Nixon's Secret (14 page)

Nixon spoke without notes, and his eye contact with the camera was intimate. He came across as a man baring his soul and his meager personal finances. Pat Nixon sat in the shot, a grim smile on her face as she stared directly at her husband in his crucible moment. Now Nixon would take more advice from Chotiner, launching a counterattack on the Democrats. The savvy Chotiner had noticed from the beginning of the fund controversy that Adlai Stevenson had not joined the chorus of those criticizing Nixon. “He was hiding something—otherwise he would have been at your throat like the rest of them,” Murray had said.
35
The
Chicago Tribune
had recently reported that Stevenson had his own fund supplied by prominent Illinois businessmen who had supported his political activities. Additionally, it had been revealed that Senator Sparkman had maintained his own wife on the US Senate payroll. Nixon would call for full disclosure by both. Then Nixon, knowing that Eisenhower had taken an unconventional tax break on his substantial income from the publication of his memoir
Crusade in Europe
, called for full financial disclosure from all the candidates. Eisenhower, watching the speech on TV, would reportedly stab the yellow pad he had in his hand, breaking the point of a sharpened pencil when he heard Nixon’s call for financial divulgence.

Now, Nixon, recalling Franklin Roosevelt’s clever use of his own dog, Fala, to twit Republicans in 1940, would turn the tables on his tormentors. On a warm summer day in 1952, a traveling salesman named Lou Carrol had shipped a crate to Nixon’s daughters, Julie and Tricia. Inside was a black and white cocker spaniel that the Nixon girls named Checkers. Carrol had read a newspaper article in which Pat Nixon said that the Nixon girls wished for a dog. Fortuitously, Carrol’s spaniel Boots had just given birth to a litter, and he thought it would be a nice gesture to gift one to the Nixon clan. “We packed bits of dog food for the train men to feed her along the way,” Carrol said. “I had no idea she’d be such a big deal.”
36

Although Checkers would never live in the White House (he died four years before Nixon became president), the treasured family pet would become perhaps Nixon’s greatest political asset on his path to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Checkers helped characterize Nixon as an American individualist, humble in his roots, modest in his needs, and under attack by the establishment.

Despite these horrid attacks, there was one gift he intended to keep, he said: “One other thing I probably should tell you because if we don’t they’ll probably be saying this about me too, we did get something—a gift—after the election. A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog. And, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was? It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he’d sent all the way from Texas. Black and white spotted. And our little girl—Tricia, the six-year-old—named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we’re gonna keep it.”

Nixon thought his speech was a failure. Upon returning to the Ambassador Hotel, Nixon met a mob scene of well-wishers, but there was no immediate response from Ike or his entourage.

Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower watched the speech in Cleveland in the manager’s office of Cleveland’s Public Auditorium, where Eisenhower was scheduled to speak. There were fifteen thousand Eisenhower supporters who had listened to the Checkers speech over the public address system. Congressman George H. Bender asked the crowd if they were in favor of Nixon. The crowd responded by chanting, “We want Nixon!”

“General, you’ll have to throw your speech away,” said Eisenhower press secretary James Hagerty. “Those people out there want to hear about Nixon.”
37
Eisenhower was noncommittal in his speech. He applauded Nixon but stated that the two would have to meet before he made the final decision on Nixon remaining on the ticket. Eisenhower sent a telegram to Nixon to ask him to meet in Wheeling, West Virginia, the general’s next stop. Nixon was sure that it was to ask for his resignation. He dictated a telegram to his secretary, Rose Mary Woods, to go to the RNC announcing his resignation. Chotiner interceded and ripped up the sheet. He felt that Nixon should allow time for the public wave of support to put pressure on Eisenhower. Now Chotiner would duck calls from the traveling party around Eisenhower. “Let the bastards wait for us this time,” he would snort.
38

Chotiner returned the call of RNC Chairman Arthur Summerfield and demanded a promise that Nixon would be confirmed a nominee at Nixon’s meeting with Eisenhower or Nixon wouldn’t go to Wheeling. Chotiner said, “Dick is not going to be placed in the position of a little boy going somewhere to beg for forgiveness.”
39
Nixon recalled the scene in
Six Crises:

His [Summerfield’s] conversation with Murray Chotiner went something like this:

“Well, Murray, how are things out there?”

