On October 7, 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the Democratic nominee for President, and Vice President Richard Nixon, the Republican nominee, met for the second of four debates. The second debate, in the first set of televised campaign debates, featured an hour long discussion on a variety of topics. It was moderated by Frank McGee of NBC, with questions posed by a panel of journalists: Paul Niven, CBS; Edward P. Morgan, ABC; Alvin Spivak, UPI and Harold R. Levy, Newsday. The debate took place in Washington, D.C.

Among the topics of this debate was foreign policy, including the fate of the island of Cuba which had recently come under the control of Fidel Castro. Nixon argued that the island was not “lost” to the United States, and that the course of action followed by the Eisenhower administration had been the best one to allow the Cuban people to “realize their aspirations of progress through freedom.” Kennedy fired back that it was clear that Castro was a communist, and that the Republican administration failed to use U.S. resources effectively to prevent his rise to power. He concluded that, “Today Cuba is lost for freedom.”

The second point of contention revolved around the downing of an American U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union and the subsequent canceling of the U.S.-Soviet summit set for May 1960. Kennedy argued that the USA was “not in accordance with international law” in the case, and should have expressed its regrets to the Soviet Union in an attempt to keep the summit on track. Nixon fired back that Kennedy was simply wrong: the Soviets never really wanted the summit to take place and simply used the incident as an excuse.

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