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.
Themes
Communism and Corruption in the Democratic Party
Even as it was directed at the public, Nixon’s speech had another, far narrower audience: the Republican National Committee and his running mate, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who were weighing whether to remove him from the ticket. Nixon’s goal was to show Republican Party leaders that he had the voters behind him and would be an effective spokesperson for their message. That message had an internal nickname: “K1C2,” for Korea, communism, and corruption. Even as he defends himself from charges of corruption, Nixon spends much of his time subtly reiterating this message—leveling accusations of corruption against his opponents in the Democratic Party. He implies that Adlai Stevenson II and John Sparkman represent a continuation of the failures of the Truman administration, and he claims that the purpose of the fund in question is
to handle these necessary political expenses of getting [his] message to the American people and the speeches [he] made—the speeches that [he] had printed for the most part concerned this one message of exposing this Administration, the Communism in it, the corruption in it (Paragraph 12).
Here and throughout the speech, Nixon equates communism and corruption, casting himself and his party as America’s last line of defense against these intertwined evils.
Nixon deflects the accusations against himself by redirecting them toward his opponents. Early in his speech, he says, “First of all, you have read in the papers about other funds, now. Mr. Stevenson apparently had a couple—one of them in which a group of business people paid and helped to supplement the salaries of state employees” (Paragraph 30). He prefaces this accusation with “you have read in the papers,” thereby avoiding the appearance that he himself is making accusations. He then says, “I don’t condemn Mr. Stevenson for what he did, but until all the facts are in there is a doubt that would be raised” (Paragraph 31). Nixon uses this rhetorical device, known as apophasis, frequently throughout the speech—claiming that he does not wish to criticize his opponents or accuse them of wrongdoing when he is in fact doing just that. He uses the same technique when mentioning that, though he believes that adding his wife to his payroll would be unethical, his opponent, John Sparkman, has no issue in doing so: “Now let me just say this: That is his business, and I am not critical of him for doing that. You will have to pass judgment on that particular point” (Paragraph 32). In this way, Nixon can avoid appearing to stoop to his opponents’ level. Magnanimously, he refuses to pass judgment while making it clear that his audience should do so.
Having depicted his opponents as corrupt, Nixon then ties this corruption to what he claims is the prevalence of communist sympathies within the highest echelons of the Democratic Party. He recalls the case of Alger Hiss, who was convicted of perjury after being accused of spying for the Soviet Union. Nixon claims,
[I]n the Hiss case they got the secrets which enabled them to break the American secret State Department code. They got the secrets in the atomic bomb case which enabled them to get the secret of the atomic bomb five years before they would have gotten it by their own device (Paragraph 35).
Nixon criticized Stevenson’s downplaying of the communist threat to their nation while emphasizing his own tenacity in fighting against Hiss. He uses this instance as a reminder of why he shall continue to fight against similar corruption and deceit.
Ultimately, Nixon’s emphasis on the theme of political corruption is meant to serve as an endorsement of his running mate, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower represented himself as the antithesis of political aristocracy and schemes, and Nixon contrasts him against Stevenson’s failures as someone who “will give America the leadership it needs” (Paragraph 34). Nixon concludes his speech by diverting attention to the good that Eisenhower can offer despite any accusations, schemes, smears, or other corruption that their opponents may try to impose upon them.
The Distinction Between Campaign Expenses and Governing Expenses
The underlying accusation against Nixon was that, in accepting money from anonymous, large donors (a common practice today but a relative novelty at the time), he had made himself susceptible to undue influence—in other words, these donors could expect some special consideration in return for their generosity. Nixon reframes his actions as evidence of exceptional honesty, in that he used the money to cover “political expenses that [he] did not think should be charged to the taxpayers of the United States” (Paragraph 5).
