Welcome to the inquiry on the BBC World Service. I'm Tanya Beckett. Each week one question,

four expert witnesses and an answer.

On the 29th of September, the two U.S. presidential candidates Donald Trump and Biden, will take part in the first of three 90-minute

live televised debates ahead of the presidential election in November.

It's no different than the gladiators except, you know, we have to use our brain and our

mouth and our body to stand, you know, I want all stand.

74-year-old President Trump's fighting talk is being met with similar rhetoric from his

77-year-old rival Joe Biden.

I'm going to beat this man like a drum. I'm telling you, I can hardly wait to debate him.

Some 80 million Americans are expected to tune in amid a pandemic that has raged across the country and curtailed the two presidential hopeful's ability to engage with the public.

On this week's inquiry we're asking, will the presidential debates in America

change the course of the election? Part 1. Suntand and Handsome. It took the candidates into a new place.

Suddenly it mattered what they looked like.

Our first expert witness explains how the very first televised presidential debate in America

marked a key point in the country's political history.

Elaine Kamark is Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

She's also author of primary politics, everything you need to know about how America

nominates its presidential candidates. She takes us back to that first presidential debate in 1960 between Richard Dixon and

John F Kennedy, watched live by 70 million Americans.

On the one hand was the youthful, handsome, suntand rested Senator Kennedy. And on the other hand hand you had Vice President Richard Nixon

who had been sick who had lost a lot of weight who refused to wear makeup,

who didn't realize that you had to shave late in the afternoon

...