“Not so good.”

“What in hell do you mean, not so good?”

“Dick just wrote out a telegram of resignation to the General.”

“What! My God, Murray, you tore it up, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I tore it up, but I’m not so sure how long it’s going to stay torn.”

“Well, Dick is flying to Wheeling to see the General, isn’t he?”

“No, we’re flying tonight to Missoula.”

“What? My God, Murray, you’ve got to persuade him to come to Wheeling.”

“Arthur, we trust you. If you can give us your personal assurance direct from the General that Dick will stay on the ticket with the General’s blessing, I think I can persuade him. I know I can’t otherwise.”
40

Nixon sent Eisenhower a short acknowledgment of his telegram and suggested they meet in Washington, DC, the following week. Nixon’s friend, journalist Bert Andrews, got hold of Nixon by phone, and Andrews also advised him to go to Wheeling. Nixon, however, flew to Missoula.

The response among an impressive number of the sixty million who had watched it on TV proved the opposite of what Nixon thought. The responses poured in. Of more than four million letters, postcards, phone calls, and telegrams sent to the Republican National Convention headquarters, 75 percent were in favor of Nixon. Checkers even received a year’s worth of dog food, collars, and toys. It was Nixon’s first lesson in the power of a television image. As his political career unfolded, Nixon would become the prototypical political test subject for the new medium. His highest and lowest moments as a politician would be facilitated by television and scrutinized for years following. In 1952, television was still thought of as a fad to Nixon, but the forum allowed the politician to get his message across unfiltered and emotional. Although today the speech is often invoked as schmaltzy, shameless hucksterism, in its day it was an innovation both in politics and communication. Nixon had his back to the ropes, but he was still swinging. “His revelations came across as painful, anguishing for everyone watching,” Thomas Doherty, a professor of American studies at Brandeis University said.
41
The speech had saved Nixon’s career.

Indeed, Nixon would write in his in his book
Six Crises,
“If it hadn’t been for that broadcast, I never would have been around to run for the presidency.”
42

On September 24, Summerfield and Humphreys called Nixon at his hotel in Missoula. He agreed to fly to Wheeling only on Chotiner’s terms. They then briefed Eisenhower on the wave of public support, and Eisenhower agreed that Nixon would remain on the ticket. Nixon made speeches in Missoula, stopped in Denver, and arrived in Wheeling late in the afternoon. Meanwhile, Eisenhower announced in his speech in Wheeling that his running mate had been the victim of an “attempted smear.”

Eisenhower went to the airport to meet Nixon, and three thousand people who had come to meet the plane cheered the candidates. When Nixon’s plane landed, Eisenhower himself would board the Nixon craft to find his running mate. “General, you didn’t have to come here,” said Nixon.

“Why not?” asked Eisenhower, “You’re my boy.” Eisenhower’s comment was reasserting his status as a general over a junior officer. At City Island Stadium, Eisenhower introduced Nixon to the crowd as a “colleague” who had “vindicated himself” from a “vicious and unprincipled attack” and who “stood higher than ever before.”

Nixon’s Checkers speech would both save his political career and add to his derision by America’s intellectual elite, who saw his performance as corny and trite. While highly successful, the speech would add to Nixon’s status as the most polarizing figure in American politics in the 1950s.

NOTES

1
.     Jonathan Aitken,
Nixon: A Life
, p. 212.

2
.     “TV Goes to the Conventions,”
Popular Mechanics
, June 1952, p. 94.

3
.     Jeffrey Frank,
Ike and Dick: Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage
, p. 30.

4
.     “Republican Party Platform of 1952,” P
olitical Party Platforms: Parties Receiving Electoral Votes: 1840–2012
, The American Presidency Project, retrieved October 13, 2012.

5
.     James Chace,
Acheson: The Secretary of State Who Created the American World
, p. 326.

6
.     Stanley M. Rumbough,
Citizens for Eisenhower
, p. 51.

7
.     Jeffrey Frank,
Ike and Dick: Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage
, p. 2.

