In March 1952, President Harry Truman announced his intention to retire from the presidency and not to seek another term. The recently ratified Twenty-Second Amendment limiting a presidency to two terms did not apply to the current incumbent, and throughout much of his second term, it was assumed by many that he would stand for reelection. But the president’s political fortunes, which held so much promise after his stunning upset of Thomas Dewey in the election of 1948, dramatically turned. By early 1952, Truman’s popularity had rapidly spiraled downward to a new low; a poll conducted in February indicated an approval rating of 22 percent, which has remained the lowest rating of any president since the late 1930s when pollster George Gallup invented the practice of polling as an ongoing measure of presidential approval within the general public. By contrast, in June 1945 during the final months of World War II and the first few months of the new president’s administration, Truman enjoyed an approval rating of 87 percent, which exceeded by 3 percent even the highest measured rating reached by his predecessor, the late president Franklin Roosevelt, and which has remained the third highest in the history of the poll. Prior to his election in 1948, he had also suffered approval ratings in the low thirties, but he managed to recover, in large part due to an energetic and aggressive campaign made famous by his whistle-stop strategy.
But after Truman’s election, events overtook the administration. China, an ally of the United States during World War II, fell to the forces of Mao Zedong’s (or Mao tse-Tung’s) communist revolution, an event that caught the United States by surprise, and for which the president was held partly to blame by many critics within both parties, especially from both sides of the aisle in Congress. Republican senator Robert Taft of Ohio, a conservative elder statesman who at that time was considered by many as the GOP’s most likely presidential candidate in 1952, made the bold assertion that President Truman’s attitude toward China and East Asia in general was “guided by a left-wing group who obviously have wanted to get rid of [Chinese Nationalist leader and general Chiang Kai-shek], and were willing at least to turn China over to the communists for that purpose.” In the House of Representatives, a young Democrat from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy, scolded the administration for blunders committed with regard to Chiang’s—and China’s—fall, sharply observing that “what our young men had saved, our diplomats and our president frittered away.” Congressman Kennedy urged resolute support of Chiang’s government now exiled in Taiwan, arguing that Americans must “prepare ourselves vigorously to hold the line in the rest of Asia.” Another young congressman, Republican Richard Nixon of California—who had previously praised the president’s postwar policies in Europe—now accused Truman and his “blundering” State Department of “losing China to the communists.” And so the administration’s reputation in the handling of situations abroad was perhaps irreparably damaged, courtesy of Chairman Mao, and yet another dangerous player, and dimension, had been added to the Cold War.
The international situation worsened with the outbreak of the Korean War in the summer of 1950. Involving the forces of the United Nations, and primarily the military power of the United States in the protection of South Korea from Soviet-sponsored North Korean aggression, the war eventually led to what many had feared since the fall of China to Mao’s revolution the previous year: American troops joined in battle against Chinese forces. By the campaign season of 1952, the war had lingered for more than two years and had cost the lives of thousands of American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines and their allies, and had devastated the Korean Peninsula. Even though Truman’s bold response to the invasion of South Korea from the north was praised by some, and the announcement of the Truman Doctrine designed to contain the spread of communism was well received in both parties and thus led to the partial restoration of his credibility as an international leader, Truman’s direction of the war had been questioned by some. Among Truman’s more controversial moves was his decision to fire General Douglas MacArthur, a celebrated figure from the Pacific combat theater in World War II.
