The fall-out from last week's presidential debate continues -- I was honored to help write a part of Frank Rich's headline this weekend, and I've also been called a few new names from the right. My open letter to ABC's Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos drew by far the most email of any blog post I've written since I started doing this in 2004, and most of it's been positive (wow!). Thank you so much, all of you on both sides, for responding.

It's time now to look forward past the debacle, but we can begin by looking back...way back. My friend and Attytood reader Joe Sixpack (read the blog, buy the book) sent me this last week, and I thought folks would find this interesting. It's the questions from the first Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960.

The debate was held on Sept. 26, 1960. The moderator was Howard K. Smith of, ahem, ABC News, and the panelists were Bob Flemming of ABC, Stuart Novins of CBS, Sander Vanocur of NBC, Charles Warren of Mutual.

The questions are self-explanatory: 

Senator, the Vice President in his campaign has said that you were naive and at times immature. He has raised the question of leadership. On this issue, why do you think people should vote for you rather than the Vice President?

 

Mr. Vice President, your campaign stresses the value of your eight year experience, and the question arises as to whether that experience was as an observer or as a participant or as an initiator of policy-making. Would you tell us please specifically what major proposals you have made in the last eight years that have been adopted by the Administration?

 

I'd like to ask this: It's a fact, I think, that presidential candidates traditionally make promises to farmers. Lots of people, I think, don't understand why the government pays farmers for not producing certain crops or paying farmers if they overproduce for that matter. Now, let me ask, sir, why can't the farmer operate like the business man who operates a factory? If an auto company overproduces a certain model car Uncle Sam doesn't step in and buy up the surplus. Why this constant courting of the farmer?

 

Mr. Vice President, since the question of executive leadership is a very important campaign issue, I'd like to follow Mr. Novins' question. Now, Republican campaign slogans - you'll see them on signs around the country as you did last week - say it's experience that counts - that's over a picture of yourself; sir uh - implying that you've had more governmental executive decision-making uh - experience than uh - your opponent. Now, in his news conference on August twenty-fourth, President Eisenhower was asked to give one example of a major idea of yours that he adopted. His reply was, and I'm quoting; "If you give me a week I might think of one. I don't remember." Now that was a month ago, sir, and the President hasn't brought it up since, and I'm wondering, sir, if you can clarify which version is correct - the one put out by Republican campaign leaders or the one put out by President Eisenhower?

 

Senator Kennedy, in connection with these problems of the future that you speak of, and the program that you enunciated earlier in your direct talk, you call for expanding some of the welfare programs for schools, for teacher salaries, medical care, and so forth; but you also call for reducing the federal debt. And I'm wondering how you, if you're president in January, would go about paying the bill for all this.

  

Mr. Vice President you mentioned schools and it was just yesterday I think you asked for a crash program to raise education standards, and this evening you talked about advances in education. Mr. Vice President, you said - it was back in 1957 - that salaries paid to school teachers were nothing short of a national disgrace. Higher salaries for teachers, you added, were important and if the situation wasn't corrected it could lead to a national disaster. And yet, you refused to vote in the Senate in order to break a tie vote when that single vote, if it had been yes, would have granted salary increases to teachers. I wonder if you could explain that, sir.

  

Senator, you've been promising the voters that if you are elected president you'll try and push through Congress bills on medical aid to the aged, a comprehensive minimum hourly wage bill, federal aid to education. Now, in the August post-convention session of the Congress, when you at least held up the possibility you could one day be president and when you had overwhelming majorities, especially in the Senate, you could not get action on these bills. Now how do you feel that you'll be able to get them in January if you weren't able to get them in August?

 

Mr. Vice President, do I take it then you believe that you can work better with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate than Senator Kennedy could work with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate?

  

Senator Kennedy, on another subject, Communism is so often described as an ideology or a belief that exists somewhere other than in the . Let me ask you, sir: just how serious a threat to our national security are these Communist subversive activities in the today?

  

Mr. Vice President uh - in one of your earlier statements you said we've moved ahead, we've built more schools, we've built more hospitals. Now, sir, isn't it true that the building of more schools is a local matter for financing? Uh - Were you claiming that the Eisenhower Administration was responsible for the building of these schools, or is it the local school districts that provide for it?