The camera did not lie in the 1960 presidential debates between Kennedy and Nixon (b&w), and the camera certainly did not lie in the presidential debate held last night between Obama and McCain (color). The Museum of Broadcast Communications website has this to say about the first ever televised presidential debates in 1960:
The Great Debates marked television's grand entrance into presidential politics. They afforded the first real opportunity for voters to see their candidates in competition, and the visual contrast was dramatic. In August, Nixon had seriously injured his knee and spent two weeks in the hospital. By the time of the first debate he was still twenty pounds underweight, his pallor still poor. He arrived at the debate in an ill-fitting shirt, and refused make-up to improve his color and lighten his perpetual "5:00 o'clock shadow." Kennedy, by contrast, had spent early September campaigning in California. He was tan and confident and well-rested. "I had never seen him looking so fit," Nixon later wrote.
As is stated in the Declaration of Independence - We Hold These Truths to be Self Evident - certain truths did not escape the eye (and ear, I guess) of the camera last night:
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