Given the West’s confrontation with communism abroad, there was growing concern about the presence of radicalism at home, and a new Red Scare descended upon American public life, darkening the nation’s discontent as the campaign season approached. Senator Joseph McCarthy, a Republican from Wisconsin, made himself into a national celebrity by “exposing” alleged subversives within the American government, further adding to the general anxiety over the deepening Cold War. Senator McCarthy’s notoriety was crystallized by a series of hearings conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which was charged with ferreting out communists and fellow travelers and addressing what was claimed to be the dangers of domestic radicalism. While McCarthy’s efforts were embraced by many conservatives, moderates and liberals in both parties were made uncomfortable by the tenor and extent of HUAC’s activities, worried that McCarthy was trading in fearmongering and injecting paranoia into the political process. Many of McCarthy’s allegations were later revealed to have been exaggerated or patently false, but for a time, his charges were taken seriously and his zealotry was in many quarters applauded. From the beginning, President Truman disliked McCarthy and distrusted his ambitions; but at that time, the senator held so much influence that a direct attack on his activities was politically risky. Those criticisms that were directed at McCarthy, mostly by liberal and moderate Democrats, were muted.
In addition to fears of communism at home and abroad, the president was mired in troubling domestic controversies. Continuing labor unrest led to numerous strikes, including strikes in the steel industry that had caused Truman to seize manufacturing facilities and place them under the direction of the federal government so that production of steel, a vital wartime commodity, would not be impeded. In a famous case, Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer (Charles Sawyer was the president’s secretary of commerce), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Truman had overstepped his authority, and it ruled against the steel seizure. Finally, a series of influence-peddling scandals involving members of the Truman administration, and especially Harry Vaughn, a close associate of the president, damaged Truman’s formerly clean reputation and seriously degraded the public’s perception of his personal integrity.
All of these factors, when added to the alienation within the party of the conservative Southern bloc that began in the previous election season of 1948, removed any possibility of a second Truman election campaign. Early polls showed some support within the party; just over one-third of Democrats polled preferred that Truman run again over the rest of the field (Tennessee senator Estes Kefauver demonstrated the second-highest support with 18%), but his approval rating among independent voters plunged to 18 percent (in a reversal of the figures, Senator Kefauver drew 36% among independents). Truman did enter the New Hampshire primary, but he was defeated by Kefauver, losing by over three thousand votes, allowing Kefauver to claim all of the state’s Democratic delegates. Thus on March 29, 1952, the president, resigned to events, formally announced that he would not be a candidate for reelection. With the president’s withdrawal, the election was now wide open; for the first time since 1920, an incumbent president did not stand for reelection, nor was there an incumbent vice president waiting in the wings, as the office had been vacant since Truman’s ascent to the presidency (prior to the adoption of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, any vacancy in the office of the vice presidency, for whatever reason, would not be filled until the beginning of a new presidential term). Given the low approval ratings of the Democratic incumbent, the Republican Party had good reason to be optimistic; the White House seemed once again within its grasp. But it had also seemed that way four years earlier when the Republicans nominated New York’s Thomas Dewey, a clear favorite in the polls to win the White House, and yet President Truman still managed to win on Election Day. Thus the GOP was particularly focused on finding the right candidate to avoid a repeat of 1948 and to guarantee a victory in November.
As the campaign season opened, the Republicans focused primarily on two candidates: Senator Taft, who had received support in previous nominating conventions and was the preferred candidate of the party’s conservative wing as well as the early front-runner; and General Dwight David Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II and a universally admired figure. In 1948, Eisenhower had been courted by both parties until he eventually disclosed, in January 1952, that he was a Republican. Owing to his high profile, Eisenhower represented the strongest challenge to Taft, who admitted that the 1952 campaign was likely his last chance at winning the White House. Three other candidates—former Minnesota governor Harold Stassen; California governor Earl Warren, who ran for the vice presidency in 1948 with Dewey; and General MacArthur—were also in the field of play. Dewey still held some support among the party moderates, but he chose not to run in 1952, instead endorsing General Eisenhower.
