and no fever, we got richard nixon with no makeup and a fever. what we got on tv in the first televised presidential debate in our nation's history was beauty and the beast. right? of course, jfk went on to win that election that year, whether or not it was because of the debate, i don't know, but thus was born the entire school of punditry that says it's all about the optics and watching things with the sounds off and all that existentially exhausting stuff we still say today. but here is the relevant context for understanding what happened last night. when mitt romney beat president obama in last night's televised debate. so the first televised presidential debate that we had was in 1960. here are all of the other years that we have since have televised presidential debates. every four years now we have these debates on tv. the only years, though, so these are all the years, right, right? the only years, though, in which you had an incumbent president running against a challenger in all of the years we've had