Television has played a decisive role in politics in the past 50 years. Since the 1950′s television and American presidential politics have gone hand in hand. The power of television and its persuasive influence on the American political arena can be seen early in the 1950′s, yet its most historically profound era can be said to have started in the 1960′s. In 1960 John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Richard Milhouse Nixon met in the television arena for 4 political debates. Those events are considered a milestone in television political history due to the vast audiences who tuned in. According to Grolier.com, “More than 70 million Americans saw the first debate, and audiences greater than 50 million people witnessed the other three. Probably the greatest consequence of the debates was to assure voters that the relatively young and inexperienced Senator Kennedy was capable of being president” (Grolier, 2000). The persuasive power of television was from that time on seen as an indispensable tool in running a campaign and in keeping office. The effect of television on the voter populace is so great that candidates running for president rely heavily on media specialists to run campaigns in the form of image marketing and mass saturation of political advertisements. (more…)