In spite of Eisenhower’s strong appeal, Taft was well liked within the party and was considered to be in line for the nomination. Taft promised to dismantle much of the New Deal/Fair Deal institutions that had been firmly established by the Democrats, under the leadership of presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Truman, over the past two decades, and also to return to a more isolationist foreign policy. For Taft and his conservative supporters, the New Deal was nothing less than a milder version of socialism and, as such, was in the process of depriving Americans of their sacred liberties. (In spite of Senator Taft’s rhetoric, as a member of the Senate, he often supported government spending to assist the poor.) Eisenhower, by contrast, was a moderate on domestic issues and an internationalist on foreign policy. Because he announced his party affiliation only in January of the election year, his campaign started later than Taft’s, but he quickly made up ground. In the New Hampshire primary, Eisenhower outpolled Taft by 50 percent to 39 percent, with Stassen taking most of the remainder.
With the win in New Hampshire, Eisenhower proved his viability, and as with Kefauver’s victory over Truman, the Granite State suddenly appeared to be a critical political arena. New Hampshire had held preference primaries since the Campaign of 1916, but with the Campaign of 1952, the importance of the state in the process of selecting presidential candidates was first realized. Beginning in the early 1970s, subsequent campaigns would look to New Hampshire as well as the Iowa caucus as bellwether indicators of a candidate’s strength and base. As expected, Stassen won the following primary in his home state of Minnesota, but Eisenhower again showed strength, polling second to Taft’s distant third. Taft recovered by winning in the Nebraska primary and then following with five more victories (including his home state of Ohio), to four more for Eisenhower, with one victory for Warren in his home state of California. All told, going into the convention, Taft had won six states to Eisenhower’s five (Stassen and Warren taking their home states for one each), while polling 35 percent of the popular vote to Eisenhower’s 26 percent—the rest of the field left behind.
As the GOP convention opened, Taft was in the front-runner position, but most delegates considered Eisenhower to have tightened the race; hence even though Taft appeared to be at an advantage, Eisenhower loomed large. The general’s cause was greatly aided by the efforts of Dewey, Massachusetts senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. (it was Lodge who, more than anyone, lobbied the general to run for the presidency), and Governor Sherman Adams of New Hampshire, all of whom campaigned vigorously for Eisenhower before and during the convention, attacking the Taft campaign by accusing Taft’s managers of having violated convention rules to block the seating of Eisenhower delegates. The strategy worked: On the first ballot, Eisenhower won 595 delegates, putting him in first as Taft placed with 500, the rest of the field far behind (Warren showed 81 votes, leading the also-rans). Given Eisenhower’s strong support, and the sentiment among many conservatives that the general actually had the best chance of defeating the Democrats owing to his popularity, delegates began to shift. On the second round, Eisenhower won 845 delegates and the nomination. California’s Richard Milhous Nixon, now a young senator who had gained considerable fame as a resolute anti-communist, was tapped to serve as the general’s running mate.
The Republican platform consisted of a laundry list of attacks against the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, which amounted to twenty years of Democratic control of the presidency, the longest run enjoyed by the Democrats at any point in American history. (The Republicans’ longest run at keeping the White House—and the longest streak for any party—is still twenty-four years, from March 1861, the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, through the Garfield/Arthur administration, followed by the Democratic administration of Grover Cleveland beginning in March 1885. That time span would likely have been exceeded between 1897 and 1933 had not former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt split from the party to run for president, thus depriving the incumbent, President William Howard Taft, a second term and providing an inroad for the Democrats to win and keep the White House for eight years during what was otherwise an era of Republican domination in the executive branch.)
As one would expect, the Republican Party platform blamed the spread of communism on the Democrats, accusing the Truman administration of “appeasement of Communism at home and abroad” (the word “appeasement” evoking images of Chamberlain and Daladier at Munich in 1938) and permitting “communists and their fellow travelers to serve in many key agencies and to infiltrate our American life.” Aside from the hysteria churned by the era of Senator McCarthy, the platform did include substantive policy proposals, promising to create a new environment for business by significantly lowering taxes and reducing government regulations. The platform blamed the Truman administration for the stalemate in Korea and for “corruption in high places” that had shamed the “moral standards of the American people.”