8
.     Jeffrey Frank,
Ike and Dick: Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage
, p. 25.

9
.     Frank Mankiewicz,
Perfectly Clear: Nixon from Whittier to Watergate
, p. 58.

10
.   Edmund Kallina,
Kennedy v. Nixon
, p. 13.

11
.   Gayle B. Montgomery and James W. Johnson,
One Step From the White House: The Rise and Fall of Senator William F. Knowland.

12
.   Edmund Kallina,
Kennedy v. Nixon
, p. 58.

13
.   Ibid. p. 31.

14
.   Christine L. Compston,
Earl Warren: Justice for All
, p. 63.

15
.   Jeffrey Frank,
Ike and Dick: Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage
, p. 32.

16
.   Herbert Brownell,
Advising Ike: The Memoirs of Attorney General Herbert Brownell
, pp. 110–111.

17
.   James T. Patterson,
Mr. Republican: A Biography of Robert A. Taft
.

18
.   Jeffrey Frank,
Ike and Dick: Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage
, pp. 32–33.

19
.   Ibid. p. 35.

20
.   Ibid. p. 120.

21
.   “Peter Edson First to Get Nixon Story,”
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
, September 21, 1952.

22
.   Leonard Lurie,
The Running of Richard Nixon
, p. 123.

23
.   Leonard Lurie,
The Running of Richard Nixon
, p. 121.

24
.   Richard Nixon, “The Fund That Treatened to Wreck a Career,”
Time
, March 16, 1962.

25
.   Jeffrey Frank,
Ike and Dick: Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage
, pp. 40–41.

26
.   Leonard Lurie,
The Running of Richard Nixon
, p. 131.

27
.   Ibid.

28
.   Associated Press, “‘Checkers Speech’ defined Nixon’s Style,”
Sun Journal
, September 23, 1992.

29
.   Richard Nixon,
Six Crises
, p. 95.

30
.   Ibid. p. 96.

31
.   Associated Press, “‘Checkers Speech’ defined Nixon’s Style,”
Sun Journal
, September 23, 1992

32
.   Leonard Lurie,
The Running of Richard Nixon
, p. 135.

33
.   Jeffrey Frank,
Ike and Dick: Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage
, p. 48.

34
.   Ibid. 49.

35
.   Richard Nixon,
Six Crises
, p. 106.

36
.   Tom McCann, “50 Years Ago, It Was Pup that Saved Nixon,”
Chicago Tribune
, Oct. 20, 2002.

37
.   Ralph de Toledano,
Nixon
, p. 141.

38
.   Herbert Klein,
Making It Perfectly Clear
, p. 138.

39
.   Conrad Black,
Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full
, p. 258.

40
.   Richard Nixon,
Six Crises
, p. 121.

41
.   David LaGesse, “The 1952 Checkers Speech: The Dog Carries the Day for Richard Nixon,”
U.S. News & World Report
, Jan. 17, 2008.

42
.   Richard Nixon,
Six Crises
, p. 129.

CHAPTER FIVE

IKE AND DICK

“I love that Mamie [Eisenhower]. She doesn’t give a shit for anybody.”

—Richard Nixon
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I
n the same way their political partnership was draconically cobbled together in a dark, “smoke-filled room” by high-powered GOP minds, Eisenhower and Nixon’s personal relationship often existed the same way. A secretly wise, publicly aloof Eisenhower used Nixon as a hatchet man to handle some of the “messier” tasks of Washington and his administration. Dick had to do some of the GOP’s most negative campaigning against the Democrats during the 1952 presidential campaign, and similarly, he was also often given the job of dealing with the Eisenhower administration’s “dirty” work throughout his years as vice president. “He [Eisenhower] was a military man and he believed that people who are subordinates were to carry out what the chief wants,” Nixon said years later. “It didn’t bother me a bit. That was my job. A vice president, a member of the cabinet, a member of Congress is a member of the president’s party. He should always consider that he is dispensable and should do what the man wants, to carry out his policy, because otherwise, the man’s got to get down in the ring. What happened to Richard Nixon when Eisenhower was president would be bad for me, but wouldn’t matter that much to the country. What happened to him would be disastrous.”
2