ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a networked reading of the Race for the White House’s “JFK vs. Nixon” episode to illustrate the important and interconnected role that collective memory plays in contemporary discourse. It focuses on research that have conducted on the Kennedy-Nixon debates over the past decade and extend it to analysis of the contemporary docudrama Race for the White House. Public memory of the Great Debates often contains some degree of politics as gamesmanship. Oft-mentioned elements include the Kennedy team’s assurances that their man had plenty of rest and tanned skin prior to the event, and that his suit and shirt appeared favorable on television. Where Race for the White House varied from the typical debate account, however, was that the “looks count” lesson extended to the entire 1960 campaign. The episode presented debate as symptomatic of the general importance of political appearances at the expense of substantive policy.
