{"id":40807,"date":"2024-07-12T21:19:18","date_gmt":"2024-07-12T17:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/?p=40807"},"modified":"2024-07-12T21:19:18","modified_gmt":"2024-07-12T17:19:18","slug":"one-memorable-speech-can-turn-around-a-faltering-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/one-memorable-speech-can-turn-around-a-faltering-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"One memorable speech can turn around a faltering campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How Nixon did it with his \u2018Checkers\u2019\u00a0talk<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

Twenty years before Watergate, then-Sen. Richard Nixon\u2019s national political ambitions were in peril. He was accused of dipping into a private, $18,000 slush fund to cover expenses, and doubts about the propriety of his conduct intensified as the 1952 presidential election campaign unfolded.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nixon was able to preserve what became a long career in national politics \u2013 and kept the vice-presidential spot on that year\u2019s Republican national ticket \u2013 with a talk on television and radio in which Checkers, his family\u2019s cocker spaniel, figured memorably.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span>Richard Nixon poses with his family and their dog, Checkers, in Washington, D.C., in September 1952.\u00a0Bettmann\/Contributor<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

What is known as Nixon\u2019s \u201cCheckers\u201d speech was without precedent, and it came at a moment when television was just beginning to have an impact on American political life.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although popular memory of the speech has faded, the episode offers a reminder, perhaps loosely relevant these days to President Joe Biden, about how political firestorms \u2013 and demands that a controversial candidate quit a national party ticket \u2013 can in some circumstances be neutralized.<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201cCheckers\u201d case is also a reminder that a whiff of scandal isn\u2019t necessarily destructive to a political campaign.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nixon at a crossroads<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The 1952 Republican ticket, led by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, won a 39-state landslide over the Democrats\u2019 presidential nominee, Gov. Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois. The sweep of the Eisenhower-Nixon victory was an outcome no pollster had anticipated, as I note in my 2024 book, \u201cLost in a Gallup: Polling Failure in U.S. Presidential Elections.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But a Republican victory hardly seemed assured in mid-September 1952, when the New York Post reported that Nixon, then 39, had benefited from a private fund set up by supporters to cover expenses incurred as a U.S. senator from California.<\/span><\/p>\n

The then-liberal Post said the fund was supported by a \u201cmillionaire\u2019s club\u201d of Californians and was \u201cdevoted exclusively to the financial comfort of Sen. Nixon.\u201d The nest egg allowed Nixon to live in style well beyond what a senator\u2019s salary \u2013 $12,500 annually, or about $145,000 these days \u2013 could support, the Post alleged.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nixon was caught unawares and denied wrongdoing. He was slow to realize that the Post\u2019s disclosure threatened his political career. Not only did it raise doubts about the senator\u2019s judgment, the report appeared to contradict Eisenhower\u2019s pledge to crack down on scandal, corruption and unethical conduct in Washington.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nixon not only seemed to be \u201cdamaged goods,\u201d as Tom Wicker wrote in his biography of Nixon. He was suddenly \u201ca liability\u201d to Eisenhower, a five-star general and America\u2019s preeminent military hero of World War II.<\/span><\/p>\n

Calls for Nixon to vacate the Republican ticket arose quickly, emanating even from within the Republican party and its Eastern establishment wing. Former New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey, a two-time loser in campaigns for the U.S. presidency, urged Nixon to quit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nixon soon was the target of jeering audiences at campaign stops. Many reporters covering the candidate figured he would have to quit. Demands that he do so began appearing in newspapers that supported Eisenhower.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Washington Post, for example, said Nixon\u2019s quitting \u201cwould provide the Republican party an unparalleled opportunity to demonstrate the sincerity of its campaign against loose conduct and corruption in government.\u201d The New York Herald Tribune, a voice of Eastern establishment Republicanism, called for Nixon \u201cto make a formal offer of withdrawal from the ticket.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Eisenhower, meanwhile, was lukewarm about Nixon\u2019s remaining on the ticket and extended little more than half-hearted support to his running mate as the controversy deepened. He called on Nixon to make full disclosure about the fund.<\/span><\/p>\n

