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September 03, 2008, 03:48 PM ET
Hosting a Presidential Debate: The Ole Miss Experience, Part I
Look what they started.
On September 26, 1960, Sen. John F. Kennedy debated Vice President Richard M. Nixon on national television. It was the first debate ever between two presidential candidates, and the most-watched political event in human history up to that time. The debate took place in a Chicago television studio.
On September 26, 2008, the first debate in this year’s contest between Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama will take place, not in a studio but on the campus of the University of Mississippi.
The first on-campus presidential debate — the one between President Gerald Ford and Gov. Jimmy Carter at William and Mary — was in 1976. It didn’t start an immediate trend: In 1980 and 1984, debates were held, just not in academic settings. But in 1988 the newly-formed Commission on Presidential Debates, a bipartisan group headed by the Republican and Democratic national chairs, took control of the debates and moved most of them onto campuses.
Two of the three 1988 debates were at Wake Forest and UCLA. From 1992 to 2004, 15 of 17 presidential and vice presidential debates took place on campuses, and this year all four will: Ole Miss, Washington University, Belmont University, and Hofstra University. This will be Wash U’s fourth debate. Wake Forest has hosted two, and several other schools have hosted one: UCLA, William and Mary, the University of Richmond, Michigan State, Georgia Tech, the University of San Diego, the University of Massachusetts at Boston, Centre College, the University of Miami, Case Western, and Arizona State.
I visited Ole Miss yesterday to give a public talk and to visit with Chancellor Robert Khayat and his executive assistant, Andy Mullins, who is honchoing the September 26 event. I wanted to know why they sought to host a debate (the subject of this Friday’s post), how they landed one (tune in next week), and how the debate is affecting life at the university now and, they hope, in the future (coming soon).
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