Polite and apolitical (yet mildly for Kennedy), a Briggs Hall crowd listened to the Fourth Great Debate last night, and then discussed it with David Riesman. There were few hisses and no cheers.
During the debate, there was controlled laughter, most of it at Nixon's expense. "I know Mr. Khrushchev" drew ripples, but the greatest (and most non-partisan) outburst came when Nixon declared: "America is not standing still, but America can't stand pat."
The crowd, however, followed Nixon's statements with absorption and he made a visible impression. Kennedy was also listened to attentively.
Most of the questions asked Riesman in the discussion after the show were apolitical. Asked what he felt about the use of terms he has coined--such as "other-directed"--by polemicists in the campaign, Riesman confessed puzzlement.
In the case of Nixon, he said, there is a distinction to be made between opportunism and being other-directed. Both he and Kennedy are "fiercely ambitious," though their ambition has different sources. Nixon is very much in the Horatio Alger tradition of the poor boy making good, while Kennedy is the ambition of the patrician, Riesman said.
And what about political ideology? Well, here Riesman thought the two parties "are farther apart than ever in recent years."
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