Throughout the speech, Nixon reiterates this notion that the responsibility of campaign expenses should never fall to the American people. He outlines some alternative means of funding campaign expenses, all of which function as subtle accusations against other politicians. He begins this list by saying, “The first was to be a wealthy man, so I couldn’t use that” (Paragraph 23). This brief statement accomplishes two of Nixon’s rhetorical goals at once: It implies that many of his opponents gain an unfair advantage from their economic privilege, and it supports his portrayal of himself as a representative of the common people. He then claims that many politicians add their wives to their government payroll as a means of generating additional cash flow for themselves; regarding himself, Nixon says that “there are so many deserving stenographers and secretaries in Washington that needed the work that [he] just didn’t feel it was right to put [his] wife on the payroll” (Paragraph 9). As the salary of a stenographer or secretary in this era would be a small fraction of the $18,000 in question, this argument can be regarded as a red herring, functioning to draw attention away from the alleged misconduct by making allegations against others.
Nixon argues that campaign expenses should never be covered by taxpayer money. This seemingly commonsense argument recasts his alleged financial misconduct as a means of protecting ordinary citizens from having their hard-earned money misused: “I am proud of the fact that the taxpayers, by subterfuge or otherwise, have never paid one dime for expenses which I thought were political and shouldn’t be charged to the taxpayer” (Paragraph 13). The language of this statement—beginning with the phrase “I am proud” and including the intensifier “never paid one dime”—allows Nixon to portray himself as a paragon of integrity, while the parenthetical “by subterfuge or otherwise” implies another subtle accusation against his political adversaries.
Integrity and Modesty
Nixon works to present himself as a man of integrity and modesty. He works to show transparency in the face of his accusations and establish a relation to the common working man. He lists all his debts and assets—something that he emphasizes no politician has ever done before—to portray himself as modest and humble in contrast with his aristocratic opponents. His goal here is to persuade voters to identify with him and see themselves as belonging to an in-group defined by middle-class modesty—a group that includes Nixon and Eisenhower and excludes privileged elites like Stevenson and Stockman.
The theme of integrity is immediately present in the introduction of Nixon’s speech as he states, “I come before you tonight as a candidate for the Vice Presidency and as a man whose honesty and—and integrity has been questioned” (Paragraph 1). He explains that the office of the vice presidency requires someone that the people can have confidence in and that he hopes to prove himself to be that type of person. In his aim to portray himself as honorable and aware of the weight of the accusations against him, he shares his personal finances, saying, “I am not afraid of having independent people go in and check the facts” (Paragraph 16). By sharing his financial history, he portrays himself as a person of ordinary means, from a humble, middle-class background: “Our family was one of modest circumstances, and most of my early life was spent in a store out in East Whittier. It was a grocery store, one of those family enterprises” (Paragraph 37). Nixon names his hometown—at the time, a little-known exurb of Los Angeles—to evoke a sense of hometown pride common among his audience regardless of where they came from. He uses the phrase “one of those family enterprises” to emphasize how commonplace such enterprises were. He has some assets, including two modest homes, and enough debts to nearly eclipse those assets. In this, he implies, he is like the great majority of American voters—and unlike his generationally wealthy opponents. Nixon even quotes President Lincoln as saying, “God must have loved the common people—he made so many of them” (Paragraph 29), further including himself in this class of people. He emphasizes that while he does not have much, he is proud of his earnings and his family is happy and cared for. This sentiment exudes modesty as well as pride in being a hardworking citizen—a notion that would make Nixon favorable among the American people.
Nixon expands on the importance of integrity by inviting his opponents to follow in his example of transparency. He questions “why [he feels,] in spite of the smears, the misunderstanding, the necessity for a man to come up here and bare his soul as [he has]” to emphasize how this choice is not only essential but also a demonstration of his love for his country (Paragraph 33). He invites other politicians to do the same and promises to continue to “drive the crooks and the Communists and those that defend them out of Washington” (Paragraph 40), thus creating a segue between this defense of his own integrity and the concluding portion of his speech, in which he argues that his opponents belong not only to a privileged elite but also to a political class rife with “crooks and Communists.”
