Happy Anniversary

Today, is the anniversary of Richard Nixon's, "Checkers" speech in which he denied allegations of improper campaign financing. At the time, Nixon was Eisenhower's running mate in the 1952 presidential election.

I had never seen the speech in its entirety. I didn't realize that Pat Nixon was sitting dutifully on the couch next to Tricky Dick.

Take a break from the current scrum and listen to the speech.





Highlights

"I have found that there are so many deserving stenographers and secretaries in Washington that needed the work that I just didn't feel it was right to put my wife on the pay roll."

" . . . the speeches that I had printed for the most part concerned this one message of exposing this Administration, the Communism in it, the corruption in it."

Ahhh, the House Un-American Activities Committee

(HUAC is the), "most un-American thing in the country today."
-former President Harry S. Truman, 1959

" . . . we've got a house in Washington, which cost 41,000 dollars and on which we owe 20,000 dollars. We have a house in Whittier, California which cost 13,000 dollars and on which we owe 3000 dollars."

Wow, cheap digs. According to the website Simply Hired, the median price of a home in Whittier, CA today is around $485,000.

"I say that a man who, like Mr. Stevenson, has pooh-poohed and ridiculed the Communist threat in the United States -- he said that they are phantoms among ourselves. He has accused us that have attempted to expose the Communists, of looking for Communists in the Bureau of Fisheries and Wildlife. I say that a man who says that isn't qualified to be President of the United States. And I say that the only man who can lead us in this fight to rid the Government of both those who are Communists and those who have corrupted this Government is Eisenhower, because Eisenhower, you can be sure, recognizes the problem, and he knows how to deal with it."

"Let me say this: I don't believe that I ought to quit, because I am not a quitter. And, incidentally, Pat's not a quitter. After all, her name was Patricia Ryan and she was born on St. Patrick's day, and you know the Irish never quit."

Full text of the speech is available at American Rhetoric.