30 pages • 1 hour read
Richard NixonCheckers
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1952A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Key Figures
Richard Nixon
In 1952, Nixon was a US senator from California and was running for vice president under General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower’s campaign was successful, and Nixon served as vice president from 1952 to 1960. In 1960, he ran unsuccessfully for president against John F. Kennedy, but he was eventually elected as the 37th president of the United States in 1968, defeating Democrat Hubert Humphrey and Segregationist George Wallace of the short-lived American Independence Party. In 1974, a scandal that became known as Watergate led him to become the only US president ever to resign from office.
Nixon’s electoral success in 1968 owed much to widespread anxiety over the social and political turmoil of the era. He promised to return the country to a state of law and order and bring the war in Vietnam to a swift and, from the US perspective, successful end. As president, however, Nixon escalated bombing campaigns along the so-called Ho Chi Minh trail in Cambodia and Laos. These campaigns were meant to interrupt Viet Cong supply lines and force the North Vietnamese government to the bargaining table, but they resulted in high numbers of casualties, including among civilians, and led to intensified anti-war protests in the US. Nixon did reduce US troop levels and end the draft, but many historians argue that his decision to extend the war for another five years after taking office led to countless additional deaths without changing the ultimate outcome.
Nixon was re-elected for a second term in 1972; however, by 1974, he faced impeachment over the Watergate scandal, in which officials of the Committee to Re-Elect the President were caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices. Though Nixon claimed to have been unaware of the committee’s actions, recordings revealed that he had attempted to cover up and divert the investigation. This revelation greatly diminished Nixon’s credibility, and he resigned to avoid certain impeachment and conviction.
At the time of his “Checkers” speech, Nixon had already acquired the nickname “Tricky Dick.” Though this nickname is now widely assumed to stem from the Watergate scandal, it originally referred to a much earlier instance of duplicity. In his 1950 Senate campaign against Congresswoman Helen Douglas, Nixon ran in both the Democratic and Republican primaries (a practice that was legal in California at the time), sending out campaign mailers to Democratic voters in which he failed to identify himself as a Republican. Shortly after winning this senatorial election, Nixon rose to national prominence by decrying corruption and communism in Washington and openly criticizing the Truman administration. His accusation of espionage against Truman administration official Alger Hiss helped to kickstart a decade of intense paranoia around the threat of communist infiltrators in the elite spheres of government and media.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Eisenhower was referred to as the reluctant politician, serving primarily as a general during World War II. He served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force and oversaw two influential military campaigns: Operation Torch in 1942 and the D-Day invasion of Normandy in 1944. After the war, he was persuaded to run for president in the 1952 election with Richard Nixon as his running mate—eventually earning a sweeping victory over Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson II. During his term as the 34th president of the United States, he negotiated a truce with Korea, fulfilling one of his major campaign promises. Some of his most notable accomplishes also include the construction of the interstate highway system and the creation of NASA.
During the presidential campaign of 1952, Eisenhower presented himself as a new type of candidate—one who, as a political outsider, was well positioned to fight the culture of corruption he saw in Washington. He chose Nixon as his running mate to gain Republican and anti-communist support. They campaigned with the focus of attacking the Truman administration for their handling of the Korean War, communism, and political corruption. Eisenhower presented himself as a man of honor, of integrity, and with zero tolerance for corrupt politics. These attributes and his popularity as a war general earned him the campaign slogan “I like Ike.” His self-proclaimed intolerance of any hint of corruption or self-dealing made the accusations against Nixon in the Fund Crisis of 1952 a particular threat to the success of his election, and he agreed to keep his running mate on the ticket only after the “Checkers” speech galvanized public support behind Nixon.
Adlai Stevenson II and John Sparkman
The opposing candidates in the 1952 election were Adlai Stevenson II and his running mate, John Sparkman. Stevenson was serving as the governor of Illinois when President Truman persuaded him to seek the Democratic nomination. Although he protested it, he eventually announced his candidacy with Truman’s support. Stevenson was known for his verbal eloquence and intellect but was also sometimes perceived as out of touch with middle- and working-class voters. His running mate, Sparkman, was elected to the House of Representative in 1936 and advocated for the war against the Nazis. In 1946, he earned a seat at the senate and eventually ran on the presidential ticket in 1952. Nixon mentions both politicians in his address and points out questionable behaviors and choices they’ve each made—referencing Stevenson’s own funds and Sparkman’s wife being on the payroll. Nixon also includes an attack on Stevenson’s judgment as he reminds his audience of how poorly the case of Alger Hiss was handled.
Stevenson was widely known to loath Nixon and made public attacks against his character throughout the campaign, sensing a false morality about him. He shared outright disgust for Nixon and villainized him whenever possible. Nixon attacked Stevenson throughout the campaign as well, claiming that he did not measure up to Eisenhower and could not effectively represent the needs of the common man. Stevenson combated Nixon’s notions by claiming that he was the type of man to create an issue if only to then present a platform against it. Stevenson claimed that he was one of the first to predict Nixon’s eventual corruption.
