There is a story about John F. Kennedy. He calls his father right after the first debate.

Afterward he tells an aide, a friend, "If I'd fallen flat on my face, he would have said, 'Jack, the way you picked yourself up off the floor was fantastic.'" (Something like that.)

It's Ted Sorensen's story, and he tells it quite better than I on a CBS special "Jack" found in my clutter of VCR tapes. "'Thanks an awful lot, Dad,'" he quotes him.