Documents and Videos from the 1960 Presidential Election

Yesterday's document from the National Archives daily document feed was an image of the Massachusetts Election Ballot from 1960. Seeing the ballot reminded me of a good resource for teaching about Presidential campaigns and elections. The Living Room Candidate has videos of almost every Presidential campaign commercial from 1952 through 2008. A video of one of Kennedy's campaign commercials from 1960 is embedded below.


Applications for Education
The Living Room Candidate is a great resource for teaching lessons about the role of media and advertising in political campaigns. The Living Room Candidate has a good resource page for teachers which provides a series of eight sequential lesson plans.

The Living Room Candidate could also be a good resource for anyone that teaches a media studies course as your students can easily watch the evolution of television advertising through the 20th Century.