Transcription:
As I See It
Television Could Revolutionize Whole Election Process
By J.M. Roberts
Regardless of any faults as a first effort, Monday night's Kennedy-Nixon confrontation on television promises to put American political campaigning into a new framework and perhaps change it altogether.
Candidates are being swept away from the past, in which they could make regional speeches playing on regional prejudices.
The old-style speech, in which a man might even get away with contradicting himself to meet his needs before differing audiences, has been going out for years - first because of fast and full nation-wide newspaper coverage and then because of radio. But this business of candidates' meeting each other under the eyes of the whole nation adds a new factor.
IT WAS RESPONSIBLE Monday night for a different bearing on the part of both men. They felt the solemnity of what they were doing. It seems quite possible that the knowledge of •the great unseen audience added considrably eo their understanding of the enormous thing they were trying to do - win the leadership of a far-flung nation composed of regions and people with many varying and conflicting interests.
The power of public judgment was close upon them.
A great many persons think it would have been better if the two men had used the old form of debate all the way through, with presentation and rebuttal and without the intervention of interrogators.
There is a good possibility, however, that if the interrogation system becomes standard on such occasions, candidates will be forced to discuss questions in the public interest that they might prefer to duck if left to their own devices.
THERE IS A POSSIBILITY, of course, that some day a complete nitwit, with wonderful photogenic appeal and a good ghost writer, would be able to sweep popular opinion 1without having to submit himself to the country in person. But the American people can usually see through the gimmicks, and have a tradition of good sense when the chips are down. Through an increasing use of television the same voters will be able to follow a campaign from beginning to end. They will be able to watch the changing reactions of candidates as the campaign progresses, instead of just depending on a one-time or even wholly second-hand impression. The public's opportunity to make repeated face-to-face comparisons, with the resulting forces that will then go to work on the candidates themselves, could revolutionize the whole election process.
-The Associated Press
