In early July 1952, the Republican National Convention nominated thirty-nine-year-old senator Richard M. Nixon as General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s vice presidential running mate. Prior to receiving the nomination, Nixon had established a reputation as a strong anti-communist and an expert on foreign affairs. On September 18, 1952, the New York Post published a story with the headline, “Secret Rich Men’s Trust Fund Keeps Nixon in Style beyond His Salary.” The story alleged that a group of seventy-six California businessmen had provided Nixon with a secret personal slush fund in excess of $18,000. The story proved extremely embarrassing for the Republican Party, and Eisenhower was under enormous pressure to drop Nixon from the ticket. Only a few years before, a number of alleged influence-peddling controversies had tarnished the reputation of the Truman administration, and the Republican Party had used these controversies as part of its campaign strategy to win back the White House for the first time since 1932. It was therefore inconceivable that Republicans would risk charges of hypocrisy in coming to Nixon’s defense.
Realizing that he faced almost certain removal from the ticket, Nixon decided to take his case directly to the people rather than addressing the scandal in a press conference. On September 23, 1952, in a nationally televised address to the American people, Nixon defended himself against the allegations and denied breaking any laws or regulations. After defending his honesty and integrity, Nixon emphasized his modest upbringing and lifestyle, noting that his wife, Pat, did not own a mink but, rather, sported a “respectable Republican cloth coat.” Even more effective in building sympathy for his plight was Nixon’s sentimental story about Checkers, the dog given to him and his family by a campaign supporter. Nixon characterized Checkers as an example of a campaign gift in an attempt to minimize the seriousness of the accusations against him:
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.
The speech was given on a Hollywood set designed to look like a room in an average American home. Nixon’s gamble worked. The speech attracted fifty-five million viewers, a record that remained unbroken for eight years (edged out by the Nixon-Kennedy televised debate in 1960). The Eisenhower campaign received thousands of telegrams supporting Nixon’s place on the ticket, and on Election Day, the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket won a landslide victory. Nixon’s Checkers speech foreshadowed the growing importance of television in presidential campaigns as a tool that enables candidates to transmit their message directly to the voters, unfiltered by print and broadcast journalists. Ironically, many political historians attribute Nixon’s loss to John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election to Nixon’s poor performance in the first of four televised presidential debates.
See also Campaign of 1952; Campaign of 1960
Lagesse, David. “The 1952 Checkers Speech: The Dog Carries the Day for Richard Nixon.” U.S. News and World Report, January 17, 2008.
Nixon, Richard M. “Checkers.” The History Place: Great Speeches Collection. http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/nixon-checkers.htm. Accessed October 12, 2015.
“Richard M. Nixon ‘Checkers’ Speech.” PBS: The American Experience. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/37_nixon/psources/ps_checkers.html. Accessed October 12, 2015.
Super, John C., ed. The Fifties in America. Ipswich, MA: Salem Press, 2005.
Wells, William T. “A Fantasy Theme Analysis of Nixon’s ‘Checkers’ Speech.” Electronic Journal of Communication 6, no. 1 (1996).