With the decision by President Truman to withdraw his name from the field, and with no incumbent vice president, the Democrats were also facing a wide-open race. Senator Kefauver, who dislodged the president in the New Hampshire primary, used that victory to sustain momentum throughout the primary season, winning primaries in every state except Florida, Minnesota, and West Virginia; all told, Kefauver entered fifteen primaries and won twelve, taking almost 65 percent of the primary votes. But in the 1950s, while the primaries were important as evidence of a candidate’s national appeal, they were not as yet the requisite path to nomination that they are today. A candidate could win every primary, and the party leadership could still prevent nomination. Senator Kefauver was viewed by some in the party as a renegade. His investigation of organized crime implicated machine politics in the East, causing considerable discomfort within the party leadership, many of whom were still products of the old machine/patronage system. Southern Democrats found Kefauver to be too sympathetic to the problems of African Americans, and given their recent decision to bolt from the party rather than concede on the issue of civil rights, Southern Democrats were at that time a nearly indivisible faction of the party that caused considerable worry. President Truman in particular opposed a Kefauver nomination, and even though Truman had lost the clout needed to run for reelection, he still remained an important figure in Democratic politics. Other candidates were considered by the party leaders, such as Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, who was appealing to the segregationist Dixiecrats and who had won the Florida primary); Truman’s secretary of commerce, Averell Harriman, who won the West Virginia primary; incumbent vice president Alben Barkley; California’s attorney general Edmund Gerald “Pat” Brown (who actually won the second-most primary votes, just under 10%, behind Kefauver, but who failed to take any states); and the young senator Hubert H. Humphrey (who won the primary in his home state of Minnesota), one of the party’s more promising personalities. Each of these candidates, while capable individuals, was somehow incomplete: Russell could deliver the Southern bloc that had fragmented in 1948, but as an enemy of the New Deal and a committed segregationist, he held little appeal beyond the Deep South; Harriman was a noncommittal candidate; Barkley was capable but, at age seventy-four, was considered too old; Humphrey, at age forty-one, was too young.
Eventually, the party leadership turned to Adlai Stevenson II, the popular governor of Illinois and grandson of Vice President Adlai Stevenson, who had served in that capacity under President Grover Cleveland during his second term. Stevenson was a moderate and could smooth divisions between Northern and Midwestern liberals on the one hand and Southern conservatives on the other, and he spoke with eloquence and clear intelligence. It was clear that in many ways Stevenson was also an idealist, but his approach to politics was far more pragmatic than Kefauver’s; and even though he supported civil rights reform, he was not viewed as a hard-liner, which made him more palatable than Kefauver. President Truman worked hard to persuade a reluctant Stevenson to enter the race, but even as late as the opening of the convention, Stevenson demurred. Nonetheless, after his opening address at the Chicago convention, the delegates were awakened to his talents and appeal, and subsequently the movement to draft Stevenson intensified. Thus, without having won—or, for that matter, entered—a single primary, Stevenson managed to place second on the first convention ballot. Kefauver won that initial ballot with 340 votes to Stevenson’s 270, and even though he held first, it was a poor showing for a candidate that had seemed unstoppable in the primaries. Russell showed 263 votes, with Harriman in fourth at 123. On the second ballot, Kefauver gained 22 votes, but Stevenson’s support increased considerably, jumping to 324, with Russell also gaining to show at 291.
Even though Kefauver still held the lead, the momentum was Stevenson’s. On the third ballot, Stevenson took the nomination. Kefauver was still under consideration as a potential vice presidential candidate, along with incumbent vice president Barkley and Senator Russell. Under the offstage direction of President Truman and others working behind the scenes, the convention tapped Senator John Sparkman of Alabama, who was liberal on economic policy but was also a segregationist, to serve as Stevenson’s running mate in an effort to heal the divisions of 1948 that led to the Dixiecrat defection. But Sparkman’s nomination did provoke a reaction at the convention, this time from African American delegates, many of whom bolted the convention in protest.
