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That was the last time the Democrat was more conservative than the Republican.

I would disagree strongly with that.

The first Kennedy-Nixon debate video is available on YouTube in its entirety (concentrating on domestic policy) and I watched it yesterday. You can see that Kennedy made no bones about the fact that he was a Democrat in the tradition of Wilson, FDR, and Truman. The domestic debate included federal aid to education, where Kennedy favored federal subsidizing of teachers' salaries, which Nixon opposed on the ground that would lead to government control of students' thinking. Nixon emphasized that there would be significantly less total federal spending under himself than under Kennedy. Then there were differences on health insurance for "old people" (the terms "seniors" and "senior citizens" had not yet entered the political vocabulary): Kennedy touted what eventually became Medicare and claimed that it would be funded by increasing the Social Security tax, while Nixon favored a voluntary health insurance plan with more choices.

Kennedy mentioned nothing about the tax cuts that his administration later pushed to revive the economy.

The main theme was whether or not the country was doing well enough under the Eisenhower administration in which Nixon was the VP for two terms.

If any of you have an hour to spare, I'd recommend watching it. What's striking is that quite a bit of the discussion still has relevance today.

Kennedy looked tanned and rested, while Nixon had been ill and appeared fatigued. The Republican turned down an offer of stage makeup. That may have determined the future of the Nation.

It's often been said that those who listened to it on radio thought Nixon won, while those who watched it on TV thought Kennedy won. I've listened to it (not watched it) on an archival recording (went to the university library, got the dreadful headphones, had to change desks because the plug didn't work, can't believe that all came back to me, lucky you getting to read this minutiae) and also thought Kennedy won it.

He was more prepared, more direct, more poised; at one point Kennedy made some claim about something Nixon said or did in the Senate, and Nixon barked, "I never said that! I never said that!" He came off sounding like a buffoon, which would have been remedied had he prepared some retaliatory bon mot against Kennedy, or even just clarified it cooly and calmly. That wasn't his forté.

Kennedy's remarks in the debate included his statement that the country has to move a bit quickly just to stand still (a Zen koan from the sound of it, referring to the economy). At this point I can't recall whether he drummed a major campaign talking point, that of the "window of vulnerability", a hawkish take on the Cold War which surprises some of the kumbaya set. That hawkish stance was actually Nixon's own window of vulnerability, because Eisenhower had the U2 / Gary Powers incident and the handling of that had been a fiasco; also, Castro had taken over Cuba on Eisenhower's watch, and Eisenhower did just that, stood and watched. Nixon was stuck having to either defend that inertia or try to change the subject.

Of course, Kennedy was born rich (some might argue that he wasn't, because the real fortune came as a result of Joe Sr's gig as the ambassador, during which time he secured an exclusive import license for scotch, and brought it in as Prohibition lifted), went to the best schools, had the best of everything, and after his military service (during which he injured his back, giving him an alibi to be out of the Senate during the vote on McCarthy) never held a job. At all. Of any kind.

Nixon by contrast came up the hard way; had parents who were grocers; lost his own and some investors' capital on a refrigerator car orange juice scheme; lost a brother to TB; wound up a VP to Eisenhower, who couldn't stand him, but distinguished himself by facing down angry mobs in South America, the kitchen debates with Khruschev, and carrying out presidential duties when Eisenhower had his heart attack. There has seldom been a better-prepared president than Nixon.

But he lost in 1960 by about one vote per precinct (average) and lost the California governor race in 1962, then unleashed some ill-considered contempt for the press (ink by the barrel, blah blah blah). I once saw a great clip of Nixon at the 1964 convention, beaming smile, laughing, stomping, clapping, probably during Goldwater's speech, happier than we're used to seeing him. In 1968 in the Pubbie primaries he ran against, hmm, I have no idea; he mended some fences. Meanwhile the Demwits nominated Humphrey, and lost the election by a margin similar to JFK's 1960 win. Strange to think how Kennedy barely won, considering how all-important those debates are sometimes portrayed by the self-serving broadcast MSM.

I can see Chet Huntley and David Brinkley as the man moved the number placards on the boards. Very close. Close enough for the graveyards of Cook County to make it The Night of the Voting Dead.

Kennedy talked tough on Cuba and Castro. He had been briefed on Nixon's CIA invasion; the new kid on the block could talk the talk.

But Adlai Stevenson fumed that he'd been humiliated at the UN by exposure of U.S. Fingerprints on the “Cuban” B-26's—and the final raid was disallowed.

Nixon would later use Howard Hunt, to his undoing. Give Us This Day (1973) would explain the rage. McClintock would've said, “You made some people angry; might've got some people killed. Somebody ought to blow your head clean off. But I won't.”

Nixon's refusal to pursue election irregularities in 1960 would be repeated in his refusal to pursue Jane Fonda (Aid and Comfort: Jane Fonda in North Vietnam, Henry Mark Holzer and Erika Holzer, 2002).

Kennedy's NSAM 263 ordered U.S. advisors out at 1,000 per month, complete by January, 1965. He would have dropped LBJ, leaving that piece of work to the woodchipper of the Billy Sol Estes and Bobby Baker scandals.

He would have dropped the waiver of Hoover's mandatory retirement. Detente with Khruschev; demarche with Castro. Test bans, and missiles in Cuba, and out of Turkey. Generals enraged.

The day after the riderless horse was displayed on tens of millions of televisions, Johnson signed NSAM 273.

The next year the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.

The following year, November, 1965, Johnson cursed and threw out the Joint Chiefs from their fifteen-minute allotted plea for permission to bomb Hanoi and mine Haiphong. The Day It Became the Longest War

We got a six-trillion-dollar War on Poverty, Medicare, and a war micromanaged and constrained to the point wherein 58,000 gave their lives, the commander in chief took Walter Cronkite's word for it that Tet was a victory for the Communists.

Johnson in March of 1968 gave the enemy the strength to persist; Kerry and Ted Kennedy would insure they would win.

I was at the Nixon Library in 1998. There was a section of the Berlin Wall there.

It went up in. . . .let's see. . . .it went up in. . . .uh. . . .