THE CAMPAIGN: Debate No. 2

NBC's Washington studios were abuzz with crowds on the outside and newsmen and technicians on the inside. At 6:31 Jack Kennedy rolled up in a Pontiac convertible with Brother Bobby and a few aides, swept directly into the TV studio. It was cold (64° F.); studio officials meant to keep the temperature low in order to counteract the hot lights that produced beads of perspiration on Nixon's face during the first telecast. Kennedy allowed as how he would need a sweater if things didn't warm up; a studio man turned up the thermostat. Then Jack and Bobby walked up to the platform, took turns standing at both speakers' stands while they gazed at their images on the floor TV monitors. Mindful of the lighting trouble that had befallen his opponent in the first debate, Kennedy noted "all those lights pointing over here" (at his position), and "only one points over there" (at Nixon's). Muttered he, as technicians scampered to adjust the lighting: "Let's not have all the lights in my eyes." As before, Kennedy disdained any TV makeup.

Twenty minutes after Kennedy's arrival, Richard Nixon's Government Cadillac pulled up and disgorged the Republican team. Nixon had recently emerged from a Statler-Hilton hotel suite where he spent a few uninterrupted hours of peace and thought. Inside the studio Nixon stepped straight up to the platform, put his wristwatch on his speaker's stand. He had been made up at home by an expert, and an accompanying lighting expert pronounced NBC's lights perfectly all right. A few minutes before they went on the air, Kennedy strolled over to the Vice President, and both spoke inaudibly as they shook hands. Moments later, TV monitors in the studio pressroom came alive and focused on Nixon. He was sitting grimly, staring straight ahead, as if to substantiate preshow betting that Nixon had decided to take the gloves off and hit hard.

Hit hard he did—and so did Jack Kennedy. Their hour-long slugging match gave the U.S. its best picture so far of the men, the parties and the issues.

DOMESTIC ISSUES

Both men made telling scores on domestic issues. Jack Kennedy belabored the Eisenhower Administration for failure of moral leadership in civil rights; Nixon named Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate Lyndon Johnson as a man who voted against and still opposes adequate civil rights legislation.* Kennedy called for economic reform, blasting the Administration's hardmoney, high-interest-rate policies, accused Ike of turning down needed aid for depressed areas. He defended his celebrated claim that "17 million Americans go to bed hungry" by shifting to Secretary of Agriculture Benson's statement that 25 million Americans have inadequate diets. A tax increase in the winter of 1961, Kennedy said, "under present economic conditions," would not be "desirable. In fact, it would be deflationary . . . cause a real slowdown in our economy."