The Democratic platform again reaffirmed support for the New Deal/Fair Deal programs of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. Equally important, the platform called for the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act that permitted states to enact anti-union right-to-work laws. “An objective appraisal of the past record clearly demonstrates,” the language of the platform intoned, “that the Democratic Party has been the chosen American instrument to achieve prosperity, build a stronger democracy, erect the structure of world peace, and continue on the path of progress.” The platform also vigorously defended the leadership of President Truman during the Korean crisis.
By the early 1950s, the newly emerging medium of television had become a more prominent feature of American life and a more frequent presence in the habits of American citizens. By the beginning of the 1952 presidential campaign, a television set was a new and exciting feature in millions of homes in the United States, and while radio was still popular, it was clear to many that television was the next wave in mass media. The major networks had already televised the Republican and Democratic conventions in 1948. The two parties used broadcast media extensively, and the first television advertisements promoting presidential candidates were received in American living rooms. Having made use of radio for decades, political campaigns initially broadcast thirty-minute discussions or policy addresses similar to traditional speeches that had been previously broadcast over radio, or even in some cases, recorded for dissemination. Candidates in the earliest days of television did not as yet understand the effectiveness of the thirty-second TV ad or the sound bite, but that was about to change. Madison Avenue advertising executive Rosser Reeves, for example, convinced the Eisenhower campaign that it should broadcast short advertisements that would be inserted during television programming in what was called “prime time”—that is, that interval of time during evenings in which American audiences were likely to be largest—to more effectively connect Eisenhower to a mass audience of potential voters. Eisenhower’s advisers recognized the importance of this, given that the general had never before faced the task of running for elective office; and even though he enjoyed the kind of fame that reaches global proportions, he was a neophyte to the rituals and methods of the political contest. The effective use of television was seen as a quick and effective way to humanize the iconic Eisenhower and to foster a more intimate familiarity between the general and the voting public.
In a series of thirty-second spots titled “Eisenhower Answers America,” the Republican candidate fielded questions from ordinary citizens, discussing inflation, the war in Korea, and political inefficiency in Washington. The Eisenhower campaign spent millions of dollars broadcasting television ads in key battleground states. Focusing on the theme of change, the Republicans promised a new direction for the country after twenty years of now-stagnant Democratic administrations. In addition to the change motif, one of the catchiest slogans in American politics, “I like Ike,” was a fixture of television ads, campaign buttons, and posters throughout the country.
The Democratic Party and the Stevenson campaign found themselves on the defensive throughout most of the 1952 presidential campaign. For the first time since 1936, Republicans were not attacking an incumbent, now turning their sights more abstractly toward the recent record of Democratic governance; and so Stevenson and his fellow Democrats found themselves forced to refute allegations that they were “soft on communism” as well as to deflect the scandals that had hurt President Truman’s integrity, and thus the party as a whole, in the final months of his administration. It was a difficult task, particularly given that the Republican candidate was a beloved war hero, an international leader, and—absent a political record—immune from charges of excessive ambition, inconsistency, incompetence, or corruption. Equally important in the weakening of the Democrats’ position, Stevenson disliked the idea of using television, which he considered superficial and demeaning. He preferred the traditional approach established in radio, one that allowed candidates extended discussions of complex issues. Stevenson’s reputation as an intellectual was earned in part through his ability to speak at length with clarity and purpose, something that the candidate found to be utterly frustrated in the new medium of television. As such, the Stevenson campaign used radio to broadcast eighteen half-hour speeches focusing on issues in detail and providing his audience with a sense of the Democratic candidate’s vision for the future. Many consider Stevenson’s stubborn refusal to fully utilize television to be a factor that significantly reduced the effectiveness of his other campaign efforts.
