W. Joseph Campbell at The Conversation: Twenty years before Watergate, then-Sen. Richard Nixon’s 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.
Nixon was able to preserve what became a long career in national politics – and kept the vice presidential spot on that year’s Republican national ticket – with a talk on television and radio in which Checkers, his family’s cocker spaniel, figured memorably.
What is known as Nixon’s “Checkers” speech was without precedent, and it came at a moment when television was just beginning to have an impact on American political life.
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 – and demands that a controversial candidate quit a national party ticket – can in some circumstances be neutralized.
The “Checkers” case is also a reminder that a whiff of scandal isn’t necessarily destructive to a political campaign.
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.
The then-liberal Post said the fund was supported by a “millionaire’s club” of Californians and was “devoted exclusively to the financial comfort of Sen. Nixon.” The nest egg allowed Nixon to live in style well beyond what a senator’s salary – $12,500 annually, or about $145,000 these days – could support, the Post alleged.
Nixon was caught unawares and denied wrongdoing. He was slow to realize that the Post’s disclosure threatened his political career. Not only did it raise doubts about the senator’s judgment, the report appeared to contradict Eisenhower’s pledge to crack down on scandal, corruption and unethical conduct in Washington.
Nixon not only seemed to be “damaged goods,” as Tom Wicker wrote in his biography of Nixon. He was suddenly “a liability” to Eisenhower, a five-star general and America’s preeminent military hero of World War II.