A turnaround with Checkers<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Nixon\u2019s response was to plead his case to Americans by radio and television from a broadcast studio in Los Angeles. His half-hour speech was paid for by the Republican National Committee and aired live on Sept. 23, 1952, five days after the New York Post\u2019s report about the fund.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nixon during the broadcast was by turns adamant, self-pitying and partisan. His wife, Pat, was seated nearby in an armchair that was mostly out of camera range. She looked stricken the few times the camera turned her way.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nixon emphasized his modest background and lifestyle, mentioning that his wife did not own a mink coat, an artefact of luxury at the time. Instead, Nixon said, she wore a \u201crespectable Republican cloth coat.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He described in detail his possessions and liabilities, saying, \u201cIt isn\u2019t very much. But Pat and I have the satisfaction that every dime that we\u2019ve got is honestly ours.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Nixon said he had granted no \u201cspecial favours\u201d to the 76 contributors who donated as much as $1,000 to the fund, which had been set up two years before. Its singular purpose, Nixon asserted, was to help cover expenses \u201cthat I did not think should be charged to the taxpayers of the United States.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The fund\u2019s single largest expenditures were reported to be $6,100 for stationery and $3,430 for travel. \u201cNot one cent\u201d went for personal use, Nixon said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Little of what Nixon described seemed to support the New York Post\u2019s claims of a fund set up for his \u201cfinancial comfort.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Nearly 20 minutes into his remarks, Nixon invoked Checkers, a passage that helped win for the speech an enduring place in American political lore.<\/span><\/p>\n

A Nixon supporter in Texas had gifted the pet to Nixon\u2019s family after he heard a radio broadcast in which Pat Nixon said her daughters would like to have a dog.<\/span><\/p>\n

A \u2018political masterstroke\u2019<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The writer George D. Gopen, in assessing the speech years later, said the reference to Checkers allowed Nixon\u2019s daughters metaphorically to \u201cburst onto the scene, unseen, to dominate our consciousness, playing with their dog.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat is great thinking and really good writing,\u201d he wrote.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the immediate aftermath of the speech, Robert Ruark, a syndicated columnist, wrote that Nixon had effectively \u201cstripped himself naked for all the world to see, and he brought the missus and the kids and the dog \u2026 into the act.\u201d Nixon had aligned himself with mainstream Americans in what Wicker described as a \u201cpolitical masterstroke.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Nixon closed by inviting viewers and listeners to help decide his political fate by sending letters and telegrams not to Eisenhower but to members of the Republican National Committee. Tell them, Nixon said, \u201cwhether you think I should stay on or whether I should get off. And whatever their decision is, I will abide by it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Americans responded by the tens of thousands, expressing support for Nixon. Members of the Republican National Committee voted without objection to keep him on the ticket.<\/span><\/p>\n

The outcome was perhaps encouraged by less-sensational disclosures at the time that Stevenson, the Democratic presidential nominee, had supported supplementary income funds for appointees to state positions in Illinois and that his running mate, Sen. John Sparkman, had kept his wife on his congressional payroll for 10 years.<\/span><\/p>\n

The day after the speech, Eisenhower met Nixon in West Virginia and declared his running mate vindicated. \u201cWhy, you\u2019re my boy!\u201d the Herald Tribune quoted the general as saying.<\/span><\/p>\n

A political disaster had been averted. Nixon served two terms as vice president in Eisenhower\u2019s administrations and twice won the presidency before resigning in August 1974 over the Watergate scandal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nixon\u2019s rescuing himself in the 1952 election was notable and perhaps instructive, suggesting that a creative, high-profile and timely response can prevent sensational allegations from overwhelming a beleaguered candidacy, much as they nearly did to Nixon.<\/span><\/p>\n

The lessons of 1952, of course, are only superficially germane to Biden\u2019s predicament in the aftermath of his recent disastrous debate with former President Donald Trump. Even though the long-ago Checkers speech offers no sure road map to surviving a political crisis, it does represent intriguing context to 2024.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is certainly noteworthy that Biden in recent days has sought out a variety of audiences, including those of a television network, in an urgent gambit to preserve his candidacy for re-election.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although Biden rejects their findings, polls make clear Biden\u2019s not succeeding, that a Checkers-like redux is not in the offing.<\/span><\/p>\n

W. Joseph Campbell<\/span>
\n<\/strong>Prof Emeritus of Communication,
\nAmerican University School of Communication<\/p>\n

\n

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 12 July 2024<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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