We've always had an economy, only recently have we had televised debates

The back story on televised debates from the Chicago Tribune.

When Vice President Richard Nixon met Sen. John Kennedy in the 1960 debates, it was more than a television first. It was the first time ever that the nominees for the country's highest office had met in face-to-face debate. For more than a century and a half, candidates for president left that job to political surrogates.

There were no debates in 1964, 1968 and 1972 because federal law made televised presidential debates impossible. Until President Gerald Ford and Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter squared off in 1976, the "equal-time" law required anyone who sponsored a televised debate to invite every candidate for president to participate. Typically, more than 200 people register as candidates with the Federal Election Commission. The 1960 Nixon-Kennedy debates happened only because Congress authorized a one-time exemption to the equal-time law. In 1976, the Federal Communications Commission and the courts reinterpreted the law, deciding that a debate was a "news event" exempt from the equal-time requirement.

It takes more than a change in the law to change a nation, and we Americans owe our tradition of televised presidential debates to two Republicans and one Democrat. When President Ford agreed to debate Gov. Carter, he ignored the political wisdom that an incumbent should never agree to share the stage with a challenger. Ford later credited his performance in the debates with his comeback—after trailing badly, he lost the election by a single percentage point. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan was ahead in the polls, but chose to debate Walter Mondale anyway. And in 1960, it was two-time Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson who first proposed the idea of televised presidential debates. But for Stevenson, Nixon and Kennedy would never have debated and there would be no televised presidential debates today.

Chicago tribune via LibraryLaw.com

I think that last sentence is a bit of a stretch--I think someone would have eventually come up with the idea had Stevenson not thought of it in 1960. Sounds like a bit of Illinois hype on that part (he was governor of that state), but the rest is interesting.

Neo-Neocon says: "I’ve never understand why the debates are considered so important. This was true even back when I was a liberal Democrat. Yes, debates do demonstrate two things about a Presidential hopeful: how fast he/she is verbally, and how clear in communicating thoughts without a script. These things matter. But they matter far less than the ability to make the sort of decisions a President actually faces when serving.