Because of his proclivities and personality, Stevenson also faced the problem of frequently coming across as much more of an academic rather than a man of the people; and he experienced difficulty in providing simple answers to complex problems. Hence Stevenson and his inner circle were described in the press (as well as by Richard Nixon) as “eggheads,” a mild insult that Stevenson embraced in his cheeky response, “Eggheads of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your yolks!” And in responding to a remark connecting the egghead label to his own bald head, Stevenson drew upon his Latin, declaiming, “Via ovicipitum dura est,” or “The way of the egghead is hard.” Other, more ordinary, slogans such as “All the Way with Adlai” and “Madly for Adlai” proved of little help against the much more polished Eisenhower campaign. However, the Stevenson campaign definitely had its moments. Much was made of a candid photograph of Stevenson sporting a hole worn in one of his shoes, an image that actually benefited the campaign, as it helped to connect the otherwise “aristocratic” Stevenson with taxpaying voters. Stevenson played along, quipping that it is better to “have a hole in one’s shoe than a hole in one’s head.” However, these entertaining episodes aside, in terms of long-range campaign strategies, tactics, and the way in which they were conceived and deployed, the general’s team was not only ahead of the cerebral Stevenson effort, but also more anticipatory of the shape of things to come, in the way it was able to utilize the media at all levels.
But the Eisenhower campaign was not without its own problems, nor was the candidate above committing mistakes that he would later regret. He was not accustomed to the necessity of projecting a certain image to the public, but rather he maintained his steady, commanding persona that, while effective in simultaneously dealing with men like the British field marshal Montgomery and the American general Patton, was not necessarily gripping his audiences at home. Eisenhower did have political experience of a kind, as he had to deal with some of history’s greatest statesmen and generals during the war, but that was for the most part out of sight and behind the scenes. Running for office was another matter, and on the campaign trail, he often appeared dry, monotonous, ambiguous, and at times even ill-informed, a decided weakness compared to the scholarly Stevenson, who also spoke more fluidly by comparison. Additionally, Eisenhower, who for the most part was a political moderate, perhaps went too far to allay the concerns of the party’s conservative elements, a tendency that made him look less the redoubtable war commander and more the pliable vote grubber, a perception made all the more disappointing to his supporters given the certainty that the Taft wing of the party realistically could not support any candidate other than Ike.
Perhaps Eisenhower’s most egregious error was one of omission, revolving around the controversies that were stirred by Senator McCarthy in his role as chairman of HUAC. For the most part, Eisenhower, who disdained McCarthy, kept the senator at arm’s length, but an opportunity arose in which the general could have rebuked McCarthy over accusations that the senator had made against General George Marshall, Eisenhower’s friend and former superior and the director of the Marshall Plan. McCarthy had scandalously called Marshall a traitor, and during a campaign swing through the senator’s home state of Wisconsin, Eisenhower had planned to defend Marshall in McCarthy’s presence during a stop in Milwaukee. But at the last minute, Eisenhower uncharacteristically lost his nerve and omitted a passage from his speech that would have honored Marshall while dismissing McCarthy’s charges. Even prior to that, a similar incident involving Indiana senator William Jenner, an ardent ally of McCarthy who had added his voice to accusations against Marshall, occurred at an event attended by both Eisenhower and Jenner. Rather than confront Jenner then and there, Eisenhower played it safe and held his tongue. These missed opportunities to speak up against McCarthyism disappointed many of Ike’s supporters, casting, at least for a time, a palpable shadow over his campaign. Stevenson did not hesitate to describe Eisenhower’s behavior as spineless, and a chorus of Democrats, and even a few Republicans, chimed in to criticize the general’s strange unwillingness to take on McCarthy.
