As Americans vote, the BBC reports. For decades, we have been covering how the US picks its president.

This year, we trawled our archive for highlights from our election coverage of days gone by.

The five antique gems below are snapshots of politicians and correspondents’ evolving attitudes throughout the broadcast TV era.

To the modern viewer, those featured in these clips may seem over the top, crass and politically incorrect – and that’s just the presenters.

In 1948, the Democrats adopted a civil rights plank as part of their party platform.

At the time 35 Democratic leaders walked out. They later established their own short-lived party, the Dixiecrats.

But even after the Dixiecrats disbanded, animosity over civil rights remained among southern Democrats.

Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett was famous for his segregationist views, and opposed the civil rights workers from the north who travelled to his state to register voters and agitate for fair treatment for African Americans.

At the 1960 convention, the BBC’s Robin Day questioned Barnett over the rights of African Americans. Barnett was unequivocal about his distaste for the equal rights movement.

“Young, rich and handsome.”

That’s how the BBC’s Robin Day described John F Kennedy while covering the 1960 Democratic convention in Los Angeles.

Kennedy was a political superstar, and his good looks and wealthy background – complete with photogenic trips to the family compound in Hyannisport – added to the appeal.

Kennedy would go on to win the election; his abbreviated term, cut short by an assassin’s bullet, is often portrayed as an idyllic time in American history.

Day was part of the Panorama team that reported on the hysteria greeting Kennedy, then a senator, when he arrived in California.

While the technical glitches in this broadcast are still, occasionally, with us today, the attitude towards female interviewees has certainly evolved.

President Gerald Ford ran for a second term without ever having been elected by the American people for his first go-round.

Ford, who had been vice-president under Richard Nixon, served as the commander-in-chief only after Nixon resigned in 1974.

Two years later, Ford was on the campaign trail, working for a second term. But at the 1974 Republican convention in Kansas City, Missouri, his predecessor was absent from speeches, photos and literature.

The BBC’s David Dimbleby reported on the glaring absence of all things Nixon.

Richard Nixon had once been such a popular figure that he won 49 states in his re-election campaign. But the pall of Watergate and Nixon’s collusion in dirty tricks, espionage and sabotage made him off-topic as the Republicans tried to retain the White House – and regain their dignity.

In the end, it was Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter who won the election.

Four years later, then-incumbent President Jimmy Carter didn’t just lose to Republican challenger Ronald Reagan – he lost big.

Carter, hampered by the Iran hostage crisis and saddled with a poor economic record, won only 49 electoral votes (out of 538). He gave his concession speech even before polls had closed on the West Coast.

In reporting on this loss, the BBC’s Martin Bell previewed what was expected from Reagan, a relative newcomer to national and international politics, when he took office.

Unlike the liberal Carter, who emphasised environmentalism and poverty issues, Reagan’s conservative credentials seemed to promise a leaner government with an focus on business – as well as the return of Henry Kissinger to the national stage.

“Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”

This riposte from vice-presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen, is considered one of the best smack-downs ever issued during a US televised political debate. His target? The Republican opponent, Dan Quayle.

Young and handsome, Quayle was also inexperienced – and, thanks to some very public gaffes – considered something of a dim bulb. When Quayle compared his experience in office to that of Jack Kennedy, Bentsen unleashed his now-famous retort.

That put the Republican campaign on the defensive, and they spent the following week rehabilitating Quayle’s image.

The BBC’s Charles Wheeler reported on the makeover effort.

For more on this story go to:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20185413