"You like Ike, I like Ike, Everybody likes Ike!" Click to see the 1950s TV ad.

Walter Cronkite was a trailblazer in television journalism. His comprehensive coverage of the Vietnam War and his warm regard for the American public turned Cronkite into an avuncular figure for Americans.

Although the technology had been available before World War II, many Americans finally put televisions in their living rooms in the 1950s. The first president to be televised was Harry Truman, and his 1947 State of the Union Address was broadcast to the small numbers of Americans who owned a set.

The medium of television has the power to make or break political careers. In 1950, Estes Kefauver prosecuted organized crime boss Frank Costello on TV and became a superstar as a result. The Senator was given book offers, movie offers, and was named Father of the Year by a popular magazine. In 1956, he was nominated for Vice-President on the Democratic ticket. Many others quickly saw the potential of the medium.

TV's first star was Felix the Cat, seen here from the first broadcast, in 1928. The broadcast -- from RCA station W2XBS in New York City -- was seen as far away as Kansas.

The first campaign to take advantage of the TV advertisement was Dwight Eisenhower's successful 1952 bid. Piecing together snappy music, lively animation, and short clips from Eisenhower's speeches that later journalists would call sound bites, Ike's ads help him steamroll the colorless Stevenson campaign. When financial scandals threatened to boot Richard Nixon from the Eisenhower ticket, he appealed to the public on television. His legendary "Checkers speech" helped him become Vice-President.

Television nearly ruined Nixon eight years later however. The Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960 were the first such contests to be aired on television. The well-tanned and well-rested Kennedy won the viewing audience compared to the unshaven, sweaty Nixon. The Kennedy margin of victory was one of the slimmest in history, leading many historians to blame the TV debates for Nixon's defeat.

"Sesame Street" first aired in 1969. The PBS approach to TV learning began to turn the tide in the debate on whether the government should continue to fund educational TV.

Television helped doom the hawk movement in the Vietnam War. Night after night, Americans watched their youth carried off in body bags. The TV brought the horrors of war directly into the American living room. When Walter Cronkite, the most respected television newscaster, spoke openly for a peace settlement, Lyndon Johnson remarked, "If I've lost Walter, I've lost the war."

As cable television became more and more widespread, the major networks lost their monopoly on televised coverage. In 1980, CNN became the first around-the-clock TV news network. Ten years later CNN broadcast the bombing of Iraq live from a Baghdad hotel as Operation Desert Storm began. C-SPAN televised live sessions of the United States House of Representatives. Americans could now watch the machinations of Congress from their living rooms.

In a TV ad, Democratic Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis's attempt to appear hawkish backfired with many voters in 1988.

Television has greatly influenced how politicians are perceived via the sound bite and negative campaigning. Michael Dukakis felt the impact of negative TV campaign ads in the presidential election of 1988. The Republican campaign hammered him with a barrage of images from the pollution of Boston Harbor, to his release of a violent criminal, to a picture of Dukakis looking foolish in a military tank.

Television images can prove powerful, enduring, and a catalyst for social or political change. Sometimes they unite us in our grief. Consider.

• Fire hoses unleashed on civil rights demonstrators at Birmingham and Selma.
• Jacqueline Kennedy's bloodstained dress and the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.
• An alleged member of the Viet Cong being summarily executed with a bullet to the brain.
• Nixon's somber departure from the White House by helicopter.
• The shooting of President Reagan.
• The explosion of the Challenger space shuttle.
• The brutal police beating of Rodney King.
• Frantic students escaping from the windows of Columbine High School.

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