Richard Nixon's Checkers Speech: The First Step in American Political Cynicism

Richard Nixon, Congressional Portrait

No doubt, the recent electoral success of a convicted felon leaves some people distressed. But take heart. Donald Trump is not the first crooked, worthless, slimy, amoral candidate to achieve political prominence, nor will he be the last. Today, let us look at Richard Nixon’s infamous 1952 Checkers speech. Nixon was then Republican candidate for the vice-presidency of the United States.

In this speech, Nixon rerouted accusations of political corruption by muddying the issue and changing the topic. Facing political disaster, Nixon did what modern politicians now routinely do: he acquired airtime. His on-the-air speech obscured the scandal and digressed from the issues. Not only did he talk the nation into excusing his dubious behavior, but Nixon convinced voters to admire his actions and, ultimately, to elect him to the vice presidency. Let’s look at the scandal, examine Nixon’s mostly irrelevant defense, and, finally, reflect on how neither Nixon nor the nation learned a lesson

The Scandal

During the 1952 campaign, Nixon accepted an $18,000 political contribution to be used as a campaign slush fund. Today, of course, such a pathetically small contribution would make no one blink. In 1952, campaign contributions were rarely regulated, reported, or publicly audited. Nixon’s political opponents jumped to accuse him of graft and influence-peddling. In 1952, $18,000 would amount to about $214,000 today. That would still seem trivial by today’s standards. 

As we all know, no one worries about those kinds of things today. But I digress.
 

Nixon’s Speech

Faced with political doom, Nixon took action. It was time to give a speech. The Republican Party purchased television time. In his televised speech, Nixon skillfully mentioned some accusations, muddied others, and talked about his daughter’s dog. 

Now, it always matters how we phrase the question, and Nixon raised the question adeptly: 

“The question is, was it morally wrong? I say that it was morally wrong -- if any of that $18,000 went to Senator Nixon, for my personal use. I say that it was morally wrong if it was secretly given and secretly handled. 

“And I say that it was morally wrong if any of the contributors got special favors for the contributions that they made.”

That was clever. First, Nixon asserted that he would talk about morality. The audience might think that a wicked man would not discuss morality. Second, Nixon focused first on the lesser charge: the suspicion that he had skimmed money. The more important problem was whether the contributors would receive political favors. But he put that issue last.

Instead, he said: 

“Every penny of it was used to pay for political expenses that I did not think should be charged to the taxpayers of the United States.” [italics added]

Of course, it wasn’t just a matter of what Nixon thought. Using public money for the campaign was illegal, even back then. But I digress again.  

Nixon denied, with little explanation, that the contributors received special consideration. By now, of course, it should be clear that Nixon intended to focus on whether he lifted money for personal expenses. This is a common rhetorical trick: he argued that he was innocent of the lesser transgression. This helped Nixon lead his audience to assume that he did not commit the greater offense.

Nixon pointlessly explained how Senate offices are financed:

 “Let me tell you in just a word how a Senate office operates. First of all, the Senator gets $15,000 a year in salary. He gets enough money to pay for one trip a year, a round trip, that is, for himself, and his family between his home and Washington, D.C. and then he gets an allowance to handle the people that work in his office to handle his mail.

 “And the allowance for my State of California, is enough to hire 13 people. And let me say, incidentally, that this allowance is not paid to the Senator.”  

Although those specifics made a nice civics lesson, they told the audience nothing about the slush fund. He was digressing!  

Nixon then all but boasted that he was not rich, that his wife is not on the federal payroll, and that his duties prevented him from practicing law. Fine. What about corruption? Well, Nixon’s audience heard nothing more about that. They did, however, learn about an audit. 

An audit? That should settle the question, should it not? Alas, Nixon never actually presented the accountants’ audit. Instead, he quoted his lawyers. And his lawyers said that Nixon had neither violated the law nor received income from the slush fund. Now, common sense would tell you that the auditors’ statement counts more than the lawyers’ opinion. The lawyers were, after all, paid to represent the Republican Party’s interests. What did the auditors actually say, in their own words? The audience never heard!  

Anyway, after rambling about his personal finances and pointing out that his wife did not wear a fur coat, but a “good Republican cloth coat,” Nixon admitted that he had received one illegal gift from a contributor – a cute dog! 

“It was a little cocker spaniel dog, in a crate that he had 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, loved the dog, and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep it.”

 Great. Now, Nixon is making his opponents out to be dog-haters. Yikes! And he diverted attention from the slush fund. 

Anyway, the speech worked. After hearing an outpouring of support for Nixon and his dog-loving daughter, Republican presidential candidate Dwight Eisenhower decided to stick with Nixon. Nixon went on to serve eight years as vice president. 

Did you notice what Nixon asserted but never proved? He asserted but never proved that his donors received no special favors. Nor did he even promise that he would not grant favors in the future. He gave weak proof that he did not embezzle. But who cares? I mean, his daughter loved the dog.

Did Anyone Learn Anything?

Did anyone learn a lesson? Well, Nixon did learn one lesson: that he could be corrupt and get away with it. If caught red-handed, all he needed to do was find a television studio and give a sappy speech. It worked, didn’t it? 

The American public also had a chance to learn. They learned two things: that their politicians were corrupt, and that they didn’t care. 

And, so, it goes on. The United States went on to elect at least two presidents with suspected organized crime ties (Kennedy and Reagan). We twice elected Donald Trump, who boasted in an infamous sound recording that he sexually abused women.

Anyway, Nixon became president many years later. He moved on to the Watergate scandal, the essence of which was that his campaign staff maintained a huge secret fund that operated outside of the Party’s control. The secret fund financed what his staff called “dirty tricks.” He got away with most of the dirty tricks, until two Washington Post reporters discovered that he had used some of the money to bribe witnesses concerning the break-in at the Watergate office building. Bribery turned out to be illegal. (Technically, it was called obstruction of justice.) Nixon didn’t get away that time. He was impeached and then resigned to escape removal from office. 

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In the short run, the outcome of Watergate was good. A dishonest man was removed from public office. Good. But the Checkers speech had removed the barriers that might have stopped corrupt politicians from pouring their filthy sewage across America’s political landscape. The Checkers speech knocked out the public’s scruples about unscrupulous leaders. We went from Honest Abe to Checkers. Step-by-step, as time went by, the public’s cynicism grew and, today, no level of veniality deters American voters.

By digressing, by proving irrelevant points while slipping around the genuine issues, and by talking about a dog, Nixon bamboozled a nation.

Gentle reader, do not think that this is a uniquely Republican problem. Upcoming, I intend to write about an even filthier speech by an even more horrible man, a man whose foul wickedness puts Nixon and Trump to shame, who happened to be a Democratic politician. Stay tuned!

by William D. Harpine

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Source note: The definitive text of this history-making speech is found on Americanrhetoric.com, a website set up by my late graduate school classmate Martin J. Medhurst. 

Research Note: My analysis is much inspired by Barnet Baskerville, "The Illusion of Proof," Western Speech, 25 (1961): 236-242. Libraries can probably find the article in databases.

Copyright © 2024 by William D. Harpine

Image: Official congressoinal photo, publid domain, via Wikimedia Commons