On this day in 1952 Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Richard Milhaus Nixon gave his famous “Checkers” speech on television. Senator Nixon from California had been chosen as the running mate of Dwight Eisenhower. He was accused of improprieties relating to a fund established by his backers to reimburse him for his political expenses. There was a lot of pressure to dump Nixon from the ticket unless he could explain this. Nixon explained his family finances and it became known as the “Checkers” speech because he said no matter what anyone said the one gift that they were keeping was a black and white dog that his girls had named “Checkers”

The speech was seen or heard by over 60 million Americans including the largest television audience ever up to that point [television was still in its early days} Nixon pulled out all the stops and in the end it saved him and his career. If he had been dropped from the ticket he would never have been POTUS [thank of what that would have saved the nation}