Richard Nixon’s Checkers speech — delivered just five days after the New York Post reported wealthy backers had set up a fund for his day-to-day expenses — was seen by some 58 million people, or about a third of the population of the United States. It lasted thirty minutes and was to be forever identified by its reference to a cocker spaniel named Checkers. It was like nothing ever seen in American politics, set apart by its intimacy, its pathos, the apparent revelation of a private life from a public man, and its use of television. Its structure was a trial lawyer’s closing (or, perhaps, opening) argument, which ranged from the explanatory to the exculpatory to the defiant; buried within it was not only Nixon’s defense of himself, but occasional jabs at his opponents and probably at General Dwight Eisenhower, his running mate. It is still a remarkable document.

The set was simple: Nixon sat behind a desk, his hands loosely clasped over his notes, and Pat Nixon was several feet away in a chair that seemed too large for her. Looking earnestly into the camera, Nixon said:

My fellow Americans, I come before you tonight as a candidate for the Vice Presidency and as a man whose honesty and integrity have been questioned. Now, the usual political thing to do when charges are made against you is either to ignore them or deny them without giving details.

I believe we’ve had enough of that in the United States, particularly with the present Administration ...

I have a theory, too, that the best and only answer to a smear or to an honest misunderstanding of the facts is to tell the truth. And that’s why I’m here tonight. I want to tell you my side of the case.

Nixon went on to do just that, often conducting a dialogue with himself in a style and rhythm that he would continue to employ and to improve upon throughout his public life:

I’m sure that you have read the charge and you’ve heard it said that I, Senator Nixon, took $18,000 from a group of my supporters.

Now, was that wrong? And let me say that ... it isn’t a question of whether it was legal or illegal; that isn’t enough. The question is: Was it morally wrong? I say 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 it was morally wrong if any of the contributors got special favors for the contributions they made.

But that never happened, Nixon insisted. And then he posed another question to himself: “Well, then, some of you will say, and rightly, ‘Well, what did you use the fund for, Senator?’ ‘Why did you have to have it?’” That permitted him to explain the economics of a Senate office — his salary, his travel expenses, and the rest. But there were, he added, other expenses that needed to be covered for which there was no federal reimbursement. How, Nixon asked, does one pay for that — and do it legally? “The first way,” he said, “is to be a rich man. I don’t happen to be a rich man; so I couldn’t use that one.” Then, using the language of quiet insinuation that infuriated his detractors, he took the night’s first slap at the Democrats — starting with Senator Sparkman — while bringing Pat Nixon into an increasingly personal narrative:

Another way that is used is to put your wife on the payroll. Let me say, incidentally, that my opponent, my opposite number for the Vice Presidency on the Democratic ticket, does have his wife on the payroll, and has had her on his payroll for ten years — for the past ten years.

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