Kennedy had in fact been briefed about our defense capabilities and just about everything else as the democrat nominee for president BEFORE the debates. He knew the US was well defended; he lied when he said we weren’t, criticizing the Eisenhower/Nixon administration. Vice President Nixon could not rebut this in the debates. because he would be betraying our national secrets.
If Kennedy really won those debates and I do not think he did, it was because he deliberately and knowingly lied. Everyone who listened to the debates via radio rather than watched on TV thought Nixon won handily. Unfortunately, Nixon’s television make-up was not very good and that is the reason some people thought he lost.
My parents told me this, I was just a grammar school kid at the time, uncaring and unknowing — which is exactly as it should be for children.
Nonetheless, with great relish, I chanted on the playground with the other republican children, “Nixon is in the White House talking on the phone, Kennedy’s in the dog house, chewing on a bone” to which the democrat children responded in the reverse, each side attempting to drown the other, the bell rang, when all was forgotten. It sickens me how children are drawn into our disgusting and immoral politics these days.
And that is when "style over substance" took over in politics.