The years leading up to an American election are a great time for those who enjoy political debates. The primaries usually offer an assortment of colorful characters duking it out while the presidential debates can be theatrical and sometimes tense. These rhetorical struggles often influence the course of American politics.

10 Kennedy vs. Nixon – 1960

In 1960, John Kennedy and Richard Nixon met in a CBS studio for the first televised presidential debate in US history, changing the very nature of American politics. Before their meeting, presidential candidates had never met for a face-to-face debate. While bookies initially gave Nixon 9–5 odds to win, Kennedy turned the debate around with a more television-friendly appearance, a strong and aggressive opening, and one cheap but ingenious trick with the thermostat. Kennedy’s team literally turned up the temperature to make Nixon sweat. Hidden History: An Exp... Donald Jeffries Best Price: $9.86 Buy New $14.70 (as of 04:30 UTC - Details)

According to a reporter for the Chicago Tribune: “[Nixon’s handlers] had expected him to slaughter Kennedy with a few words.” But Kennedy launched a strong attack: “In the election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln said the question was whether this nation could exist half-slave or half-free. In the election of 1960 and with the world around us, the question is whether the world will exist half-slave or half-free.”

Compared to the youthful and energetic appearance of Kennedy, Nixon looked haggard, tired, and unshaven. In future debates, Nixon tried to rally, but the damage was done. Attempts to use makeup left Nixon open to snide attacks, such as those by Kennedy’s running mate, Senator Lyndon Johnson, who accused the Republican candidate of ignoring serious problems affecting the nation. “He covers up the sore spots with a talcum powder makeup of tranquility,” Johnson charged.

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Despite improved performances for Nixon in later debates, Kennedy would edge out his opponent in a close win, which much credits to the fateful first debate.

9 Baldwin vs. Buckley – 1965

African-American author James Baldwin and archconservative William F. Buckley Jr. met at Cambridge University in 1965 to debate whether or not “the American dream is at the expense of the American Negro.” Buckley was a long-standing opponent of the civil rights movement, a view he pushed in the influential National Review magazine he founded, while Baldwin was considered the ablest public speaker of the black intellectual movement.

The Betrayal of the Am... Murray N. Rothbard, Mu... Best Price: $11.20 Buy New $18.50 (as of 07:55 UTC - Details) Baldwin immediately launched into a strong, principled position despite being unfamiliar with the format of the collegiate debate. While he harshly criticized the racist American system, he expressed sympathy for whites caught up in it: “The white South African or Mississippi sharecropper or Alabama sheriff has at bottom a system of reality which compels them really to believe when they face the Negro, that this woman, this man, this child must be insane to attack the system to which he owes his entire identity.”

Baldwin also laid a trap for Buckley, who seemed to pay scant attention to the bulk of Baldwin’s argument. Buckley immediately launched into denial and a personal attack with this claim: “It is quite impossible in my judgment to deal with the indictments of Mr. Baldwin unless one is prepared to deal with him as a white man, unless one is prepared to say to him that the fact that your skin is black is utterly irrelevant to the arguments you raise.”

In the end, the almost entirely white student body awarded the victory to Baldwin, 544 to 164.

8 Buckley vs. Vidal – 1968

Many see the 1968 debate between leftist author Gore Vidal and firebrand William F. Buckley Jr. as the moment in which American political debate became inflamed with passion and bloody rhetoric. Against a background of serious political and social unrest, 10 debates took place during the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. But it was the ninth debate in Chicago that was the brashest spectacle on American political television up to that point.

Vidal and Buckley made no bones about their dislike for one another. Vidal tried to get Buckley’s goat by claiming that Buckley was the inspiration for the transgender protagonist Myra Breckinridge. Meanwhile, Buckley mocked Vidal’s failed screenplays and produced a note from Robert F. Kennedy suggesting that Vidal be sent to Vietnam. The Problem with Socia... Thomas DiLorenzo Best Price: $9.49 Buy New $11.93 (as of 06:45 UTC - Details)

Things became especially heated when the subject turned to police brutality toward protesters, whom Buckley argued had brought problems on themselves by chanting obscenities and pro-Vietcong slogans. Moderator Howard K. Smith asked Vidal, “Wasn’t it a provocative act to try to raise the Vietcong flag in the park in the film we just saw? Wouldn’t that invite . . . raising a Nazi flag in World War II [which] would have had similar consequences?”

Vidal replied that while he supported the American right to protest, the Vietcong had the right to organize their country as they saw fit. Buckley countered that many Americans were pro-Nazi before and during World War II and were rightly condemned for their stance.

Vidal coolly interjected, “As far as I’m concerned, the only pro- or crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself.” Seething, Buckley rose to his feet and spat, “Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in the goddamn face, and you’ll stay plastered.”

Later, Buckley regretted losing his temper because he had played directly into Vidal’s hands. While the debate was shocking at the time, it was also highly entertaining and helped to cement political debate as a viable form of television entertainment.

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