Kennedy vs. Nixon: Their First Debate, Thirteen Years Early

Before the famous television debate of nineteen sixty, John Kennedy and Richard Nixon first squared off right here, in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. On April twenty-second, nineteen forty-seven, the two first-term House members appeared together to debate the Taft-Hartley Labor Management Relations Act, which Congress was then considering.

Kennedy argued for labor's side; Nixon favored management. The exchange was spirited and substantive, a preview of the rhetorical styles each man would refine over the next decade. Both were then obscure freshmen congressmen assigned to the House Labor Committee. No one in the audience that evening had reason to believe they were watching a future president debate another future president. Thirteen years later, tens of millions of Americans would watch them face off again, this time on live television.