation. The United States stood at a crossroads—between the comfortable calm of postwar stability and the restlessness of a new generation ready to redefine what it meant to be American. Factories thrummed, suburbs sprawled, and televisions flickered in nearly every home, each screen a mirror reflecting a country on …
On September 26, 1960, America tuned in to something it had never seen before — politics as performance, democracy played out not on a podium or in print, but in the glow of television screens. It was the first-ever televised presidential debate, pitting a young senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy, against the sitting vice …