An angry President Truman, who in the past had always admired and liked Eisenhower, and who had, since his withdrawal, remained quietly cloaked behind the scenes, now openly campaigned against Eisenhower and for Stevenson. Truman publicly scolded Ike, stating that he “had never thought the man who is now the Republican candidate would stoop so low,” and he took to the campaign trail confessing that at one time he thought Eisenhower would serve the country well as president, but that he had been mistaken and was now determined to oppose his candidacy. Before Election Day, Eisenhower finally referred to Marshall as a great patriot; but by then, few were impressed by his late display of loyalty in defense of his friend and former commander. Sadly, this episode in the Eisenhower campaign ended what had been a genuine friendship between Truman and Eisenhower. Embittered over Eisenhower’s lack of response to McCarthy when it was needed, Truman, roused from his silence, now referred to Ike as a Wall Street stooge and a willing tool of “reactionary” forces (viz., McCarthyism) in the GOP. Fueling the president’s wrath, Eisenhower, toward the end of the campaign, boldly promised the voters that if elected, he would “go to Korea,” a remark that further angered Truman, who shot back that such a promise was “cheap” and deceptive.
As embarrassing as Eisenhower’s capitulation to McCarthy was, the biggest challenge to the GOP ticket involved Nixon. Prior to his nomination for the vice presidency, Nixon had made many enemies in both parties due to a reputation for having allegedly employed unscrupulous campaign tactics in the past, particularly during his 1948 campaign for a seat in the House of Representatives, won against Jerry Voorhis in what some argue was a particularly nasty fashion, and an even more allegedly brutal campaign for the Senate against Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas in 1950. His campaign’s success in painting Congresswoman Douglas “red”—that is to say, a potentially disloyal left-winger—led to the circulation of a new nickname for Nixon, “Tricky Dick.” And now as the campaign for the presidency turned hotter, the California senator was accused of receiving an illegal campaign slush fund of around $16,000–$18,000 from a private donor, a charge that, if proved true, would render hypocritical Eisenhower’s criticism of corruption in the Truman administration and his own pledge to honesty in government. A movement to force Nixon off the ticket began in the press, even among newspapers that supported Eisenhower’s candidacy, and gained traction among Eisenhower volunteers at the state and local levels. For a brief moment, some among the party leadership considered catching the rising swell against Nixon, and to save face, they began to consider the possibility of dropping Nixon from the ticket. But Eisenhower was convinced that the campaign would suffer irreversible damage by making such a move, and at one point, he privately admitted to Sherman Adams that the election was lost without Nixon on the ticket. In a public statement addressing the indictment, Eisenhower confidently asserted, “Knowing Nixon as I do, I believe that when the facts are known to all of us, they will show Dick Nixon would not compromise with what is right. Both he and I believe in a single standard of morality in public life.” Nixon did not hesitate to defend himself, countercharging that the smear tactic was somehow traceable back to “communists and crooks” inside the government.
Eisenhower coolly stepped back to measure Nixon’s response, and under the advice of Thomas Dewey, the vice presidential candidate made his stand before a nationally broadcast television audience. During the address, which at that time was the highest-rated broadcast in the short history of television to that point, Nixon explained his side of the story, discussing the funds in question (identified as being $18,000)—where they came from, indicating that there was never any secret as to how the funds were raised, and accounting for “every penny” having been spent for the campaign while assuring the public that none had gone to his personal use or remuneration. Additionally, Nixon avowed his objectivity as a public servant, noting that “no contributor to this fund, no contributor to any of my campaigns, has ever received any consideration that he would not have received as an ordinary constituent.” Continuing further, Nixon appealed to the public’s sympathies, supplying his life story: his rise from “modest circumstances” and the history of his family’s finances, including income raised and debts accrued, punctuating the fact that he did not come from the privileges of wealth. With a particularly effective show of familial loyalty and strength, Nixon defended his wife and family against Democratic claims that the Nixons were living in luxury on revenues illegally peddled. “Pat does not have a mink coat,” Nixon parried, “but she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat, and I always tell her she’d look good in anything.” Even more dramatically, just over halfway through the speech, the Republican candidate for vice president delivered one of the more famous moments in the history of campaign politics. In speaking of a dog that was given to his family as a personal gift from a supporter, Nixon disclosed the following:
One other thing I probably should tell you because if we don’t they’ll probably be saying this about me too, we did get something—a gift—after the election. A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog. And believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore, saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was? It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he’d sent all the way from Texas, black and white, spotted. And our little girl Tricia, the six year old, named it “Checkers.” And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog, and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we’re gonna keep it.
