On Monday night, NY1 will be broadcasting live from Hofstra University on Long Island, where Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will square off in the first of three televised debates. While these debates are a tradition the American public now takes for granted, it wasn't always so. Bobby Cuza takes us on a trip through presidential debate history.
It was a true game-changer: The first televised presidential debate helped catapult the youthful and confident John F. Kennedy to victory over Richard Nixon in 1960.
But while it helped usher in the modern political age, after Nixon-Kennedy, there would be no general-election debate for 16 years, until 1976, when Gerald Ford committed one of the first debate gaffes.
Ford: There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.
Q: I'm sorry, what?
Debates have also offered memorable one-liners. There was Ronald Reagan in 1980, saying, "There you go again."
And in 1984, Reagan responded deftly to a question about age.
"I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience," he said.
Vice presidential debates have had their moments, too, like when Dan Quayle compared his experience to JFK’s.
"Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy," vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen said to Quayle.
That same year, Michael Dukakis was viewed as too dispassionate, when asked if he'd favor the death penalty if his wife was raped and murdered.
"No, I don't, Bernard. And I think you know that I've opposed the death penalty during all of my life," he said.
Even a gesture can be damaging, like George H.W. Bush checking his watch in 1992, or Al Gore repeatedly sighing during George W. Bush’s responses.
While TV networks generally control the primary debates like the one co-sponsored by NY1 earlier this year, general election debates have been run by the nonprofit, bipartisan Commission on presidential debates since 1988.
The candidates themselves are no under no obligation to appear. Republican Donald Trump has said he'll participate in all three debates, contrary to earlier speculation he might back out. The polarizing and provocative Trump could help draw enough viewers Monday to break the record 81 million people that watched the Ronald Reagan-Jimmy Carter debate in 1980.