In his peroration, Nixon promised that he would not quit, that he would continue to battle against “crooks and communists and those who defend them” in government, and that he believed that the best thing for the United States was to vote for Eisenhower, whom he described as “a great man.” After the speech, Nixon’s critics accused him of cynical, maudlin manipulation, turning the political campaign into a soap opera. However, others argued that it was nothing less than a campaign masterpiece; and what would soon become known as the “Checkers speech” was in some quarters compared to FDR’s brilliant “Fala speech,” another example of a presidential candidate in one deft stroke defending both his integrity and his dog. Democrats, however, were not convinced of any fair comparison between Roosevelt’s good humor and what they saw as Nixon’s cynicism. What really mattered, however, was General Eisenhower’s reaction.
That same night, Eisenhower was scheduled to give a speech at a Cleveland auditorium. Prior to the general’s address, the Nixon speech was broadcast live to the audience present. The audience was moved, women wept, and as Eisenhower mounted the stage, he discarded his prepared remarks and announced, “Tonight I saw an example of courage.” As telegrams in support of Nixon’s retention on the ticket inundated the party’s national headquarters, Eisenhower met Nixon at the airport in their first encounter since the broadcast, embraced him, and enthusiastically avowed, “You’re my boy.” The Checkers speech signals the first effective use of the new medium of television by a candidate involved in a presidential campaign, and it provided the first precedent for the power of the medium that would help propel and sustain those political aspirants who would come after Nixon. Years later, as Nixon’s political career matured, he would often be described as awkward on television, out of touch, and incapable of using the medium effectively; but in the annals of presidential politics, it was Richard Nixon who first demonstrated with great skill the power of television to move public emotions and sway opinions, signaling the way in which candidates would be promoted in the near future. While Adlai Stevenson continued to adhere to radio for valid reasons of his own, Richard Nixon helped to usher in the era in which television would become, for good or ill, the primary medium for political rhetoric in national campaigns.
Although the Eisenhower campaign in 1952 encountered its problems, the country in the end seemed prepared for change, and the results of Election Day proved it. Eisenhower won slightly over 34,000,000 votes, at that time the highest number of popular votes won by a presidential candidate in history, and representing 55 percent of the voting electorate. Stevenson polled 27,375,000 votes, just over 44 percent, with around 300,000 votes cast for minor parties. Stevenson actually won three million more votes than President Truman had won in his victory over Dewey four years earlier, but the high turnout of the “stay-at-home voters” that the GOP campaigned to win over for its candidate helped boost Eisenhower to victory. The landslide was, as is usually the case, more impressive in the Electoral College, where Eisenhower won 442 electoral votes to Stevenson’s 89, sweeping the Northeast, the Midwest, and the West, and by winning Virginia, Tennessee, Texas, and Florida, cracking into the Democrats’ Southern base and winning a higher percentage of popular votes in once-solid southern states than any Republican candidate in history, a stunning blow to the Democrats. While the Democrats had lost considerable Southern support to the Dixiecrat defectors in 1948, they had not lost any state in the Old South to the Republicans since Hoover took six southern states (including Texas) in 1928. Additionally, the Republican Party rode Ike’s coattails to reclaim both the House and the Senate.
It was the most successful year politically for the GOP since 1928, but it would not, as some had anticipated, initiate the reversal of the legacy of the New Deal. The 1950s would, however, be marked by other concerns: pressing social movements urging cultural changes at home, and new dangers lurking just over the horizon abroad.
The American Experience. “The Presidents.” PBS. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents.
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